The Unpopular Gospel - Pastor Tom Loghry
After Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, he tries to offer a defense before the Jews that were gathered. They begin to protest all the more and the commander sends him to be flogged. Paul then reveals his Roman citizenship.
Transcript:
The truth is the truth, but it is not always popular. People love the truth when it backs them up, when it confirms their priors. They despise the truth when it cuts against them. The truth should be loved unconditionally, not only when it fits our narrative. Because we should always be seeking the better narrative, the truer narrative than those stories that we tell ourselves. God's narrative over those of our own making.
More often, however, we fight back. From the end of Acts 21 into chapter 22, we hear Paul's own testimony of how he came to be an apostle of Christ. It's a story told not for its own sake, but because it reveals the truth. It reveals the truth of who Jesus is, and it reveals the truth of regarding God's redemptive purpose here in this world. We learn the true story in Paul's story. And as we'll see, there are fireworks in response. Already, as you'll recall, Paul had been dragged from the temple under the accusation that he had defiled the temple by bringing a Gentile, named Trophimus, into the temple. Now, Paul hadn't done that, but he was accused of doing that. Jews from Asia Minor knew Paul, and they wanted to bring trouble for him, and they started a riot. And they were trying to kill Paul until Roman troops intervened. And so we continue the story from that point in verse 37 of Acts 21.
Now, as has always, already been read, Paul begins speaking to the commander. He says, "May I say something to you?" And Paul says this in Greek, and the commander is impressed. In fact, the commander is surprised because he had supposed that, in fact, Paul was a terrorist. He says in verse 38, "Aren't you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?" The time in which Paul is living is a very violent time. The Jewish historian Josephus corroborates, in fact, this detail of there being a false prophet who came from Egypt, was not a native Egyptian, but was a Jew who lived in Egypt, in order to try to lead a revolt against the Romans. Now, it failed, but they were trying to get the guy. And meanwhile, also, there is a group in the area known as the Sicarii, which is just kind of a plural term for the daggers, those who use daggers. They're a group of assassins. They went after the Roman authorities and any Jewish sympathizers, killing them in broad daylight. So the commander here thinks that the people are upset because they've found one of these terrorists, or perhaps even, in particular, this, this one fellow who has been causing trouble from, from Egypt.
But the fact that Paul is so fluent in Greek suggests to him that Paul probably isn't this, this fellow. And Paul tells him as much. He says, "I, I'm," he says, "I'm, I'm basically not from there. I'm from, I'm a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, citizen of no ordinary city." Now, Tarsus was a very respectable city. It wasn't any sort of backwater town. It wasn't a seedy kind of place. And so what we find is that the commander's going to give Paul permission to speak here. Why? Because he's probably hoping that Paul will be able to clear this all up, cause the crowd to disperse because they'll realize that he's no troublemaker. He's just this guy from Tarsus, it's all a big mix-up.
And so Paul makes his approach, and as we'll see, he, he addresses his countrymen in the Aramaic language. Now, this is the language that Jesus spoke. It's the language that was commonly spoken by the Jews at this time, even while the scriptures were originally written in Hebrew. Hebrew had fallen somewhat out of, out of common use. And so he's speaking to them in a language that's not familiar to the Roman authorities. They don't understand it. Now, I'm going to read through the speech as a whole so you have a feel for it. It just kind of feels a little artificial to break up a speech. I'm gonna read it as a whole, and then we'll talk about it some.
So Paul says this. "After receiving the commander's permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic, 'Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.' When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet. Then Paul said, 'I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. About noon, as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" "Who are you, Lord?" I asked. "I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting," he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. "What shall I do, Lord?" I asked. "Get up," the Lord said, "and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do." My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, "Brother Saul, receive your sight." And at that very moment, I was able to see him. Then he said, "The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, and to see the Righteous One, and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized, and wash your sins away, calling on his name."
When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking to me. "Quick," he said, "leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me." "Lord," I replied, "these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him." Then the Lord said to me, "Go. I will send you far away to the Gentiles."'"
So, and this is where the speech ends. Not according to Paul's plan, but it ends. In verses, in the first few verses here of Paul's speech, we see that he begins with kind of his bona fides in speaking to his countrymen. He says, "I'm a Jew like you. I'm from Tarsus, but I was raised in Jerusalem. I was raised in this very city." And more than that, he actually studied under a highly respected teacher, a well-known Pharisee named Gamaliel. He studied the law, and he was completely religiously zealous. And he tells them, "I, I was just as zealous as you are today." They're trying to kill him. They're upset because they think that he's defying the law, saying, "I was just like you." In fact, Paul was so zealous, he tells them, that he persecuted the followers of the, of the Way, which is just another way of referring to Christians. Christians are followers of the Way of Jesus Christ.
He was so zealous for trying to defend what he believed to be the truth that he was trying to imprison the Christians, he was trying to kill the Christians. He wanted to go outside of Jerusalem. He wanted to go to Damascus, over in the area of Syria, to go get the Christians there and bring them back to Jerusalem just to punish them, to shut them up. And so he, he got letters to the associates in Damascus, "Go and do this very thing." So the people that he is speaking to, and the authorities in Jerusalem, they know Paul. They know his story. They can say, "Yeah, that's what actually happened. He was in tight with us."
And so in doing this, what Paul is doing is he's, he's setting the stage here of his credibility as a witness. How is it that a man like that, whose great joy in life was to try to kill Christians, then becomes an apostle of Christ, becomes a Christian himself? Well, it takes a very profound intervention. That's what he relates to them. He says, "I was on my way to Damascus." He was on his way to Damascus when he was suddenly struck by this bright light which blinded him. He had this encounter with Christ. Jesus called out to him saying, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" And Jesus identifies himself and, and, and says that, "I'm the one that you're persecuting." Now, what's really interesting here, I always like to point this out, is obviously Jesus has ascended. Paul's not persecuting him in that way, but he is persecuting the Christians who are members of Christ's body.
From this blinding intervention, Paul is just kinda left a bit dumbstruck, and like, "Well, what do I do now?" And Jesus tells him to proceed, to proceed to Damascus 'cause he's gonna get his new mission there. He thought he knew what he was about when he was heading to Damascus. He had a mission. And Jesus is saying, "No, I've got a totally different mission for you. You thought you were seeing things clearly, now you're blind. I'm gonna give you real sight when you show up in Damascus. You'll see the way that I have for you." And when Paul shows up in Damascus, he says that a man, Ananias, came to him, and it, again, Paul's going at great pains here to try to underscore that he is truly Jewish in the way that he came about to following Christ was in a Jewish manner. This man, Ananias, was known to be a devout observer of the law. He was highly respected by everyone.
And he tells, he tells his, this crowd that Ananias told him this, that, "The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear the words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard." Now, just something that's really interesting here, the fact that Ananias says that Paul has seen the Righteous One. It's a detail we can roll over very quickly, but this is just another indication of the divinity of Christ, that He is, in fact, truly God come to us in the flesh, the Son of God. Now, Isaiah 24, verses 15 through 16, it says, "Therefore, in the east give glory to the to, to the Lord. Exalt the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, in the islands of the sea. From the ends of the earth we hear singing, 'Glory to the Righteous One.'" It's interchangeable. All the glory that belongs to God belongs likewise to Jesus Christ because He is, in fact, God. Now, in response, Paul is called by Ananias to get up, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name, calling on the name of the Righteous One, calling on the name of Jesus Christ.
Now, you might wonder, I mean, how is it that baptism washes away our sins? Well, it's not by the water. The water doesn't do anything in itself. Peter, in 1 Peter 3, verses 21 through 22, says that this baptism that now saves you also, he says that it's not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone to heaven and is at God's right hand with angels, authorities, and powers in submission to Him. The way that we experience cleansing in baptism is this: is that baptism is the manifestation, it's the sign, it's the seal of our faith in Jesus Christ.
It's a, and it's not our faith that cleanses us, it is Jesus who cleanses us. How does He do that? He does that by the sacrifice that He has offered up for our sake. When Jesus went to the cross, He was a perfectly innocent man, did not deserve to die. All of us are sinners. All of us have gone astray. We deserve to die, but Jesus didn't. He received in Himself the penalty that we deserve. But more than this, that's just the negative part, He received the punishment, but He offered up the life all of us are supposed to offer up to God. And so Jesus has made the restitution. He has paid the ransom. He has made things right between us and God if we throw our lot in with Him. If we say, "No, I'm just gonna do my own thing," then we gotta stand before God on our own two feet, and it's not gonna fare well for us. But God has given us mercy in Jesus Christ, so that if we put our faith with, in Him, God will accept us on the basis of what He has done. And more than this, not only is our guilt washed away, our, our record made clean, but in Jesus Christ, we are given new life, resurrection life, so that we are no longer dominated by sinfulness, by the waywardness of our hearts, the ways of the devil that have corrupted our soul. Now instead, we are inhabited by the Holy Spirit so that we walk in harmony with God, and we walk forward towards the day when Christ will return, and we will be raised from the dead to live forever and ever with Him. So this is what baptism represents. It's our union with Christ. We go down into the waters, we are joined to His death. We leave the old life behind, and we are raised to new life and move forward with Him.
And so that's what Paul does. He's baptized, and he moves forward. He leaves the old life behind. And then he says that he goes to Jerusalem, and he's in the temple, and he experiences this trance. Now, we don't know all the particulars here. There's, there's some suggestion that this might be the experience that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians 12, verses one through four, where he goes to the third, third level of heaven, and he has this incredible visionary experience which he doesn't tell us much details about. Says he can't say much about it and that he experiences some affliction from it in order to keep him humble. But in any case, he experiences this incredible encounter with, with Christ. And what it, and we do know this, according to Paul's testimony here, that Jesus told him this. He said, "Quick, leave Jerusalem immediately because the people here will not accept your testimony about me."
Now imagine Paul's surprise. Like, just think naturally here. You've turned to Christ. You've been called to bring the gospel message to people, to try to persuade them that Jesus is truly the Messiah. You've studied under Gamaliel. You used to persecute the Christians. Where do you think that you should serve? Jerusalem seems like a perfect spot, right? It seems like, "God, you lined everything up for me to be right here." But that's not God's plan for Paul. Instead, he does the complete opposite thing. He wants to send him away. Well, first off, he tells him, "They're not gonna listen to you," which, again, is just incredible. But it's a reminder to us that people don't come to believe in the gospel by natural means. It's not by mere reason that a person repents and comes to put their faith in Christ. Their hearts must be transformed. It is a miracle when a person turns to Christ. Even Jesus himself, remember he says in Matthew 13:57, he says, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in, and in his own home." Jesus was rejected in Nazareth when he went to his own people. He's telling Paul, "They're gonna reject you, too, and so I'm sending you elsewhere." Rather than going to the Jews, where we would imagine that he would be sent, he's, he's sent to the last people you'd expect. He's sent to the Gentiles. The, the last people that you would expect someone like Paul in his past life just to be found with. Now, we can imagine that Paul probably had more to say here, and he had probably hoped that he had kind of laid enough of groundwork here to get a hearing, but he gets cut off by the crowd.
Continuing on in verse 22. The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, "Rid the earth of him! He's not fit to live!" As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust in the air, the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty?" When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. "What are you going to do?" he asked. "This man is a Roman citizen." The commander went to Paul and asked, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?" "Yes, I am," he answered. And the commander said, "I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship." "But I was born a citizen," Paul replied. Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he'd put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
So we see how upset the people become when they hear Paul say that Christ had sent him to go to the Gentiles to bring a message of salvation. And we wonder, why is that? Why is it, why is it, why are they so upset? Are they justified in being upset? The reason why they are so upset is because for the past several centuries, they had been hemmed in by the Hellenistic culture. First Alexander the Great came and swept through and began leading the Jewish people through that cultural influence to begin to compromise their faith. It wasn't a good thing. And what this ended up leading them to do is to become very insular and very focused on trying to retain their national identity, their religious identity without having any sort of association with those Gentiles. But the thing is, is should they have had that outlook or should they have expected something else? Should they have expected something more to come about? Even while all these bad things had happened, should they have hoped for a better future? Yes, they should have. And we could review many passages in the Old Testament, but I just wanna show just two. Two really important ones. We go to Genesis 12.
This is such an important passage here for just understanding the trajectory of the biblical narrative. When you pick up the Old Testament, you kind of expect, okay, this is just, this is a Jewish book, it's gonna be all about the Jews, about how God loves the Jews, and he only cares about the Jews. But what we in fact see from the very beginning is that while God uses the Jewish people, he begins with the particular, that particular people, his intent has always been universal in scope. When God calls Abraham and, and makes his covenant with him, he says this in Genesis 12, verses two through three. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse;" and then get this, "And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." Not just the Jewish people, all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
And then we get to the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 49, verses five through six. Speaking of the servant who is fulfilled by Jesus Christ, he is the one who is the servant. It says, "Now the Lord says-- He who formed me in the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him and gather Israel to himself, for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord and my God has been my strength-- he says, 'It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.'" Think about how incredible this verse is. It looks like it could be taken right out of the writings of the Apostle Paul, that God is not just for the Jews, but that God intends to be the God of all people, and to bring his salvation to all people in Jesus Christ.
But they didn't, they weren't ready to accept that message. Instead, they respond, "Rid the earth of him. He's not fit to live." You see, they had lost the plot. They had lost track with the biblical narrative. They had bought into their own narrative, and they wanted to double down on the division. They didn't want reconciliation. But it's for that very reason which Christ came. The Apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:14-18 says this about Jesus. He says, "For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one, and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. He came and preached peace to you who are far away, and peace to those who are near. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit."
This is the good news, that in Jesus Christ, all people are invited back to the Father in him. This is good news, but it was not good news to their ears. It's not what they wanted to hear. And so they throw their cloaks. The dust is flying. And the commander, you can imagine the poor commander's confusion here. Paul's been speaking in Aramaic. He doesn't know what the guy's saying. He's like, "All right." Like, "This guy must be up to no good." And he's like, "We're just gonna flog this guy, and he'll eventually tell us what's, what's going on here." Now, flogging was a serious deal. Paul had been beaten up before with rods.
Flogging, though, we're talking about metal balls and pieces of bone. It would've tore him up. He could have died from undergoing flogging. And so it's at this point, Paul's been saving this, and he figures this is probably the time to bring this up. Paul mentions, "There's this little detail here. I'm a Roman citizen. I'm a Roman citizen." Now, this is a big deal. Roman citizens are due a fair trial. You can't just bind them up and start beating them up. And the fact that Paul is a natural citizen, apparently, we don't know all of Paul's backstory, how the, all this came about, but he was a natural Roman citizen versus the commander who had to purchase his citizenship, kind of gives him even a one-up on the commander in terms of his standing as a citizen. And so they all back off because if they flog him and he turns out to be a Roman citizen, it may take a little time to prove that out, but if it's proved that he is, the commander could be out of a job. Maybe worse, but there would be consequences for him, and he doesn't wanna deal with that. It's not worth it to him.
Again, the truth is the truth, but it is not always popular. Paul has a great testimony. I mean, how many of us would love to, I mean, none of us wanna have on our record that we tried to kill and imprison people, but it's a great testimony to have. He was a zealously religious Jew. He was trying to kill Christians until Jesus Christ confronted him on the road to Damascus. We can't imagine a better spokesman, and yet he is rejected. They say, "Rid the earth of him. He's not fit to live." We can't imagine a better spokesman except for Jesus himself, but he too was rejected. Remember the crowds yelled, "Crucify him. Crucify him." So if they rejected Jesus, and if they rejected Paul, don't be surprised if you endure some rejection when you share the gospel.
You see, the gospel is only good news if you can admit that you're a sinner. When you tell some people that they're sinners, that they need a savior, that's bad news to them. They won't even admit that. The gospel offers us forgiveness. Sounds like good news, but it also calls us to forgive others in the same way that we have been forgiven. That's bad news to some people. They don't wanna forgive the people that have done wrong to them. They wanna hold onto their grudges. The gospel offers forgiveness, but it also calls for repentance, leaving the way of sin behind. Some people are like, "Yeah, sign me up for get out of jail free card," but they're not interested in walking a different path. They, they like the forgiveness, but they want to keep doing their own thing. The gospel reveals Jesus to be King.
That sounds like great news considering compared to all the other political authorities we, we've seen in history and in our present day. I'll take Jesus every time. And yet, some people would take it to be bad news 'cause they're just not ready to submit their lives to Him. They know what Jesus says, they know what the Bible says, but they think that they know better.
It might not just be one thing. It could be a combination of things that lead someone to reject the gospel. In Paul's case, the Jews he spoke to rejected the gospel because the gospel offered salvation and inclusion to non-Jews, the Gentiles. They are more invested in their ethnic pride and their, their idea of religious fervor than the actual kingdom of God.
So what can we do? We can only do what Paul does, testify to the truth. Speak the truth even when you expect to be rejected. And keep in mind that Paul was not always rejected. Remember all the people who responded positively to the gospel in his preceding missionary journeys. We shouldn't be doomers or Eeyore, saying, "Woe is me, no one's ever gonna listen to us," blah, blah, blah. None of that. We just should know what to expect in the mix of things so that we don't get discouraged, so that we don't lose hope, so that rather we persevere knowing that God can do things that seem impossible, even turning a murderous man like Paul into an apostle. We can imagine him looking out into the crowd, seeing himself, hoping that they would be transformed like him. As we look out onto the world, let us hope for the same, that God would transform hearts just as He has transformed our own. Let us pray.
Dear Father, this passage testifies to the abundance of Your mercy towards us.
We see in particular in the abundant mercy that You showed Paul, this man who was persecuting Christ himself, persecuting the people of God, and yet you showed him mercy and redeemed him to be your own. Father, we thank you for redeeming us to be your own. From turning us from being enemies to being your children. We thank you that our sins are washed away in Jesus Christ, that as we put our faith in Him, our trust in Him, we can know that we are accepted, forgiven, and that we have the promise of a new life, which begins today.
Father, our prayer is that we would testify to the truth, even if we think we might be rejected. Father, we pray that you would help us to trust in your plan rather than what seems most natural to us. Paul, Paul had all kinds of ideas on how he thought it would go, but you had different plans. Help us to trust in your plans more than our own, Father.
Father, we come to you and submit ourselves to you as your servants, asking that you would give us this great blessing and privilege to be used by you for the sake of the gospel, that Jew and Gentile alike, so that the ends of the earth, our neighbors, our friends, and to whomever you would send us, Father, may come to know the salvation that you've given us in Him.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God and hear the preaching of his word. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)