Dennis Tuuri

Glowing with immortal bloom. There’s application of that to the people of God. And certainly Paul in the text we’re about to read exercised the power of God in reference to those who would kill him.

We read today from Acts 21:31, and I’ll read through verse 24 of chapter 22, beginning at Acts 21:31.

And as they went about to kill him, tidings came unto the chief captain of the band that all Jerusalem was in an uproar, who immediately took soldiers and centurions, and ran down unto them. When they saw the chief captain and the soldiers, they left off beating of Paul. Then the chief captain came near and took him, and commanded him to be bound with two chains, and demanded who he was and what he had done. And some cried one thing, and some another among the multitude. And when he could not know the certainty for the tumult, he commanded him to be carried into the castle. And when he came upon the stairs, so it was that he was borne by the soldiers for the violence of the people.

For the multitude of the people followed after, crying away with him. And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain, “May I speak unto thee?” Who said, “Canst thou speak Greek? Art not thou that Egyptian which before these days made an uproar, and leadest out into the wilderness 4,000 men that were murderers. But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city.

And I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people. And when he had given him license, Paul stood on the stairs and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying, Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defense which I make now unto you. And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence.

And he saith, I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers, and was zealous toward God, as ye are all this day. And I persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women, as also the high priest doth bear me witness and all the estate of the elders from whom also I received letters unto the brethren and went to Damascus to bring them which were there bound unto Jerusalem for to be punished.

And it came to pass that as I made my journey and was come nigh unto Damascus about noon, suddenly there shone from heaven a great light round about me. And I fell into the ground and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And I answered, who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom thou persecutest? And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me.

And I said, What shall I do, Lord? And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus, and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appointed for thee to do. And when I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of them that were with me, I came into Damascus. And one Ananias, a devout man, according to the law, having a good report of all the Jews which dwelt there, came unto me, and stood, and said unto me, Brother Saul receive thy sight.

In the same hour I looked upon him, and he said, The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that just one, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shalt be his witness unto all men, of what thou hast seen and heard. And now, why tarriest thou, rise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. And it came to pass that as I was come again to Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance, and saw him, saying unto me, Make haste, and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.

And I said, Lord, they know that I am imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee. And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. And he said unto me, Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. And they gave him audience unto this word, and they lifted up their voices, and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live.

And as they cried out and cast off their clothes, and threw dust in the air, the chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle and bade that he should be examined by scourging that he might know wherefore they cried so against him.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that this word demonstrates to us the power of the resurrection. And help us, Lord God, as we meditate upon this text to be transformed by it, to move from glory to glory, to be strengthened by giving grace from you. Lord God, through this word that we might obey you and might more glorify your name in all things that we do and say, experiencing ourselves the power of the resurrection. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Glowing with immortal bloom, Paul stands as he’s about to make his defense of the faith before two groups. The Roman soldiers who are taking him into their fortress, their castle, their tower for safekeeping until they can examine him on the one hand and on the other hand the Jewish rabble or mob intent on killing him and out of whose hands he has just been rescued by the providence of God by soldiers of an occupying army.

Paul stands and in his simple beckoning of the hand, God uses that to quiet the crowd that were crying out for his death in such a tumultuous way that the Roman soldiers couldn’t even tell what the charges were. Things were so moblike in what was going on here. And yet Paul glowing with immortal bloom, so to speak, the power of God going through him quiets all men so that they might hear the words of the servant of Jesus Christ.

What are those words? Those words witness to the power of the resurrection. Those words speak to the reality of the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth and his testimony to Paul. His words to Paul is being seen by Paul and Paul being qualified thereby to be an ambassador for the Lord Jesus Christ. An apostle. One of the requirements of which was to see and be in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the apostle here is the one who was in his presence in his resurrected power. That is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul in his defense before a silent crowd, a great silence had come over them makes his defense of the faith. We are all to be able to provide a defense for the hope that is in us. We are all required to speak forth a defense of the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ before men. And so this picture for us of the Apostle Paul speaking of the power of the resurrection has great significance for us indeed in the very phrasing of the story.

God has in his providence given us a picture of a witness to all men. We have the Jews on the one hand and Paul speaks to them in Hebrew. We have the Roman soldiers and Paul has just spoken to them in Greek and astonished them and pleased the Jews by his speaking in Hebrew. And he will shortly hereafter in the text make his appeal to Rome. Romans, Greeks, the Greek language, the Hebrew language, the Jews, all men are kind of brought together here in a sense and pictorial sense to demonstrate the way the defense of the faith is to be made before all men.

And so the Apostle Paul’s defense is important to us. And it is surprising to us. It’s not really, as you read the text, what you’d expect necessarily. I mean, the very first words out of Paul’s mouth are rather incredible for a couple of reasons. One, because he does speak in Hebrew or Aramaic, the common Hebrew of the day, the common dialect of the Jewish people.

Well, why is that surprising? These men all knew Greek. They expected Paul to speak Greek. He had just been speaking Greek to the Roman soldiers. And they thought, of course, that Paul was this great deserter of the Jewish people. And so Paul goes out of his way to provide a ministry of grace to them by speaking in their native tongue, so to speak, a good picture for us of our defense of the faith. Speak in the vernacular. And Paul here surprises them and makes them even more quiet by speaking in their native tongue.

And it’s a surprise to us. Why is he going out of his way to give a concession to these men who are just about ready to kill him and were obviously ethical rebels against the Lord Jesus Christ? But then he does something even more amazing. Instead of just speaking in Hebrew, he refers to this unruly mob as men, brothers, and fathers.

I was speaking with a sister in the Lord this week about my trip to Salem twice this week and how I almost in front of a committee I used the term fathers in referring to them and decided not to—it would be totally misunderstood. And I try to point out and I think that this text verifies the fact that all those that are in authority are to refer to in with reverence as fathers because they hold positions that God has in his providence ordained for them and they represent an aspect of God in terms of their rule and authority.

And so Paul and speaking to this gathered mob and calls them brothers and also calls them fathers because there were members there—probably the high priest was there himself, certainly members of the elders, the ruling authority were there.

And so Paul doesn’t do what we would necessarily think you’d want to do. You know, in going to Salem this week, this text was on my mind the entire week. And Christians want to go to Salem. And all too often, they want to go down there and remind these men that they are responsible to God and they better do what’s right, you know, and they better get on with it or else God’s going to judge them. And that’s certainly true.

But the other side of that is that these men in Salem, heads of households in families, rulers in church and state, and other realms as well, bear titles, as Calvin has said, that are on loan from God. And one of the reasons for that is to remind us to approach them respectfully because of their position that God in his providence has put them in.

So Paul’s defense of the faith begins by demonstrating the power of the resurrection in his ability to have the grace from God through the power of the resurrection to approach those men that needed to hear the words of the defense respectfully. He goes out of his way in the very language he uses and the very opening phrases that he used to make concessions. I say in the outline, it’s not quite a good enough word for it, but he wants to minister grace. In spite of their desire to kill him, he wants them to live. And that is not possible in the flesh. That is an evidence of the power of the resurrection in Paul’s life. And it’s a model for us too in our defense of the faith.

We want to minister grace. The fact that he’s willing to address them is an example of grace extended to them. And then of course as I mentioned on the outline he’s entreating them as brothers and fathers and speaking to them in the Hebrew tongue is concessions to them. And essentially Paul’s defense he says three things basically which the next three points of the outline.

He first of all talks about his zealousness for the law. Now remember the charges are that he wants to get rid of the temple and get rid of the law and the Jewish nation, all that stuff. And he’s deserted them. And Paul begins his defense by saying, “That simply isn’t true. That I was as zealous for the law as you were, and I was a student brought up in the context of the law.” And he tells them about his past.

Then he tells them about his conversion on the road to Damascus. And then he tells them about his commissioning from the Lord Jesus Christ to take the gospel to the Gentiles and why he left Jerusalem when he did after his conversion. So he speaks to them of his previous state prior to his conversion being a zealous Jew loving the law and then he talks to them about his conversion and then he talks to them about his commissioning to go to the Gentiles.

And really in each of those areas Paul is preaching the sovereignty of God because he says that he was a Jew because he was born that way in the—he had no choice in the matter. He was born into a Jewish household and he was raised in the context of the Jewish faith. And then when it comes around to talk about his conversion, he says that it wasn’t my choice. I wasn’t somehow dissatisfied with the Jewish faith. I wasn’t dissatisfied with the law of God. I wasn’t looking to convert. But the Lord Jesus Christ himself came to me in the form of a great voice and a blinding light. And he brought me to an awareness of my sins against the Lord Jesus. He persecuted Jesus through his church. And he preaches the sovereignty of God. And then he preaches the sovereignty of God and his commission to go to the Gentiles wasn’t my choice.

He says again, my choice was to come back to Jerusalem to minister here. I thought this was a better mission field, but Jesus sent me away. So don’t blame me. It’s Jesus Christ who has risen from the dead, who has the power of the resurrection, who gives me the power of the resurrection, and as a result converts me and commissions me to go into all the world. And so the Apostle Paul’s defense is that—now, it’s cut off. We don’t know what he might have gone on to say, but we know that this in the providence of God is what he wants us to see.

And recognize that in each of these three elements of his defense of the faith, he preaches the sovereignty of God. And recognize, too, that it’s not just at the beginning of this text that Paul draws continuity between himself and the Jewish people, between himself and the law of God, between himself and the temple worship that he has been accused of abandoning.

He throughout this defense ties all that together and wants us to see who read the text 2,000 years later and wanted the hearers to see that there is no discontinuity between the faith of the Old Testament properly applied and the faith of the New Testament. He says that he was zealous for the law and he doesn’t say that as a bad thing. He says that he was born a Jew. He says that he was raised, nourished and taught according to the strict manner of the law consistently with the scriptures.

He was taught by Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the glory of the law. Some people referred to him as—he was one of six men that had the title Raban, which is a higher title than rabbi, and a rabbi itself is the higher title than Rab, which is a lower form of teacher. So he’s like the highest kind of teacher you can get. And he literally sat at his feet. He was born a Jew. He was nurtured as a Jew. That’s the second participle he uses there. He was raised up by his family as a Jew. And the third thing is he was instructed in the law of God. And that instruction came through a tremendous expositor and instructor of the law. And he doesn’t say these things in a negative cast.

You know, we want him to be just a New Testament Christian, but he’s not. He’s an Old Testament Christian. He’s continuity between the law of God and the fulfillment of that law in the Lord Jesus Christ. Like the Savior, Paul says, “I don’t come here to abolish the law. I come here to preach the fulfillment of the law in Christ.” And so he in his opening statements about his own Jewishness he talks about his upbringing. And then he says that he didn’t just have instruction in the law. He was zealous for the law. He wasn’t just a hearer of the law. He was a doer of the law. And he says this all to show them that I’m like you in this case. I don’t despise the law of God. I see this continuity.

And he says that his zealousness for the law caused him to persecute the way. And he goes on to talk about how he actually held the cloak of those that attended rather to the death of Stephen. He imprisoned Christians. He was commissioned by the high priest and elders. He says, “You don’t believe me that I was a zealous Jew. Ask the high priest. Ask the elders. Look at the records. 20 years ago, you’ll see that I was commissioned by letters from this group.”

So he draws his commonality to them in the sense not of their traditions, but rather in the sense of a strict conformity to the law of God. And then he goes on to say, “But something else needs to be added to this story. It is good that you’re zealous for the law, but he’ll say later to Romans that they’re zealous for the law, but without knowledge, without the completion of the understanding of what that law is fulfilled in, and that’s the personal work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that’s the second part of Paul’s defense. He says that he came to Christianity. He talks of his conversion. And he talks of that by saying that it was God’s call to him. Again, he wasn’t dissatisfied. It was the completion of these things. And it was the sovereignty of God that first brought him conviction of sins, rock of ages, cleft for me. You know that song we sang today and the author of that song, Augustus Toplady, a great Calvinist from England. You’ll read the story of the origins of the song. You see a picture of the rock mentioned in that song in the handout.

There’s a handout from like we have up there from the Christian History Institute. If you got one of those, you’ll see that in there. And Paul is brought to an acknowledgement that indeed he had persecuted the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ of Nazareth and he’s told to wash away his sins. He goes to the rock of ages cleft for him. He’s brought to an awareness of his own sinfulness, his own rebellion, his own misuse of the law in the case of persecuting the church by a sovereign act of God, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to him. And God works through not simply that, he then humbly submits himself to the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, “What will you have me do, Lord? What should I do? What should I do?” And Jesus says, “Go to member of the church, go to the Christian church to receive instruction.

Jesus doesn’t tell him directly what to do. He tells him instead to go on to find Ananias member of the Christian church. And even there Paul says that my first contact with the church with converted Jews so to speak was himself a man who was a Jew who was zealous for the law and obedient devoted to the law is what he says and had a good reputation among the Jews. You see he’s still playing to this audience saying look at—there’s no—don’t tell me I’m not a Jew and don’t tell me I’ve broken the law. I’ve come to the completion of the law. And even in the process whereby Christ converts me and commissions me, he sends me to the first Christian I meet who himself is another Jew who is devoted to the law.

And so Paul answers the charges by way of just a simple recitation of the facts of his own past, his conversion, and then his commissioning. And Ananias tells him that God has sovereignly chosen Paul. He has chosen you. You have not chosen him. And what purpose? That you might know God’s will. That you might see the just one, the righteous one, the Lord Jesus Christ. You might hear his voice and then be a witness to all men.

Requirements of apostleship to see the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he sees Jesus in the power of the resurrection. And Ananias tells him he’ll be a witness not simply to the Jews, but he’ll be a witness to all men. And so Paul begins at that point in his defense to talk about why he’s there because he’s taken the message of the law, the fulfillment of the law, the glory of the law, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s going to take that message to the Gentiles, but it’s not his choice. It’s God’s sovereign choice again. And then finally, in his defense, the last thing he mentions is he then, without talking about the three years that intervene between Ananias’s bringing his sight back and him being baptized and washing away his sins—then there’s three years, but he doesn’t mention that—he goes right to his next stay in Jerusalem.

And he says there that, you know, I did indeed leave Jerusalem to go to the Gentiles, but that wasn’t my choice either. That was the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. I told him. And where was Paul at, by the way, when Jesus comes to him? He’s in the temple. Again, you see, he shows the continuity. There’s nothing wrong with Christians being in the temple until the temple is destroyed by God. And so, he says, “I was praying in the temple undoubtedly at one of the set hours of prayer, and I was in a trance. The Lord Jesus appeared to me and said, get out of here because they’re not going to hear you.”

And Paul actually—argue is too strong a word. But Paul speaks with the Lord Jesus. He says, “Well, you know, I think this is the best mission field for me. I want to do your will. I want to witness to you and I want to bring men to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, who you are, but I think this would be a good place to do it because these guys know that I persecuted the church.” And so now, surely that’s going to be a great testimony I can give to these folks and help them to see the reality that the law is fulfilled in Christ.

And Jesus says, “No, very simply and plainly, no. I’ll send you far from here to the Gentiles.”

And of course, it’s at that place that the Jews reject Paul. They cry out away with such a man because they are convinced of their natural privilege with God being born of the lineage of Abraham. They’re convinced that they are better than everybody else. It’s pride. It’s national pride at stake here. And as a result of that, they don’t like the idea that the gospel is going to be taken to the Gentiles. They don’t like the implied accusations against them all along the path here. He was like them. He was killing the wrong people. And God says he’s going to send him to all people. God comes to bring him to completion of salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don’t like that. And then God says, “You’re going to go to the Gentiles and these guys won’t hear you.” And that really riles up the crowd and they want to kill Paul.

And so they get all upset and the Romans take him back to the tower. But this is Paul’s first defense. Paul’s going to have a series of defenses of the faith as we go through these concluding chapters of the book of Acts. Now away from the missionary journeys, he’s now going to be an apostle in bonds. And in bonds, he’s going to give us a series of defenses of the faith and presentations of the gospel. And they’ll be very instructive to us.

Today, I want us to think about the instructiveness of this particular text in demonstrating the power of the resurrection. This is that Lord’s day when we focus upon the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I hope you’ve seen the liturgy up to now, the movement from death to life, the movement of the crucifixion to the resurrection. First half of Psalm 22 to the last half and our identification with that moving from rock of ages up to up from the grave he arose and up from the grave we arise as well and the Lord Jesus Christ in his resurrected form appears the apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul manifests the power of the resurrection.

The power of the resurrection can be seen in many ways in this text working through the apostle Paul. The fact that the power of the resurrection is the means whereby he silences the critics at the beginning of this sermon as a demonstration of that power and that ability. The Apostle Paul does not speak as a fanatic. He chooses his speech carefully and distinctly. The Holy Spirit came upon men in the Old Testament. They could work with their hands in delicate and fine ways the craftsmanship required for the temple and its construction. And the Holy Spirit and the power of the resurrection is demonstrated in the Apostle Paul in that he knew just how to speak correctly to this group of men and women. He speaks with a great ability as an orator so to speak. He doesn’t just let words fly. He chooses his words carefully.

And as I’ve demonstrated, and we could go into more detail, maybe you could later on yourselves as you read the text, how many times he’s trying to get them to see this correlation. And so the power of the resurrection is seen in the preaching Apostle Paul in silencing his critics. The power of God flows through him. The power of the resurrection is seen in the Apostle Paul that he submits to ungodly men. He calls them fathers, those that would seek to kill him. The power of the resurrection of the Apostle Paul is seen also in his implied challenge to those same authorities to obey the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe and to be converted.

It is a fearful thing to go before men that are in power over you that can kill you. It’s a fearful thing to have to submit to them, but the power of the resurrection enables us to do that. And it’s a more fearful thing to challenge them. And the power of the resurrection gives Paul the authority and power to do that.

It requires the power of the resurrection to converse with God. Now, we take that very lightly in our day and age because we don’t have a very good apprehension of the holiness of God. But Paul certainly did. And when the Lord Jesus appears to him in the temple and says, “I want you to go someplace else.” For Paul to be able to speak with the Lord Jesus, not to argue—that’s too strong a word, but to give his insights, to be able to approach God in intercession and say, “Well, it seems good to me that I stay here.” That isn’t foolishness on the Apostle Paul’s part. That’s what prayer is for us—is dialogue with God. And if we have an understanding of the holiness of God, then it requires the power of the resurrection to embolden us to approach him with such words.

And Hebrews says indeed that we can have boldness to approach the throne of grace. Why? Because of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our sins are covered through that action. It takes the power of the resurrection to witness to God’s sovereignty.

Certainly in our day and age, that’s true. And I want to focus in closing here on three particular aspects of the power of the resurrection. We can talk about many of them. As I’ve mentioned here, all three of these have to do with identification with the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re going to have communion in a couple of minutes and we’re going to partake of the Lord Jesus Christ, eat of his flesh, drink of his blood, his perfect humanity, and we’re going to receive power from on high to obey him.

Identification with the Lord Jesus Christ is the heart of the power of the resurrection because he is the resurrected one. And we move from death to life because of our covenantal identification with the Lord Jesus Christ. And throughout this text, again, I’ll only mention a few points, but throughout this text, there are correlations between Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ. Things that are given to us to identify him with us.

I’m going to give you just a couple of small examples. As I said, like his Messiah—the apostle Paul was implying through this text that he did not come to abolish the law that the Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfill the law. And Paul’s defense of the faith shows that correlation of the law and the Lord Jesus Christ and mimics so to speak the savior’s own words that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

Like the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul comes unto his own here. He goes out of his way to say, “I’m like you. I’m one of you. I’m a Pharisee.” He comes to his own just like Jesus did. But just like Jesus also his own don’t receive him. They seek to put him to death instead. And he’s going to go—be at least the text leads us to believe he’s going to go—be scourged just like the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve talked a lot about this, but identification with the Lord Jesus Christ is the essence of the power of the resurrection.

We have no power in it ourselves. We have no power in our volition or ability to summon up courage or whatever, but rather all that comes through identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, grace from on high. And let me just speak about three manifestations of the power of the resurrection. I’ve kind of touched on these a little bit, but just three things in closing.

First, the power of the resurrection is required to take those who are our enemies, who would seek to kill us, and instead of killing them, seek their conversion. The big transition as Paul moves from death to life is that one way it can be seen is that while he had former enemies the church—Christians—and as a Pharisee in his deadness he sought to kill them. Now he has real enemies, not just those who had implied enemies, but now he has real enemies in the context of this scene in front of the Roman tower who have just tried to beat him to death. So he has even more justification for striking out at them than he did striking out at the church.

But he doesn’t do it, does he? Instead, he reaches out to them trying to minister grace if it’s perchance they are members of the elect community of the Lord Jesus Christ. If they are also sovereignly called by God, he doesn’t want to get in the way of that. He seeks the conversion of his enemies, not their death. Now, he knows that they’re not all going to convert necessarily. He knows that God’s going to judge them. And I’m not removing any of that. But I’m just saying that in his defense of the faith, he instead of striking out at his enemies, seeks to convert them.

That’s a difficult thing to do. I was at Salem several days this week and one particular time I was before a committee, the child and family services, and there was a sodomite on that committee and we had a poll we’d released this week about child abuse and we distributed it. We were asked to come to this committee for 15 minutes and present our results and we were kind of thrown to the wolves is what happened. And this sodomite came after us pretty hard in terms of the validity of the survey and how he was offended and shocked that we’d quote the Bible in a scientific poll, you know, of the people. These people hate the Bible, some of them. And you know, when you see that coming at you like that, my instinct in the flesh, what we want to do is strike back.

We want to lash out. We want to destroy him. We want God’s judgment to come down on the sodomite and take him off. Dispatch him. And God may do that. God will if the man doesn’t repent. But we should seek his repentance. We should seek not to hurt him, but we should seek to convert him. And we should seek to speak words that are efficacious to ministering grace should he be called by the Lord Jesus Christ to be a Christian.

And the only way to do that, folks, the only way to do that truly without being a hypocrite is the power of the resurrection. And you’ve had people in your life this last week or month or year or you will in the near future probably have those who oppose you and who treat you unjustly. And you’re going to have a desire in the flesh to strike out against them. And God help you and God help me too. Forgive us when we seek to justify our own lashing out by appealing to religious motivations.

And we know the text that God brings judgment. We’re not denying that. But I’m saying that what we want to do is pray for the grace that God gives us the power of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ that we may not lash out but rather be like Paul humbly submitting ourselves to men and seeking their well-being. The Apostle Paul goes out of his way over and over in the context of this text doing just that. And that is a demonstration of the power of the resurrection.

Like Stephen, Steven did the same thing. Paul stands before the same sorts of people as Steven did 20 years earlier. And of course, Paul was one of those that sought Steven’s death. And who knows in the providence of God what Steven’s defense, including the exact same address, brethren, men, brethren, fathers, how that might have been part of the process whereby God works with the Apostle Paul to finally bring him to a realization of his sin.

Surely, it’s on Paul’s mind. He uses the exact same form, same form of address. Just as Steven demonstrated the power of the resurrection, not lashing out, but rather treating respectfully the people that he came across, so Paul does as well, in his tone, he had a tone that quieted the people. His demeanor by a very gesture, he produces peace, at least of a vocal type. And then in his content, he seeks to minister grace. And he demonstrates the power of the resurrection.

Let us also, as Calvin said, learn so to reverence and honor men that we impair not God’s right. And as I said, one of the great privileges I had this last week was to go before a couple of different committees and before the education committee of the house was to speak forth the responsibilities of that committee to submit to the king of kings. But I did it also in the context of saying that homeschoolers are essential—most of them are Christians—and we go down there representing them seeking to show them deference and honor to the legislators but also reminding them of their responsibility to the great king of kings. But that’s only possible to make those sort of statements through the power of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One writer said of Paul: “It was a remarkable feat of intellectual balance and self-control after the violence of the mob’s manhandling and a rescue which can have taken little thought of gentleness to lay hold of the opportunity for testimony and in the act assess the needs of the situation and the appropriate approach and seeking to conciliate his hostile audience.” That’s the power of the resurrection working in the Apostle Paul. But I’d suggest that we need also to seek that same power of the resurrection in our life to make an adequate defense of the faith.

As Matthew Henry says, there appears no fright in the Apostle Paul’s statement. And there appears no passion—that is no angry expressions—in his defense either. And those are the two things that usually trip us up. Fear. Stand in front of people that have authority over you. It’s fearful. And then secondly, you can overcome the fear by anger. But either one of those things are wrong—an unrighteous anger and an unholy fear. God wants us to have calmness and peace as we meet people that are opposition and who work against the cause of Christ. He wants us to have a peace and stability, a lack of fear and a desire to minister grace. And that’s possible only through the power of the resurrection.

Secondly, the apostle Paul demonstrates the power of the resurrection in his humbleness to God and the institutional church. As I said, upon his conversion, when the Lord Jesus appears to him, His response is, “What shall I do, Lord?” Calvin says, “This is the voice of a tamed man, and this is the true turning unto the Lord. When laying away all fierceness and fury, we bow down our necks willingly to bear his yoke, and are ready to do whatsoever he commands of us. Moreover, this is the beginning of willingness to ask the mouth of God, for their labor is lost, who think upon repentance without his word.”

And so, it demonstrates the power of the resurrection to submit ourselves humbly to God and to his will and to seek from him and from him alone what we shall do—to not look to our political machinations, to not look at how we’ve learned from the wisdom of men in terms of how to become friends with people or do this or that or the other thing, but rather to humbly submit ourselves to the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what demonstrates in us also the power of the resurrection in the midst of difficult trials, great temptations and persecutions—to seek humbly the will of God as a demonstration of the power of the resurrection.

And notice also that as I said earlier, Jesus refers him to Ananias. And Calvin goes on to say, “Furthermore, in this Christ appointeth Ananias to be Paul’s minister, he doeth it not for any reproach or because he refused to teach him, but by this means he meaneth to set forth and also to beautify the outward ministry of the church.” And we can think we’re humble to God. And when God tells us to seek the instruction of the church, which he does for us not to humble ourselves to the institutional church, to other brothers and sisters in the Lord, to those that are called to special office in the church, then we demonstrate a lack of the power of the resurrection in our lives.

Again, who wants to do that? None of us want to do that. We want to do our own thing. And if it can help God out in his cause, that’s fine. And if it might be able to do something for the church, that’s good, too. But to set aside our own will and to seek humbly from God what shall I do?

Think of this last week and maybe an argument you had in your home or a difficulty you had at work or a problem you had in your community with a neighbor this last week or two or maybe you read some of the press accounts about the child abuse report etc. In the midst of difficulties or a trouble like that, the answer that’s so far from us and yet it is the answer that removes us from the situation and turns it back around and does it correctly. The answer is to stop in the middle of that and ask God, “What would you have me to do?”

You know, usually we know what we’re supposed to do, but our passions get running off with us. Our flesh goes ahead and in the deadness of our old habits that we’ve learned before we were Christians, we respond improperly. And God says, “No, you’re a new creature in Christ. You’re the power of the resurrection. Seek my will. Pause in the midst of your sin and humbly say to me, what will you have me do, Lord?”

And that demonstrates the power of the resurrection.

The third demonstration of the power of the resurrection in Paul’s life—not to strike out first was the first one—but to seek to minister grace. Second one is to submit to God and to the church. And the third demonstration of the evidence of the power of the resurrection in Paul’s life is persistence in doing what’s correct when difficulties occur.

We read in this text that the God of the fathers has called Paul. That’s what Ananias tells Paul. The God of the fathers, again, an identification with the old covenant and the law for that whole purpose. But the God of the fathers has called you, Paul. And God gives us that assurance that when difficult times come and when we do stop and say, “What will you have me to do, Lord?” And he tells us and we do it and the situation doesn’t change outwardly, the mob is still going to try to kill us or our friends are still upset with us or the neighbor still wants to get even with us or whatever it is.

To persist in doing what’s right, to persist in doing the will of the Lord comes from a firm knowledge that he has called us to these tasks and to have perseverance in the task to continue to do what is right in the face of opposition is again not our natural tendency. Our natural tendency is to slink off then and go away and say, “Well, that didn’t do any good.” But God wants us to continue to do what’s right in the context of difficulties.

Again, to quote from Calvin, “His labor seemeth to be condemned of peculiar reproach when his witness or testimony is rejected because his person is hated. But it was meet that the holy servant of the Lord should be thus humbled, that all the preachers of the gospel might learn to give over themselves wholly to obey Christ, that when they be excluded from one place, they may be ready immediately to go to another, and that they may not be discouraged nor cease off from doing their duty though they be undeservedly loathed.”

You know I to be able to do that—to continue to do what’s right in spite of personal animosity placed upon you by the opposition when you’re doing what’s right when you’ve humbled yourself to God when you’ve sought his will when you’ve sought to minister grace—to still have them come after you, to continue to do what’s right and continue to minister the gospel of grace requires the power of the resurrection.

Every time I go down to Salem, starts out great. I feel really encouraged. I can go down there and speak the word before people and try to convince people of the good things the bills were trying to help, etc. There’s always opposition and I always get discouraged and I don’t want to go back. And God says that the power of the resurrection says, “No, you go back. You keep doing what’s right. You keep ministering the gospel of grace. You keep doing what’s right in spite of opposition.”

The opposition is meant by God to humble you, to make you more submissive to his will. And so the power of the resurrection is demonstrated in the defense of Paul in the faith. And these things are also true of us. We are those who are also to bloom with the greatness, the immortal bloom of the resurrection. We’re supposed to have the power of the resurrection in our life.

We have the power of the resurrection. We have moved from death to life. And that whole flow of the worship service is a reminder to that every week to us when we confess our sins, receive the assurance of the forgiveness of our sins, receive instruction from God to reform our lives and our culture. Every Lord’s day is a movement from death to life to show us that we are indeed recipients of the grace of God and the power of the resurrection.

God gives us the power of the resurrection to be able to face death if necessary for the faith. And he says that power is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ when we submit ourselves to do his will. You know, probably the greatest demonstration—or at least one of the greatest ones—of the power of the resurrection in Paul’s life is that he continues to do what’s right in the context of the knowledge not so much of the enemies round about him but to confess before them that 20 years prior he had stood there consenting to the death of Stephen. Such a one as him—one of the great things that stops us from demonstrating the power of the resurrection is our own guilt. You know, if you’re guilty you feel guilty you disengage from things whether it’s your family, your work, civil action, whatever it is.

And Satan loves to play upon that guilt. That’s what he is. He is a slanderer. He’s an accuser of us. And he reminds us of our sin. The Apostle Paul, more than anything else, needed the assurance of his calling certainly, but also the forgiveness of sins. That his sins had been washed away figuratively in the baptism some years earlier. But his sins have been made atonement for by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Those sins the book of Hebrews tells us make us bound—we are in bondage to death all of our lives because of the fear of death as a result of the knowledge of the guilt of our sins. What’s hindering the power of the resurrection in your life? If you find yourself unwilling or unable to minister grace in the context of difficult situations and if you find yourself unable to continue well-doing in spite of difficulties—you’ve done the right thing. You’ve submitted to God and people still don’t recognize it and you then flake out and so demonstrate not the power of the resurrection but the impotence of death.

If you fail to submit yourself to God and ask in the middle of a difficult situation, what will you have me do, Lord? Guide me through your word and through your church and instead take to yourself the ability to guide yourself through difficult times and so move from the power of the resurrection to the impotence of death. What gets in your way? Why does that happen?

And I suggest that one thing is not having a full knowledge of the atonement of your sins through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Again, the Lord’s Day service is a movement from death to life. And we’re going to have here in a couple of minutes communion. Calvin spent several pages on his commentary talking about the baptism. You know, Ananias told Paul, “Be baptized, wash away your sins.” And how do those two things correlate?

And one way they correlate is that God gives us external signs to cause us to rely upon, know, and to determine assuredly that we have moved from death to life in the Lord Jesus Christ. To know that our sins are atoned for and washed away and to put them behind us, not to forget them. They remind us who we are, but not to be held in guilt by them and as a result the impetus of death instead of the power of the resurrection.

How is it in your life? Do you understand and do you submit to the will of God and so move into the power of the resurrection? I pray that be the case. As we pray now and we bring forward our tithes and offerings, let us commit ourselves to accepting and acknowledging the atonement for sins made through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And indeed that he has the power of the resurrection. He is the resurrected one and comes to us and fills us with power and grace from on high that we might demonstrate the power of the resurrection in everything that we do and say.

You know, again this week when I went down to Salem and sat in front of a couple of committees and we had a press conference on this report and everything. I went down with another gal who does some work for us down there lobbying and I told her, you know, that this is not me, my abilities doing this stuff. And I was a boy. I had a younger brother, a couple years younger, still do. But I used to have him go up and buy the candy bars for me, you know, at the store. I’d be too shy, fearful of men to do that. And I still am that way. I don’t like to get out of the car and ask directions, not because I’m lazy, because I’m fearful of men and of myself. I’m sort of out. The last thing I want to do is talk to just about anybody, let alone get up in front of all of you, although you’re friends here, get up in front of you every Lord’s Day and try to exposit the word of God, which is a fearful thing.

Then to go down to Salem to sit in front of legislators and then to go in front of cameras and do press conferences and stuff. People say, “Oh, yeah, you’re real good at that.” No, I’m not good at that. Whatever abilities I have in this area is because the power of the resurrection has been brought into my life through the sovereign Lord. And as a result, I can move away from the fear, not acknowledge that, not acknowledge the impotence of death, but rather acknowledge the power of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ because he has called me to do these things.

I don’t know what God will call you to do this week. Speak to a non-Christian, resolve a dispute in the context of your family, maybe yet this day.