Dennis Tuuri

Oh God uses sorts of angels that we don’t expect him to use in this text and the one that we’ll read in a couple of weeks as well. Please stand for the reading of God’s command word. Acts 23 beginning at verse 12 going through verse 23.

Acts 23:12-23

“And when it was day certain of the Jews banded together and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. And they were more than 40 which had made this conspiracy. And they came to the chief priests and elders and said, ‘We have bound ourselves under a great curse, that we will eat nothing until we have slain Paul. Now therefore, ye with the council, signify to the chief captain that he bring him down unto you tomorrow, as though you would inquire something more perfectly concerning him, and we wherever he come near are ready to kill him.

And when Paul’s sister’s son heard of their lying in wait, he went and entered into the castle and told Paul. Then Paul called one of the centurions unto him, and said, ‘Bring this young man under the chief captain, for he hath a certain thing to tell him.’ So he took him and brought him to the chief captain, and said, Paul the prisoner called me unto him, and prayed me to bring this young man unto thee, who hath something to say unto thee.

Then the chief captain took him by the hand, and went with him aside privately and asked him, ‘What is that thou hast to tell me?’ And he said, ‘The Jews have agreed to desire thee that thou would bring down Paul tomorrow into the council, as though they would inquire somewhat of him more perfectly. But do not thou yield unto them, for there lie in wait for him of them more than 40 men, which have bound themselves with an oath, that they will neither eat nor drink till they have killed him.’ And now are they ready, looking for a promise from thee.

So the chief captain then let the young man depart, and charged him, see thou tell no man that thou hast showed these things to me. And he called unto him two centurions, saying, Make ready 200 soldiers to go to Caesarea, and horsemen threescore and ten, and spearmen 200 at the third hour of the night.”

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word and pray, Lord God, that you would help us to understand it, to believe it, and to commit ourselves before you this day to act on the basis of the truths found therein throughout the rest of this week and indeed the rest of our lives.

We pray Lord God you would help us to understand more of our Lord Jesus Christ through all of this and that we would worship him correctly. We pray too for the younger ones that go to their Sabbath schools, that their teachers would be guided by you and that their ears would be open to hear words from your scriptures taught at their level that their lives might also be changed and they might go from glory to glory maturing in their faith and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In his name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

A Sabbath. That’s what we want, right? Men who believe with all their heart. Men who are committed to act on the basis of those beliefs. Men who have great zeal. Men who are worked up, have ardent emotion to the task that they believe in, to do that which they have committed themselves to do. Men who covenant together with other men, who bond together and don’t just go off halfcocked on their own, but get together with other men.

Men who consult and make plans in accordance with the institutional church. Men of courage, men who are willing to face death if necessary for the sake of the cause they’ve committed themselves to do. Men with courage, men with zeal, men with a covenantal mindset to bind themselves together. Men who are willing to die if need be. Men who would take on the strongest troops of the opposition for the sake of the cause that they’ve committed themselves to.

True believers, men of zeal. Well, that’s what we’ve got in this text. We’ve got more than 40 of them representing a nation of thousands—men who did have true belief, zeal, courage, covenantal commitment, and a desire to face death if need be for the sake of their beliefs. But they are men without knowledge, as the Apostle Paul says. I bear witness to them. Paul says, “They have zeal, but not according to knowledge.”

And so zeal and strength and courage and commitment and covenantal-mindedness, etc., all these things are useless without a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, without saving faith granted by his grace to his elect community, without a belief in grace righteousness, not works righteousness. The Apostle Paul identifies those who have zeal without knowledge as those who have a desire to attain a righteousness apart from the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In fact, the scriptures teach us very clearly here that not only is zeal without knowledge of no use to the kingdom of Christ, but is positively opposed to the kingdom of Christ. We don’t want true believers who don’t have a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. These men here are wicked men. They are the most wicked men the scriptures conjure up for us. They stand in a long line of wicked men—men who would plot the destruction of those who are ambassadors and representatives of God and indeed the same men, in terms of being Israel here, apostate Israel, who met and plotted the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so zeal without knowledge is a very dangerous thing. Zeal must be accompanied with the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

This text lays out for us first some wicked plans made by men. Secondly, God’s thwarting of those plans. And then third, I want us to see in this text in terms of the literary structure used that all this happens in the context of the apostle Paul who is walking in the master’s footsteps and in this particular text is walking virtually alone, just as the Lord Jesus Christ was essentially alone when it came to his crucifixion.

All had left him. And so we want to go through those points: the wicked plans of man, God’s thwarting them, Paul’s being related explicitly in the text to the Lord Jesus Christ, and then draw some application.

First we have wicked men plotting in this particular text. These are men as I said who have great zeal but it’s not according to knowledge and they pledge themselves here, basically saying that it’s his death or our death. If we don’t kill the apostle Paul we’re not going to eat food or drink water or any liquid until we accomplish the death of the Apostle Paul. And in fact they placed themselves under a curse. “Let us be anathema,” they said, “if we fail to kill Paul.”

In fact, as the text goes on to say, at first they say they won’t eat or drink, and then later as it’s recounted, it says they won’t taste anything. They won’t even actually put taste to their mouth, not just consume food. They’re that dedicated to saying it’s his life or ours.

Wicked men plot against the righteous in this particular text. They put themselves, they bind themselves in a covenant together, put themselves under the curse of God, and they in doing this, the text tells us, they represent all of Israel because we’re told in the verses we’ve just read that some of them, out of them, the young man tells the Roman soldier, 40 or more of them have come together to plot against Paul.

We read that in verse 21. Look at verse 21: “Do not thou yield unto them for there lie in wait for him of them more than 40 men.” It wasn’t just these 40 fanatics or 40 plus fanatics. These 40 plus men are representing the nation of Israel in this task. And the picture God wants us to have in our minds here is you’ve got these 40 plus men consorting with the institutional church, going to the leaders of the Sanhedrin, catching, putting his plot together with them and they’re representative of the entire nation of Israel in its apostate state.

As we’ve said before, it’s only going to be a few years before Israel is judged by God. Jerusalem is destroyed. And we see in the context of this story, much of the social upheaval that’s beginning to take place in Jerusalem as God turns over the greater and greater hardening against him, all based upon the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ and their rejection of him. And God wants us to see the whole city arrayed against Paul—all of the institutional church, so to speak, of that time founded in Jerusalem against the apostle Paul.

And so these wicked men plot together on behalf of Israel. And the scriptures tell us this is the way it works. This is the pattern of history—that indeed there are people who plot together against the upright.

Psalm 3: “How are they increased that trouble me?”

Psalm 2: “Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed.”

In the book of Acts, one of the constant themes is that the anointed, the Lord Jesus Christ, was certainly plotted against by the people of Israel, but also those who are the anointed ones who are covenantally in the Lord Jesus Christ, who are the church and anointed for service by him, they also are plotted against by the wicked.

And so Paul is plotted against here. You see that acting in concert with other men doesn’t necessarily help us. It can hurt us. Exodus 23:2 says, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” Here was a multitude of people racing together headlong, as it were, plotting the death. “Ready to kill” is what the phrase says. Fit to kill, people here now. They’re ready for blood to be spilled. They’re anxious to destroy the Apostle Paul. And they are doing this on behalf of, they think, of God.

Our Savior said in John 16:2 that “they shall put you out of the synagogues. Yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God’s service.” He’s preparing his disciples. The Apostle Paul understood this—that these were men with zeal without knowledge.

The apostle Paul would write about that in his epistles. These men thought they were doing God’s work, but in truth they were plotting against God. And as a result, they were taking upon themselves an anathema because 1 Corinthians 16:22 says, “Any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.” Indeed, these men making themselves anathematized if they fail to carry out their plot—probably a hypocritical oath, probably one that the council at that time would easily let them off from.

But in any event, their own words condemn them because they will indeed find themselves cursed by God, and brought under judgment from him because of their evilness.

So these wicked men plot against the Apostle Paul. Micah 2:1 says, “Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds. When the morning is light, they practice it because it is in the power of their hand.”

And so these men here—remember this is the same morning, this is the morning after the Lord Jesus Christ has appeared to Paul with words of good cheer and comfort that he will be able to finish his task and his mission. That’s in the nighttime. And then when daytime comes, this plot comes to light. These men have been essentially fulfilling this prophecy of Micah 2. They’re devising this wicked plot in the night, and when the morning comes, they’re ready to execute it. And they go to the Sanhedrin and say, “Bring this guy down, Paul. Tell the Roman chiliarch, the ruler there, you want to talk to Paul some more about this stuff and when he brings Paul down here, we will intercept him before he gets there and we’ll kill him.”

So these are those men and the scriptures say, woe to such men.

Isaiah 1:21 certainly is true of what’s going on in Jerusalem at this particular time: “How is the faithful city become an harlot? It was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers.”

Murderers—not just a band of wild citizens out there somewhere, murderers who are plotting and conspiring with the heads of the institutional church. Jerusalem’s cup is being filled up and know of a certainty, as you read this text, that the book of Revelation will occur, that God’s judgment will come upon Jerusalem. It’s when iniquity is being filled up, just as the Lord Jesus Christ predicted and prophesied, that their cup would become full.

Those that killed the prophets would kill the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a picture of the mercy and grace of God—not to destroy Jerusalem then, but to send them Peter, to send them Stephen. Peter they tried to kill, they couldn’t. Stephen they did kill. And then finally to send them the Apostle Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a man himself who acted in much of his life with zeal without knowledge, to come to them and bring them again the message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That this isn’t something that’s disjointed from the Old Testament. Apostle Paul has said that he is in complete continuity. He is a good citizen of the theocracy of God. And as a good citizen, he accepts the reign of Messiah.

Think of the grace and compassion of God in giving this apostate rebellious nation witness after witness, even after they’ve killed the Son, the owner of the vineyard. The Apostle Paul is a demonstration of the longsuffering and patience of God toward the evil and wickedness of men. But these men are evil and wicked.

They’re not going to taste even of food. They’re going to kill the Apostle Paul.

You know, the Scottish poet Burns wrote, “The best laid plans of mice and men / Dang a glee often go astray.” And indeed here, the best laid plans of these men go astray. God thwarts their plans. God has promised that he will indeed deliver his righteous ones, those who look to him for deliverance. He will deliver them out of the snare of the fowler.

As we’ve just read, Apostle Paul has seen this deliverance before. You remember back in Acts chapter 9 when he went to Jerusalem the first time? The Jews took counsel to kill him then. But their lying in wait was known of Paul, or Saul rather.

Acts 9:24 says “And they watched the city gate day and night to kill him. But he was led out of that city by a knowledge of that plan coming to his people.”

And so here it is as well, for the second time, a second witness in the life of the Apostle Paul and the recording in the book of Acts, that God will deliver his people.

Psalm 37:32 says, “The wicked watcheth the righteous and seeketh to slay him.”

So that’s what’s going on here. But the next verse says, “The Lord will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.”

But God sometimes will have men suffer death and martyrdom. Steven, that’s what happened to him. But God still delivered him. He still had the Lord Jesus Christ appear to him and receive him. And though even then there is no defeat for the Christian in his death but rather there’s only victory.

Isaiah 8:9-10: “Associate yourselves oh ye people and ye shall be broken in pieces. Compact yourselves together, he says, enemies of mine and I will break you in pieces. Take counsel together and it shall come to not.”

God is not surprised by anything. God is the sovereign ruler of all of creation and he’s working out in his providence his decree. He’s not surprised here and God uses secondary means to accomplish the deliverance of the apostle Paul and the thwarting of the plans of the wicked in the text before us.

Now notice here that in terms of the secondary means, his angels bear up the apostle Paul, so to speak, and those angels in the context of God’s secondary means in this account is the Roman government—again, for the fourth time in a very few days here, the Romans once more rescue Paul from the Jews.

And notice that one of the ways in which this is accomplished by way of secondary means is the courtesy of the Roman chiliarch to the young man that comes bearing a message from his mother and then also from the apostle Paul.

I say young man because as the chiliarch, the Roman ruler, takes him by the hand here, the implication is that this is a young man and he wants to assure him and kind of calm him down and to hear what he has to say. And there’s a good model for this for us in our homes and in our church and in the civil state—that rulers should not despise young people and should not just pay attention or not to things that are brought to them.

The chiliarch does pay attention. He’s messed up before in this tale, hasn’t he? Remember, he was going to have Paul scourged and hadn’t inquired to see if he was a Roman citizen. And he’s not going to mess up again. The picture of this chiliarch is an amazing one, and we’ll talk more about it in a couple of weeks. We’ll talk about imperial protection.

Remember, we said here the imperial protection is going to accrue now to the church. In the scriptures, rulers are sent by God. They’re God’s agents. And while they can become beasts, as Nebuchadnezzar was—the Roman Empire will be portrayed as a beast in the book of Revelation, it will eventually turn on the Christians—but normally the scriptures want us to see rulers as good things. The peace and order they bring is good, and it’s good for the people of God. And here, the Roman government is the protector once more of Jesus in the form of the Apostle Paul.

Jesus in the power that is in the resurrection life of the Lord Jesus Christ is portrayed here as being protected by the Romans. And so God uses an apostate government, a government that was not Christian at this time in any stretch of imagination. He uses the chiliarch, he uses his courtesy shown to the young man. The chiliarch then dispatches 470 troops to take the Apostle Paul safely to another city.

An amazing thing. And yet God wants us not to praise the chiliarch for this. He wants us to praise his holy name, that he so moves in the heart of the king as to affect deliverance for his righteous ones.

Now, if he so moves in the heart of the king, is there anything that he can’t move to affect his will? Well, the answer is of course not. And he gives us this picture of this strong Roman ruler here being used by him and in his hand to affect the well-being of his people. And he wants us to put our hearts at rest and to not be fearful when difficult times come to us.

None of us probably will have to go up against a strong Roman ruler or against a mob of 42 people seeking to put us to death. But we do go through various trials and tribulations. And God gives us an account that is true, but an account nonetheless that is quite striking and extremely amplified in terms of normal life that we go through, to help us to remember that in our normal lives as well, God affects deliverance for his people.

And when people plot against you—if they’re unsaved relatives or perhaps people that have a zeal that they think is for God and yet seek to hurt your reputation or hurt your family somehow—you can put your mind at rest here that God will certainly provide for your deliverance.

On the other hand, the Apostle Paul does not on the basis of that assurance of the Lord Jesus Christ simply sit on his hands and say, “Well, God, you’re going to deliver me, so I’m not going to do anything about it.”

Remember, the Lord Jesus has come to the Apostle Paul the night before and said, “You’re going to be able to go to Rome to complete your mission. I know that’s what you want to do, Paul.” And that’s what all of us want to do, right? We want to complete the mission God has given to us. And God says, “Be of good cheer. What you been called to do, you will accomplish.” And he’s told the Apostle Paul, “You’re going to Rome.”

Now, the Apostle Paul gets this young man coming to him, his sister’s son. And this son says, “They’re plotting against you.” And the Apostle Paul, if he was in a wrong relationship to God’s sovereignty, could have just sat on his hands and said, “Well, nothing to worry about because Jesus has told me I’m going to Rome. So, just forget it. Go on home and don’t worry about it.” That’s presumption.

And while we completely believe in the sovereignty of God, we know that he has established means and secondary means to affect his decree and his providence. And our wills, our decisions, our actions are important. God is certainly sovereign, but in his sovereignty, he establishes our wills as part of the secondary means by which he moves to fulfill his decree.

His decree is unalterable. What God has decreed shall come to pass. Nonetheless, he doesn’t want us on the basis of that to become quietest, to simply pray about things and not to do anything. Now, of course, we’re not supposed to go off in our own strength and try to think that we can take care of things on our own without an understanding of God’s sovereignty and a reliance upon him in prayer. But nonetheless, the balance here is the Apostle Paul says, “You go and talk to the chiliarch.”

God has given us means and he’s going to affect my deliverance. And one of the ways he’s going to do it is by bringing knowledge to me apparently of this plan so the chiliarch can find out to let these guys be put to naught, their plans. And so as we said last week, so here very importantly in the context of God thwarting the plans of the wicked is that he works through the means of his people, and it’s an encouragement to us to make use of all legitimate, godly and lawful means to affect what God wants us to affect.

Now those are very important words and I’ll return to those in just a minute but first I want us to think about the fact that these men who plot against the apostle Paul are part of a long line of murderers.

Cain was the first son to come up out of the ground, so to speak, of the marriage of Adam and Eve postfall. Now, Cain comes up as not a good healthy tree, but rather as a thorn or a thistle. Remember, the ground’s going to bring forth thorns and thistles as well as good things. Life’s going to be tough after the fall and after men rebel against God. And the first son comes up as a thorn and a thistle. He murders his brother Abel.

The Lord Jesus Christ has told us that Satan himself is a murderer and has been from the beginning. And these men who plot against the Apostle Paul, these wicked men are of the line of Cain. They’re of their father, the devil. They’re of those men that plot against the people of God.

And there are some Old Testament examples too. I just want to touch on very briefly in terms of forbearing to eat and drink until the mission is accomplished. This brings to mind Saul, the king, first king of Israel. You remember the story probably in 1 Samuel 14. They’re out chasing after the enemies of God’s people. And Saul says, “Well, I tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to make a decree that nobody can eat or drink until we’ve killed all these guys.”

And then remember what happens? Jonathan, Saul’s son, runs along and he doesn’t hear the order apparently and he dips his staff in some honey as he’s running along the way to kill the God’s enemies and he eats the honey and his eyes brighten up. That’s a good thing—to have eyes bright, to have spirit refreshed. God gives us a meal in the presence of our enemies. He gives us sustenance along the way as we’re fulfilling the mission.

Now Saul was known for his devotion supposedly but it was a devotion that went outside of God’s law. He didn’t want to wait for Samuel to come and sacrifice—he decided to do it himself. And here he decides to go ahead and make this bad oath or curse upon the people who eat or drink. And so these men are associated with the king Saul in their persecution of the apostle Paul.

These men are the same type as Saul, who think that on the basis of their works, their zeal, their own particular activity that they can gain grace or acceptance with God. They’re of Saul.

Later on, it’s interesting that the scriptures tell us there were more than 40 of them. Doesn’t say how many, but twice in the Old Testament, groups of 42 are killed through God’s secondary means.

Once is when the 42 children, young men come out and mock Elisha. And that story is found in 2 Kings chapter 2. Elisha has come into the land of the spirit and power of Elijah, a double portion of his spirit. He makes a particular place bring forth good water and good fruit. And then these 42 children, some think, or the text seems to want us to believe, came out and mocked Elisha. And God then uses the secondary means of a bear to rip these 42 opponents to Elisha and to God into pieces and kill them.

There’s reason to believe, without getting into the text, that these 42 were actually not children but were actually servants of the priests of the golden calf worship, the false church. And that would draw a very good correlation then to these 40-some men who in cooperation with the false institutional church of that day in Jerusalem plot against and go out to kill Paul. And yet they are ripped to pieces, so to speak. They will be killed by God and their plans will be thwarted.

In 2 Kings 10, Jehu goes out and he’s killing the bad guys here and Ahaziah, king of Judah, comes up to Jehu and he’s on his way to go consort with Ahab. Jehu has seen Ahab’s children put to death and so this king of Judah comes out to consort with the wicked king of Israel and they are then put to death and there are 42 of his men specifically that are said to be killed.

And so the scriptures draw on this 40 plus—there’s 42 or so people in the account in the book of Acts—a correlation back to these other occurrences of God’s enemies and they assure us that God’s enemies will be put to death.

And so there’s a long lineage here: Cain, Saul, going back eventually to the devil himself, of course.

The Apostle Paul here faces these men essentially alone. Where’s the church in this account? Have you thought about that? Why didn’t the young men who heard about this go to the church, go to James and have them go and figure out something to do? The church is completely absent from this account.

Now, we don’t know why that is. We don’t know what was going on. But I think that God wants us here to see again another of dozens of correlations between Paul and Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus as he went moved to his crucifixion was left alone by all his followers. All of them left him and forsook him. And so it is with the Apostle Paul. He seems to be essentially alone, relying here upon an actual physical relative for the information that will affect his deliverance.

The Apostle Paul is in isolated straits here, and but that reminds us of the correlation between him and the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul goes through yet another resurrection, so to speak, as he has four times now at the hands of the Romans, resurrecting him, so to speak, from those who would seek to put him to death.

And so we have in this story zealous wicked men—men with zeal without knowledge. We have God thwarting the plans, reminding us that he thwarts the plans of all the ungodly and he delivers the godly out of their hand. And we see in the context of this the basis for this is Paul’s relationship to Jesus Christ.

The zeal without knowledge that is spoken of by Paul later on in his epistles is a zeal without the knowledge of full understanding and relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so this zeal that they have is not a good thing. It is a bad thing.

And by way of application now, I want us to think a little bit, going back now to talk about this point about zeal without knowledge.

We had in Jerusalem at this particular time an increasing amount of zeal without knowledge. Men who would in their zealousness kill Roman soldiers routinely. If a Roman soldier got off the path and was found by himself in some dark corner of Jerusalem, it was not uncommon for assassins, Jewish thugs, to come out and to kill them. They were being occupied by the Roman government. And their response to that occupation was to strike out at them and murder them.

It was to take the law into their own hands. Okay?

And their zeal and their love for God supposedly is what justified to them taking the law of God into their own hands, taking vengeance upon them, taking revenge into their own hands instead of looking to the civil magistrate and lesser magistrates to work through in terms of them trying to affect long-term deliverance from Roman occupation.

Now, this story is very contemporaneously applied to us today.

Now, I might mention here that John Calvin in his commentary on this related this to the papists of his day—how the Roman Catholic Church who had rejected the Reformation would have no problem at all killing reformers and justifying it on the basis of their zeal for God and for religion. Yet it was a zeal without knowledge. Rome believed in justification by works. Whether they said it or not, that’s what they believed.

They had become corrupted just as Jerusalem had become corrupted. They’d become the false church and just as the Roman soldiers and the Roman government was used by God to protect the apostle Paul, so the princes of various countries during the time of the Reformation, some of them not Christian, were used in the providence of God to protect the reformers from the papists. And so you see these correlations.

Well, the correlation isn’t quite like that in our day and age. Not many people are out there trying to kill Calvinistic Christians, but it can come to that. And it does frequently come to that in the history of the church.

But we do have an example, a contemporary example in the context of the last few weeks in our country of men who have a zeal but without knowledge. We had men last month bind together in a covenant. Apparently, it took some planning, some commitment to build the bomb that blew up people in Oklahoma City. We had I don’t know how many people there were. It might have been just a couple, might have been a handful, might have been more. We don’t know how far the particular conspiracy or plot or plan went.

We had men who have a great deal of zeal and a great deal of anger that’s kicked up their zeal, their hotheadedness against the government. And there’s a lot of basis for justification for their zeal as well. Just as there was reasons to not like the oppressing Roman state, there’s reasons now to not like the civil government that sometimes acts way out of bounds. For instance, in the Ruby Ridge incident.

Nonetheless, the scriptures warn us with examples such as this that it is always wrong, always wrong, to take the law into our own hands, to think that somehow we can justify plots of murder because of how wicked our opposition seems to be to us.

You see, misplaced zeal—zeal without knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and of his word—killed nearly 200 people in our country just last month. And I think that the days that lie ahead of us as we move toward the next millennium are days in which there will be all kinds of people who have zeal without knowledge and this is not restricted to outside of the church as well. It happens in the context of the church.

I don’t know the specifics of it but in the Sunday paper today there was a story of a sex ring operating in the context of, including sex with children, in the context of a charismatic church, an Assembly of God church I believe, or I’m not sure what kind—some kind of a Pentecostal church actually, not charismatic, Pentecostal church in Wenatchee, Washington. I remember several years ago there was a charismatic movement somewhere up in the Seattle area and they believed they should get into holy dancing and the holy dancing led to fornication and adultery.

They had a zeal but they had a zeal without a knowledge of God’s objective standard of the word and without a willingness to apply it. And so they end up doing terrible things, things against God’s word.

Certainly even in the context of those people that are Calvinistic in their soteriology, their view of salvation and in their worldview. We have men act with zeal without knowledge. Paul Hill, formerly a minister in the OPC and the PCA church as well. A man who believed much of what we believe in terms of Reformed view of the scriptures. Became a man with zeal without knowledge last year. And he killed an abortionist. He murdered people. He took the law into his own hands just like these men took the law into their own hands.

Men who thought they were doing God’s service. And Paul Hill thought he was doing God’s service. And these Pentecostal and charismatic churches think they’re doing God’s service. And even now there’s a movement beginning to sweep America, the Holy Laughter Movement, in which excesses are not uncommon and in which the zeal that is kicked up in the context of that particular charismatic movement can quite quickly become a zeal without knowledge, without a relationship really to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the King’s word.

If we think we have zeal for the religion of Christianity and yet end up violating God’s word, that zeal is zeal without knowledge. And it is a very, very dangerous thing.

We can ask ourselves, how do we avoid zeal without knowledge? It’s important that we do avoid it. It’s important that we don’t end up deceived and deluded as these men were who tried to kill the apostle Paul thinking they were doing God’s service.

And let me just point out a few things to you. One of the handouts you have today—I hope Mr. Harris doesn’t mind—I xeroxed off a number of pages, number of copies of a particular page from his noble planner. And that’s a page in which you’re supposed to, as you develop your long-term plans, list out various counselors that you’re going to have for your life.

Now counselors are very important. It’s easy for us to go off on our own in our own particular direction the way Paul Hill did and reject the council of the institutional church in which he was a member. That church had excommunicated him just prior to him killing the abortionists.

Now, you know, council is a funny thing because with most of us when we’re about to do something and we know that what we’re going to do may be a good idea, may not be a good idea, and we really should get counsel on it, but we kind of want to do it. We’re going to pick our counselors who are going to give us the right answers.

You know what I’m saying? You’ve done that. I’ve done that. I’m sure we’ve all done that.

Well, I know if I talk to so and so about this particular plan, they’re not going to like it much because they’ve got a real strong position, for instance, against debt. And I know if this plan involves debt, I probably shouldn’t talk to them because they’re going to give me an answer I don’t want to hear. Or maybe some other thing.

And that’s why I think it is an excellent idea and why I gave you the handout today as a physical reminder as you go home today—to establish what Greg Harris calls a “cloud of witnesses,” counselors around us prior to those decisions having to be made. I mean, in other words, if you say, “Here are a couple three men that I’m going to seek counsel from in economic matters, or here are a couple three men that I’m going to seek counsel of in spiritual matters, or here are some men and women that I’m going to seek counsel of relative to my family.” If you do that before a situation occurs, then you’ve sort of committed yourself to hear their counsel, even though you know that maybe their counsel is not what you want to hear on that particular issue.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that one thing we need to do to try to avoid zeal without knowledge is to establish godly counselors around us—men, or men and women, that we can talk to about particular plans in our life and lay before them because God has a witness in his church for us. He wants us to be in the context of a covenant community and he wants us to have a group of counselors around us. The scriptures say that there’s wisdom in many counselors.

So I would urge you, hopefully yet today, by the end of the day or on into the first part of this week, to establish for yourself a group of counselors. People that you will consult with whose knowledge of the scriptures or knowledge of a particular area that you’re going to need counsel in is sound and good and particularly people that can bring spiritual scriptural knowledge alongside of an economic matter or a family matter, whatever the matter is you need counsel on.

So establish a group of counselors for yourself. Talk to people. Let those counselors know, “I have decided that I want to consult with you when I have an important decision in my life and you may hear from me today, you may hear from me tomorrow, you may not hear from me for six months, but you’re part of my group of counselors. Is that okay? You’re willing to help me out when I seek counsel?”

So, first of all, establish a group of counselors.

But, you know, these men had counselors, didn’t they? These zeal without knowledge guys—there are 40 plus of them. And they even went to the institutional church and got counsel as well. And so, that isn’t going to do the trick.

It is important. The scriptures do tell us that counselors are important. But the second indication of whether or not we’re doing something according to the will of God—the first being the witness of the church through counselors and particularly through the officers of the church in counseling on big decisions—the second thing, the means of God’s putting knowledge to our zeal is of course his revealed word, his law.

And when you end up taking an action, killing someone, and the scriptures say “thou shalt not murder” and the scriptures say “don’t take your own vengeance. I’ve set up civil magistrates to do that.” We know that’s against the will of God. And if the will of God says that you shouldn’t be in debt, and if you determine that the word of God says don’t be in debt, it’s a bad thing, then that helps you to make that kind of decision.

And if the word of God says on the Lord’s day you should be in worship someplace, then it’s wrong for you to be away from worship, unless, of course, you’re on an extended trip which you simply can’t get at a particular church. But you should make every effort to get to church every Lord’s day.

This is just an example. And you may say, “Well, what I needed really on the Lord’s day was a walk in the forest. And I needed to go commune with God outside today. And I didn’t need that inside thing with that long-winded preacher. Terry goes on and on. You know how he goes on. And I just needed some peace and quiet out here. And I didn’t need to see people that I don’t know what my relationship to them is. What I needed today was rest.”

Well, see, you may need rest and you may need that walk in the park. And you may need peace and quiet, but you don’t need it during the hours of worship. You don’t even got to think about that one because God says—I believe God says—and if you don’t believe it, well, you know, I’m not telling you this is for you. But what I’m saying is you need to study the scriptures then and make sure that your rejection of that truth is based on the scriptures. But I believe the scriptures tell us that when worship is convened, God’s people are supposed to be there. That’s what it’s supposed to do.

What I’m saying is that, you know, one of the big movements I believe for Reformed people—and I’m talking about biblically Reformed, I’m not talking about those liberal Presbyterian churches. I’m not talking about how the liberal Reformed churches have gone way off, but I’m talking about Orthodox Reformed Christianity—one of the biggest movements for them, as for most of us if we’ve gone from a dispensational perspective into this perspective, and it’s really kind of subtle in a way but it’s a differentiation of how we discern God’s will.

It’s a movement to the objective reality of God’s word, buttressed and supported by the institutional church and the counselors God provides to us, as a determination of what we do in life. And you know the bulk of Christianity today I believe goes on the basis of subjective circumstantial evidence when it comes around to making decisions on what they do in their lives.

“Well, God led me because the circumstances fell out in this way. Never mind the fact that decision is in contradiction to the plain teaching of God’s word. He led me this way because of circumstances.”

Circumstances are an incredibly poor indicator of what you should do. And I say that because God will so work circumstances to test your commitment to his word and to his church, the body of Christ. And if you allow circumstances, external indicators, and your subjective feelings to pit you against the institutional church, the body of Christ, and his word—and preeminently his word, of course, the church here is an indication to us at the time of these 42 men, the church can go way off track—but his word, if you let circumstances and your subjective feelings dictate a decision that is contrary to his word and to your trusted spiritual counselors, you are moving toward a position of zeal without knowledge.

“God told me to do this. I’m real happy and excited about it. But do you have the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ which indicates that the king has given us a law word to indicate objective reality to us? And the king has given us a community of people, citizens of the kingdom by which we’re supposed to help understand how to rule and govern and direct our lives?”

Zeal without knowledge. It is a terrible thing. It kills Christians. That’s what this text tells us. An attempt to kill Christians.

Now, this is difficult, what I’m suggesting, because what it means is two things. You got to study the word. That’s why we tell you over and over again. That’s why we have these things to hand out to your kids, getting them to read the Bible every day. If you don’t read the scriptures, if you just believe what Terry up here is saying, you’re not going to be in very good shape because I’m not the determiner of what’s right and wrong. The scriptures are. You got to read your Bibles. You got to study the word. And particularly when it comes to a decision that you may not understand, you got to study the word to see what it means.

That’s one problem. The second problem is if you’re going to have counselors and you’re going to look to the body of Christ for direction and guidance, that means you got to open up to people. Well, what’s wrong with that? I can open up. It’s difficult, isn’t it? You think of difficult areas of your life in which you really need help—areas of your life where you need help, maybe not discerning, but following through on a commitment to obey God. And you want to open up to the person sitting next to you right now in the pew or the person right in front of you or something. Very difficult because we don’t trust people. People let us down and they do, and we have fear because of that.

But the scriptures say that overarching all these other means that God uses is the hand of God himself. And if you’re opening yourself up to people in relationship to the commitment of God’s word, then you can trust that God will enable you to do that and will see you through it.

Finally, with respect to zeal without knowledge—so we’ve talked about the witness of the church. We’ve talked about the witness of the word and we’ve talked about these in opposition to the idea of letting circumstances and feelings guide us. These men had a lot of feeling. That’s what zeal is. Zeal is feeling and emotion. And God says that’s a terrible way, apart from the word and the church, to make decisions.

But then finally, we have to recognize that apart from the grace of God, we’re not going to make the right decisions. Period.

The apostle Paul himself understood these men. He would say later, “I would that I could be accursed, cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren in the flesh.” These very men who sought to kill him, the Apostle Paul wanted to save so badly that if it could be possible, he said, “I just assume be accursed, that they could be grafted in and brought to salvation in Christ.”

Now, he understood that wasn’t going to happen, but that was his heart attitude toward them. Why? Because the Apostle Paul was himself one of those men with zeal without knowledge. Remember, he gave consent to the killing of Stephen.

And we must say with the Apostle Paul that we are no better ourselves, that apart from the grace of God we would be part of that band of 40 or 42, whatever it is, mocking Elisha, going to consort with wicked king Ahab, or killing the Apostle Paul or striking out against our brother Abel. Apart from the grace of God, we would be just like our father, the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning.

How was Paul moved? How did Paul come to have a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and of his word and of his church? By the sovereign grace of God. And he says, as I said before, that these men that have zeal without knowledge, they think that they can—they what they stumble at is the grace of God. They think that they can attain righteousness on their own terms.

The Apostle Paul was blinded by the light of the Lord Jesus Christ. And interestingly enough, he didn’t taste food or drink for three days. Kind of a very interesting analogy here. We could talk about the analogy in the Nazarite vow as well in this, but we won’t take the time now. But the Apostle Paul is a demonstration to us that most of all what we need to be is men of grace.