Dennis Tuuri

The psalm asked the question if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? And the immediate response in the psalm is the Lord is in his holy temple. And our account today from the scriptures that we have as the sermon text, the foundations are certainly rotted out and nearly destroyed in the culture in the church at Jerusalem. And yet God is in his holy temple. Sermon text today is Acts 24 beginning at verse one.

Please stand for the reading of God’s holy word. Acts 24:1-23 long text. Let us attend. And after 5 days, Ananias the high priest descended with the elders and with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul. And when he was called forth, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying, “Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very worthy deeds are done under this nation by thy providence, we accept it always in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness, notwithstanding that I be not further tedious unto thee, I pray thee that thou wouldest hear us of thy clemency. A few words, for we have found this man, a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, who also have gone about to profane the temple, whom we took, and would have judged according to our law.

But the chief captain, Lysias, came upon us, and with great violence, took him away out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come unto thee, by examining of whom thyself, made us take knowledge of all these things, whereof we accuse him.” And the Jews also ascended, saying that these things were so. Then Paul, after that the governor had beckoned unto him to speak, answered. For as much as I know that thou hast been of many years a judge unto this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself, because that thou mayest understand that there are yet but 12 days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship.

And they neither found me in the temple, disputing with any man, neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the city, neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets, and have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust. And herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward man. Now after many years I came to bring alms to my nation and offerings, whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with multitude nor with tumult, who ought to have been here before thee, and object if they have ought against me.

Or else let these saying here say if they have found any evil doing in me while I stood before the council except it be with this one voice that I cried standing among them touching the resurrection of the dead I am called in question by you this day. And when heard these things having more perfect knowledge of that way he deferred them and said when Lysias the chief captain shall come down I will know the uttermost of your matter. And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintances to minister or come unto him.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your most holy word and we gladly and cheerfully confess that it is inspired in every word and every sentiment by you. Help us, Lord God, to attend to this word. Help me, Father, to have clear mind and a clear voice to speak forth the truth of this word. Keep me from error, Lord God. We pray that we all might hear your word in such a way as it might reform our lives. We thank you for that word and pray that you would bless it now unto your servants as we stand here desirous of further obedience to King Jesus.

We pray also for the Sabbath school teachers that they also may minister the word to these young ones at a level they can understand so that they might also go from maturity to maturity and might continue to go from glory to glory in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Jesus name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

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The stage has changed. History has turned. An important event has occurred in the context of the historical account given to us in this particular chapter of the book of Acts. Things are different. We’re not in Jerusalem anymore. Paul’s defense of himself, his apostolic ministry, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ now is given not primarily to Jews. It’s given primarily to Felix, Roman governor. Now, the Jews are there. They secondarily receive this message.

And as Ananias, the one who slapped the face of Paul or had it slapped rather, ordered it to be slapped to prevent his hearing Paul’s defense, now is subject, has to sit there silently as Paul responds to the charges leveled against him. History has turned. The foundations have indeed been demonstrated as being rotted and destroyed.

The leaders of the people are here accusing a righteous, peaceable, noble man. They are here to call good evil and evil good. They refer to the Apostle Paul as a pest, a trouble of the people, seditious, a sectarian, a schismatic, and a sacrileger, a profaner of the temple. They call the good evil. And in their calling of the good evil, they refer to the evil Felix who was a bloodthirsty tortured sort of a man who then tortured other people. They call him good in many ways in their flattery.

The stage has turned. We’ve reached a pivotal point in the movement of the gospel. Let me read an extended quote. I’ll do it now rather than in the bulk of the sermon. It’s easier to listen to perhaps at the beginning from J. A. Alexander cementing what I’d said last week about the Imperial Protector and the change that’s going on here in the context of this narrative.

You’ll see in your outline that this is described in the outline as a narrative. There is a protagonist, there’s an antagonist, there’s the antagonist has an entourage of fellows with him. There’s time references, there’s space references. It’s a beautiful written story. It’s historically true, of course. And this narrative is very important in terms of the turn that’s going on in the context of God’s movement of redemption history. Let me quote from J. A. Alexander. He said that the contrast here between the order and fairness of this Roman process, though conducted by a wicked man, and the passionate confusion of the Sanhedrin, although composed of priests, scribes, and elders of the people, it seems as if the Jews and Gentiles were beginning to change places as the guardians of the church. A transposition afterward brought out in terrible relief at the destruction of Jerusalem, where Titus, the Roman, was a temperate and humane and as tempered and humane as the zealots were ferocious to themselves and to others.

This circumstance imparts new interest to the crisis which we have now reached and in which Paul begins his third apology or apostolic defense of Christianity and of himself, not uttered like the first to a vast crowd of Jews from all parts of the world assembled to observe the feast of Pentecost, nor like the second in the presence of the Sanhedrin or eldership of Israel, but rather before a Roman magistrate and under the protection and restraint of Roman arms, yet in the presence of the high priest and a deacon and a deputation of the elders, so that he was still appealing to the chosen people and before these gentile witnesses attempting for the last time to convince them of the true relation between law and gospel, between Christ and Moses.

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Let’s consider this momentous turning point of history. First, we see in the context of this that there is a specific reference given to time. It’s 5 days after the events just described. They got there quick. This is probably 5 days after Paul was actually warned of the plot. And so the time reference is important to show us the quickness and the importance that Ananias the high priest places upon his task here.

And make no doubt about it, while Tertullus the orator lawyer—we know we could say a lot about that. And we have here in this particular account from scripture a what we could see as a modern-day portrayal of a lawyer, isn’t it? I mean, he’s flowery. He’s flattering to the one who’s going to hear the case. And he doesn’t have a whole lot of substance to his charges, but he makes up for the lack of substance by his flowery flattering of the judge.

So we have here the beginning of what could be seen as an accurate portrayal up to this day and age of lawyers. I don’t want to give a bad rap to them. But the fact is here we have one and he doesn’t—it’s like the O.J. Simpson trial. Don’t judge all judicial process by this trial. And I guess we shouldn’t judge all lawyers by Tertullus. But he is a specimen for us.

But remember that Tertullus is there as the spokesman for Ananias. It’s the high priest really that is the chief antagonist I believe in this story, not Tertullus. Tertullus is the mouthpiece of Ananias. He can speak better than Ananias and he knows the Roman court system better. Whether he was Jew or we don’t know. And then of course we have the elders of the people also present. And so make no mistake about it, this is the picture of the institutional church at Jerusalem and by extension by all of Israel that’s represented here as attacking the Apostle Paul.

And remember Ananias is that fellow. It’s kind of interesting. You know, he’s the one who had, as I said earlier, commanded Paul to be slapped. Can you imagine the ferociousness of Ananias, the personal vendetta that he has in the context of this. He doesn’t calmly hear Paul out at the Sanhedrin, nor does he calmly make his way to Caesarea. They rush there the same way he rushed to want to hit Paul’s mouth. Ananias is highly agitated by the Apostle Paul.

And so he comes quickly and he comes with a higher gun, so to speak, and he comes as representatives of the people, the elders, and he comes to Caesarea. Where is he at? He is downstream. The text tells us specifically that they descended—Ananias again, he’s put forward as the chief here, the high priest descended with the elders with a certain orator. It’s always in the New Testament you descend from Jerusalem you move away from Jerusalem whether it’s physically elevated or not and in this case it might have been. I don’t know the fact is there’s a moral elevation that’s supposed to be true of the city of God and the people of God and so the descent always happens.

And in the outline I put that this is downstream because again that’s what’s supposed to happen—the crystal clear water of God’s truth is supposed to flow out from the city of God and go into the regions. But this stream that flows out of Jerusalem and goes downstream is a rotten, corrupted, death-like stream. It’s like one of those polluted rivers that everybody wants to clean up in the context of our land today. It’s a chemical dump pit is what’s going on in Jerusalem. And they’re sending death and destruction downstream instead of life downstream. And so these men come as a filthy stream and they come and then make the attack or charges against Paul in the next few verses.

Now, this attack is preceded by statements of flattery relative to the particular man they’re speaking about here, Felix, who was the governor. We mentioned before last week that this man was not a particularly good man. He was a very vicious sort of a fella. He made extensive use of the assassins of the day and as a result for his own particular political purposes. The assassins then grew as a group of people in the context of Jerusalem. He would later murder the successor of Ananias through the assassins. He caused the worst friction known in Caesarea at that time. Finally the Jews got so disgusted with the man that they pleaded to Nero and he then removed Felix who replaces him with another man who we’ll see in the context of the book of Acts.

So this man does not do noble deeds. He’s not a noble man and he’s not a hidden man. He has been placed in this position by God to protect the Apostle Paul and protect the church.

But when we read these flowery statements of Tertullus of entreaty, we have to see in this a contrast between him and Paul, he does flatter. Now there are those who say and remind us that in the context of Roman law, this was typical to make this particular kind of opening to try to gain favor with the judge. You’re supposed to be respectful. But certainly, I think we can see in the extensive comments of Tertullus here that he goes well beyond what was required or useful in terms of judicial process.

He says that by thee great quietness has been enjoyed by us. And of course this just wasn’t true. In point of fact, Jerusalem as I mentioned last week and the countryside were filled with robbers and bandits and assassins and insurrectionists and it was a bad deal. Now Felix had put down a particular insurrectionist this Egyptian that was mentioned earlier in the text whom Paul was mistakenly taken for. He had put down some insurrections but overall the political climate of Jerusalem was not good. It was quite hot and turmoil.

So when he says we’ve got great peace by thee, he’s really, you know, flattering him and that very worthy deeds are done into this nation by thy providence. It’s interesting in the word of God this is the only place where providence is ascribed to a man. Providence is specifically and strictly used in the New Testament only in direct reference to God and his providence, his care for his people. And here the statement is applied by Tertullus to Felix. And so we see how the foundations are destroyed even in these beginning statements of flattery where they ascribe providence to this wicked Roman governor.

We accept it always in all places most noble Felix, with all thankfulness. Thankfulness is Eucharist. And when we have a Eucharist downstairs, it’s the same basic word. It means thanks. Not downstairs next door. It means thankfulness, rejoicing. And so they rejoiced in this great order of Felix is that given to them. But of course, this is really flattering. And then he makes a very skillful transition. The attacker does in verse four. Notwithstanding that I be that I be not further tedious unto thee. I pray thee thou shouldst hear by clemency a few words. I don’t want to take up more of your time. I don’t want to, you know, impinge on your greatness here too much. So I want to just get to this matter. But I do have a matter here. And we want to beg your clemency.

By clemency here in the King James, it really means your judiciousness. It doesn’t mean overlooking sins. It means being judicious, not swerving to the right or to the left. And so again, he compliments him even in the transition to the attack. And then the formal attack begins by Tertullus against Paul. And you’ll notice the way that he starts it here is not even by referring to him by his name. He simply says, “We have found this man.” He kind of dismisses him with the wave of a hand almost in the way he speaks of Paul here.

We found this man, not Paul, this man to be a pest. Now the King James says a pestilence fellow. The word really means a pest, a bringer of plagues, a bringer of pestilence. He’s a pest, he says, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews. Sedition means to stand up either in direct insurrection against a rule or simply in fomenting dissension is what could be said here as well. So Paul’s a pest and he’s a pest by means of the fact that he stirred up all these Jews throughout all the world and he’s a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarene.

So first he calls him seditious, this man, a pest, a mover of sedition, etc. He’s seditious. Secondly, he calls him a sectarian schismatic. He’s the ringleader. That word means the point man in an army, the guys at the front, the leader of the sect of the Nazarenes. Now, the Nazarenes here refers to the Christians. They were called this contemptuously as Jesus was earlier in the book of Acts referred to as a Nazarene contemptuously. And so his followers are also referred to in a way of derision or contempt and they’re referred to as a sect here.

This word is the original word of our word heretic and it means essentially to take to oneself particular doctrines or particular portion of the scripture emphasize that to the exclusion of all others and that is a sect. So it’s not orthodox. It’s outside of the Orthodox church through a particular teeing off on one particular doctrine or practice. And so this man’s a sect. He says he’s a schismatic. And third he says he has also gone about to profane the temple. So these are the three charges, the same charges that are frequently leveled against our Savior and other apostles, etc. that of sedition schism and sacrilege.

Now you, it’s interesting here that in verse six it doesn’t say he did profane the temple. Remember that was the charge earlier they had made, that he had profaned the temple. But now the charge is softened. Well he might not have actually profaned it. We can’t prove that but he attempted to. That was his idea. That was his motive. And so with these three specific charges, the attack is mounted against the Apostle Paul.

Now, notice too that Tertullus is a good lawyer. He’s popped up the judge. He’s made this nice transition. And the charges he lays out are specific charges that would be troubling to Rome. May not seem like that at the first, but remember that Rome hates disturbances or mobs or uprisings. And so they call this man seditious. He’s a pestilence guy creating problem all over the world. These Sanhedrins tell the judge through their orator the Roman world in other words. So he’s, you know, he’s what causing all these problems when in fact of course it was the Jews themselves—wherever Paul was they would go and stir up the people against them but they have no problem with their hypocrisy.

The foundations have been destroyed and rotted out and these men are liars. They contravene the truth. Then secondly this idea of the sect—also it was insurrection of sects of Judaism at this particular point in time that would frequently create these rebellions against Rome. And so and he’s linked here to the Nazarene who was Messiah. And so these messianic sects were frequently the ones that Romans had to put down and get rid of. And so that’s a charge also that Rome would find disturbing to its own peace.

And then third, the fact that he profaned the temple. Remember that these are Sadducees. Remember that at this particular point in time, you basically have Pharisees and Sadducees on the Sanhedrin, but the high priest is a Sadducee. Remember Paul made that clear for us earlier. And these Sadducees are the ones who are primarily the priest class. The Pharisees came from the scribes primarily. So you got the scribes and the priests represented by the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

And remember that the Pharisees are the conservatives and the Sadducees are the liberals. The Sadducees are the accommodationists to Rome. So it’s the priests and the temple service, the men who run that whole thing that are primarily the accommodationists who are Rome’s friends, so to speak, in Jerusalem. And so if this man profanes the temple and attacks the priest class and the temple, then they’re really attacking the collaborationists with Rome. So all three of these charges are made in such a way as to gather a lot of support from the Roman official who would be very concerned if these things were true.

And then they finally, after the attack is mounted preceded by it, then follows by a reference a complaint about Lysias. And again here the way they twist the truth is just incredible. It’s a deliberate twisting and contravening of the truth. It says the chief tacticius came upon us. We would have judged him according to our law. But your captain came and took him by force away from us. We were going to judge him lawfully.

Well, you remember what actually happened was they attacked Paul, dragged him out of the temple and were beating him to death when Lysias the chief and the Roman soldiers came and rescued him that he might be lawfully dealt with. So it’s exactly the reverse of what they say. A reversal has gone on here in practically the entire statement of the attack against Paul. And this is the way wicked men are. Wicked men have no trouble twisting and distorting facts to meet their particular purposes.

And then he says this list made us come to see you which is a real pain in the neck. We didn’t have to travel here to take care of this matter. It’s not our fault it’s his fault. So they end with a complaint about this. And then they say you can ask Lysias about all this. And of course later that’s the excuse that Felix will use to defer judgment.

Well, after this attack is made we then have Paul’s defense given. Paul’s defense contains really an accurate set of responses that accurately meet the charges rendered against them. You’ll see on your outline that the charges erroneously numbered 1 2 and four should be 1 2 and three. You could in a way correlate number one to subsection one of point C. You see in Paul’s defense it also is preceded by due deference by the way that we just mentioned there for children and for wives and for men all of us when we do want to make a defense of who we are when we want to make an appeal to a ruler of governor of any sort. We do want to show the deference that Paul showed.

Now, Paul did not race into his defense. You know, if you have small children, you know that if you bring your two kids before you to hear a matter, they just want to jump right in there and start speaking. But Paul’s a mature man as we should be mature men. When we’re brought to a place where we want to present an appeal of our own or a defense of who we are, whether we’re children, adults, men, or women, whatever it might be, we want to see this example of Paul as a good example for us.

He waits his turn. He waits for Felix to beckon with the hand for him to speak. He’s not over anxious because he’s relaxed. He’s calm. He has a belief in the sovereignty of God in the midst of this process that gives him the kind of stability, peace, and calm that we all should have as we trust ourselves not unto the particular people we’re appealing to, but rather to God in heaven whose heart—who controls rather the heart of the governor himself.

And so Paul can wait for his turn and then Paul can begin with a statement of deference as well. He says, “Well, you know, I’m not going to butter you up.” He doesn’t say that, but that’s the implication. I’m not going to buddy up like this guy did, but it is good. It cheers my heart to know that you’ve been around a while. You’ve been here a number of years. You know who the Jews are. You know the situation. You know the lay of the land. And that’s good. I feel better about my speaking to you because you’re an experienced person in terms of these matters.

And also Paul says, you know, you have both the means and the office to know that I’ve only been around these areas 12 days. Couldn’t have done a whole lot of rising people up in 12 days. So he puts his defense in the proper context. He shows due deference by waiting his turn. And you know, we all would do well to follow that example.

And children, you would do well to not get anxious about going to mom and dad preparing your defense. Wait your turn. Wait for mom or dad to call you. Wives, wait for good timing when you’re talking to your husbands about a particular matter that you need to speak with him about. And husbands, wait for good timing with your wives, with your boss. Don’t be anxious to rush into making a defense of yourself. You have no need to. You can trust that God will be your defender and shield. He proclaims that over and over that he’ll do that for us. We should trust him and we should show deference to the officers that God places in the context of our lives.

And then Paul, as I said, puts his defense in the proper context. He says specifically that his purpose for going to Jerusalem, he’s only been only left 12 days ago and all this has happened in less than two weeks. I went to Jerusalem, he says, for to worship. Paul puts that first and foremost in the context of why he goes. Now, he’ll refer later in the text to bringing alms and doing offerings, but he says, “The reason I went there to begin with was to worship God. Why would I be seditious? Why would I want to profane the temple? Why would I want to hurt the people of Israel when my whole intent was to go and worship God? I went there in a humble supplicant position.”

Paul is saying, he places his defense in the context of worship. And then he begins his formal defense. And as I said, the three points of his formal defense correlate or could be correlated to points one, two, and three of the charges. In other words, as he says, what he didn’t do. You can see that those three points in summary is really a response to the accusation of sedition. And then when he says what he is, who he really is, you can see that as he explains then the nature of the sect so to speak, the Nazarene sect that he is a member of. And that’s a refutation of the second charge that he was schismatic. And then third, he talks about when he went to Jerusalem, why he went, which was to give alms and offerings and he refers to his temple worship and that’s a refutation of the charge of sacrilege.

So you can see his three points. He takes the three points put very briefly by Tertullus because there was no evidence essentially and answers those things very specifically and very exactly. Again a good model for us to speak to what has been spoken of even though it’s ridiculous and absurd. Point out its absurdity and Paul does that in his defense. So let’s take up the first of these. He begins with his primary response to the charges.

Who he isn’t. So in other words, the other way to look at this first of these three things is to say specifically that he rebuts all the charges against him by saying he didn’t do it. Then he’s going to say who he is and then he’s going to put it in the context of his worship of God. But first he begins by the fact that he didn’t do these things. And he says here they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man nor raising up the people neither in the synagogues nor in the city. Neither, neither, neither, nor. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it in the temple. I didn’t do it to the people. I didn’t do it in the synagogues. And I didn’t do it in the city. And you know, I didn’t because you’ve been governor around here a long time. You know how the things work. And you’ve been governor while I’ve been these 12 days moving from Caesarea to Jerusalem to worship. These things are demonstrable that I didn’t stir up anybody.

So he rebuts the specific charge and says, “I didn’t do these things. Neither here, here, here, or here. I didn’t do it. and raise people up. I’m not seditious. Neither can they prove the things of which they now accuse me. And he says, the point of fact is all these charges, the particular phrase here is what’s called the optative mood. It just means that this is really a very clear assertion that they can’t do anything about this. They cannot make any charges against me. There are no charges that they can substantiate against me. Let’s get back to the facts.

Paul says the facts are these things didn’t happen. You know, Ananias and these elders—they’re like a lot of people. They just were bugged by Paul. They had Paul under their skin and they didn’t bring specific things because there weren’t specific things. They just didn’t like that guy. He was a troubler. He bothered them. He, you know, they couldn’t maybe explain it using facts and assertions of fact about his sins. But they didn’t like him. And they knew that he was evil somehow. And they knew that Felix ought to be convinced of that somehow. So they tried to make the case, but they don’t make the case because there’s no case to be made.

Paul says, you know, call me a pastor. Let’s have the specifics here. We’ve heard a lot of charges. Where are the specifications to what those charges are? And in the specifics, Paul says, I am an innocent man. I didn’t rile anybody up. He had taken great pains at Jerusalem not to rile people up. He’d been warned there was problems in Jerusalem. He’d gone out of his way not to do that. Some of the normal things he would do in cities, which would be to talk to people, which is perfectly legitimate, but he had gone out of his way not to do that in the context of Jerusalem because he is trying diligently to create no offense toward the nation of Israel.

So he goes back to the specific statements of fact—again a model for us. And charges are brought—don’t address general charges of whatever it is, character assassination. Bring people back to the specifics. Tell me what I’ve done wrong and if you can’t, close your mouth. What Paul says here in reference to the charges against him—but then he does confess to something. And this begins his second part of the defense.

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First, he says he didn’t do these things. He denies that he disputed anyone in the temple. He denies that he raised up the people anywhere. And he denies that any proof can be forthcoming about any of these charges. Then he moves to the second part and he actually does confess something here, although not to the Jews, but he confesses it to Felix and that is that he is indeed a member of the way that they call a sect.

Verse 14. But this I confess unto thee that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets, and have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust. And herein do I exercise myself to always have a good conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.

That’s the second part of his defense. And Paul here says some very important things in terms of characterizing who he is. And by way of application, what should characterize our lives as followers of the way? The way is a term that refers to the doctrinal statement and the practical application of life in the context of the way one lives his life. The Apostle Paul here goes out of his way to describe that to us and to make a defense of the way and a presentation of it unto Felix. And it’s very important for us to spend a couple of minutes on this particular part of the text.

He says as your outline points out that first he is a Christian worshiping and holding beliefs consistent with the scriptures. Again, we’ve seen this from Paul before, but he says, “Hey, you know, I do not claim any break with the Old Testament. I claim that the way that they call heresy is in fact the Orthodox faith.”

By implication, he’s calling them schismatics because they were now—that’s an important fact for us to really think through a little bit because you see they were the institutional church. They had the form of orthodoxy. But Paul asserts that what is really important in analyzing who’s the heretic and who isn’t is who has the faith that is consistent with the scriptures. You see. And he also refers to the God of the fathers. He shows his continuity with the institutional church by way of his adherence to the doctrine of the church.

They claim that he was schismatic because they were the institutional body and the church was not. And Paul says he asserts in essence substance over form. That’s what he’s saying here. He’s saying, well, I’m not going to trace my lineage, he says, but I am going to tell you that I hold the faith of the whole Bible, the law and the prophets, and I worship the God of the fathers.

Now, one other interesting point here about Paul, remember, he’s talking not to Felix. He’s not really talking directly to the Jews. And he uses a different term here in the Greek. He uses here a term that could be better translated the paternal god or our father’s god, which was a phrase more akin to how the Romans talked about the worship of the gods of their ancestors. And so he didn’t use the term the god of our fathers which you would use of Jews normally which is the term they used. He didn’t subvert any truth. He still used the single god and he asserts the importance of that. He asserts that god will be the god who judges all men just and unjust. So he doesn’t compromise the faith.

But he does put the assertion of the worship of the god of the fathers into language that the Romans would understand. You see you hear what I’m saying? Frequently our language in Christianity needs to be adapted to the context of the people that we speak to. We use terms like justification, righteousness, salvation, all this. Repentance, thinking that people knows what it means and they don’t. Repent. What does that mean? I don’t know what that means. The modern man will say because he doesn’t. You want to be like Paul. He wants Felix to hear what he’s got to say. And he has no trouble moving away from jargon. I don’t want to put it in a negative sense. Christian terminology is important and it has meaning and it’s good words. I’m not putting them down.

But you want to be able to communicate it in the vernacular. Remember the Reformation—that was a big part of what happened was the scriptures were translated into the language of the people, the vernacular. That’s what Paul is doing here. And when we make appeals to people, when we present the gospel, we want to work hard and diligently to communicate with them. And so Paul does that.

But what I really want you to see here is he asserts the same God the same scriptures and the same hope which is a messianic hope which we’ll see in a minute that the faith is always held. So he says I’m not schismatic. Yes, I’m a member of the way which they call a heresy but in actuality this way is simply the march of the orthodox faith because we are those who worship the same God based upon understanding and belief of the law and the prophets and read in the law and the prophets the centrality the dynamic of our life which is a hope based upon the knowledge of God’s resurrection of the just and the unjust.

So Paul says who he is here and by way of application it’s important for us to figure out who we are. Paul links the worship first of all here—first point I want to make in this way of application—he links the worship of the god of the fathers to believing all things in the law and the prophets. Paul was not a will worshipper. Paul would not just decide how he was going to worship God based on his own subjective feelings. The worship of God here is linked to the objective revelation of God in the law and the prophets, the scriptures of the Old Testament, which is all they had at that particular point in time.

So he links it to that and he links his ethical behavior to the hope of the resurrection also based on the objective doctrine of the Old Testament. Okay? At the center of who he is a belief in the objective reality of the whole Bible, the Old Testament law and the prophets. And he says based upon that I’m not schismatic. I worship the same God and I exercise myself in upright behavior because of my belief in the word of God. And you see now that’s what you should be like.

You should have a knowledge and a belief in the scriptures that teach you how to worship the same God of the fathers and instructs you in the hope of the resurrection of the dead and the undead, a judgment of all men that motivates you to ethical conduct. See, that’s who Paul was and that’s who we should be. And if we think of worship outside of the context of the mandates of scripture, we’re wrong. And if we think that our ethical behavior can be based upon anything other than a knowledge of God’s judgment of men, again, we’re wrong. God says it’s got to be founded in the objective reality of his word.

And what Paul does here very adeptly and very significantly, as I said, is to really make the case that it is these men who are accusing him of being schismatic. They are the sectarians. These are Sadducees. These are men who reject that portion of the Old Testament which speaks of the resurrection. See, and Paul says because they’ve rejected the objective revelation of God in the scriptures. By way of implication, he’s saying this. And because they reject the resurrection, they’ve rejected the objective reality of God’s word. And because they reject the objective reality of God’s word, preaching the resurrection, they have neither good ethical conduct—they’re liars, cheats, thieves, or terrible people. Nor can they claim to worship the God of the fathers. They’ve rejected the God of the fathers. You see, there’s a lot of implications for this which we can speak of.

I can’t spend all day on it, but I wouldn’t mind doing that. Think of the implications to our day and age and the institutional church that exalts form over substance. Or think of the implication to a culture that says, “Well, the Apostle Paul is the apostle of grace in contra-distinction from James the guy who was into law.” See, well, Paul makes no such assertion in his first presentation of the gospel to a Roman governor. Makes no such assertion. He ties himself to the Old Testament. He ties himself to that law, to the prophets, and he’ll tie himself in a little bit here to offerings in the temple as well.

He ties himself to the law of God. Men today that claim that Christians who assert the continuity of the scriptures, a belief in the whole Bible, and who say that worship must be regulated by that Bible, and who teach ethical conduct based on the reality of Messiah and the implications of Messiah for judgment in this earth today—when those sort of people are called schismatic, sectarians, cults, by large institutional churches of our mainline churches either evangelical reformed, they simply prove themselves to be the sect and the schismatics. Do you understand what I’m saying?

When people say that they don’t assert the God of the Old Testament, that they don’t believe in the law of God as understood by all of the revelation of scripture, they in essence say that they are the schismatics who have left the orthodox faith and who no longer worship the God of the fathers. And when they assert that Messiah has no relevance to judgments, eschatological end points, then they show themselves to have departed from the God of the fathers, proper worship, and proper ethical conduct.

Remember that Paul early in the book of Acts in his statements to the Jews on his missionary journeys talked about the full implications of Messiah. Remember he talked about the Old Testament history and the implications Messiah had, that the final judgment has on intermediate judgments as well. God comes, Paul asserted and Messiah has come and as a result things are different in the world and things will change. That’s the orthodox faith once delivered. So people who reject the law or the implications of that law for earthly manifestations of God’s blessing and cursing show themselves to be schismatic and sectarians and have departed from the mainline orthodox faith.

Now whether people have made those decisions self-consciously or not, that’s a whole another matter. But this defense of Paul and the implications for the men that accused him speaks reams and volumes for our day and age.

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Now we could go on to say here that there are some very important things that he has to say also and I want to talk about this now a couple of specific applications in the context of this which is really sort of the center of who he is. Not now saying what he didn’t do. Now saying who he is and by way of application to us who we should be. There’s a couple other things we need to stress here more in a specific nature.

Paul at the center of this assertion of who he is speaks of hope. Hope—Paul says that he has this objective assertion and belief of what’s in the scriptures. He worships on the basis of that belief the God of the fathers and those scriptures assert that he has hope toward God. There should be a resurrection of the dead both of the just and the unjust. At the center of and then he goes on to say in verse 16 “and herein do I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense toward God or man.”

His ethical behavior is linked—as I led to—the hope of the resurrection which is linked to the objective reality of scripture. So without the hope of the resurrection, those men who deny the hope are painted in this particular literary device and the scriptures are a literary device. Remember we have two groups here arguing before a judge and the men that accuse Paul, the true sectarians, they are Sadducees and they reject the resurrection.

And what do they do in the public presentation of who they are before Felix? They lie. And they lie in such a way as to try to seek the death of Paul. They want to kill him. That’s why they’re there. They want to kill him. They’ve consented to plots. They’ve tried to get him beaten to death outside of the temple. These are wicked, mean, nasty men. Why? Because they’ve rejected the hope of the resurrection.

God wants us to make that connection, I believe, in this narrative because Paul makes the connection between the hope of the resurrection and his ethical conduct. Now, he always tries to have a good conscience. Hope is necessary. That’s what I’m trying to say here. Hope is very important to us as believers and it is a specific hope of the resurrection that is important.

Now I recently saw a movie some of you probably have too and it’s got some Academy Awards I think—The Shawshank Redemption—and I’m not necessarily recommending it. You know, I think it’d be good to watch wait for it to come out on TV because there’s some very bad language in it and there’s some uncomfortable scenes in the opening and there’s also scenes it takes place in the prison primarily. There’s a man who is unjustly accused of murdering his wife. You don’t really know until halfway through the movie that he hasn’t murdered her. I hope I’m not ruining this movie for any of you, but it’s an important point I want to make. And in the context of the prison life, this man suffers assault by other men. And so it’s a very uncomfortable movie, at least in the first half of it, gets much better the second half. And that probably is by way of design, too.

The movie moves toward a tremendous climax at the end, which is an assertion—this is where I bring it up—of hope. The main character, Andy. And then there’s a black man in the prison played by Morgan Freeman called Red. They’re really the central characters in the movie. And Andy asserts hope. And Red says in the context of the movie that hope is a bad thing. It just drives you nuts and whatever. And Andy, or Red rather, because of his rejection of hope over the course of this movie becomes what he calls an institutionalized man with no hope.

Another prisoner is released when he’s quite old and kills himself because he can’t take freedom. You know, there’s a message for us in that we live in the context of a culture that is not free in the sense of economic freedom, freedom in many ways. We’re taken care of by a maternal paternal state. And when God finally removes that paternal state and moves us out of this prison existence that we’re in, the assertion of sovereignty by the state, it’ll be interesting to see how men cope with that freedom. And many will seek death because they become so institutionalized.

Well, in any event, probably losing some of you, but this character in this movie, the Shawshank Redemption, Red is a man who is becoming more and more institutionalized over time, in unable to live in freedom because of fear and because of a lack of hope and he asserts a negative. He actually pushes hope away from himself. And the other man, the central character Andy, he is the assertion of hope incarnate. He always is hoping and he moves in that hope and finally escapes from prison after suffering great humiliation and trouble in prison and he finally escapes and he leaves a message for the other prisoner when he gets out. He tells him go to this particular place and there’ll be this—there’ll be something for you and without getting into all the details of the movie the fact is that the Shawshank Redemption is not about the redemption of the white guy who escapes. I believe it’s about the redemption of Red the black man played by Morgan Freeman who is paroled, finally, but is fearful of the world in which he moves in the context of because he has no hope.

He is given hope by Andy’s escape and by this note then that calls him to go to be with Andy on the Mexican coast where they’re going to build a boat and go out into the Pacific Ocean. Well, at the end of the movie, the black man now released from prison gotten this note and he says, “I hope that I the Pacific Ocean will be as blue as I thought it was going to be and I hope that this will happen. I hope that’ll happen.”

You think, why is this saying that? Because in 30 seconds, he actually is arriving at the place where Andy is. He sees the Pacific Ocean. All his hopes are realized. The reason why the movie script writer put that hope statement in there three times at the end of the movie is to demonstrate that the Shawshank Redemption was about the removal of a man from fear through the agency of hope into the future and into peace in the Pacific.