Dennis Tuuri

# Acts 21-22: Paul’s Defense and Witness

Amen. Well, we come today to a text in which the Beatitudes are very applicable. A nice exercise for your afternoon might be to take a look at the Beatitudes from your order of worship. Think about what Paul encounters in Acts 21 and 22 and through the rest of the book of Acts and see how they line up and see Paul as one who is greatly blessed in spite of what happens to him.

So today we’re kind of returning to—we were going through the book of Acts looking at how Paul presents the gospel in different settings and different contexts, and today we make a transition. He’s still doing that, but now it’s primarily a defense and we’ll talk about the relationship of this defense or apologia of Paul’s to his testimony for Jesus. But we’ll read from Acts 22. When we get to the sermon we’ll talk a little bit about the context from Acts 21. In fact, quite a bit about that, to put Paul’s talk in perspective. But we’ll read just his talk and then maybe a couple of verses afterwards.

This is found in Acts 22 beginning at verse 1. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Acts 22 beginning at verse one: “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense before you now. And when they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent. Then he said, ‘I am indeed a Jew born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ law, and was zealous toward God as you all are today.’ Can you hear me?”

Okay, it’s very echoey up here. Okay, reading on from verse four: “I persecuted this way to the death, binding and delivering into prison both men and women, as also the high priest bore me witness, and all the council of the elders from whom I also received letters to the brethren, and went to Damascus to bring in chains even those who were there to Jerusalem to be punished. Now it happened as I journeyed and came near Damascus at about noon.

Suddenly, a great light from heaven shone around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ So I answered, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And he said to me, ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting.’ And those who were with me indeed saw the light and were afraid, but they did not hear the voice of him who spoke to me. So I said, ‘What shall I do, Lord?’

And the Lord said to me, ‘Arise and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all things which are appointed to you to do.’ And since I could not see for the glory of that light, being led by the hand of those who were with me, I came into Damascus. Then a certain Ananias, a devout man according to the law, having a good testimony with all the Jews who dwelt there, came to me and he stood and said to me, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight.’ And at that same hour, I looked up at him.

And then he said, ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know his will and see the Just One and hear the voice of his mouth. For you will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard.’ And now, why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. Now it happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple that I was in a trance and saw him saying to me, ‘Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning me.’ So I said, ‘Lord, they know that in every synagogue I imprisoned and beat those who believe on you.

And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by consenting to his death and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’ Then he said to me, ‘Depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles.’ And they listened to him until this word. And then they raised their voices and said, ‘Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live.’”

Let’s pray. Lord, God, we thank you for this piece of history. We thank you, Lord God, for the text of your scriptures. Bless us by it. Help us, Father, to be transformed by it. Help us to be better witnesses of you, defenders of the Christian faith and our participation in it. And help us to become more committed as well to the tone of the Beatitudes and looking for opportunities as we conform ourselves to your word to speak forth the truth of Jesus. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

So the text begins with Paul’s particular speech in verse one: “Hear my defense before you now.” So this is a text that’s normally talked about as Paul’s testimony of Jesus Christ. This account of the Damascus Road experience is actually found in three places in the book of Acts. So it’s significant, of course, to who Paul is. It is the place where he had this encounter with Christ, but it doesn’t say here that it’s his testimony. This is his defense.

And what we’ll talk about in a little bit is that he was being charged with certain things by the Jews. So he was defending his own actions to his Jewish accusers. And so that’s why it’s a defense. He’s defending himself in court, so to speak, or before men or in an argument, whatever you want to think of it as. But the question is one of what’s the relationship of this to testimony and witness?

And there’s always a big discussion that goes on in extended church circles about the relationship of apologetics on the one hand and evangelism on the other. This Greek word is apologia. He’s making a defense for his actions. And so some people want to make a big distinction between apologetics and evangelism. Apologetics is more of a classical defense of the faith against opponents of the faith, etc. And evangelism really isn’t that.

But here, what we’re going to see is that actually apologetics and evangelism are tied together, but the apologetic, while being also of what he was—you know, the Lord who was directing him—is specifically a defense of what he was doing.

Now, in Acts 23:11, in another chapter and a half, we’ll read the following: “But the following night, the Lord stood by him and said, ‘Be of good cheer, Paul, for as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome.’”

Now, that’s the big thing that’s going on here: witnessing and testifying to Jesus in Jerusalem and in Rome. But this is interpretation of what we’re reading now, right? So Jesus tells Paul, “Well, you testified and bore witness to me in Jerusalem, and that’s going to happen now in Rome.” So what that tells us is that while Paul calls this his defense, an apologetic, it actually is testimony and witness. Okay?

And so this is talked about in other places of scripture. In Acts 25:16, he answers them—and again, it’s his accusers—and he says that in Roman law, you’re supposed to have the opportunity to answer for himself concerning the charge against him. And that’s what he’s doing here. He’s answering for himself to his accusers, as we’ll see in a couple of minutes.

In Philippians 1:7, we read: “Just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, in as much as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace.” Now, he’s actually chained while he gives this presentation here in Acts 22. But the important thing here again is to see how Paul ties together this idea of defense and testimony and confirmation all related to the gospel. So while this is a defense of his actions, it’s really a defense of the gospel and at the same time it’s a testimony of the gospel.

In 1 Peter 3:15 we read: “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense, an apologia, for anyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”

So again, there the word is defense but it seems to be rather obviously pointed to a testimony or a witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the gospel of grace. So the scriptures sort of tie these two concepts together—at least as I understand it.

Now one other text before we go back to the actual context for this sermon: in Luke 21:12 and following we read, “But before all these things they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and rulers for my name’s sake, but it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. Therefore, settle in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist.”

So Jesus says, you know, again, you’re going to be persecuted, which is what’s going on with Paul here. But this will be an opportunity to bring in your defense, to bring testimony for the gospel to the rulers of the world. And what we’ll see here at the end of this story—the rest of the story—is that’s what happens. Paul goes to Rome. So it’s a bad set of events, but Jesus has already forewarned them. Paul knows the gospel account, and he knows that persecution and his defense against persecution will lead to testimony for the gospel and that will increase actually the number of people and influence he’ll have. He’ll be able to testify before leaders as well.

So I guess I’m belaboring this point just a bit to make sure that you recognize opportunities that come to you when people bring charges against you, when people accuse you, right? When they do something because of something you’re doing for the sake of the gospel of Christ, you should make a defense for yourself. It’s right, but that defense should be tied to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and an occasion for testimony. And you shouldn’t be, you know, flummoxed, irritated, angry necessarily when people do this to you. You should look at it as an opportunity for witness and an opportunity for the grace of the gospel to happen.

Okay. So now, what we’re going to do is let’s look at the context for this sermon first before we get to the actual—not sermon but—speech of Paul. And so what we’re going to look at first is what happens, what Paul is doing here. And on your handouts today this is point number one: “No Two Good Deeds Go Unpunished—The Best Laid Plans.”

So what am I talking about? Well, you know there’s a phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” and you try to help somebody or something, you try to do a good deed and you end up getting in trouble. And that’s more common than we’d like it to be. And so we say “no good deed goes unpunished.” And in Paul’s case, what we see going on here is his persecution results from two good deeds he’s doing. Okay?

So in Acts 21, we read that Paul is going to Jerusalem, right? He’s been warned, by the way, that things will go badly for him there. Now, one of the things he’s doing is bringing money. Remember we talked about offerings a couple weeks ago. You’ve got this thing at the back of your order of worship again. Well, Paul had done this. He had these people commit to help for the city of Jerusalem. He had sent emissaries out, after a year, collected this money, was returning it now to Jerusalem. So he’s on a good deed. He’s on a benevolent mission. He’s on a charity case, right? He’s doing something really good. And his payment for that is they’re going to try to kill him.

So, you know, it’s a good deed. And don’t—so what does this tell us once more? When we do good things and bad things happen as a result, don’t doubt the goodness of good things. Identify with Paul and identify with the opportunities that opened up to him as he did this good thing.

Now, I said two good deeds don’t go unpunished, right? Well, in Acts 21, so Paul’s going to go to Jerusalem. And by the way, he says on his way, you know, they try to tell him it’s going to go bad. He says, “I’m willing to die for the gospel.” Okay. So Paul was willing to die for the gospel if that’s what was going to happen to him in Jerusalem. If they’re going to kill him, that’s okay. He’s going to do it anyway. May God give us that fortitude. All we have to do is witness. And usually what we’re afraid of is not physical death. We’re afraid of a little embarrassment, which is still a form of death, right?

But we should steel ourselves with this example of Paul to say whenever we have an opportunity to testify to the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ, “Is a little bit of embarrassment going to keep us from doing that? I don’t think so.” We want to walk in the feet of Paul who was willing to die if necessary. That’s what he says in Acts 21. Okay.

So he gets to Jerusalem and so he meets up with James and the other elders and they say, “Well, it’s great what God is doing through the Gentiles. And by the way, he’s saving a lot of Jews here, too. And these Jews that are being saved are zealous for the law.” Now, we’re going to talk about this in a little bit, but there’s this big law-grace distinction in modern American evangelicalism, which is just wrong. Okay? It’s not bad that these Jewish converts were zealous for the law. You should be, too. We’ll talk about that a little later. But in any event, they say, plus, you know, the problem is you got these Jews who are ticked off at you and they think that you’re actually telling all the Jews—not the Gentiles, the Jews—not to circumcise their kids, not to pay attention to the law.

That’s what they think. So what we want you to do, Paul, is show them that you really respect the law and we want you to take these four men that we have and they’ve made a vow and we want you to go and pay for their vow price when they go to the temple and shave their heads and complete their period of vow. Okay?

Now, the fact that it’s shaving of the head, by the way, involved in this in Acts 21, what that tells us is this is in some way or fashion a Nazirite vow. Okay? And we’ve seen before—we’ve talked about this before. Paul took such a vow as well. And so this puts what just narrative opens up in front of us. And as Acts 21 tells us that the occasion for the persecution of Paul, which becomes an occasion to testify to Jesus, to Caesar’s household ultimately, that this all begins with a reference to holy war vows, to the Nazirite vow. Again, the text wants us to associate—number six—holy war with the proclamation of the gospel with a new way of doing holy war, right?

And so Paul will act out the Beatitudes and it’s set in the context for us when it brings up the shaving of the head of holy war. So you want to be a holy warrior for God, you know, don’t get on Call of Duty or whatever it is, you know, do what Paul does. Love your enemies, speak the truth, do good things, knowing that a lot of your good deeds will produce opposition and trouble for you.

So anyway, the point is they’re trying to do a good thing. And Paul says, “Okay, I’ll do that. I don’t want to make anybody stumble. You know, it’s not true. I’m not against God’s law, but yeah, sure. I’ll do it. I’ll do that vow thing to show them.” So Paul is doing one good deed: bringing funds for the starving in Jerusalem. And two, he actually engages in an activity in the temple with his purification, completion of the vow, and the shaving of the heads to go out of his way to minister grace to those who might be caused to stumble at him and as a result at the gospel of Jesus Christ. Okay?

So he’s doing a second good deed. In response to that, the Jews see him in the temple in Acts 21 and they say, “That’s the guy right there who’s telling everybody, all the Jews, to break Moses’ law.” Not only that, but that guy is bringing Gentiles into the temple. So in response to Paul’s good deeds, he gets set upon. They start beating him. They’re going to kill him. That’s the response that Paul has to his good deeds. Okay?

So no good deeds, no matter how many you might do, go unpunished. So goes the old saw, the old phrase. And that, you know, the best laid plans—”I know how we can prevent people from getting mad at us. We’ll just go out of our way to show them we really like them.” Doesn’t work all the time. Okay? You know, “You’re supposed to live as peacefully with other men as much as in you lies,” right? You’re supposed to try hard to do it but with some guys they just won’t be happy with you. They’ll always distrust you. They’ll always speculate about what you’re actually doing, etc.

So first of all it shows us that it’s dangerous to work out the gospel in your life, you know? Right away, you know, we see the lie to a lot of you know, name it and claim it—”just become a Christian, your life will be great, it’ll be super and have a great life.” No. Paul becomes a Christian, works out with deeds of kindness and love, right? And in response to deeds of love and kindness for the gospel and for Jesus, he gets—they attempt to kill him. They attempt to kill him.

So that’s what happens first in the narrative. Secondly, what they do is they tell lies about him. Half-lies and damned lies. And I use the word damned lies. Well, should I put that on the—yeah, I should. Is when you engage in this kind of behavior, God says it’s one of the things he hates. He’ll bring damnation on people for doing this kind of thing.

Later in Acts, they actually refer to Paul—the Jews do—as “a plague.” And you know, if you know anything about lex talionis judgment, that means God’s going to bring some form of plague on them in terms of their own sin by calling a representative of Jesus a plague.

Now, hopefully, you know, God converts them through that, but you know, they end up telling lies.

Well, where is this at? Well, this is in chapter 21:28 and following. Why don’t you turn there and I’ll show you this. Chapter 21:28. So this is Paul. He’s doing this good deed. He goes to the temple. And in the temple, men start crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place. Now, he’s at this place. He’s keeping the law—the actual Nazirite vow law, right? And what we’ll see later is that when Paul comes to conversion, God sends him to Ananias, who is devout in terms of the law. So there’s a lot of pro-law statements throughout this narrative.

So they’re lying about him right now. Maybe it’s a half-truth because certainly you know, the law—the portion of the law that kept Jews and Gentiles separate—when God destroys the temple in AD 70, that’s all gone now. Gone. And the story of the New Testament church, many of the epistles, is the weaving together into one body Jew and Gentile. So some of the law—the stuff that kept them artificially separated, saying that man’s unity wouldn’t come until Messiah, till Jesus paid the price for our sin—that part will be done away with. It’s kind of a half-truth, but it’s a half-lie as a result as well.

And furthermore, they say he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place. Now, that was a big charge. There was a four-and-a-half-foot wall, you know, with the court of the Gentiles out here and then the temple back in here. They couldn’t go in. Why? Because God was artificially—again, we could say—keeping people separate, preparing us for the coming of Jesus when unity would happen. But in any event, it was a big deal. There were signs posted. “Any Gentile, you know, goes over this wall and gets into the temple, when he dies, it’ll be upon his own head.” It was a capital crime. And the Romans were fine with that. Okay? So it was a big deal. You couldn’t have Gentiles in the temple.

And they say Paul’s bringing Gentiles into the temple. Well, the text goes on to tell us why they thought this. “For they had previously seen Trophimus, the Ephesian, with him in the city whom they supposed that Paul had brought into the temple. They didn’t see him with Gentiles or Trophimus in the temple. They saw him out in the street of the city with the Gentile. They see him in the temple with four guys and think they’re Gentiles. It was a complete fab. It was wrong. It was one of those lies that they were telling about Paul because they didn’t, as we’re supposed to do, investigate to determine truth.

They didn’t do that. Instead, they said, “Oh, this guy is doing horrible things.” And they made up lies about him. They might have believed them, but they were lies nonetheless. Slander and gossip against Paul was what they were doing. Lies, half-lies, and damned lies.

Alistair Begg—I’ve got a quote on your handout—we see here the impact of a failure of integrity. Now, it’s a small thing, right? You see something, you make up a story about the thing and you spread the story about the thing. You see a fact, thinking you see something happened. You see Paul in the city with somebody, then you see him in the temple with people and you put two and two together and you get five. That’s what we tend to do. And when we act on the basis of that five, we damage other people and spread that mistaken speculation of fact. Then we’re engaged in a lack of integrity, a lack of honesty, a lack of truthtelling.

And as Begg said, this shows the horrific consequences of what that kind of failure of integrity can bring to pass. Because after these men cry this out in the temple, all heck breaks loose, right? And the whole thing gets up into a big uproar. They grab him. They start dragging him out. They start beating him. They’re going to beat him to death. Okay?

Now, he’s saved by the Romans. We’ll get to that in a little bit. But the point is those are the disastrous consequences of us taking certain things that happened and then putting a very negative construction on them. I’ve had these things happen very recently in my life where you know people are mad at me and they’re mad at me about X and I say, “Well, what’s the problem?” and I say, “Well, you did this.” And I say, “Well, actually yeah, I did do that but I don’t see that’s a problem.” “Well, you did it because of this, this, and this. This is your motivation. This is what you were trying to do. This is all the hell you were wreaking upon you know this person or that.” “Well, that’s an interpretation. That’s a story.”

And those are the things that we have to be very careful, Christian brothers and sisters, that we don’t do. The Bible is very clear that we’re not supposed to gossip, slander, produce disunity amongst brethren through bringing of half-truths or speculations about things that we’ve seen or observed or even heard from somebody else. I’ve had that happen, too. “Well, he told me you did this. You did this—that must be horrible because of this and now I’m really mad at you.”

Brothers and sisters, this will tear a culture apart where that goes on. You know, I was thinking about this in terms of political radio. This happens every day. It happens on the shows I like to listen to, right? It happens on the left. It happens on the right. You know, we have this presupposition, this preconceived notion—we don’t like Obama or we don’t like Rush Limbaugh or whoever it is. And then we hear something that Obama or Limbaugh has done or said and we believe it. We believe it. It’s so easy to believe half-truths, mistaken stories that are told about somebody and something they might have actually done when we have a preconceived notion against that person, right?

You don’t like somebody. And when you don’t like somebody and you hear a story about that somebody, it just—it’s one more tally mark on why you don’t like them. It’s a horrible thing that we enter into in terms of the fallen state.

Now, God uses evil for good. So this is a happy story at the end of the day. It would be very discouraging if we didn’t know the rest of the story because this is so common in our lives. I’m sure it’s common in your life. It’s certainly common in my life for this to happen.

So you know, they tell these half-truths. You know, we’ve made this case with the Crucial Conversations book, right? “Master your stories. Master your stories.” We might see a fact, then we get mad about it. But in between seeing that fact—unless it’s an overt sin, usually those facts though—the reason why we get so upset is because we tell ourselves a story about it that’s negative toward that person. And when we do that, then we get angry. Then we sin in our heart against people and usually with our tongues as well.

It’s because we don’t even know. We’re not aware. Usually—and think about this now—you’re probably not aware. You see something happen, politics, personal rule, whatever it is. You get upset and you may not even—you probably haven’t stopped to analyze that you just told yourself a story about that thing, but you did. It’s the interpretation of the facts that leads to the sorts of anger that is so deadly to a community as the one we see here.

They saw certain things. They saw Paul with a Gentile. They saw Paul with four guys in the temple. Again, they put two and two together. They get five. And because they get five, five is bad. Five is “Paul is a horrible sinner. He’s bringing the wrath of God down upon us by defiling the temple,” right? We talked about that last week. We went from the temple in the womb where the child is being knit together as the veil of the temple, dwelling place for God. And so when people commit abortion, yeah, they’re striking at the image of God, but they’re actually striking at the temple of God.

And we said how horrible that is. Not much worse you can do than that—to strike out at the dwelling place of God. So abortion is doubly wrong and I would say it’s wrong more for the fact that it defiles the sanctuary of God. That’s the worst thing that abortion is. And here that’s what they’re thinking about Paul. He’s defiling the dwelling place of God by bringing Gentiles into the temple. And it’s completely wrong. They’re just flat-out wrong, truths and half-truths.

We are not to follow a mob to do violence. This is what happens. People tell these stories and then the next thing that happens is they’re shouting this stuff out and the next guy says, “Oh, that must be true. Look what this Paul is doing.” Now, they haven’t even seen Paul with Trophimus or with the four guys—nothing. All they do is they hear a report from somebody else. They jump to conclude that’s also true. And now we’ve got a mob going on.

And this mob goes after Paul. They grab ahold of him. They drag him out of the temple. They start beating the stuffings out of him. They plan to kill him. It’s a mob following an untruth that they ascribe truth to, but they’re wrong. They don’t check the facts. We’re not to do that.

Children, you hear your little, you know, friend tell you something about some other child and you don’t like the other child as a result of what you hear. Don’t do that. When people tell you things that are hurtful about other people, just ignore it. You’re not usually part of what that all is about. Ignore it. You may even want to tell them, “Hey, stop doing that. You’re not supposed to.”

According to God’s law—again, and we like God’s law around here—according to God’s law, you’re not supposed to gossip and slander. In fact, the very text that you’re supposed to love your neighbor as yourself is found in Leviticus 19 in God’s law. And it is explicitly given in the context of not talking about your neighbor behind his back because you’ve got a problem. And instead, the text says, “The way you love your neighbor is yourself as you go talk to them. See if the story is right. You can’t get the story out of your head—I’m not telling you just to sit there sleepless night after night—but then go talk to your neighbor. Is my story right? And don’t tell them your story. Don’t say, ‘I know you’re a lousy jerk because you did this, this, and this, and you had these lousy reasons for it.’ No. Ask them kindly and nicely, ‘Well, I’m tempted to think you did this. Is that true?’ Give them the benefit of the doubt.

So don’t follow a mob to do violence. When we hear bad things about people, we should focus on the facts, not the interpretation of the facts that people are telling us. We shouldn’t listen to gossip. And when we hear slander about others, we should ignore it.

Well, that’s not what happens here. Instead, Paul is nearly beat to death, you know, for violence because the Jews are doing something that’s so common to us that God warns us again and again not to do. It’s common to you. It’s common to me. It’s very important and particularly, as I said, particularly important when we’ve got preconceived notions. If we already don’t like somebody, we’re going to be tempted to think the worst of whatever they end up doing. We’re going to believe the half-truths and the twisted distortions and the speculations.

So so please steel yourself and I’ll try to steel myself that we would not enter into this sin.

That’s what happens here. Paul does a good deed. They try to kill him and they do it based on telling lies, half-lies, and lies that bring judgment upon them.

Well, the next thing that happens is the Romans have this tower outside the temple province there, and they can see down into the temple area and what’s happening in front of the temple, right? They’re keeping an eye. They’re like the NSA. They’re getting information about what’s going on in the city. They do it from a high place. They can oversee things. And to a certain extent, just the fact that you’re watching people holds them under some degree of control.

Now, the Jews knew this, but even the watchful eye of the Roman government couldn’t keep them from beating Paul, trying to kill him. Well, anyway, the Romans see it. Now, the Romans in the text here are described as very efficient people. In chapter 21, they see this hub going on. They see this guy being beaten. They immediately, boom, they dispatch a group of guys, a tactical squad. They shoot down there. They protect the guy being beaten and they try, you know, to get some order.

Well, they can’t get order because the crowd is yelling this, they’re yelling that. They’re saying all kinds of things. Can’t even hear yourself think. It’s like the Seahawks game, you know, if they were playing in Seattle. You can’t hear yourself think. So they’re very efficient. They’re used to these things. They put a cordon of guys around Paul. They actually pick him up and they rush him up the stairs to the soldiers’ barracks. They take him into custody, right? So they know what they’re doing. They’re very efficient guys.

And the third point of the outline related to this is “Who are the Good Guys?” You know, we’re used to thinking of God’s people as the good guys and the Romans are the bad guys. But that’s not the way it is in the Bible, not in Acts. In Acts, over and over again, the Romans are protecting the Christians against the Jews.

And that’s what happens here. Now, that’s because of two things. One, God says in the book of Daniel that he had set up a series of governments, right? Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. He had set up these series of empires, and he was going to use the empires to protect the good people who are in captivity, right? Daniel and his friends weren’t in captivity because they were bad. They were actually there being kept safe by God because they’re good. Okay?

And so these empires tend to protect them. And we see that, right? We see Daniel being promoted and protected. Yeah, there’s difficulty and stuff, but that’s what’s going on. So one reason why the Romans are described this way is that God had actually had them in place to do just that, to protect the Christians against the Jews who really didn’t believe in God at all. They just wanted their own—they were proud of themselves, their nation, their race, their customs.

So that’s one other reason, and this is very important: this is the purpose of government. You know, government is to, you know, punish the wicked, praise the good people. Government—again, we in our circles can tend to think government’s a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing. You know, Sir Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons: “Tear down all the government, you turn around, there’s Satan. What’s left to protect you? Get rid of the Roman government. Who’s going to protect Paul? Nobody. Beaten to death, killed.”

So government is good. Yeah, there’s abuses of it, etc. But the good guys here are actually the Romans. And the not-so-good guys are the Jews here. Romans are protectors.

It’s interesting because, you know, there’s all these little details in the text. This text—you know, if you go home and read chapter 21, chapter 22, you think about it, you try to see where words occur several times—there’s all kinds of connections. There’s all kinds of twinnings going on here. Matches up. There’s, you know, irony and storytelling in various directions, lots of ways. And so a detail of a biblical narrative is exceedingly important. God wanted us to know that their vow, including shaving their head—so they look like, you know, certain people—no, sorry, but he wanted us to know that detail.

Well, another detail that he wants us to know is that when the Romans grab ahold of Paul, they start talking to him and they’re amazed because he speaks in Greek. Paul speaks Greek to them and they say, “Oh, aren’t you that Egyptian that caused all that trouble around here?” So apparently there was an Egyptian guy and he got all these, you know, these Jewish followers and they were going to, you know, take over the government or whatever it is. He was, you know, a bad guy.

But why does God include that? Why do we—why does God want us thinking about that? Is Paul an Egyptian?

Well, it’s the huge theme, right? Throughout nearly the beginning of the Bible to the end, we have Egypt and Jerusalem. We’ve got, you know, place of captivity and then the city were delivered. In the context of but then we know that by the time of Jesus and actually before that in the time of the exile and captivity they flip, right? Jerusalem becomes Egypt. So Jesus is called out of Egypt. He’s sent away from Israel to Egypt for protection when he’s a boy and then he’s brought back.

So the things flip. Instead of Pharaoh killing little children, we have Herod killing little children in Jerusalem. And so here, that’s what we’re being told. Again, I think the little cue here is for us to say, “Who are the Egyptians? The Egyptians are these God-hating Jews who, because of their supposed religiosity, are actually beating on God’s representative. They want to kill him just like they killed Jesus. They’re Egypt. They’re the Egyptians. Paul’s not the Egyptian. He’s the light of God. He’s the Moses come to deliver those, right? Or at least he’s representing Moses, the greater Moses—Jesus.”

So who are the good guys and bad guys? These narratives—it’s not always easy to tell. And what you have to do is suspend your prejudices when you come to a text like this and let the text tell you who the good guys and bad guys are. And here, clearly the good guys are the Romans, the bad guys are the Jews. Jerusalem is Egypt and Paul is not.

So that is what happens. And then Paul is being taken away to the barracks by the Romans. He tells them he’s a citizen—he’s a Jew, a citizen of Cilicia—and he speaks Greek to them. And so what happens next is they’re hauling him up these stairs. Okay? So he’s going up these stairs away from the temple area and they’re going to throw him in with the soldiers in the barracks area where they’re going to interrogate him, which means they’re going to beat him.

Well, at the top of the stairs, he asks the commander if he can speak to the crowd, if he can make his defense. And the Romans let him do that. So what are the Romans doing? They’re not only protecting Paul, they’re giving him a high platform whereby he can preach to the Jews. They’re protecting him and giving him opportunity to make his defense here to answer the charges against him.

So that’s what happens next. And that’s why we end up with number four on your outline: “The Defense and Witness of a Gracious Law-Keeping Trophy of Grace.”

That all happens because Paul is on these steps. So at the end of chapter 21, he’s up there and then he says, “Can I address him?” And they say, “Okay, sure.” And then he starts to—well, actually, first he beckons with his hand. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s very interesting. Another detail that God wants us to think about. He somehow makes some kind of motion with his hand, and the crowd chills out.

God’s hand of power doesn’t work through Paul. I mean, they want to kill this guy. But for some reason in the providence of God, God uses Paul standing there beckoning with his hand, doing something—who knows what—to cause them to come to silence. That’s what the text tells us. And then Paul can make his defense.

And that’s where we come specifically to the text that we read in chapter 22. So this is what Paul does. He makes his defense. Now, notice how he does it. “Blessed are those who are persecuted,” right? Blessed are you when you bless others and don’t, you know, try to attack them.

Look at what he does. These are men that just tried to kill him. They’re beating him to death. They lied about him, right? They’re lying about his savior. What does he call them? “Brethren and fathers.” Brethren and fathers.

Why does he say this? Well, there’s two reasons it’s recorded, I think, for us here. One big deal: here, Paul is a minister of grace and he’s not trying, you know, to lord it over, beat these guys up, attack them, and you know, give them eye for eye, tooth for tooth sort of human vengeance. He’s not doing that. What he’s doing is treating them the way he was treated. He was treated graciously by God, by God bringing him to his knees and converting him. He’s giving them honor.

Now, what have we said for years at this church? “If you want people to hear you, honor them.” These are bad folks here. Is he being just a lousy mealy-mouthed hypocrite? No sir. He is being an example to us. And he doesn’t say “you whitewash sepulcher.” He’ll do that at certain times in his address in the book of Acts. But here he begins by saying “men are brothers and fathers.” Okay.

So number one—and we’ll see it throughout this address—Paul will honor them trying to get them to listen to his facts. They’re not interested in facts. That’s all Paul’s interested in is he wants to tell them the facts about what happened to him and who he is.

Now, okay. So he says, “Now I think there’s one other reason this is here: brothers and fathers.” The only other place where that address is used is in the speech that Stephen makes before he’s killed. You remember Stephen? They’re doing the same thing to Stephen they did to Paul. And Steven wants to talk to him and he gives him a fairly long address about the scriptures and what God has done in history and he begins it by saying “brothers and fathers.”

Now when Stephen did that, Paul was there. Now Paul tells us that in this account and in other places of scripture when they were killing Steven, he was taking care of their coats—of the guys that were killing Steven. He was consenting to the death of Steven, okay? And then he went and persecuted other Christians, brought him back to Jerusalem so they could be beaten, scourged, killed, whatever it was.

Paul was there. He heard Steven say, “Brothers and fathers,” and then he listened to what he said. And we, you know, he wasn’t changed by that testimony of Steven. But you’ve got to think, you know, that has something to do. God wants us to tie together Paul’s sermon here and Steven’s text back earlier in the book of Acts. He wants us to see those two together.

And the big picture, of course, is the wondrous grace and good news—the gospel of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit full of mercy and not, you know, not killing Paul because of his involvement with Steven, but rather bringing him eventually as a trophy of grace to be his witness just like Steven was. So the big picture is right away—if you know your Bibles, boys and girls, and you read that address and you’ve been reading the book of Acts—you should think, “Stephen.”

And you should pause for a moment and think, “Yeah, Paul was there. He was helping kill Stephen.” And now here’s Paul defending the very same God that Stephen was. Praise God.

And some of us, not all of us, you know, a number of us were raised in the covenant. We weren’t like this. But a number of us—some of us at least—we know what that’s like. We know how we rebelled against God. We were sinful against him. We did everything we wanted to do. And we would make fun of Christians and, you know, demean them, ridicule them. Same with Jesus. We’d ridicule him. And God didn’t strike us dead. He saved us. He saved us through a series of providential events in our story. And that’s what he does with Paul.

Paul is a trophy of God’s grace. He says, “Not only did I consent to his killing, I persecuted the way—people that follow the way, the truth, and the life. That’s Jesus Christ. I persecuted those people. I actually got letters from some of these same rulers here that are ruling over you, the priests and the rulers. Those guys, they know who I am. They know I like the law. They gave me letters so I could go arrest Christians. That’s why I was on that road to Damascus—is I was that kind of fella. But now I’m here to tell you I was all wrong. I was persecuting the Savior, the Messiah, the Just One.”

He refers to him—at in his speech. Paul is a trophy of grace. And because he’s a trophy of grace and he knows that—he knows it’s not of his works. He knows it’s the grace of God. He treats them graciously. “Brothers and fathers, hear my defense before you now.”

And what—how do they respond? It works. They hear him speak the Hebrew tongue, Aramaic. The word says Hebrew with the common ver. It’s not like biblical Hebrew, Old Testament Hebrew. It’s like Aramaic Hebrew. But they’re speaking to him in the vernacular, right? In their language.

To the Romans, he was speaking their language. To the Jews, he’s speaking their language. He’s contextualizing what he has to say. He’s putting it in a context that will gain him the most hearing with the particular audience he’s talking to, right? So he honors them. He calls them brothers and fathers. He honors them. He speaks to them in their tongue. Now, they knew Greek, too, for the most part. But hey, that’s, you know, that’s points for Paul—the fact that he speaks to him in Hebrew. And the text tells us that. It says they kept all the more silent. They’d already settled down. And then when he talks to him in Hebrew, they’re like, “Oh, calling us men and brothers and talking to us in Hebrew. This we need to listen to.”

And he continues in this way. He says, “I’m a Jew.” He identifies with Judaism. “Born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel.” He’s a PhD from Harvard, okay? He’s got cred with the intellectuals and with the street. He’s telling them, you know, the stuff that was part of who he was that would help him get a hearing with these particular people.

Now, they think he’s just buttering them up, but what he’s doing is preparing them to be called to repentance, right? That’s what he’s doing. But the point is, when we defend false accusations against us or the gospel, and when we give our testimony, when we give our witness, we’re not supposed to be jerks about it, right? We’re not supposed to be as irritable as we can be. And we also don’t hold back from telling the truth. He does that as well.

These are not—he’s not, you know—these are the facts. And his testimony, his defense, it’s nothing but the facts, ma’am. He gives them the facts and these facts will drive them to want to kill him. But this is what he does.

So he says, “I was brought up by the familial—taught according to the strictness of our fathers’ father’s law and was zealous toward God as all of you are today.” Your zealousness is a good thing. You want to be really committed to God and you want to keep his law. But they weren’t doing it. Okay? In fact, they were—I mean we know the elders read through the laws of Exodus at our elder meetings. We read a different verse each week and just a couple weeks ago we read the one we were at the place in the reading where it was the one verse: “Don’t follow a mob to do violence.” Now, that’s the law of God. And that’s the part of the law that’s inscriptured. That’s the part that they should have memorized. They did. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t care. Their own personal hatred for Paul meant that they could break that law.

So they’re not lawkeepers. He is. He’s telling them that, too, by way of implication.

Then he goes on to talk about how he persecuted the way. If you go through this speech, you’ll see that Paul has nothing to do with an anti-law perspective. That’s not the problem. The problem is, you know, that they’re rejecting the giver of the law.

Paul is a trophy of grace. He speaks very graciously in his presentation of his defense and in his testimony. That is a defense and a witness. And he’s very gracious in that because he’s a trophy of grace. Hallelujah. Praise God.

He tells them who he was, how he was born, his upbringing. He’s like them. What he did: he persecuted Christians just like they are doing. What happened to him: the Damascus Road experience. And so it’s totally the grace of God. And in the context of that, he talks about another guy, Ananias.

The children’s coloring page is a picture of Ananias and Saul. And Ananias, you know, is the one that God uses to bring Saul to sight and to baptize Saul. Saul says to Ananias, “What shall I do? What should I do here?” And Ananias tells him, “Yeah, there is a miraculous vision that Paul’s given. You don’t have that, but you have Ananases in your life. And you can be an Ananias to other people—telling people, telling Christians, ‘This is the way. This is what you got to do.’ Encouraging them to move into baptism, into covenant relationship with Jesus Christ, to follow him, to do what God wants him to do.”

That’s what happens to Paul is God intervenes and God sends him to a person who is going to help him grow in his Christian life. That’s how sanctification happens. I think Doug Wilson recently said that sanctification is just imitation and that is the bulk of it. You imitate the people that God has put in context with your life. So if you’re always moving on, you never move to that end of imitating others and your sanctification stops. But this is what Paul’s been given—somebody to help sanctify him. And we are as well.

Now, that man is Ananias. I think his name means grace or gift of God, something like this. And he is a gift of God to Paul. And how does Paul describe him? Well, he’s well thought of by the Jews. He is a Jew and he’s devout according to the law. So you know, don’t get the impression here that you’ve got these people pro-law and Paul anti-law. That’s what they want you to believe—the liars. Paul, Ananias—pro-law, pro-used correctly. And then, as I said, wanting to know what I should do—this question “what I should do.”

Let me read a quote by John Calvin about this. He 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 us to do.”

So Calvin says this is the key. This is the identification of what a Christian is. He says, “What should I do?” And he says it to other people, other Christians who are going to help guide him into the truth. So that’s Paul’s testimony here. It’s what he did and now it’s what he is, and he goes on to say, “This is why now I’m here—is that Jesus told me in the temple that I should leave Jerusalem and I should turn to the Gentiles.”

Now up to then everything Paul says, they keep quiet. They listen. Interesting. Now they could have gotten upset about a lot of these things, but they didn’t. The—what’s the one thing that gets them so upset? When he says, “Jesus told me to go to the Gentiles, to turn to the Gentiles.” That’s it. At that point, they start yelling again. They’re going to kill him again. They grab ahold of him. They hate him. Okay?

And that is the message of this text: the one thing they didn’t want was the growing together of Jew and Gentile in one body, the Christian church. They wanted partisanship. They wanted one side and some—and the Gentiles on the other side. They wanted favoritism with God that wouldn’t extend out. “Yeah, you Gentiles can become converts, but you’re not fully equal with us. You’ve got to kind of become like us. You’ve got to do the things we do, eat the food we eat, dress the way we dress.” Okay? And God was doing away with all that.

Now, an interesting thing about this text—and I can’t read the verses to support it, but believe me, the description of what happens in Jerusalem reminds us of another description in the book of Acts. You know what it is? Ephesus. When the gospel is preached in Ephesus, what happens? A riot breaks out. People start yelling this and that. Very similar expressions used—just like with Paul speaking here. A riot breaks out. They’re yelling this and that. Confusion, disorder, disunity. It’s a mob. It’s a riot.

It doesn’t make any difference whether you’re in Ephesus or whether you’re in Jerusalem, whether people claim to believe in God or not. But when God’s word and his message is rejected, all unity disappears. All unity disappears. That’s the message, I think, of this text that God has come. Jesus has come in history to bring people together. Sin has broken them apart and God now has come and the artificial division between Jew and Gentile being done away with—AD 70 totally gone. No more Jew, no more Gentile, one body of Christ. And that’s what they were rejecting. They wanted the distinction.

What’s the message? The message is the only source of unity in the world is the unifier, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you reject the unifier, Jesus, who brings together men and women as disciples of him, Jews, Gentiles, different races, different cultures, when he brings those together in him, there’s wonder and beauty and order. And when a culture rejects Jesus, what do we get? We get polarization. We get disorder. We get mob-like riots or political parties breaking down into pure partisanship. Nothing works anymore because it’s not supposed to work.

God doesn’t want a world that works without Jesus at its center. Our job is to bring blessing to the world. And when we’re persecuted, to see opportunities to bring people to the kind of unity that is true unity, that’s the true common good—only to be found not commonly, but it’s Christian good. It’s Christian good.

Now, what’s the rest of the story? Well, the rest of the story is they get all mad again and they want to kill him. The Romans arrest him again and going to scourge him. It turns out he’s a citizen. And without going into all the details, the rest of the story is this is the segue into Paul bearing witness before the governor, right, before the king and ultimately before Caesar’s household in Rome itself. The fulfillment of God’s calling for Paul is accomplished through the difficulties, the trials, the tribulations that could discourage him but don’t—and they shouldn’t discourage us.

The rest of the story is that no matter what man does to us, no matter what the government tries to do, whatever our enemies try to do, God is affecting his purposes for our life. The end of the story is that being nearly beaten to death and all these lies told and all that stuff, Paul at the end of that time—he’s a happy guy because God has used every bit of it so that he could give his defense and witness of Jesus Christ to governors, rulers, kings, and to the very household of Caesar himself in Rome.

Brothers and sisters, may we have that kind of trust in the sovereign God who weaves these sorts of stories, presents them to us to remind us of what he’s doing in our life. In our life, oh, we don’t have the big callings and all that. But what God is telling us is he is well able. He’s sovereign. He converts people that hate him. How much more sovereign can you be than that?

And because of that sovereignty, we can trust him that the end of our story is better than its beginning, that whenever we stop at the middle of a story and with discouragement and a lack of hope and “oh, our troubles are so big”—don’t do that. Right? Trust God. He’s bringing to pass beautiful things, you children.

So you’re going to—uh, why do I got to learn Latin? Why did my parents and my teacher tell me to learn Latin? Who knows? God knows. Why did Paul have to study his Aramaic? Right? He was cultured. He was smart. He was Greek. His mom said, “Study the Aramaic. Why do I got to do that?” “Well, one day it’ll be useful.” “Why do I got to do math?” “One day it’ll be useful.”

You see, we trust God working through his people, his authorities in our lives—our parents, our teachers, our church—knowing that God is preparing us for a life of service that we have no idea where the opportunities will pop up at or what part of our training will be used to speak forth the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord God grant us a simple trust that he is superintending every detail of our lives and even the bad things of life.

Yeah, they’re there. The Christian life isn’t like “become a Christian, have a great life.” Become a Christian, maybe have a worse life, but it’s really greater because it’s going to lead to great opportunities to testify for the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s through difficulties and trials. May we trust God enough to trust the way he is providentially superseding every event of our lives for his glory, for our well-being, for our joy ultimately.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the great truth of Paul here in his defense and the wonderful blessings that you brought forth from it that weren’t seen in the short term but certainly are seen in the long term and we can see recorded in your pages of history in this book of Acts. Help us, Father, to trust you, to believe, and to ask “what should we do” and to seek out people that can help us to know that. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.