Category: Band

Paul now writes a letter from Ephesus back to the Corinthians, after having spent about a year and a half in Corinth establishing a church there in that city. Corinth was an extremely worldly city, known for its excesses in sexuality and drunknness, but also in business, wealth, and even religiosity based on the Greek gods. Between the two letters to the church in Corinth that we have, and a third that was lost, the Corinthians give us the greatest insight into how Paul had to work with its church and deal with some of the issues of that time within its community.

One of those issues is how the Corinthians saw their standing within the society based on their understanding of the Gospel. There were divisions amongst them with regard to who they followed, and there was pride about their knowledge of the Gospel.

Paul, however, says that this knowledge is probably nothing to be proud about, at least in front of the people of the world. If their intent is to be considered to be special by the world, they have it all wrong. They will simply be considered to be fools:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Paul is saying that the world is looking for different things that what they are preaching. Human wisdom is completely different from God’s wisdom and those differences come out within the cultures within which that wisdom is grown.

For example, the Jews demand signs, Paul says. Why? Why would the Jews demand signs? The Jews have grown up telling the stories of the Old Testament, the stories of Moses leading the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea, the water coming from the rock, the manna falling from heaven. These were signs that the Jews of Paul’s time recognized as God’s work, even if there were points at which the people who experienced the signs didn’t actually recognize God’s hand in the demonstration of the original sign.

On the other hand, Paul says that the Greeks look for wisdom. The Greeks believed that they could understand the world through reason. Through their own human intellect, through what they could observe, they tried to answer some of life’s great questions, including human origin, human purpose, etc. Of course, we humans are very limited in our ability to observe, and thus limited in our ability to reason based on limited understanding, so we fail to come to the right conclusions.

In any case, regardless of the human system within which the Gospel is preached, Paul says that those who are listening with human ears and reasoning with human minds are doomed to call the Gospel simple foolishness. How can it be good news that a Messiah, the one that God has sent, is crucified and killed? What good can that possibly produce?

And yet, Paul says that is exactly the message that he is preaching. Why? Because this is the wisdom of God. God isn’t simply looking at our short span of time that we call life as humans on earth. He isn’t even looking at the timeframe of what we would call “history”, a few hundred years. He is looking at eternity. Eternity past, eternity present, and eternity future. Or simply, just eternity. God knows that the human soul will continue to live on forever, but in the context of God’s glory. Not simply in the context of our world. Not in the context of this life. In the context of eternity.

In that context, if we can even begin to imagine it, the foolishness that Paul is preaching begins to demonstrate the wisdom with which God is acting and moving. Everything else fades. All of the kingdoms of this world. All of the politics of the world. Everything else becomes nothing at all. Why? Because when we understand our lives in the greater context of eternity, we understand that we either give glory to God, the One who created and made all of eternity, or we run against Him, the one who made it all.

Christ is crucified as a payment for the sins that we have committed, allowing us to enter into the Kingdom of God. Now, as we understand this, we see the reason for this message. We see why God’s wisdom is different than human wisdom. God is allowing us to enter into his presence, to give him glory. Not glory for ourselves, but glory for God, and him only. Without this perspective, this message seems like foolishness, but for those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

Paul is continuing to try to convince the Galatians that they have been set free from the law. They no longer need to continue to obey each of the tenents of the law that God gave to Moses to lay out to the Israelites. They no longer needed to do this because God has given them freedom through Jesus Christ because they now have the Spirit of God living within them.

Paul starts chapter 5 saying this:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

I love the sentiment of that first sentence. I think it speaks to something deep within me. Freedom. Yeah, that sounds good. I don’t always feel free, so the offer of freedom sounds amazing. It is for freedom that Christ has set me free.

But exactly what are we talking about there? What do we mean when we say the word freedom?

Oxford says this:

the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.
“we do have some freedom of choice”

Or

the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
“the shark thrashed its way to freedom”

Let me test those quickly: It is for “the right to act, speak, or think” as I want that Christ has set me free.

Hmm… no, that doesn’t really fit what we would think of in a Biblical sense. I need to put on the mind of Christ, not my own mind.

Another test: It is to not be “imprisoned or enslaved” that Christ has set me free. Yeah, that’s getting closer. The scriptures most certainly talk about not being a slave to sin or being imprisoned by sin. So, Christ has set me free so that I will no longer be enslaved.

So, we’re close, but I’m not sure that we’ve completely captured it yet.

But I noticed, as I looked down further in the chapter, a connection between how Paul started the chapter saying that Christ gave us freedom, and potentially a definition of what he means by that. Paul draws a comparison between the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. He says that the acts of the flesh are obvious, and of course, that is true: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.

And if we think about it, those things are obvious to us, not only because we not only inherently know that each of those things are not good, but we also have laws from God against each of them, not to mention laws from man against several of them as well.

But then Paul goes on to speak about the fruit of the Spirit, meaning that if we live according to the Holy Spirit that God has placed in us when we live for Jesus, we inherently do these things: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And Paul, of course, points out that against such things there is no law.

Typically when I write, I don’t like to use examples of other people to show a bad example, but I had something happen yesterday that is relatively benign, yet a good examplar of what I think we’re talking about here.

I had to take my son to another city for a practice for his sport, so we drove on a 4-lane highway down to the other city. It was about an hour away and we were already running late, so admittedly, I was already going a little faster than I should have been. I was in the left lane and passing someone when I look in the rearview mirror and see a car come screaming up behind me. I couldn’t tell you how fast he was going, but he was swerving through traffic.

He came up very quickly behind me, flashing his lights, riding on my back bumper, etc. I continued to pass the car that was in the right lane and then moved over to the right. However, in some sort of strange demonstration to seemingly show me his dominance of the road, he swerved over behind me, drove up on the right shoulder, and then swerved over right next to our car, as if he was going to broadside us on the right side, swerving back over at the last second to avoid hitting me. My wife was screaming. I was “exclaiming”, let’s say, and it was chaos for about 2 seconds. All of this at about 130km or 80mi per hour. In the end, he just kept going, flying down the road ahead of us.

Whew… So, that made me think this morning. There are laws, of course, against what he was doing. No one should ever drive in that way. It was super-dangerous, to say the least.

But then I also thought, those laws didn’t necessarily stop him from driving in that way. He didn’t seem to mind breaking the laws.

Yet, if he had driven, and if we all drove according to the fruit of the Holy Spirit, there wouldn’t need to be any laws. If we drove with love, joy, peace, etc… no laws required. Yet we don’t. Our egos, our pride, our own desires all get in the way.

This is that from which Christ has set us free. We have freedom from the law and from the punishment that would come from breaking the law because we have the Holy Spirit. Let us live according to the Spirit as a free people, those that have been set free to live according to the leading of the Spirit.

I was reminded this morning that Jesus not only came in the flesh, being God yet living like one of us. He also entered into the same type of systems of the world that we live within.

In particular, I noticed in Galatians this morning where Paul says that Jesus was born under the law:

But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.

Galatians 4:4-5

Jesus came into the same situation where we live, into the physical world and in all of its systems to be able to purchase us back from it. In this particular case, I want to make note of the part that says that he was born under the law, to redeem those under the law.

No one had been able to fulfill the law in its fullness and completeness. Each detail of the law demands obedience, or it is broken. Each part is perfect and demands perfect execution. It is God’s law and he expects that it is completely followed.

Yet no one had ever done it. And after Jesus, no one has done it since.

But Jesus did it. He fulfilled the law. He did everything that the law required. He fulfilled it all. Completely. And because he did so, he was undeserving of punishment, but instead completely pure and worthy as a sacrifice before God.

Paul goes on to make a comparison to Ishmael and Isaac. He says that he can either be Ishmael, like the son of Abraham born to a slave woman. The slave woman, Hagar, is a worker in Abraham’s family. We can be a servant, just as we would be as servants to the law if we are born only to the law and this was our redemption, our way to please our master.

Or we can be Isaac, like the son of Abraham who was born to Abraham’s wife, Sarah. Sarah was connected to Abraham because Abraham loved her, and their child Isaac didn’t have to work to be loved because he was a child of their marriage. Isaac was a child of the promise, the promise that Abraham made to Sarah, but more importantly, a child of the promise – the covenant – that God made to Abraham.

Paul is asking the Galatians the same question that he might ask us today. Which are you? Like Ishmael? Or like Isaac? Through the law, and your attempts to make God happy by trying to work for him and fulfilling all of His commands, we could be like Ishmael. Or because the law has already been fulfilled through Christ, we can be a child of the promise. Which one are you?

Paul is pretty frustrated, and he is taking it out, in a certain sense, on the Galatians. They had heard the Gospel of Jesus crucified for each of us directly from Paul’s lips, and now they were turning their backs on the Gospel and deciding instead to follow the works for the law for their justification before God.

And Paul puts a question to them: Did you receive the Holy Spirit because you believed? Or did you receive the Holy Spirit because you followed the Law and did good religious works? Which was it?

Here is how he records the question in his letter:

I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?

Galatians 3:2-3

Let’s walk this back one step at a time.

Paul went to what would become the Galatian churches – Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe – and announced the Gospel of Christ to them. He spoke of Jesus Christ as the Messiah who was to come. He spoke of Jesus crucified for the forgiveness of sins, and he spoke of Jesus being resurrected of the dead. If you want to get a sense of Paul’s message, take a look at the recounting of his preaching in the synagogue in Pisidian Antioch.

From here, the people believed, were baptized and received the Holy Spirit, or they did not. There wasn’t any additional teaching on how they needed to clean up their lives before they received the Spirit. There wasn’t additional teaching on how they needed to obey each of the teachings of the Old or the New Testament before they received the Spirit. There wasn’t even a waiting period prior to believing nor to the Holy Spirit coming upon them. Instead, Paul says, when they believed and had faith in Christ, they received the Holy Spirit.

But how often do we practice the opposite? In various religions, people will say that they need to be good people. They need to be righteous. They need to practice good religious deeds. As long as they continue in this way, at least according to what we see in the Bible, these people will never receive the Holy Spirit because they do not believe in Christ as the One who will save them.

But even in Evanglical churches, do we not frequently do similarly? Don’t we often teach, or at least practice, that someone needs to clean up their lives to be able to come to faith in Christ? Yes, this happens, and frequently.

Of course we must call people to repentance. Of course we must call them to leave their sin. But the thing to understand here is that it is not up to man’s understanding, or man’s wisdom to decide if someone is ready. As they believe in Christ in faith, they can receive the same Holy Spirit that we have. We are not gatekeepers. We are seed sowers. God does all of the rest.

Let us call people to repentance and faith in Christ, and let’s open the doors to the Holy Spirit to come in and make all of the change that He desires because just one thing is required, faith in Jesus.

We are great at neutering the Gospel. As people, we think that we can do it. We don’t really need God, nor His way of doing things.

Religions impose sets of rules that show us how we can make God happy and serve Him. Do it this way, or do it that way…and if you do it like that, then you will get to go to heaven.

What we don’t seem to understand though, is that all of the rule-setting and all of the rule-following that we are so great at putting in place is exactly what I started with: a neutering of the Gospel.

Paul wrote to the Galatians that he is a Jew, and as a Jew he lived knowing hoping that following the Law would make him right before God. But then Paul correctly points out that it never did. Following the Law didn’t justify him before God. It didn’t make him right before God. His attempts only made it worse.

So if not following the rules, then what? The work of Christ on the cross, that’s what:

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!

Galatians 2:19-21

Paul is saying that his adherence to the Law did not give him salvation, so instead, he puts all of that aside for one thing: to let Christ and his work reign within him. It is no longer Paul that is the one who has made him alive before God. It is Christ because it is Christ who continues to live and gives life. The only thing that we have to offer is faith in him. Christ’s death on the cross is the only thing that gives righteousness, which brings life to Paul – and to all of us – and our response is simple: faith in him. That’s it. We have nothing else that can make God happy.

Now, that’s not to say that the way that we live doesn’t change. We have been made new and Christ is now living in us. Therefore, my entire view and outlook on life is changed. I now must live to glorify Christ. It is he that is living within me. My life should reflect back to God the image of God that he has placed within me by making me alive once again in Christ.

But do those actions that I take make me right before God? No, it is only the work of Christ that can do that. My actions are my response.

And yet, as I noted above, our religions mess this up greatly.

Islam says there is another prophet and you have to follow these five pillars and make sure to do more good things then bad things.

Catholocism places all of these saints as idols before us that we must pray to and then follow a bunch of rules to make God happy.

Mormonism, like Islam, says there is another prophet and then several more rules and plans from God.

And these are just three examples. There are many more. But in the end, why all of the additional prophets and rules after Jesus? Because they believe that they can make God happy on their own. It isn’t God’s work that makes them right before Him. It is their own religiousness that they believe will make them right before God, and in doing this, they are directly fulfilling what Paul says here, they work for a righteousness that is gained through a religious law that they themselves have created, and to them, Christ has died for nothing.

May we not live in this way! May we put all of our faith and hope and trust in Christ, and only him.

Christianity is a faith with its roots in Israel and in Judaism. The people of Israel had waited for a Prophet. The people of Israel had waited for a Messiah. They had waited for the return of Elijah, and it is for this reason that they had asked John the Baptist if he was any of these when he had started his ministry and was baptizing people in the wilderness.

John said that he was not any of these, but there was one who was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This One is Jesus and he was the one that the Jews had been waiting for. They had waited for him for centuries, in fact for millennia, and many had essentially given up. Many thought that God had simply forgotten them, or abandoned them.

Yet those who maintained their hope continued to wait and watch. They continued to look for the one that would come, and when they saw the one who spoke in the way that God spoke, who did the things that only God could do, they correctly identified him – Jesus – as the Messiah, as the One for whom they were waiting.

As before, Paul, now in Rome before the Jewish leaders there, identifies Jesus as the hope of Israel. He is the Messiah that they have awaited.

It is because of the hope of Israel that I am bound with this chain.

Acts 28:20

Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets and brought the waiting of the Israelites to an end.

We find ourselves in a similar place today. We are also waiting on Jesus. We are waiting for him to return. And many, like in the time of the Israelites’ waiting, have lost hope. They have thought that Jesus is not returning. Or they have rationalized that he isn’t real. Or they have believed in something else.

But Jesus is returning. He is not only the hope of Israel, he is the our living hope as well. He not only died, he arose, and Jesus will return to finally and completely establish his kingdom here on the earth. This is the hope that we cling to as well. This is what we are also waiting for. Like the Jews, we must not give up hope nor lose faith. God is not slow in coming. Our hope, like that of Israel, will be fulfilled.

The plan of God rarely works out the way that we see it happening in our minds. Frequently we think that God has sent us to do something, and the image in our mind of what we think God wants to do is full of good times and even glory for ourselves. Yet the way that the reality usually works out is quite different from this. It usually, instead, looks like one challenge after another.

Jesus’s plan for Paul was that he had chosen him to be sent to the Gentiles. This was a new thing that God was doing, opening the Kingdom of God to new people who had never had access to the Kingdom previously without becoming a converted Jew, but now Jesus is carrying out this plan through Paul.

Paul had traveled throughout what is modern-day Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Macedonia, sharing the Gospel and planting churches through the entire area. Now Jesus was carrying out his plan to send Paul to Rome, the center of the Gentile world at the time as the Roman empire had conquered the largest portion of the world.

Paul wouldn’t travel there triumphantly, though. He would go there hidden. The Gospel would travel with him hidden. He was a prisoner, of no consequence to the Empire of Rome. Nothing from a human perspective.

When daylight came, they did not recognize the land, but they saw a bay with a sandy beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could. Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach. But the ship struck a sandbar and ran aground. The bow stuck fast and would not move, and the stern was broken to pieces by the pounding of the surf.

The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners to prevent any of them from swimming away and escaping. But the centurion wanted to spare Paul’s life and kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. The rest were to get there on planks or on other pieces of the ship. In this way everyone reached land safely.

Acts 27:39-44

Paul is traveling as a prisoner and has been in the midst of storms as he has moved with fishing vessels from east to west, having left Caesarea and headed to Italy. To those in charge, his life meant very little, but he was obeying the plan of God and moving in the way that God desired.

In some ways, this reminds me of how God also brought Jesus into the world. Jesus came as a baby, under the cover of darkness, hidden. Nothing particularly astounding about him and people really didn’t regard him highly, except that he taught with authority and performed signs that only God could do.

In the same way, Paul moved as a simple man, following the plan of God without fanfare, even following God’s plan while in chains and through great difficulty.

So we also should expect to move similarly as we see God use us. There will not likely be many friendly greetings from the world. There will not likely be any fanfare. Instead, we can expect the normal. We can expect the struggle. We can expect that, in the process of doing what God has called us to do, to need to overcome the obstacles of the world by depending on God’s help and leading.

Paul is giving his defense to King Agrippa, who is the great-grandson to King Herod who had attempted to kill Jesus as a baby. The line of Herod kings that had been passed down throughout the years had been brutal as they ruled over the land, working to stamp out any threat to their reign.

Yet here was Paul, speaking again of Jesus, the one that he would call both Savior and King, and he is doing it directly in front of a Herod, King Agrippa.

Paul explains that he has seen the fulfillment of the purpose of his people, and it is in this fulfillment that he has placed his hope. His people are the Jews and the role of the Jewish people within God’s plan has been to offer blessing and hope to the world. That blessing and hope was fulfilled in the coming of the Messiah, in the coming of Jesus Christ.

Paul explains that he has seen this hope for his people fulfilled. That is why he can say that agrees with the Pharisees. He was one, and he still believes everything that the Pharisees believe. They believe in the resurrection of the dead? Yes, so does he! And why does he believe it? Because he has seen it. He has seen the resurrected Messiah. He has seen Jesus and he has been commissioned and sent by him.

It is precisely this commissioning that caught my attention this morning as I read Acts 26. I noticed a significant shift in how Paul recounts what Jesus has said to him and the messages that God had given previously. Here is what I mean:

First, take a look at Isaiah. When God calls Isaiah, he sends him to his people with what seems to be a very strange calling. He says:

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? ”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

He said, “Go and tell this people:
“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;
be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’

Make the heart of this people calloused;
make their ears dull
and close their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”

Isaiah 6:8-10

Hmm… that’s really strange. God is telling Isaiah, His prophet, that he should go and tell the people that they should be ever seeing but not perceiving? Ever hearing but not understanding?

God’s people had disobeyed and walked away from Him. They worshiped other gods. They lived like the other nations. They refused God as their King, and for this God would bring punishment upon the Israelites. We see that the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans all come to rule over the Jews, taking possession over the land of Israel. So before they could repent and return back to God, their rebellion must be punished and so Isaiah’s role is to proclaim a message to the Israelites that the time of healing was past and the time of judgment and punishment was upon them.

Interestingly, even Jesus spoke in a similar way. He frequently spoke to the people in parables. In one time in particular, when the disciples came to ask Jesus why he always spoke in parables (presumably to ask why he doesn’t just speak to the people plainly!), Jesus said:

Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

Matthew 13:11-13

Jesus went on to say that the prophecy spoken to Isaiah was fulfilled with these people, these Jews specifically who were listening to him. He was giving them the knowledge of the secrets of the Kingdom, but they weren’t allowed to comprehend them. Only to those that Jesus had chosen would those secrets be revealed. These were the ones that Jesus would allow to understand the Kingdom of God.

But here is where we get to the difference. As Paul recounts what happened to him on the road to Damascus as Jesus appeared to him, he says that Jesus said something very different to him. He said that Jesus told him:

Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.

Acts 26:16-18

The time has come. God’s plan to reestablish His Kingdom on the earth is in motion and Jesus has come to redeem his people, purchasing them away from the kingdom of darkness to come into the Kingdom of light. The people can receive forgiveness for their sins and they can take their place within the Kingdom because they have been sanctified by Christ.

What is more, Paul says, none of this has happened in a way that is hidden. He points out to Festus and Agrippa that Agrippa would know all of these things. They have been done in the open, and now it is time to understand the meaning of all of these things. It is time to open the doors for all men, whether Jews or Gentiles – everyone! – to come to Christ. The time of judgment and punishment is over. The time for the Kingdom and the worship of the King has come. And this is the work that Jesus has given to Paul, to speak and open the eyes of all people so that they can clearly see and come to Jesus.

The backroom deals can make things happen at times that leave you scratching your head. Just when you thought you knew the rules, you find out that the rules have been changed.

That is what the Jewish leaders try to do with Paul. As Festus, the new puppet king ruling over the area from Caesarea, comes up to Jerusalem, he stays there for about a week and a half where he meets with the Jewish leaders and works out a potential plan. The Jews ask that Paul be transferred back to Jerusalem where they will administer some “street justice” upon him by ambushing him while traveling back and kill him. Festus denies their request, but later reconsiders and asks Paul if he would be willing to go up to Jerusalem. Who knows…maybe Festus eventually realizes that he has a problem with Paul that he hasn’t been able to solve and just wants to clear himself of the issue? Hard to know why he had a change of mind, but clearly he was hoping to get Paul out of there.

But Paul sees through it. He knows that going back to Jerusalem would be death for him. And he also knows that Jesus has called him to take the message to Rome, so he sees his opportunity:

Paul answered: “I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”

After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!”

Acts 25:10-12

Paul had been left in prison for two years. He had been forgotten, and his case simply not dealt with. But now is the time to move forward. He appeals to Caesar in Rome, and Festus agrees. He says that Paul will go to Rome.

Throughout this entire process, we can continue to see Paul speaking with wisdom, depending on the people before whom he is standing. He used wise words before the Sannhedrin to be able to divide the leaders and be taken from Jerusalem to Caesarea. He did the same as he stood before Felix and the Jewish leaders to face the charges, identifying himself and his position to be the same as that of the Jewish leaders. And now, he does it yet again before Festus by pointing out that what Festus wants to do is unlawful and is stripping him of his rights as a Roman citizen. In each of these moments, at key times, I think that we can see the hand of God guiding Paul, helping him to move in the direction of Rome, fulfilling the words of Jesus from Matthew 10:19: But when they arrest you, do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say.

Jesus continues to walk with his people, especially in moments of trouble. We can depend upon him to complete his plan as he will be the one to guide us with his words and power, even when men devise schemes in an attempt to play out political agendas.

As I noted yesterday, Jesus had told Paul that he would go on to testify for him in Rome. Paul wouldn’t stay there in Jerusalem. His story wouldn’t end there, but instead he would continue on and take the story of Jesus into the heart of the Gentile world of that time.

The commander Claudius had sent a detachment of two separate centurions down to Caesarea where Felix was the governor so that Paul’s case could be heard there. This is where Paul’s trial would begin, a trial that would take him, through the Roman governmental system, straight to Rome.

Paul was being accused by the high priest and the elders of stirring up the Jews and causing riots among the Jews. As Paul clearly points out, there certainly were riots, but it wasn’t because of his actions or because of what he had taught or done. No, the riots were the direct action of the Jews themselves. Because of their unhinged reaction to him, even while he was clearly and calmly following Jewish law and customs, Paul found himself now in chains, arrested because of what they had done.

Reading this story in Acts 24 this morning, I was reminded of what Jesus had told his disciples in Matthew 10. In fact, it seems to me that it is a direct fulfillment of what Jesus had warned his disciples. He had told them that they would be like sheep among wolves, that they would be beaten in the synagogues, they would be betrayed, they would be persecuted. And they would be brought before governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles (Matthew 10:18). Yet, despite all of this, Jesus said that he would be with them, and he would give them the words to say and would instruct them how to say it.

And that is exactly what has happened here in Acts 24. Jesus is directing Paul’s steps, leading him toward Rome by way of Caesarea into the Roman system, carrying out his plan. It isn’t necessarily Paul’s plan. Paul is being used by Jesus to carry out God’s plan to carry the message of Christ further and further into the heart of the Gentile world, just as Jesus said would happen. Jesus’s disciples would be brought before the governors and kings as witnesses to them and to the Gentiles. That is exactly what is happening!

Jesus is giving Paul the words that he must say and the way that he must say them. And in this case, we see that Paul does not try to fight the Jews. Nor does he change the story at all. Instead, he simply recounts what he had done and allowed his innocence to speak for itself.

But I noticed something very interesting in the way that Paul says what he says in his defense, and I couldn’t help but think that this may precisely be Jesus giving Paul the words, and more specifically the way that he should say them. Paul says:

I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.

Acts 24:14-15

Instead of fighting against his accusers, Paul identifies himself with them. He says, in fact, that he believes everything that they believe!

Now it is getting confusing. How would that be possible that Paul believes everything that they believe and yet the leaders of the Jewish people are here accusing Paul of crimes?

It is possible because Paul divides with them on the fact that he knows that the same Law and Prophets that they believe has been fulfilled in Christ. Jesus fulfilled the Law in what he had done and the way that he lived. He did not sin. And he fulfilled the Prophets because he is the Messiah that the Prophets spoke about as the One who would come.

But instead of going into all of these details in the midst of a court where he wouldn’t be understood or heard, Paul simply says that he believes just like them, his accusers – both in the Law and the Prophets – and what is more, that he believes in the resurrection of the dead. And why does he believe in the resurrection of the dead? Because he has seen Jesus. Jesus has shown himself to him. He doesn’t believe it theoretically. He believes it experientially. And so it is to this that Paul testifies. He is speaking of Jesus to the kings and governors in his defense because Jesus himself is leading him through the process where he wants Paul to go.

Now, as I’ve noted a few times before, it is important to realize that Jesus says that he will give us the words that we are to speak as we stand before the kings and governors, but he never said that he would protect us, at least not physically. In fact, he says that we will be beaten. And that happened to Paul. He said that we would be persecuted. And that happened to Paul. He said that we could be killed, and while the scriptures don’t specifically tell us that, we believe that Paul was probably killed in Rome. But Jesus also said that we shouldn’t fear those that can harm the body and nothing more, but instead we should fear the One who can determine what will happen with our soul in eternity. And that is what we see also happen with Paul. He clearly wants to serve God and is less concerned about his own welfare.

Paul could have left prison. He could have offered Felix a bribe. Surely he knew that. But Jesus’s plan was that Paul was to be in prison because that would lead him before more and more of the kings and governors. Paul would eventually appeal to Caesar, and that would take him to Rome. He would go there to testify about Jesus, just as he had been told.

Now, I am not saying that we should try to be placed in prison. However, I do ask who I – who we all – fear. The one who can harm the body and no more? Or the One who can determine the final fate of our souls in eternity. These are important questions that we need to consider because it determines the direction of our lives and what we are willing to do. Are we willing to give our lives for God’s glory? Or do we keep our lives for our own?