Acts 21:16-40 - Misunderstood

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we're so thankful, but there's wonderful opportunity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, the for the freedom that we celebrate and enjoy in this country, in this place, the freedom to dig into your word, to proclaim your gospel openly and freely.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord is so many around the world, have to meet and secrecy for the very protection of their lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: May we not take for granted the incredible freedom that you've blessed us with.

[SPEAKER_00]: May we continue to celebrate that, by meeting and proclaiming your word and showing your love in this world.

[SPEAKER_00]: Please bless this study of your word.

[SPEAKER_00]: May we see more clearly and grow more into your likeness and Christening we pray.

[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[SPEAKER_00]: had that beautiful moment, but for me it's a very vivid moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of those physical memories that I really just can't shake.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was very thirsty and coming in from a ron or doing yard work or something outside and I came in and saw my glass that I thought I'd filled up with and just expecting that beautiful glass of ice cold water that I was so longing for and I pulled up my lips and

[SPEAKER_00]: and vomited milk all over the room.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I expected a nice cold glass of ice water and I got room temperature milk.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the room temperature milk wasn't bad, it hadn't turned, but just the fact that it was so separate from what I was expecting, caused me to be unhappy with.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can see the power, the incredible power of expectations, when someone says, oh, you have to see this movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the best movie in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was okay, but you feel embarrassed and you tell him, oh, I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: I really enjoyed it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what was the problem?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the problem was that you expected to be the best movie in the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even though it was a fine movie or a decent movie, the fact that you had a way to high an expectation in this case.

[SPEAKER_00]: causes you to alter your perception, the movie.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the way we are, our expectations, our expectations spoken, and unspoken oftentimes influence the way that we act and we react.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in this country with all the wonderful freedom that we have, we oftentimes have an expectation that people will not misconstrual what we say.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have an expectation that people who are not believers are not in a relationship with Christ will correctly and accurately reflect our views and beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a false expectation, but I think that causes us to react as believers in correctly in many situations, because we sometimes think that maybe we're entitled to a persecution-free road, and I hate to break this to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: but we're not.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we're especially blessed in the situation, but we need to expect as Paul certainly seem to expect people to misconstru, misunderstand, and take us completely out of context in various situations.

[SPEAKER_00]: That should be our expectation, and that will help us respond correctly to that reality that we constantly face.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we'll look at that in our passage today.

[SPEAKER_00]: But most of our action today occurs, most of the story today occurs in Herod's temple, or in the temple that Herod was most responsible for building, or we might say, rebuilding.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to give you just kind of an idea of the layout of this temple, so you had it fresh in your mind, because it's going to become important.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as you move in, and it's kind of hard because the dots on this charter diagram don't correspond top to bottom, but

[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, as you move in, essentially tort through these various gates, you move in through the court of women and then finally the court of men Israel and then as you go within that you have the court of priests and you had to be appropriately qualified to pass within those and the risk was defiling the temple of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: We took it very seriously as we're going to see today how the holiness and the sanctity of that temple had to be treated, even to the point of having a special provision within the context of Rome's oversight over Jerusalem's rule over the Elder's rule.

[SPEAKER_00]: They had a special provision to do what they could not do under other circumstances, which is take a life.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why the Jews had to bring Jesus to Pilate in order to crucify Him because they didn't have the authority to take His life on their own.

[SPEAKER_00]: However, this was their one exception, was they could take the life of someone who is not qualified or not pure.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, not qualified, that is a Gentile who passed through the wrong gates.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have a special provision from the Roman government.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where we are today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Remember Paul?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd come here to complete this Nazarite vow, and that brings to my what's going to be very important in our account today, which is why Paul came.

[SPEAKER_00]: We remember that Paul was approaching Jerusalem with full knowledge that this was going to be difficult and time filled with hardship.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it was going to result in his imprisonment and possibly worse eventually his death for all that he was aware.

[SPEAKER_00]: God had been very clear, and he knew his certainty where this would finally end up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we saw, I hope clearly in the past few studies in this book, was that Paul had a purpose in coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just he was lonely or longing to get to Jerusalem, but I believe it's pretty clear from context.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not very clear from context.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's desire was to make sure that the early church did not split into the Jewish church and the Gentile church.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knew that there were these harsh and slanderous rumors about him gathering passing around, particularly amongst the Jews who were not believers, saying that Paul is this snake in the grass, going around and defying the traditions of our elders.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's going and telling everybody that they should not circumcise their children, that they should not follow the law or keep our traditions or customs, that they should totally give themselves over incompleteness.

[SPEAKER_00]: to the pagan immoral way of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what happened or what was a risk to happen because Paul's message is very clear given to him directly from Christ that Gentiles did not need to become Jews in order to walk with Jesus in order to be saved in order to grow.

[SPEAKER_00]: They misconstrued that message and slandered him in claiming that Paul himself was sort of an anti-Semitic Jew.

[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul wanted to come back even at the risk of knowing that he was going to be in prison for this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul wanted to return so that he could restore the rift, bring the body of Christ together, make sure there was nothing carrying or drawing one apart from the other or making two churches, a Jewish church and a Gentile church.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was not acceptable to Paul.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just as it should not be acceptable to us today, as we see rips and splits and problems in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where we pick up Paul's desire not to see the church grow apart from or become anti-Semitic and certainly not to see the Jewish portions of the church rejecting the Gentile portions of the church over manners of custom and tradition.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we're told that Paul is recognized.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's going about his business trying to repair the breach between the Jewish and the Gentile population in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he's recognized by these folks that were told are Jews from Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are very likely the Jews who he experienced discussion with and sharing with an emphasis and around that area that would be the Roman idea of Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were not thinking of China and India here, but the Roman province of Asia.

[SPEAKER_00]: So very possibly from around the Ephesian area.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it would make sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's quite possible that these Jews were not coming back expressly to cause trouble for Paul by any stretch of the imagination.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were just coming back to observe their regular religious duties, in other words, to have their pilgrimage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And some of them see, although, again, possible that they did come just to make trouble for Paul.

[SPEAKER_00]: they see Paul in the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I want you to picture this in your mind from these Jewish folks from Asia's point of view.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see Paul had come into their synagogues and tried to share the gospel and share the gospel of Jesus Christ made the reality clear to them that Jesus Christ was the promised Messiah that he fulfilled prophecy and that there was still yet more to be done

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that slowly got, if you like, worse and worse, that the relationships got worse and worse there and the scripture tells us they were hardened and became more likely to ignore and not so much disgust as Paul wanted, but rather got argumentative and slanderous.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because what Paul was saying is that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, has come.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're forgiven.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're free to be in a relationship with God and what they were hearing is,

[SPEAKER_00]: It's all the traditions of our fathers are being thrown away and thrown to the wayside.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which was not Paul's message at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was trying to tell them about Jesus, but they were hearing that the most important thing in their ethnic identity was going to be taken away and they weren't okay with that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so then they started to misconstru as message, completely in saying that he's against us all together.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you can understand how they would come to this point.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here they've come back to home to home base in this pilgrimage.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they're in the most holy place that any of them can go being non-leave vites.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is far towards the center of the temple that they could be.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here they look across.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can imagine looking across the

[SPEAKER_00]: the expanse of the courtyard, and seeing that very person who they had convinced themselves was speaking actively against their religion, their history, and their traditions.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see why it would cause them to be a little bit, or more than a little bit scandalized,

[SPEAKER_00]: because they convinced themselves that Paul was against Judaism and here he was in the most sacred place that Judaism had.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can see why that would cause them to flip out for lack of a better term.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they come with the accusation.

[SPEAKER_00]: and it's pretty interesting.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're mind so twisted and so thoroughly embracing their pre-suffusion and their distaste for Paul, they're already ready to come up with a false accusation.

[SPEAKER_00]: They say, men of Israel, help!

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, help us bind Him, help us grab Him.

[SPEAKER_00]: This man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place.

[SPEAKER_00]: and furthermore, he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, we're going to call this the slander, but slander doesn't have the idea that they didn't know better.

[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that these hearts and minds were so twisted by hatred and rejection of the truth and the message of Jesus Christ that they believed every word that they were saying.

[SPEAKER_00]: just as it is today when people resist the the gospel of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And all of a sudden the lies start to feel seam or he sort of believed that they're true.

[SPEAKER_00]: So their perception where Paul was trying to go everywhere, talk about the good news of Jesus Christ was that he was actually going everywhere saying that the Jewish laws and customs were silly and outdated, that Jewish morals and ideals were not worthwhile and that Jews ought to just be more like Gentiles.

[SPEAKER_00]: None of

[SPEAKER_00]: at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: He never spoke against the Jews, in fact, in what we saw in just this previous chapter and wrapping up in this, is it Paul said, no, I love the traditions of our fathers and I keep them when it's appropriate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's Paul with this Nazarei Valley says, no, we're like, I'm perfectly respectful of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's message wasn't that the true traditions of the Israel were not meant to be kept by Israel.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd say he was saying that they weren't necessary

[SPEAKER_00]: that they weren't a prerequisite to salvation.

[SPEAKER_00]: So he wasn't speaking ever against the people, the law, or that place.

[SPEAKER_00]: What he was doing was just representing the reality that there was salvation to be found not in Israel, and there was no salvation to be found in the law, and there was no salvation to be found in that temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Salvation was found in Christ alone.

[SPEAKER_00]: and yet they misconstrued that message, to say, I'm speaking out against those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then they bring into the false accusation, whether they knew it to be or not, you see, they had seen that Paul was around the city, and of course, they knew that Paul associated very heavily with Gentiles and Godfathers in his travels abroad, so they assumed that he must have brought Greeks into the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we showed this diagram before, but on the wall between the Court of Women and the Court of Israel and this sign, which translates to no foreigner is to go beyond this ballastrade, and the plaza of the empty zone, whoever is caught doing so, will have himself to blame for his death, which will follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now this sign looks a little bit worn from the years because it has been actually thrown off of a reasonable sized cliff and we're thankful to have recovered it through the testimony in the ages, but it was fresh then, right at eye level.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody looking through passing through these gates would see it and know that they were going to a place where they were surely going to lose their life where they not qualified

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you can note that it does not say that there's any penalty for bringing someone else through the gate.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones whose lives would be forfeit.

[SPEAKER_00]: So even within this accusation which is false because there's no Gentile around it's like he's just very that guy he brought him in.

[SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't point to that guy.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were assuming at some previous time he would have brought a Gentile into this part of the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they couldn't produce him.

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't there at that point because he was never there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And furthermore, you couldn't punish Paul for the person who disobeyed this law because Paul was perfectly qualified to be there, interestingly enough.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what we see here is the Jews defending their way of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: From Paul's side, he wanted to keep Christianity from becoming anti-Semitic, which tragically is the story of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The story of the church sadly continues with this rift getting wider and wider to the point where more Jewish persecution is occurred at Christian hands than should ever happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And only now is the riff between Judaism and Christianity finally being healed to some degree.

[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that Paul was working very much to this end.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, what we want to bring to light here is that for these Jewish people, it was their traditions, their culture, it was what made them special that kept them

[SPEAKER_00]: They couldn't listen to Paul's message, his true message of the love and the grace and the perfect provision and the messiah ship of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because they were blinded and deafened by you're saying that we're not as special as we thought we were.

[SPEAKER_00]: In modern terms, we'd say that's just not my culture and you can't impose this idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: of God's provision, that takes away from my earned salvation, from being born Jewish, from being this, from being that, here's what I want to point out, because we live in a fascinating age of multiculturalism.

[SPEAKER_00]: An idea of intercultural respect, which is most of which is a good thing.

[SPEAKER_00]: It can be a very positive thing, but there's a very negative side of it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's when we allow our culture to be held above and this could be from any human, our culture to be held above the Word of God, our identity as in our case of Americans, or in anyone else's case, whatever your ethnic or social or national identity is, to be held above our ultimate identity, which is to be found in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what we see here,

[SPEAKER_00]: is that the culture of the nation of Israel, these Jews, keeping them from being able to be hold Jesus Christ and listen to His gospel and the good news of His provision.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was never planning on or insisting that any Jewish person not circumcises Son.

[SPEAKER_00]: He never planned on or insisted

[SPEAKER_00]: that they did not continue to observe the Jewish calendar and feasts because all of those feasts pointed to Jesus Christ and still do.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was not against the land of the law and the people in any sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: He just wanted them to be understood in the correct relationship.

[SPEAKER_00]: to salvation, and the provision of salvation in the Messiah, that's that the law could bring no salvation ever to anyone, and the law could bring no growth to anyone ever that could come only by God's provision in Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we see these accusations from the world here making an ugly, ugly showing in a public place.

[SPEAKER_00]: but I want to note something.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, this is a little bit of the insinuation of Scripture, so you're welcome to take it or leave it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it seems to me the most likely possibility that the way that the church, when we're Paul comes in, he's greeted with joy and they immediately say, hey, by the way, we've got a problem here.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody thinks that you're teaching against our church, you're basically

[SPEAKER_00]: and Paul went his way to correct that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where was that accusation coming from?

[SPEAKER_00]: From where had that come?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to posit this before you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that the church listened to the accusations of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: These Jews had come back to, as they would normally for their pilgrimage to Jerusalem and had spread everywhere.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see what this Christianity does, the slander in lies.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see what Paul had done.

[SPEAKER_00]: He spoke everywhere against the blah blah blah.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the church rather than saying what they should say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you are making these accusations against Paul, but we'll check that out on our own.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than say that, they seem to have accepted these accusations, these lies of the world, and essentially met Paul with a, well, if you're not, then prove it, attitude.

[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than greeting him with the generosity and love and grace of giving him the benefit of the doubt.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to drive a

[SPEAKER_00]: has no way you're getting your information from.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying we should walk around with our fingers in our ears, but we should know where we're getting our information from.

[SPEAKER_00]: And realize that the world, along with every other source, has an agenda.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we see Christian leaders or Christian movements being lambasted in the public eye in the public media, we must recognize that they're probably not given the most charitable view.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, accuracy might not even be a concern of theirs, in portraying what Christians have done or what Christians believe or what Christians have said.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying Christians are without fault, and that there aren't some very reprehensible things done in the name of Christ, of course, that's the case.

[SPEAKER_00]: But at the same time, what I would like for us to do is to maintain an understanding.

[SPEAKER_00]: that every bit of information comes from one source or another or another.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that source comes with an agenda and an idea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the church, again, I believe improperly, the church and Jerusalem specifically here, improperly entertained accusations from a source outside of the church, against one of their leaders.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that caused trouble internally, and that caused trouble for Paul personally.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's sad, because nothing's changed.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, Christians are very frequently the first ones to jump on the bandwagon, and y'all, crucify them, crucify them when a Christian gets in trouble, or a Christian leader gets in trouble.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's inappropriate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nevertheless, they begin to drag him from the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is interesting, because here they are,

[SPEAKER_00]: going to kill this man, who is totally innocent.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, there's no penalty for bringing someone in.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's penalty for coming in, because it's not the person who brought that the Gentile and that made the Temple of Pure, is the Gentile entering that made it impure.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here they are, essentially, misreading, misconstruing their own law in order to bring about the death of Paul unjustly,

[SPEAKER_00]: But in the true nature of any legalist, they're not going to do it here because you can't shed blood in the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, we're being wholly immoral and disgustingly unjust.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we have to make sure we're following at least these three directions.

[SPEAKER_00]: Even if we're going to ignore all those things, we're going to make sure we maintain our little subset of values or priorities that we hold above, because those are what make us feel good or feel like we're doing something right.

[SPEAKER_00]: The hypocrisy of this moment is striking indeed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet we see that Rome comes to the rescue.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that picture of the temple he saw that was a little square kind of off of the side.

[SPEAKER_00]: There was a Roman garrison right next to the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: It not far away and you would be able to hear and then likely even see.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was going on here this uproar and the soldiers come out and have to use force to retrieve and save Paul's life, which is of course a fulfillment of prophecy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly, what Paul had been told by Agamis and likely others was that he would suffer at the hands of Rome.

[SPEAKER_00]: I almost wonder what it was like for him.

[SPEAKER_00]: to be attacked and be, you know, mobbed by these Jewish people who had every intention of lynching him, I wonder if he said, well, we're going to be okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: You didn't say I was going to get killed by the Jews.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't have had that much presence of mind, but Paul could have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we see that Rome comes to the rescue and wants to find out what's going on and point five brings our next big thing, trying to ascertain what was the crime.

[SPEAKER_00]: What was the crime?

[SPEAKER_00]: And he asked if I know what he was and what he had done.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says, in some among the multitude, tried one thing and some, another.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to notice something because it should be something that is valuable or characteristic of all Christianity.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do you ever notice how frequently it's Paul against the mob or the church against the mob?

[SPEAKER_00]: Mob tactics are Satan's tool for moving humans.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can just get enough humans together and scare them or get them angry.

[SPEAKER_00]: They'll do anything no matter how horrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet what we constantly see throughout the book of Acts is that Peter or Paul and the church in general is reacting as the thinking reasoning response to the foaming mouth persecution of the mob.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't wanna bring this up?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I believe it is an expressly Christian trait to not just be suckered into the mob.

[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be easy enough for all of us, maybe not so much in this physical sense, but anyone could be brought into a mob mentality.

[SPEAKER_00]: Any of us can be drawn into a sort of binary us and them.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just come over here and we just need to be mad about this viewpoint.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I believe the demonstrated Christian character is one that says, no, we don't act in the mob.

[SPEAKER_00]: We consider, we think, we reason, we respond.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we don't just go with the flow of the mob and the group.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of Christ's character within us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so, as with any mob, they don't know why they're there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some say, well, it's the, and some say, oh no, he...

[SPEAKER_00]: And because he can get no agreement, it's very clear that whatever this person might be guilty of, they're not going to figure it out just at that moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so he pulls Paul out of the situation, and Paul asks in verse 37, may I speak to you, or more literally, in Greek giving the idea, am I allowed to speak to you, in other words, is it illegal for me in this situation to talk to you

[SPEAKER_00]: And he is greeted with the realization that the Roman soldier, the Roman guard, thought that he was somebody else.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here.

[SPEAKER_00]: not even knowing what's going on in the situation, Paul has to explain his identity again.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this Egyptian, can you speak Greek, or you're not the Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a rebellion and led 4,000 assassins into the wilderness.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible knowledge commentary explains this very well as saying that Josephus wrote of an Egyptian imposter who claimed to be a prophet.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said this Egyptian had gathered 30,000 followers, Luke with accuracy states 4,000,

[SPEAKER_00]: In 8054, came to the Mount of Olive's promising his adherence that the walls of Jerusalem who collapsed at his command, instead the Roman army promptly marched on them, killed some and captured others while the remainder was scattered.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Egyptian escaped.

[SPEAKER_00]: So sometime in recent memory, then,

[SPEAKER_00]: this Egyptian had had gone about these religious hijinks of claiming that this was going to happen causing a huge problem of riot and then escaping.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so this guard thought, well, it makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: He showed up now again, and he's up to his old tricks or something like it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we can't just let him kill him like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's got to answer to Rome too.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, we find that this was not, obviously, not the case because Paul was not this Egyptian person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul describes himself instead in this way.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I am a Jew.

[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, in other words, I'm qualified to be here.

[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't broken the law at all.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am a Jewish person.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am completely justified in taking my place in the temple of Israel, or the court of Manifu

[SPEAKER_00]: So I am a Jew from Tartsis in Solicia, a citizen of no mean city.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now he's describing to this Roman soldier.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, I am also from a good, well-founded

[SPEAKER_00]: Roman city.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, he would have had a great Roman education, as far as Roman background and culture and history.

[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, he's saying, I am not a part of this no-mean city.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a part of some backwards rebellion.

[SPEAKER_00]: I come from a good, big, Roman established town.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then he does something that shocks me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to put yourself in Paul's position for just a moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've been going around, and pulley me.

[SPEAKER_00]: My wife and I got to spend some time in Korea, and I don't know whether you're aware of this or not.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't always have as Americans the best reputation of broad.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are nods that we've, that's known.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when we were a bride, we didn't care to hang out with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had a handful of American friends for sure, but there were also more than enough folks of our, of who were American, who were making it worse for all of us, who were living up to our reputation in Korea.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was made me a little bit less excited to tell people I was American.

[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine how Paul must have felt.

[SPEAKER_00]: As he goes throughout the world, tries to represent the truth of Christ, and he's getting the loudest, most active persecution from the Jews.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones most commonly, in his case, misconstruing his message.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're the ones taking active stances against not the only ones, but many of the ones taking active stances against him.

[SPEAKER_00]: At various points, he said to be so disgusted with Jesus's fine, if you count yourselves on worthy for salvation, I'll go to the Gentiles, and he washed his hands of them.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, in most of the cities that we get to see in depth, he starts off with bringing the truth of Christ of the Jewish population, and then

[SPEAKER_00]: Gives up once they're hardened and goes to the Gentile population.

[SPEAKER_00]: Said to wash his hands of his own people so many times, I got to be honest with you.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be tempted to just permanently wash my hands of my people, but not fall.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, they were just about to lynch him.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were just about to drag him out of town and stone him to death at the very least.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet he says his desire is, he let me speak to the people.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna look at the content of his discussion in the coming studies.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I just want you to view the gracious heart of Christ in Paul.

[SPEAKER_00]: His people had slandered him thoroughly.

[SPEAKER_00]: These people had lied about what he taught, what he did, what he believed.

[SPEAKER_00]: These people had physically, on more than one occasion, and now to had him imprisoned, and had physically attacked him.

[SPEAKER_00]: These people had caused difficulty and strife and pressure for him within the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: It caused problems with him amongst his friends.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, when he was saved from them, his only thought, was, can I talk to him?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I explain to them what they've missed, what they've misunderstood?

[SPEAKER_00]: Can I tell them that they've got me all wrong and share the truth of Christ's love with them?

[SPEAKER_00]: I think part of the reason why Paul was able to do this beyond just purely his reliance on Christ was that he expected it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He expected that the God of this robot of cloud of their minds.

[SPEAKER_00]: He expected that they'd get the message wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: He expected that they'd mix and screw and misunderstand.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, no, I'm anticipating that.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm not frustrated.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sad.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to explain it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's part of the reason why Christianity is possibly floundering at certain points in the United States because we expect that everyone is going to understand us, respect us and never give us any God for flag or pushback rather than what we should expect, which is that the enemy is still hard at work trying to confuse the minds of unbelievers.

[SPEAKER_00]: The enemy of our souls is still hard at work trying to sabotage people's understanding of the grace and the love and the forgiveness and the provision of Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we encounter that, even when it's angry, even when it comes with hurtful words or actively destructive actions against us, we should be meeting that with, yeah, no, I expect that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we're spawning with this love and grace that says I, can I, can I explain this to you in a different way?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because my greatest desire is to see you, whoever the persecutor is in that case, or the attacker is in that case, it comes in no Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I see at a pole here, and I think it's remarkable.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, for us, for this week,

[SPEAKER_00]: might we expect slander and expect misunderstanding and have patience and perseverance in that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we also have patience and persecution.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not saying what we should expect those things in order to just act we asked to enter.

[SPEAKER_00]: Give up.

[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, no, no.

[SPEAKER_00]: Quite the contrary.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're still meant to oppose it.

[SPEAKER_00]: But let's not oppose it from this shocked sense of entitlement.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone should have gotten it the first time through.

[SPEAKER_00]: But let us be patient.

[SPEAKER_00]: In whatever level of persecution or opposition we receive for our faith in any environment in which the Lord might place us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's in our home or in our workplace or in our neighborhood or anywhere else.

[SPEAKER_00]: May we be patient through that as Paul was here.

[SPEAKER_00]: and may we have compassion.

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to turn on the TV and watch for long to find someone who's desperately lost apart from the Lord and who absolutely deserves everything that there's coming coming their way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just as we would deserve it to apart from Christ, and may we, with compassion, see those who are resisting actively and passively, the grace and the truth and the love of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: and desire for them to know Christ first, so that they might escape the judgment that's yet to come.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's close with the word of prayer.

[SPEAKER_00]: Father, we thank you and we praise you for this wonderful gift.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're worthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We thank you for your compassionate heart, as we see.

[SPEAKER_00]: I expressed here in Paul.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, may we look past all the things and wrongs that may have been done to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: and all the things that might frighten us or the things that may happen to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And represent the truth of your gospel, your Son Jesus Christ.