SUNDAY - JULY 19, 2026 "Providential Protection Plan" Acts 23:12-35

As you turn to Acts chapter 23 this morning, I don't know if you know this about me, but I like to have a plan.

Acts 23 · chapter mention

Like going into things.

Now I understand that, and you need to understand, I have five kids.

So we don't always hold to the plan.

But I like going into a situation with a plan.

I like going into it knowing, hey, this is kind of the direction.

I think plans do a lot for us.

I think plans can cut down frustrations because everybody kind of at least starts on the same page.

So frustrations can be can be cut down some.

I think plans help with communication along the way so that if things go awry, we're able to communicate and talk, and you're just starting from a good place.

But let me tell you one thing that I love better than having a plan.

I love it when a plan comes together.

I love when you get to the end of a end of a situation, end of a thing, and you've had a plan and you've laid it out, and even if you've had to modify that a little bit along the way, when you get to the end, it has worked out.

It has come together.

Everything is is right and it has fit together.

As we turn to Acts chapter 23 today, and as we as we look in Acts 23, what we're gonna see is God has had a plan for Paul.

Acts 23 · chapter mention

God continues to have a plan for Paul, and he's going to carry that plan out.

We've talked about this plan way back in Acts chapter 9, even right after God called Paul in Acts chapter 9, verse 15 and 16, God says this about Paul, but the Lord said to him, Go, for he, this is Paul, is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

Acts 9 · chapter mention Acts 9:15

So what has happened here is Paul has been converted.

He comes to this man named Ananias and says, Ananias, I want you to go to his name was Saul at the time.

I want you to go see Saul.

Ananias was apprehensive at first because he knows all that Paul has done to believers and to the church.

So he doesn't he doesn't really want to go, but but God comes to him and says, Hey, you need to go.

He is my chosen instrument.

And I'm God says, I am going to use him to carry my name to the Gentiles, to the kings, and to the children of Israel.

We've seen him carry this message to Jews.

We've seen him carry this message to Gentiles, and we've talked about for the past two weeks how God is going to use Paul to carry this message to kings.

Today he is going to stand, or he's going to be sent to Felix, who is the governor of the Roman province.

Felix is going to introduce him to a guy named Festus, another governor of the Roman province.

He is going, Festus is going to introduce him to Agrippa, who is a Jewish king.

We're seeing Paul go before kings, and then we're going to see him be sent to Rome to be witness there.

And we saw a couple of weeks ago, even last week, we saw God's plan.

When he stood before Paul in Acts 23, 11 and said, The following night the Lord stood by him and said, Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.

God is sending Paul to Rome to testify, to be a witness to the kingdom of God.

And what we're going to see is God is going to protect Paul in this sovereign plan to carry this way.

Now, now we need to understand that protection may not look the way we think it should look.

Because the protection of God is to finish the plan, to have the plan come together.

And in the midst of that, God is using all kinds of people.

We're going to see today that He's using wicked people, He's using evil people, He's using pagan people to carry out His will.

He's going to use good situations, He's going to use difficult situations.

And protection doesn't mean that we're not going to face hard times.

Protection means the plan is going to be carried out.

And where we need to come is to understand that we must trust God.

Because His plan, even when we don't understand it, His plan, even when it's difficult, His plan, even when it means we not only face challenging circumstances, we are sometimes beaten down by those circumstances.

We must understand and trust that His plan is perfect.

We've got to trust Him.

So hopefully today as we explore this passage together, we will see how God protected Paul and hopefully understand how God also protects us as He carries out His plan in our lives.

I invite you, if you're able, to stand with me as we if as we read Acts chapter 23, we're going to start in verse 12 and read down through the end of the chapter.

Acts 23 · chapter mention

Luke writes, God speaks.

When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

There were more than forty who made this conspiracy.

They went to the chief priests and elders and said, We have strictly bound ourselves to an oath oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul.

Now therefore you, along with the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine his case more exactly, and we are ready to kill him before he comes near.

Now the son of Paul's sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul.

Paul called one of the centurions and said, Take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to tell them.

Tell him.

So he took him and brought him to the tribune, and said, Paul, the prisoner, called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you.

The tribune took him by the hand, and going aside, asked him privately, What is it that you have to tell me?

And he said, The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him, but do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him, and now they are ready, waiting for cons for your consent.

So the tribune dismissed the young man, charging him, Tell no one that you have informed me of these things.

Then he called two of the centurions and said, Get ready two hundred soldiers, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night, and also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix the governor.

And he wrote a letter to this effect.

Claudius Lysius to his Excellency the Governor of Felix, the governor Felix, greetings.

This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman citizen, and desiring to know the charge for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their council.

I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment.

And when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him.

So the soldiers, according to their instructions, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris, and on the next day they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go on with them.

When they had come to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the governor, they presented Paul also before him.

On reading the letter he asked what province he was from, and when he learned that he was from Sis Cilicia, he said, I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive.

And he commanded him to be guarded in Herod's Praetorium.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for how you have given us your word.

And we ask now that we, as you have revealed yourself to us, that we see you today.

We love you.

Jesus is in your name we pray.

Amen.

So as we explore how God protected Paul, I think there's some there's a few things that we need to see.

First of all, we understand and we can see that God protected Paul through a foiled plot.

Through a foiled plot.

Here's what's happening.

Here's the plot.

There are Jews who want to kill Paul, and what they've said is they are going, let's call him to be questioned on the way down.

We're going to attack him, kill him before he is able to get there.

And they've done this, they've sealed this by an unholy oath.

Here's what they said: we will not eat or drink anything until Paul has been killed.

As I thought about this, as I read this, it reminded me of another oath that was made.

That was an unholy oath similar to this way back in Judges chapter 11.

Judges 11 · chapter mention

In Judges chapter 11, there is this guy named Jephthah.

Judges 11 · chapter mention

And Jephthah was a judge, and the Jews came to him.

They were being exploited, they were being attacked by the Ammonites, and they went to Jephthah and they said, Hey, we want you to save us from the Ammonites.

And Jephthah agreed.

And here's what Jephthah did.

He made a vow to God that said, Hey, God, if you will give me victory when I return home, the first thing that comes out of my house I will offer as a sacrifice.

So he goes to war, he goes to battle, he wins the battle, and upon his triumphant return, you know, the first thing that came out of his house was his daughter.

It was his daughter.

Now there's there's more than one big problem with Jephthah's vow.

One of those problems is it was an unnecessary vow.

God had proven himself over and over that he would protect Israel.

Even when when they sinned against him and they sent, he sent people to attack them, and he always, throughout the book of Judges, he raised up a judge to release them so they could live in freedom, to free them for a little while at least.

Jephthah was no exception to this.

He was coming, but here's what he brought with him.

He brought a religion, he brought a view of God.

He brought a view of God that he had syncretized with other religions around him.

And so he's bringing this view of God saying, hey, for God to give me something, I have to offer him something big.

And so what he offered was the first thing that came out of his house.

I doubt he was expecting his daughter to be the first thing that came out of his house that day.

Yet it was an unnecessary and unholy vow that he made before God.

It wasn't needed.

God is God.

He didn't need the vow.

And as we come to the Jews here, while we can respect their zeal.

You got to respect the zeal of the Jews here.

They believe Paul is wrong, and they are going to do everything they can to stand up against what they think is wrong.

You got to respect the zeal.

We are called to stand against evil.

I understand it.

We are called to stand up and face wrongs in our society.

But listen, the vow that they made here was was unnecessary.

Because what's happening, what's going to happen is God is going to carry out his plan.

Jephthah didn't need the vow.

The Jews don't need this vow.

And neither do we, what we need to do, instead of trying to make vows to win God over, what we need to do instead is trust God to carry out his plan.

We need to trust him to carry out his plan.

There's another story in the Old Testament that shows us a little bit better, instead of making an unholy vow, how to trust a holy plan.

It's David.

You probably remember the story of King David that David was anointed to be the next king of Israel while Saul was still the king of Israel.

David even served in Saul's court for a little while.

Till Saul tried to murder him, and David went on the run.

And at that point, Saul took it upon himself to chase David because he had heard that God had anointed him the next king.

Saul didn't want God's plan to take place, even though there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop it.

But what he decided to do is, hey, if I can kill David, it's going to be okay.

So he pursued David.

And what David did is he, even though he had opportunities, instead of taking his revenge or taking out Saul, what he did is he trusted God.

In 1 Samuel chapter 24, we see one of these opportunities that David had.

1 Samuel 24 · chapter mention

Someone comes to Saul and says, Hey, David is hiding in the wilderness of Engedi.

So Saul gathers his troops and he goes and they come upon this cave.

Says Saul goes in the cave to use the restroom, and David and his men are hiding in the cave.

Saul has no idea.

David has every opportunity to sneak up on Saul, kill Saul, and take over as the king of Israel.

Because that's what's supposed to happen.

He's supposed to be the king.

His men are saying, hey, David, God has put Saul here for this time.

God has placed him here.

You need to go take him out.

So what David does is he sneaks up behind Saul, but he doesn't murder Saul.

He just cuts off a corner of his robe.

And then he feels bad for even taking off a corner of his robe because Saul is God's anointed too.

He feels bad about it.

It tells us in 1 Samuel chapter 24, verse 6, here's what he says to his men.

1 Samuel 24:6

He said to his men, The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my Lord, the Lord's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed.

Here's what David chooses.

David chooses to trust the plan of God.

He chooses to follow God, to trust him.

To trust that in God's time, God is going to carry out his plan exactly the way it needs to go.

God didn't need David's help.

So David trusts God.

As we return here to the story of Acts.

What happens if the Pharisees, instead of taking upon themselves to take out Paul, even though that was unholy in and of itself, what would happen if they just trusted God?

If they heard God speak.

Man, it could have looked a lot different.

But no, instead, what they do is try to take it into their own hands.

Church, we we've got to trust God.

We've got to trust his timing.

We've got to trust his way.

We gotta lean on him.

Because it's yet not I, but through Christ in me.

Not only do we see God working and protecting Paul through the foil plan in this plot, we see him using spoilers.

What happens here in the next little section in verse 16, we're introduced to two new people, Paul's sister and her son.

So Paul's nephew.

We don't know anything else about them.

We don't know their names.

They'd never appear in any other place in Scripture.

We don't know anything about them, but somehow Paul's nephew learns of this plot and he goes to Paul and he tells Paul about it.

Now, now here's some things that are interesting.

First of all, we don't know anything about these two people, yet God uses them in a mighty way.

Listen to me.

You don't have to be well known for God to use you, just trust him.

Second, God begins to use these people and just the way that he's working.

So Paul says, Hey, I want you to go to the tribune and tell them.

And he tells his nephew, so here's what Paul does He looks at the centurion and says, Hey, come here.

First of all, why would a centurion listen to Paul?

Paul is, he's not really a prisoner, but he is being held kind of like a prisoner.

But the centurion does it.

He comes over to Paul, and Paul says, Hey, this kid has a message for Lysias, the tribune.

I need you to take him to him.

He doesn't give any more explanation.

Hey, just take him.

And the centurion doesn't.

Why in the world would he do that?

I think it has something to do with how God has already worked in the centurion's life.

Way back in chapter 22, when it was one of these centurions had Paul stretched out to be flogged.

Paul says, Hey, I'm a Roman citizen.

He tells Lysias, what in the world are you thinking?

And listen to what it says in verse 29 of Acts 22.

So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid.

For he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him.

The tribune also was afraid.

So that means others are afraid at this point, including this centurion.

They are afraid because they unrightly, unjustly bound Saul a Roman citizen, which they were not supposed to do.

He was uncondemned.

They were not supposed to hold him there, and yet they did, and so now they're afraid of consequences.

And I think God is using that in this life of this centurion.

So now that Paul says, Hey, come here, I need you to do something.

He's worried what else Paul is going to do.

So he says, sure, I'll take him.

So then he takes this young lad to Lysias, the tribune, and here's what it says: that the tribune takes him by the hand and pulls him off privately and says, Hey, what's going on?

Paul's nephew explains to him what's about to happen.

And Lysias listens.

This is not normal.

The fact that a Roman gives ear to a Jew is not normal.

The fact that the Jew that they're listening to is a Roman citizen has them all befuddled, thinking unnormally, and so he listens to him.

And then he acts.

His job was to make sure riots don't happen in Jerusalem.

That's what this is his main job.

And because Paul has already caused such an uproar in Jerusalem, he's afraid of these consequences.

So he's acting to try to keep the peace.

He's not convicted by anything, he's just acting to keep the peace.

So he he gathers up and he sends Paul to Felix.

Now, here's the thing God, in his omniscient wisdom, in his providential plan, is using Lysian.

Adherence to the Roman law to carry out his plan.

He is an amazing God.

He is always working.

We see him protecting Paul through a foiled plot.

We also see him protecting Paul through a pagan government.

Here's what happens.

He begins, if Lysias writes a letter to Felix the governor, sends Paul, sends Paul with this letter.

So he writes a letter just like he writes a normal Roman letter greeting all of those things, telling Felix what's going on.

So he's using this pagan government the way it works.

He's using these Roman soldiers, this guard, and listen how many he sends.

200 cavalrymen, 200 spearmen, and 70, and 700 foot soldiers, 200 cavalrymen, and I get it right.

200 foot soldiers, 200 spearmen, and 70 cavalrymen.

Almost 500 soldiers to guard Paul.

Not only that, he gives Paul his own horse so he can keep up.

This is enough.

This is so much.

God is using this pagan government that doesn't worship the one true God.

They worship tons of other gods.

History tells us that.

Yet God is using them to carry out his plan.

And he sends them to Felix.

Felix then questions about where Paul is from because here's the deal.

He wants to make sure that according to Roman law, he is in the hierarchy.

Should he send him to Agrippa, who's going to meet Paul later, or should he question him?

Because Cilicia was in the same province as Jerusalem.

Hey, I'm going to question him.

God is using and providentially carrying out his plan, and we've seen God do this.

We've seen God use pagan governments before.

Way back, you can make note, you can look it up later.

If you're due up time, we won't necessarily turn back and read this, but way back in 2 Kings chapter 17.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

2 Kings chapter 17, God tells the Israel that he is going to send Assyria to destroy them because they have walked away from him.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

God is using this Assyrian king for his purpose.

Later in Israel's history, in Jeremiah chapter 25, God prophesies using Jeremiah that he is going to send Babylon, the Babylonian Empire, to come destroy the southern kingdom.

Jeremiah 25 · chapter mention

Hey, I'm going to send Babylon.

And here's, he describes King Nebuchadnezzar this way.

He calls him my servant.

Jeremiah 25, verse 9, God calls Nebuchadnezzar my servant.

Jeremiah 25:9

My question is, does Nebuchadnezzar know that?

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter whether Nebuchadnezzar knows it or not.

Because God is a sovereign God.

Carrying out his providential plan.

He can use whomever he wants to do whatever he wants.

He is using this government to protect Paul, to get Paul to the place to finish the plan.

And here's how we must understand this finally this morning, real quickly.

He is protecting Paul through a proper protagonist.

Through the proper hero.

The hero of this story is not Paul.

It's not.

The hero of Acts has not been Paul.

It's not been Peter.

It's not been the church.

The hero of Scripture is not David.

It's not Moses.

It's not Abraham.

It's not any of the apostles.

The hero is God.

He is the hero.

He is the one that's going to make all things right.

He is the one that is working in Paul's life to carry out his plan.

And what we have to do, what we must do is understand our lives.

In your life, in my life.

If I'm the hero of my life, my life is going to fail dramatically.

If you're the hero of your life, your life is not going to be what it could be.

God is the hero.

He is working.

Yet not I, but Christ in me.

We've got to trust God to carry out God's plan, to use us in God's way to do what God wants to do.

We must absolutely trust Him to work in our lives.

As we do that, God is going to do things in our lives that we never thought imaginable.

Because He is God.

And He is going to carry out His plan in our lives.

We need to trust Him.

I don't know where you are this morning.

But if you have never trusted Him for your salvation, understand.

Just as your life is not going to be what it could be if you don't trust God with your plan.

If you don't trust God for your salvation, you are never going to be redeemed.

Only He can save us.

This morning, if you've never trusted in Christ as your salvation, just a moment, we're going to stand and sing a hymn of invitation, and we invite you to come.

If you have, but maybe right now you are trying to be the hero of your story.

Yeah, God saved me, but now I'm going to take over.

Maybe this morning during our invitation time, you need to repent and trust Him.

Stop trying to do it yourself.

Stop trying to be the hero.

Trust God to be the hero in your life.

If you're looking for a church home, we invite you to come.

However, God is moving in your life, we invite you to come as we sing this hymn of invitation.

Let's pray and then we'll sing.

God, I thank you for today.

I thank you for this opportunity that we have now to respond to you.

God, I pray that as you are moving and you are working in our midst, Father, that this morning you will give us the faith that we need to trust in your plan.

For those who need you for salvation, God, I pray that today is the day.

For those who need you to be the hero of the story and they need to turn that over, God, I pray that today will be the day.

God, I pray that you will work as only you can.

We love you.

Jesus is in your name, we pray.

Amen.