Leftovers - Acts 23:1-11

Happy Monday off a solo weekend at church on Sunday.

Thanks Chris and Kristen for abandoning me.

You know what turn about a spare play?

It just happened to me like what, a week or two ago?

Two weeks ago, that's true. Kristen and I were.

Gone. And of course and of course when

you leave, there's at least one like audio microphone scare,

which, yeah, had me about out of my skin 'cause.

You were fine. So you say, but internally I was

I was moving at about 100 miles an hour.

It sounds like a personal problem.

It really is it really? Is microphones worked just fine

for me this week. I don't know, I'm so afraid of

them. I could never be a stand up

comedian. I think for a lot of reasons,

they know. They know that you're afraid of

them, so they know, so they act out against you.

It's. True, they seem.

To you, oh man. So no thanks for a sweet

gathering time yesterday, Sunday morning.

I appreciate you church family. We're going to continue the

conversation around Acts 23. I said in my sermon, even we

read the first 11 verses of, excuse me, verses of Acts 23,

and I basically skipped over the 1st 10.

I I even said at some point, the beginning part of this passage,

there's a lot of good historical detail and some political

intrigue and we're not going to talk about any of it, but that's

what this space is for. By the way, it killed me and

it's hard to hear if you're watching online.

So listen, I, we, we watched like about an hour after it

aired on Facebook because Alyssa was driving.

And so I just turned it on the phone and have it going through

the car. And unless people really have

like a loud laughter moment, you're not going to hear that on

the online thing. But I did wonder, like, I was

like, seriously chuckling when you said yeah, but I'm not going

to cover any of that. I just kind of started laughing

in the car and I was like, oh, OK, cool.

And yeah, I wondered if that hit anybody else, but maybe not.

I don't know. I just found that amusing.

And I meant for it to be amusing and it just kind of, it just

kind of went over. I don't know.

It didn't have to be funny, but I felt like everyone in the room

was just like, OK, Yep. So we're just we're sticking

with you. We'll go where you go.

Yeah. So, but by the way, before we

get into anything else, I got to tell you, man, like when I

turned on the live or whatever, the thing that was so striking

was like your yellow sweatshirt, like I was just like, oh, man,

that hits hard. And I'm not, I'm not, please

hear me, I'm not promoting ERC merge.

That's not what I'm trying to do here.

But like, it's the first thing I noticed.

I was like, man, look at that sweatshirt.

That's crazy. And so I hope I wasn't the only

one who, like, saw that and went, whoa, that's, that's

awesome. There were others who chimed in

and even like wanted that design or or at least wanted a crew

sweatshirt with with the logos on it too.

But that yellow one in particular, I just I mean, we're

in Iowa. Sorry to the rest of you college

allegiances, but I just had the I feel like at least around

where we are, maybe it's just the people I'm around or my most

of my attention is on University of Iowa.

Like that's, I just feel like that's what captures.

I know, I know there's Iowa State and Northern Iowa and not

like all the other places and we have people who went to all of

those colleges, but like to me it's Hawkeye colors.

So so that was just can I make a Hawkeye colored sweatshirt that

like will catch people's attention, but gotcha.

It's it's search stuff. Actually, I'm annoying for

Jesus. You know, and it's funny, like,

and that makes sense because even when Pastor Brandon was

here, you know, it's been a thing in Iowa for a long time.

America needs farmers. And it's got that classic circle

on it. He took that exact same idea and

turned it into the Elevate design for a lot of the shirts

for the youth convention. And I was like, oh, I, I see

where you got that. But he, he's right.

Like it's a good design and good color pattern and all that kind

of stuff. Real quick, maybe like one of

the things that I don't know if we've ever like talked about

from on stage is the fact that like, why do we, why do we have

ERC shirts? Like why do we do that?

I think I think there's a good reason for it, but I don't think

we've ever actually talked about it.

Yeah, I mean, it's it's mostly the the knowing Jesus and making

him known that it's the it's the making him known side of that.

I've been wearing Christian St. wear for, I don't know, 15

years, probably 1215 years. You will be shocked the

conversations that strike up just by the clothing that

you're. I mean, we notice people's

clothing all the time. So why shouldn't it also scream

Jesus or or scream Bible verses? So but we also have some very

creative individuals here. Like everything, everything

we've made has been designed by either me or students or or

other individuals here. Grace Hendrickson has a ton of

them, a ton of the designs that we've produced.

But yeah, so to have Jesus St. wear, but also have it attached

to a local community, a local church that hey, this is This Is

Us and we want you to be a part of it because we want you to

know Jesus. Like I think that's I think

that's the larger picture, the larger vision of of the clothes.

So it's not just, I mean, we're, we're covering costs and we're

and we're do and that and we get to kind of customize them.

I like we can, we can do that. We have that freedom to be able

to make the colored shirts that people want and we'll actually

enjoy to wear. So we're not certainly not

filling the budget lines, right? Like we're just breaking even on

stuff. But I think at least I and, and

you, Kristen and others like we just, we just believe in it

enough to wear our faith on our sleeves, as it were.

So. And I think, I think that's

really neat. I, I would hate for anybody to

get the wrong idea that somehow we're just like, quote UN quote

self promoting because that's never the heart behind it.

The heart behind it, of course is like, yeah, how can I know

Jesus and then therefore make him known?

For some people, it's not easy to have a conversation with

friends or family or even strangers or anybody, but man,

it is really easy to wear a shirt and they go, oh, what's

that? And then all of a sudden here's

the conversation starter for that.

And I think that's really important, especially when

you're talking about getting somebody plugged into a

community of faith. I think that's really important.

So I love that we do that. I just, I just don't think we, I

don't know that we've ever expressed that out loud, the why

behind the shirts and stuff. Sure.

Yep. And that's that's good.

I think that's a lot of the heart around it is, hey, we, we

love our church and we love Jesus and we want you to be a

part of that too. If that can happen through the

clothing we produce and share and sell and wear together, I

think mission accomplished with that then.

Absolutely. So Acts 23, as I said, we left.

We left plenty of stuff out. Sorry, before we jump into Acts

23, there's like e-mail and text and announcements that are going

on about this too. But we're going to change it up

with the podcast a little bit. At the beginning of September,

we're going to do a couple of episodes because the first

Monday is Labor Day and then the following Monday, September 8th

is actually it's the day after kickoff.

But we're going to a conference in Jacksonville, actually Church

Leaders Conference. So those two weeks of the pod,

we are going to do some Ask Me Anything episodes and that

literally, I mean anything. I'm not saying we're going to

answer all the questions, but you can submit whatever

questions you want and then we will answer as many of them as

we. Yeah, I actually feel

comfortable. I don't know.

I am super, super excited about those couple episodes because it

could be some really ridiculous, would you rather that we've

never talked about that you want to hear some weird banter on?

Or it could be like a deep theological question that you're

like, I've never felt comfortable asking this out

loud, but man, I would sure love to hear hear my pastor's

opinions on on this thing. And so I think that's going to

be really cool. I'm really looking forward to

those. Yep.

So that's coming up the first couple Mondays in September.

If you have questions again from from anything, it can be

ridiculous. Would you rather scenarios,

theological questions, personal life questions like I mean,

really ask me ask us anything is is what we're doing.

You can drop those in the comments on in the show, on your

podcast feed there or Facebook feed where it's posted.

Connect at emmausrdonline.org is the e-mail or you can text.

You can text anytime the church number 563-659-9444 and we'll

get those questions too. And if you want to ask, ask a

question, but not have us mention who that is, who's

asking the question, that's perfectly valid too.

That's OK, Just tell us you want to keep it anonymous and that's

fine. We'll still throw your name in.

That's got to be. You can let us know that you

wanted to be anonymous and then. Well, we just lost 5 questions.

No. And if you really, if you really

don't want to attach your name to it, we can.

We can keep it off, but yeah, I hopefully it's fun enough that

it, yeah, doesn't necessarily. You're not going to get judged

for, we're not going to judge you for it, so.

No, don't. Worry about receiving that from

anyone else either. Yeah.

I mean, if if anybody who's listening to this was aware of

some of the questions I've been asked in the last decade of

pastoral ministry, you wouldn't be ashamed to ask anything.

And I will not bring any of those up in this space.

Right. Yeah, good.

All right, Acts 23 as I said, I I skipped over a lot of the

geopolitical drama contained in this passage, but the first

couple of verses, couple interesting things come out of

this looking intently at the council first one of chapter 23,

Paul said, brothers, I have lived my life before God in all

good conscience up to this day. And the high priest Ananias

commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth.

That got that. Got hot in a hurry?

Real quick, Yep, real fast. Paul tried to he greets them

with brothers, which is something that he would like

writing a letter to the early church.

These are these are not his friends, right.

And he tries to say, hey, trying to trying to be civil about

this. I'm I'm a Roman citizen just

like you are. I was I was a fairest.

I I was a leader of the religious law at one time and he

tries to say I've lived my life before God and all good

conscience up to this day like I have presented myself rightly.

I I think I can live with how I've lived my life before God,

which is interesting if you think about the whole scope of

Paul's life. I brought this up a Bible study

on Thursday does I don't know that it goes this far, but does

he mean even when he was persecuting the church like he

still had such conviction he was he was still in a respectable

stance before God even as his enemy.

Let that the Jesus I'd I'd rather you are hot or cold, not

lukewarm that I would spit you out like is there is there some

measure of respect even that God had for the conviction of Paul

against his church that Paul lived so rightly and good

conscience before God, even when he was his enemy, Of course,

since his conversion, but. No, I think, I think one thing

that again, despite the harm he did in individual people's lives

and maybe in a greater community sense, in some ways, despite all

of that, man, he was sold out for what he believed.

And, and I think that's, I think we can see that today.

And and that's I can respect that even if I don't agree with

somebody. If you are totally sold out for

that and this is what you believe in your heart of hearts

and you've got either data or, you know, a specific faith

background to really back that up.

Like, hey, you know, in some ways, good for you.

I guess you can live with a clean conscience because you are

living into your convictions. And, and I think we should all

do that to whatever extent that we can.

So I, I can see how Paul would say this and could say that with

a straight face because he's always taught, you know, spoken

and acted inside of his moral convictions.

Yeah, and I think it lends credence to his position.

Now, he knows that they disagree with his position, but they also

have to be familiar with who he was and what he was and what he

did. And if he can say I went with

the same level of conviction that you knew I had against the

church before my conversion, I now in all earnestness believe

this with all my like that we're on the same scale of intensity

of conviction, though I'm my perspective has changed.

Maybe their ears would be more more open, would would hear that

and be more open to what he has to say.

And I would we brought this up way back when we first read

Paul's conversion story on June 15th.

I brought up the idea of being able that a philosopher kind of,

and I'll paraphrase it here, but a philosopher talks about the

greatest level of freedom is being able to disagree with

yourself, even from an hour ago, but having the freedom and the

right to be able to say, you know what, I was wrong.

I can disagree with that version of me, but here is my real

conviction now. And and I don't think honestly,

we, we hear a lot of apologies in our culture because, oh, I

offended this group or I offended that person.

So I know I need to give this big public apology through my PR

person or whatever. I, I think I would have to argue

that like rather than rather than that apology would probably

be far more profound to be able to say, you know what, I've

thought long and hard about this.

And actually, I think I disagree with my previous self and I

disagree to the point where I'm I'm with you and that was wrong

that I said that. And I can see that now and and

I'm willing to disagree with my previous self and that gives me

a lot of freedom. Yeah, and that's a respectable

position then to have that reflective part of of your

conviction, right? Yep.

Yeah. So Ananias's response to this,

though, I think he probably only heard before good before God.

In all good conscience, he probably just heard Paul saying,

hey, look at me, I'm I'm God's Golden Boy done, done nothing

wrong, righteous before God. And he immediately calls for

Paul to be struck on the mouth, which was AI mean physical sign

of all right, you're done. Like we're we're turning that

off. He offended the high priest and

he he I'm sure Ananias's perspective was someone accused

of the crimes that Paul was accused of couldn't claim a

clear conscience. This is not a person he wants to

be in good standing. So Paul's response then verse

three, he says back, God is going to strike you, you

whitewashed wall. Are you going to sit and judge

me according to the law and yet contrary to the law, you order

me to be struck. Remember, like the Roman

citizenship still like protects him in this moment right there.

There's not supposed to be physical consequence until

judgement has happened. So verse 4, those who stood by

said, would you revile God's high priest because Paul has now

maybe offended the high priest and then talked back to the high

priest. Paul said I did not know

brothers, that he was the high priest.

For it is written, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your

people. Yeah, this is a really

interesting moment, I think. And you and I were chatting

about this briefly before the show, which is this, this kind

of classic phrase, 2 wrongs don't make a right.

And So what Paul does here again, just like owning his

ability to say, you know what? I was wrong and I'm owning that,

but now here I am in these current convictions in the same

way Paul owns his own sin. He's not asking them to he's not

insisting to them at in this moment that they have to repent

from their sins of striking him, which it is because you can, you

can look that up. It is a sin.

However, he just owns his stuff and says, you know what, that's

on me. I, I broke, I broke God's law

here by disrespecting or, you know, along those lines, God's

high priest. And so he still shows some sense

of like, he honors the authority of the Jewish Church.

And I don't think he's ever dishonored the Jewish church,

even in his 20 years of preaching Christ.

I don't think he's dishonored it.

I think he very much sees it the way that modern Christian would

be, which is Jesus is the fulfillment of this.

It's not. He's not in opposition to the

Old Testament. He's not in opposition to the

law. He fulfills it.

But yeah, the the greater thing here is he owns his stuff, and I

think that's a pretty powerful thing to do.

Yeah, absolutely. And his his misstep, the

priest's misstep maybe even if the priest was wrong in ordering

for him to be struck, Paul's acknowledging that that does not

make allowance now for his misstep.

So like the the mistake of an other does not make your mistake

allowable in response, right. So he he backtracks very quickly

and says, Nope, you're right. I was, I was out of line.

I did not know. There's a couple, there's a

couple little theories on how he like, how could you think?

How could he not know who the high priest was?

Like, shouldn't this guy be marked out?

Isn't it very clear who the guy in charge is?

He's wearing special robes or something.

And maybe maybe he's not wearing special robes like they could

have had a uniform and just known who the senior was because

that. But so in that argument, if he

is wearing different clothes, just some scholarly theories of

Paul's getting up there in eight his at this point, his eyesight

may may be going. He may literally not be able to

clearly see Ananias where where he is at and he might not be

sure who it was or just lack of proximity.

And this is about 20 years after his conversion.

He just he hasn't been in these circles either.

It would be natural that the authority would have turned over

the office of the high priest. He just might not have these

personal, almost certainly didn't have these personal

relationships anymore that he once had when he was in these

Jewish circles before. So not unreasonable that he just

like it sounds a little crazy that he'd be like, I didn't, I

didn't know, but there's a couple reasonable explanations.

For what? He wouldn't know.

Nothing. Nothing in the New Testament

gives us a sense that Paul's character would just outright

lie. You know, like he does.

As you mentioned at the at the top of this, he does a very

savvy move. Or maybe you mentioned it

yesterday in your sermon. It's a very savvy move.

What he's about to do when he kind of divides the room between

Pharisees and Sadducees. Very briefly talked.

About the difference, he's not lying.

He's not lying. And so I don't, I don't think

that that's a part of his character.

So I think it's perfectly reasonable to think that maybe

his eyesight is as bad as what it's been reported especially.

Having others write, write letters for him and things like

yeah. I think that's perfectly valid

and I I don't, I don't see why we would question that a whole

lot. Right, so he uses some pretty

harsh words. It'd be more interesting if we

knew the tone of the words to did did he did he say it

begrudgingly? Did did he say it kind of under

God will strike you, you whitewashed wall like?

Did he almost mutter it to himself or did he did he shout

it back? Was it a deck of God will strike

you, you whitewashed wall? Like I don't know that it

matters the the meaning is still there, but it'd be interesting

to know the vibrancy of Paul's retort in in this situation.

Whatever it was, this insult, this whitewashed wall, just a

white outer covering, concealing obvious corruption underneath.

Like that's, that's what the insult is, a whitewashed wall.

It's not really the way it is, but it's covering up the ugly on

the inside, right? And that's the same, that's the

same, you know, thing that Jesus said to the Pharisees and

Sadducees. You know, he called them

whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside, but full of dead

men's bones on the inside. And, you know, and I think

that's fair. You're basically just, it's a

really cool way to call somebody a hypocrite.

And so, you know, if you, if you need like a high level way to

disrespect somebody, I suppose that's a way to do it rather

than just calling them a hypocrite.

Yeah, and so he speaks harshly, but there's also truth in that.

Deuteronomy 25 one and two, according to the the Old

Testament law, only a man found guilty can be beaten.

And Paul had not yet been adjudged and there there wasn't

a verdict. And so he could he should not

have been struck. So he's calling out the

immediate hypocrisy as an appeal to you're calling me out for

breaking the law, yet you break the law right now.

So who are you to even call me out?

Even even parallelism of our own sinfulness as as we interact

with other believers. But it's not it's not our place

to judge. And I don't think Paul's even

saying that that it is his place to judge.

You see how quickly he he walks back when he's called out for

his sin, he just kind of humbly says, yeah, you're right, I am a

Sinner. I messed up, not my place.

So I think there is an interesting parallelism in in

what we're called to as well. And I want to, I want to clarify

something here because this gets tossed around a lot in modern

day culture is, oh, you can't judge me, you can't judge me.

But you have to understand what that word really means in the

biblical context. When we say judge, we mean

potentially make an assessment or something about that person.

I'm assessing you and I'm saying that you're not worthy,

whatever. That's how.

Usually in a. Negative way.

But the word judge here in the Bible, it actually means

condemn. It means to condemn.

It's a much harder, stronger word.

So when people get it wrong, when they say you can't judge me

and what they're really saying is you shouldn't assess my

behavior. No, Christians have to assess

behavior. We have to use our God-given

brains to assess whether something is right or wrong.

Now, is the Christian called to judge in terms of the biblical

nature of the word, which means to condemn?

No, we are not to condemn, right?

But yeah, we have to assess people.

We have to assess intentions and actions and things like that.

So I just want to put that out there.

So that way if you're listening to this like in the next time

something like that comes up, you know that like it doesn't

mean don't use your brain and don't assess the situation.

It does mean don't condemn. Yeah, no, that's a really good

point. Paul's insult goes on.

He calls him a whitewashed wall, calls out his hypocrisy, and

then he offers, offers some judgement, offers some

condemnation. Actually God will strike you.

Maybe more prophetic than we realize in this moment or maybe

even then. Paul realized Ananias the high

priest notably historically involved in scheming and bribes

and and pro Roman supporting the empire politics.

He was brutally killed by mobs of Jewish nationalists, Just

Jewish culture people who were done with his corrupt ways.

Crazy. I did not know that before

today. By the way, that is like a

crazy. I I don't want to use word fun,

but that's a crazy historical fact.

Like man, you don't want. To use the word fun.

No, I don't. That's see and that's why I

didn't use the word fun. I said the word fun, but I don't

think it is fun. So let me clarify that.

So yeah, that was it didn't happen right away in the moment,

but Paul again, kind of foreshadowing, sure what would

befall this corrupt ruler kind of got.

He got his judgement. He did receive his condemnation

dying in such a severe way. So at this point, Paul, we said

it, Paul is not in the midst of France.

They all the Pharisee and Sadducees, don't really like

each other. They also definitely don't like

Paul at all. He has no friends, no allies in

the room. Verse 6 and chapter 23, when

Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other

Pharisees, he cried out in the council.

Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.

Concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead, I am

being judged. I called this out in the sermon

yesterday. One of one of the big

differences, both Pharisees and Sadducees just steeped in the

law. They love the law, they love the

ritual, they love the rights, they love the things that you

have to do for your religiosity. The Pharisees, however, at least

believed in the divinity of Jesus, right?

The resurrection of the dead that that there was a promised

Holy Spirit that there there were the the reports of of

angels or or just supernatural beings, voices, communication

from God. The Pharisees were on board with

with all of those things. The Sadducees were absolutely

not that they did not believe that Jesus resurrected from the

dead that that there was that promise of heaven because of his

work. So so Paul kind of points out,

hey, I'm on your guys Pharisees. We agree on this.

We're like we're team Jesus here.

We, we, we, we like this and it it causes infighting.

I I don't you'd have to think that there was he was at least

maybe he was just trying to appeal.

I don't know that he's looking to set him off fighting against

each other, but that's what happened right?

We we have this chaos afterwards on that that even turned violent

that that even like broke out to the point that Paul had to be

rescued and brought back off to jail.

So clever move. Yeah, it is very clever.

I like actually in the show notes here, one of the things

that gets brought out is the Sadducees were the theological

liberals of their day and denied the reality of the life after

death and the concept of resurrection.

And so I think, you know, if we're trying to place ourselves

in the moment and understand the context, that's a pretty great

way to say that, which is, you know, and if you bring that

forward into modern religion or Christian Christianity, you

might look at that and go, oh man, I feel like I could

probably pick out the hyper liberal churches that don't

believe fully what the Bible says, but they're still claiming

Christianity is their own, even though they're not really

adhering to the word itself. And so that's, you know,

essentially, if we need to bring it forward to understand it

more, that's that's how we do that.

You know, we can pull that right in and say, OK, now I now I have

a sense of like these two, these two factions that are now

arguing amongst themselves because of what Paul said about

resurrection. And so we can understand that

way. And I think that's perfectly

valid. Yeah, the Sadducees want to know

part of that, of that divine afterlife, part of it.

The Pharisees problem was they, they took the Bible seriously.

They took Scripture seriously, but they still it it, it was

like Jesus plus Jesus plus the things that I do results in

eternal life. They still added the traditions

of of man to Jesus's teaching to, to the Old Testament

teachings as as the way for eternal life.

So the Sadducees were lacking the whole truth of the Bible.

The Pharisees took the whole truth of the Bible, but they

wanted to put their two cents in as well to probably maintain

power to to still have some semblance of control over the

people. So in this way, though, Paul,

Paul hit a nerve like he struck a nerve.

This was the right issue to bring up.

And the Pharisees even say this, he brought this is what we

believe and we believe in a powerful God that works in these

ways. Let us not fight against God.

We're not we're not going against Paul anymore.

If this is the message that he's bringing the the riot kind of

turns violent. Verse 10 says now there arose of

great dissension and the commander fearing Paul might be

pulled to pieces, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him

by force from among them and bring him into the barracks.

So even back to the last couple weeks, we said we saw the

crowds, the Jewish crowds as he was preaching to them.

Like there came a point tensions are really high at this point

I'm it's the people amidst the leaders.

The gospel is is working in ways that are maybe madding to the

public at this point, either for either for annoyance or maybe

from sheer conviction. Like it could be working in that

way of frustration. Do you ever like the phrase

truth hurts, right? It's it's cliche, but but it's

true. Like if there's something that

you either don't love about yourself or a situation you

handled and someone and someone calls that out, you feel that

right? You're like, I know I kind of, I

kind of hate that I did that too.

Like looking back, I didn't like that as well.

Like that's, I feel like that's what's happening amidst amidst

the crowd or even the frustration that we see Boyle up

here in the leaders. The truth of the gospel was

cutting through so much that they felt a level of conviction

of guilt, of, of wrongness. Even if they didn't agree with

it, they could feel the weight of oh man, he's, he's right.

Like we we feel this is wrong. Well, and I think, you know, to

give it further historical context, you add the fact that

the the Jewish people have been under the thumb of the Romans

now for I don't even know how long would have to look that up.

But you know, so there's all this tension inside the city all

of the time because you really don't like sure, if you're a

Jewish person at that point, you can live out your faith to the

extent that the Romans allow you to.

Now take for example, you know, they did, the Jewish people did

push back on the Romans from time to time because, you know,

there's a moment where they want to have Caesar's likeness put on

or near the temple. And the Jewish people revolt and

they tear the thing down and yeah, people go to jail, they

get beat. But ultimately Caesar decides,

you know what, this fight isn't worth it.

It's fine. We're just going to leave that

off or whatever. But still, like there's always

this underlying tension of their in their lives of we are not

free. We could get arrested, beaten,

whatever at any given moment if the Romans decide that we don't

like what you're doing. And that could be religiously or

otherwise. So there's just this always

underlying tension in the air. Plus you add Paul, who again,

the accusation is that he's saying no Moses, no customs, and

that's really setting an already volatile situation on fire.

Yeah, and this is so just looking up a historical timeline

quick. The the Roman rule was from

about 60 BC to about 13140 somewhere in there AD, so about

a period of 200 years and we're roughly around 50-60 AD right

now somewhere in there. So there's been this period of

there been on a Roman rule for 120 years at this point they're

on the the downside like they didn't know obviously when it

would end, but in another 80 years they would have broken

free. So you're right, like this is

the start of tensions mounting, kind of boiling over, kind of

being done with this, this Roman rule and occupation.

And it makes me wonder about the frustration of the crowds,

though They, they were obviously yearning for something else.

Did they, did they hate Paul for taking the out of aligning with

his Roman citizenship like we were talking about last week?

Did they? Oh, well, this guy's, well, this

guy's a Christian, but he aligns with this political force and we

don't like that. So by extension, we don't like

Christians. Is is that?

I don't know. It could be, I mean, I, I think

you could draw some modern day parallels with certain groups of

evangelicals and stuff like that.

If they're telling you how to vote and whatever.

And all of a sudden now I don't like you at all because you are

representing Christianity, but you're also representing the

side of the aisle that I don't like.

And it could be either side. But yeah, I, I could absolutely

see that as being true. And yeah, just the extent of and

it makes me wonder, like, you know, sometimes, sometimes our

anger in our frustration comes out on people or on situations

when that's not really the person I'm angry at.

I just happen to blow up on you. And I could see that with Paul

in some ways, you know, especially as he claims his

Roman citizenship in front of them.

Like, yeah, they're not going to like that.

And and so I mean, like, it just brings about all these feelings

of feeling small and feeling oppressed.

And then all of a sudden, like this guy who's trying to tell

you about, you know, the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

now he's aligning himself with the Romans, calling himself a

citizen, which he is. But all of a sudden, now I have

an even greater beef with you. And it didn't start with you.

It started with this oppression that our people have felt for

the last 120 years. But here you are representing

that. So you're going to get, you're

going to get the blunt of my anger.

So there's miss, there's misplaced anger here, just kind

of by proxy, by association, Paul aligning himself with this.

They're frustrated at the bigger political concept of of the

Roman Empire. And yeah, so there comes this

great disagreement, riot, physical violence, the commander

fearing. He's fearing, I think not so

much for Paul, but maybe for the law that he's supposed to.

It's by law that he's supposed to keep Paul safe, right?

Like as a Roman citizen. So I don't even know it's

personally for Paul's well-being.

He's probably just covering his own job and standing.

But it's it's his responsibility to keep this prisoner on trial

safe. I don't think it was any

personal affections necessarily. There's.

Nothing, nothing here to. Well, I mean, think about these

guards. If, if a Roman citizen gets

mobbed in Jerusalem, you better, you better know that the people

above you are going to hear about that.

So like Paul is no different. He's a Roman citizen.

They're going to hear about it if they let him die.

Yeah, and then there's even just know if they can't keep the

citizens safe, then there's no. You're not doing your job.

No. And then and they don't, their

reputation would fall away and, and all those, all those things.

So this note in verse 10 here again, I use, I use the enduring

word commentary very frequently. But this note in verse 10 kind

of catapulted me to the point that I landed on, on where I was

going to be in the message. And I, I really only focused on

one verse, verse 11 for the message.

And that's why we haven't gotten there yet.

We're not going to spend a whole lot of time on it because I

spent 25 minutes on it yesterday.

But Paul's clever ploy. This is from the Enduring Word

commentary. Paul's clever ploy rescued him

from the council, but he could not have been happy with the

results. He had the opportunity to preach

to a huge crowd of attentive Jews on the Temple Mount and it

ended in failure. Then he had the opportunity to

preach to the influential Jewish council and it also ended in a

fistfight. I can't, I can't imagine this is

this is obviously not the context in which Paul thought he

would be bringing the gospel, seemingly open to any context,

but obviously conditions were not perfect for how he would

imagine preaching the gospel. But as I brought up yesterday,

this certainly was not the outcome that he thought he would

get that he experienced in other places.

We have all these other accounts of and, and the Lord added daily

to those or 3000 came to be saved that day or whatever.

Like we've had these momentous happenings in the early church

where just thousands of lives are changed in a day and he's in

Jerusalem and crickets like nothing, no, no result.

It's got to be, it has to be crushing to some degree.

I don't know how despondent Paul was, but it was despondent

enough to to come to verse 11 that it took a visit from Jesus

to encourage him to cheer him up.

Verse 11, the following night, the Lord stood by him and said,

be of good cheer, Paul. For as you have testified for me

in Jerusalem, so also you must bear witness at Rome.

Yeah, I think there's, there's an interesting note here, you

know, talking about Paul's feelings on the issue, you know,

because if he was just cold, he would say, well, they didn't,

they didn't listen to me. They're bad.

Oh, well. But like, you know, the notes,

they, they, they give this interesting thing coming out of

Romans 9/1 through 4:00. I am speaking the truth in

Christ. I am not lying.

My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have a

great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.

For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from

Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according

to the flesh. And so you read that.

And not unlike Jesus, who's ascending to Jerusalem and he

just weeps, he looks at his people and it breaks his heart

that they refuse to receive him. And Paul's no different.

He really has the heart of Christ in mind for these people.

And it had to have been so heartbreaking for him to go

there with this message of freedom and forgiveness and

life. And then to be squarely

rejected. He's taken beatings before, he's

been, he's had rocks for him, he's been thrown out of town.

All these things, he's endured all these things.

This is not anything new to him, but this is heartbreaking.

That is new to him, that he looks at the people who he loves

and cares for and they just refuse to receive the good thing

that he has for them. Yeah, so not even in a depressed

sort of self reflection or evaluation, his, his heart is

breaking for their lack of response.

Like maybe not even judging himself or his quote UN quote

effectiveness or whatever in in the gospel, but just truly

distraught for the lives that are in jeopardy and in in the

scope of eternity that are in jeopardy.

And that's it's a really sweet and tender place to be.

And when we talk about the example that Paul had in the

heart after Jesus do our we we sing the song Hosanna lately

break my heart for what breaks yours is is is in that bridge

and I I just think that's an amazing posture that's that's

emulated here in Paul. Of course, of course Jesus is

heartbroken that there's there's people against him that don't

want to repent and turn back to him.

Paul seemingly is is on is on a similar empathetic level to

Jesus for his his despondency in in the stubbornness of these

people's hearts. I think we've brought this up

before, but it's worth saying again, which is if you're going

to be a Christian through and through heart, mind, body, soul,

etcetera, that does not necessarily grant you a happier,

easier life. In fact, it's.

The IT almost definitely won't, no.

It's true. Welcome to Christianity.

Sorry. This is actually not a funny

thing. It's not a funny thing.

I just, I had the image of people hearing that coming from

their pastors and like, we're fine, we're fine.

We're OK. Like we're, we're not, we're not

just having a pity party here for ourselves.

No, but I mean, The thing is, the the closer you draw to God's

heart, the more your heart will break for the things that breaks

His heart. And of course, and I'm sure

people listening have experienced this.

You've got friends, you've got family, all these kinds of

things that like you would love to see these these people, you'd

love nothing less than to see these people have a real

relationship with Jesus Christ and have salvation and have

assurance and security in their eternity.

And it is so difficult to watch people either passively or more

aggressively outright turn away from that.

That's really difficult to do. And so, I mean, I think we can

absolutely empathize with Paul here.

We, we can with Jesus too, to some extent of just like, yeah,

it should break our hearts, you know, to some extent when we we

know what Jesus offers, we know what life abounding really looks

like. We know what freedom looks like.

We know what all these things look like through Jesus Christ.

And to have somebody that we love and we care about openly or

passively reject that, it's really, really difficult.

So yeah, I will tell you, as others have said, maybe more

eloquently than me, if you're a Christian, it's your heart's

going to break more often than not, because you're going to

watch an entire world of people just reject this grace.

Yeah, yeah. And that's that's the brokenness

of heart that the urgency I think that that Jesus calls us

to to have as we go and make disciples.

The final thing I kind of want to talk about and I didn't leave

room for it in the message because this could have gone.

I focus on verse 11 and I probably could have focused on

this aspect of verse 11 for about the same amount of time as

I did in the message yesterday in in totality.

Paul obviously is a unique individual, has a unique

relationship with God, with Jesus, more so than really

anyone, any Christian that would follow, I mean.

Yeah, that. I think that's fair.

Wrote most of the New Testament, right is is the human author of,

or at least Penner of most of the New Testament, the the Canon

that we hold as Holy Scripture. But as I said yesterday, never

once have I had like this clear of an affirmation, interaction,

correction, or encouragement from God.

And I didn't talk to anyone yesterday who blatantly has

either. I don't, I don't know that you

have one one way or the other. Why?

Why don't we get this clear as a bell feedback from God either

either either well done, keep it up or even to some degree Jonah,

like Jonah got a whale sent to get him back on course.

But like I, I, I feel like we can find ourselves in you.

You were talking about earlier kind of this bartering with got

like give me a sign. Let let me let me know if if

this is The thing is, is that a weird thing to think about?

Is is it something that we should long for?

Is it something we should be OK not having?

What what's, what's your personal understanding of of the

dynamics of that? Yeah, I, I'll tell you what, I

have read a couple different articles about Muslims in

various places across the earth. And they turned over their life

in a day, actually in a night, because they saw the risen

Christ in a dream. And this is the same Jesus that

they know they've been persecuting through this other

faith. They know they've been making

him less than what he is because, you know, a Muslim will

say, well, Jesus is a prophet and nothing more.

He's not the Son of God, you know, whatever.

And so these people have reported and have done a

complete 180 overnight based on this dream experience that

they've had with Jesus Christ. And so I absolutely believe

those things still happen. Now, here's the thing that we

have to ask ourselves. And it's a bit like CS Lewis in

his story, The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the characters

asks about a different character.

And as land, the the line who represents Jesus says, that's

that's not for you to know. You only need to worry about the

life that I'm giving you and that I'm working in and through

you. That's not for you to know.

That parallels really nicely. And CS Lewis is pretty, pretty

slick for this. It parallels really nicely when

Peter and Jesus are walking on the beach and John's kind of,

you know, a little bit off from them.

And Peter asks about, well, what about John?

And Jesus says, that's not for you.

You need to worry about your story with me, not anybody

else's. And so it sounds like kind of a

cop out. I can hear myself saying it, but

it's true. Like when we look at other

people's experiences with the living God and we say, Oh my

gosh, isn't that fantastic? I would love to have.

Jesus shelved. In my bedroom and finally I had

that. But like we have to recognize

that A as the Bible makes it very clear and CS Lewis brings

out on his story. That's not for us.

Absolutely not. God makes that very clear.

But the other thing is like, if we assume God's sovereignty and

we assume that he knows us better than we know ourselves,

then we also have to assume that he knows best what we need when

we need it. And so again, it sounds like I'm

sidestepping or it's like a cop out, but I don't believe that at

all. I believe that God absolutely

knows exactly what I need, when I need it and how I need it.

And so, for example, like, you know, various parts of my life

over the last 15 years, God showed up in some really real,

real ways for me and my family. Now, did He show up in my living

room as the glorified Christ? Nope.

That hasn't happened to me yet. It'd be cool if it happened, but

it hasn't happened yet. Yet it's always been enough.

He shows up through His Spirit. He shows up through His people.

He shows up in all sorts of ways that we need.

And so I just think God differentiates.

I think He knows our hearts. I think He knows exactly what we

need when we need it. And that would be like how I

would address that. It would be cool, but like, is

that really what you need? God would know you wouldn't.

And that makes a lot of sense. I think.

I think you said that really well.

How it's, it's not for us to, to have, we don't need to have the

exact encounters that Paul had with God to gain eternal life,

right? Like to, to, to end up in heaven

with God. We also there's plenty of

interactions that even even in the book of Acts where we don't

have this follow up of Jesus popping up and being like, hey,

2 thumbs up. You're on the right track.

Keep going. I.

Like how you said that, by the way, yesterday that was.

I like that a lot. So it's a very, I just think

it's a very unique, it's an obvious question to ask why, why

doesn't, and we, I feel like we asked that a lot, Why doesn't

God still speak in this way? Why, why isn't God?

Why isn't God's voice more prevalent?

I think we have I think we over generalized the instances of God

Speaking of Moses in a burning Bush and Angel of the Lord

appearing before Joshua and letting him know exactly what

he's supposed to do at the city of Jericho or or whatever it

might be. These are these are these are

one in a million moments, right recounted in the Bible and and

we kind of we have them in a highlight reel in the Bible of

when they happened. But how many countless thousands

of other millions of other interactions went on still

within the will of God, still pleasing to him without this

little pep talk at the end of them, right.

Like even the disciples, even many of the stories in this book

of Acts, plenty of things happened without this positive

affirmation with it, without this direct direction, if I can

say that redundantly in this direct direction from God and

and that's OK, right? Like they still the word of God

still went forth. They were still acting in

alignment with his will. I think it more just highlights

maybe the depths of despair that Paul was in the the significant

discouragement that he was experiencing in this moment.

And like I said, like I said yesterday, he didn't even at the

time really know what was in store for tomorrow with his

life, life threat being 100, being beyond that of, of how his

life was going to be taken. So he was, he was already that

discouraged Jesus. Jesus knew exactly where he was

at and knew he needed this boost.

You're, you're on the right track.

This doesn't look like how you drew it up or how you thought it

was going to be, but you're exactly where I want you right

now. And I and I want you to keep

going and. I think we can minimize our holy

experiences. What I mean by a holy experience

is that maybe you're in prayer about a particular thing and

gosh, guess what? Somebody calls you 10 minutes

later and they're literally talking to you about the very

thing you're in prayer about. Or, you know, same kind of

thing. You're, you're asking God for

answers and you're only praying to him.

You haven't talked about this, you haven't done anything, and

then you go have lunch with a friend and all of a sudden

they're speaking some pretty amazing truth into your life

that you didn't even start talking about.

And I think we minimize those moments and, and I, I don't

think Christians ought to believe in coincidence.

I really don't. I think if you are, well, that's

just a coincidence kind of thing.

I don't know that you know, the God of the Bible yet because he

is so powerful to move 1000 different pieces that we don't

see in real time so that we have that interaction so that that

person says just that right thing to us that we were

privately praying about. Like, if that's not God, I don't

know what is. So I would, I encourage

Christians, do not minimize those holy moments.

And in fact, as the Bible calls us too often, you need to

remember those. You need to hold that in your

memory bank. And when you feel low, when you

feel like man, I wonder where God's at, you need to pull those

memories forward because God constantly tells us in his word,

Remember, remember, remember, remember my faithfulness, you

know? And so like, if we don't earmark

those moments in our minds when God clearly shows up, God has a

right word for us through a person or, or whatever that

looks like. If we don't earmark those and

remember them constantly, we are going to get a little bit

despondent and we'll feel like, oh, I'm not getting the

experience that this person got or this person.

But again, that all rolls back to like, no, God's relationship

was with you. And you don't need to like worry

about what that looks like with other people necessarily.

Yeah. And I, so that's where kind of

the jump off for the message for me, if, if it was this

significant, if Paul's despair or frustration or discouragement

or whatever it might be, it was so significant that Jesus had to

step in and say, you're on, you're on the right course.

You got to keep going. I felt like we then as Christ

followers need to be on guard for similar situations like

where we don't see the results that we imagined or we don't see

the life change for the sake of Christ that we dreamt up,

whether whether it's in our lives or the lives of our family

or the live or whatever, whoever the people that we're

interacting with, the stranger that we randomly share the, the

gospel with. Because I've had I've had

interactions where I've I've, I've felt the prompting, I've

felt the push of the Holy Spirit to conditions were not perfect.

It's, it's not how I would have drawn it up or even with the

person that I that I would have drawn it up back in, in my early

20s, there was, there was a situation with a young guy who

was, I mean, had a tough life was it was looking for some

breaks. We were working at the same, we

were working at the same place and he would found out that he

was using, using some stuff on the job and the, and he was, he

got fired and, and all these things.

And I, I, I had to be the one to let him go actually.

And conditions were not perfect as I'm walking him out in the

parking lot out to his car. I had at the time, I kept little

like pocket Esvs with me in my in my backpack and I I gave him

the Bible and I said, I'm sorry that like the answers you were

looking for in life didn't didn't get answered at this job.

I promise the answers you really need aren't here.

And I gave him, I gave him a couple like I encourage him to

read John and and Proverbs were were like the two books that I

said, you should really pull, pull these out of here and ran

into them around town a few times around then and and kind

of kind of followed up. Come to find a few years later

that he he took his own life. I don't know.

I don't, I don't know where he wound up in his faith journey

after that. And I'm not, I'm not saying this

just to tout my own. It was, it was awkward.

It was as awkward and and uncomfortable as you can

imagine. It was not perfect.

I didn't I'm I'm recounting the story in a in a succinct form

and it sounds maybe direct and elegant.

It wasn't. I promise.

I was stumbling over words and I didn't know exactly what to say.

But ultimately, obviously, it didn't end up the way that I

drew it up it there there. I didn't experience the life

change in this guy that but as I said yesterday, I don't think

that's the point. I think the point was there were

there was a hurting soul in front of me and my heart broke

for him that he needed Jesus. I think that's ultimately what

we're called to in this. I don't need to be longing for

and and again, didn't receive feedback in that moment.

I did. I didn't I didn't step back in

my office and get a pat on the back from dude like yeah, you

did it. You you reached out to another

one. All right, good.

Like, yeah. But our faithfulness in that for

especially in in people's most broken moments to bring Jesus to

them. That and that's the that's the

attitude we see from Paul here. That was just that was the

message that was resounding on my heart this weekend that we

need to be guarded. We need, we need to not let the

results of our faithfulness be reflected in other people.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely.

Thank you for sharing that story.

That's incredible. And I hope for anybody that was,

by the way, my first time hearing that story.

Sorry. No, that's OK.

Drop that on. No, that's a, that's a big one.

But no, I, I, I hope as people have heard that story now that

you've said that, that, yeah, it did not have the ending that you

wanted, but man, you gave him something that nobody else did.

And what he did that with that, that's between him and God, as

we've talked about. But that's, that's our call to

faithfulness to to be ambassadors.

I can't help but reflect on the fact that in the in the Old

Testament, the Old Testament prophets, I can't remember,

maybe it's both Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

God just straight up says they're not going to listen to

you do it anyway. And, you know, it begs the

question, yeah, but if they're not going to listen to me, if,

if, if I can't control the results, then why am I doing it?

And that's a valid question to some extent, if you take God out

of the picture. But if you leave God in the

picture and you let him do what he does best, which is save

people, then you can remove yourself from that personal

weight of I didn't do my job. No, you did your job.

You were faithful to the call that God gave you and let him do

his job. And we don't exactly know what

that looks like in any given person's life.

But that's his job, not ours. Yeah, so that's the extra

thoughts on Acts 23 this week. Thanks for hanging out with us

for a little while longer. A couple Ask Me Anything

episodes coming up at the beginning of September.

We need your questions to fill that time.

You can e-mail them, connect at emmausrdonline.org, DM the

Facebook page, send them. That way you can text your

questions to 563-659-9444 or I mean you can.

If you have our numbers, you can text us too.

That's, that's fine. We'll put them in a put them in

a bin, put them in a dock and, and have them ready for the

show. So that'll be fun.

We'll enjoy doing that. This has been great.

Love this reflective time with you.

Feedback from the sermon, but also just some of the extra

things that we can touch on so. It's a ton of fun, I hope you

guys are enjoying it. Have a blessed week Church,

we'll catch you next time.