Nephew and Commander

Father, you know that in studying this week, once again I come to this narrative, and how hard it is—it seems so repetitive—and how I’ve asked for your help. And now I ask for it again, not now to study the material but to deliver it. And together we ask for your help, that beyond the voice of mere humanity we might hear your voice, we might learn truth from your Word about who we are and about who you are, the living God, and about how you operate in our world and what you plan to do. And then, if it please you, will you bring our lives into line with the truth that you convey? For we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

During the summer, I went back to one of my boyhood haunts at Sterling University in Scotland—Sterling Castle, actually, not the university. The university wasn’t there when I was a boy, but you look down on it from the castle and from Wallace’s Monument. And as I stood there in the company of loved ones, I was reminded of how when I was tiny and there was still a barracks in Sterling Castle, I would go there of a morning, and when the soldiers came out to march on the esplanade, then I would march alongside them. I suppose deep down I thought I’d like to be one of them. I never got to be one of them. I’ve never been a soldier or a sailor or an airman. I’ve never enjoyed that privilege. But I have respected and still respect those who have and those who do.

And in being fascinated by all of that, and particularly by the Second World War, I have gravitated frequently towards war movies and war books. And so, right up there amongst them is, of course, Bridge on the River Kwai—and who can think of that movie without thinking of Guinness and some of those others in those great displays? And in the course of that, there are all these troop movements. Of course, we know that it’s all fabricated. We know there’s cameras and microphones and everything around. But they create this wonderful illusion of the troops moving inexorably towards their next destination. And with the movement of the troops, the response of the community—“Who’s part of this group, and where are they going, and what they’re doing?”—because, after all, the occupation and the occupied territories were intrigued by what would happen and what the eventuality would be.

And that has been true, I guess, throughout the history of warfare. And certainly when you think about the movements of troops even today, even when they’re on patrol and are doing reconnaissance missions and have no armaments with them, there’s still something very striking about coming on a convoy of the military and saying to yourself, “I wonder what they’re doing, and I wonder where they’re going.”

I mention all of that because when you take the little section that was read and the piece which follows it, we’re introduced to a significant movement of troops. They’re moving from Jerusalem eventually to Caesarea. They have a stop along the way, as we will see. And in order to catch something of the humanity of it and the flavor of it, we need to recognize that men and women whose homes were along the route of travel would in the evening hours—and remember, they’re moving under the cover of darkness, as we’re told—they would in the evening hours hear these troops going along. They would hear the cavalry. They would hear the horses. They would perhaps pull back the blinds and look out and say to themselves, “This seems to be a tremendous amount of personnel. I wonder what they’re doing. I wonder where they’re going.” And, of course, they would eventually be able to answer the question, because the word would spill out, as it inevitably does. Somebody would find out in the morning, when they meet one another at the market: “Did you hear all those troops going through last night?”

“Yes, where were they going? I heard some of them coming back in the opposite direction later.”

“Oh yes, they did.”

“Well, why was that?”

“Well, they split up at Antipatris, and the main foot soldiers came back, and the cavalry and a few others went on.”

“What were they doing?”

“Oh, I don’t know, something about a guy, a Roman citizen, a Jewish rabble-rouser, somebody causing trouble. I believe his name is Paul. He was known as Saul of Tarsus.”

And that’s the way the information would have gone around the community.

And here Luke tells us that when we consider what was going on, from one perspective it was simply that: just the movement of troops. They were conveying a prisoner to his destination. It happens every day, all day. It happens around us in the community here. You see not troops, but you see personnel being moved in carriers, and they’re going as prisoners to their destination.

But Luke also is careful to point out that from one perspective, it is simply the movement of a man, but from another perspective, it is God fulfilling his purposes for his servant. He had made a promise to Paul that he would go to Rome, and here it is that this first part of his journey is unfolding now. And the significance of Paul going to Rome, we’re going to discover, is even beyond that insight.

So, what is happening? A prisoner is being moved. What is happening? God is fulfilling his purpose. What is happening? God is actually accomplishing the purpose that has been established in eternity to put together a company that no one can number from every nation and people and language and tribe and tongue[1]—that the unfolding drama that is involved in the movement of this particular prisoner is actually far more than it initially seems.

Now, I mention that this morning because our view of history says a tremendous amount about us. The way in which we read history and the way in which we give explanation of history says a lot about the way in which we think concerning far more than history. And there is a distinctly Christian way to view the unfolding drama of world history. And unless we think Christianly about the drama of world history, we may be caught up in the sadness and disappointment of immediate events, we may be tyrannized and horribly fearful of future events, we may completely misinterpret what has taken place in past events. But when we learn to view the unfolding story of history from the perspective of the Bible, then it saves us from undue distraction, it saves us from being overwhelmed, it saves us from being so preoccupied by our own little personal histories that we just can’t see much beyond ourselves. And some people have got no view of history at all, because their world is bounded by themselves—like Edith. Remember Edith, who said of Edith, “Edith’s little world was bounded on the north and south and east and west by Edith”? It was all about Edith, how it related to Edith. And she never really viewed anything much beyond the parameters of her own influences and concerns. Well, the Christian can’t operate like that. But nor should the Christian be overwhelmed by the things that are part and parcel of the story of our world.

Now, this morning there is much before us. If you take just our own country: I was in Washington for three days this week, and in the context of Washington, a great deal of the buzz was directly related to the ratings of the present President, to the question of the Supreme Court nominations, and everywhere one went, people had a view and a concept of it and so on. And some were gravely concerned, and some were elated, and everything else, and it’s possible to be caught up in all of that drama.

But eventually what I did was I just stood away back from it all. Way back from it all. Actually, I saw a cup on my desk that had the Bayeux Tapestry on it, which took me back to the eleventh century, to 1066 and the Battle of Hastings and so on, and I said, “Well, imagine that all that time ago.” And then I said, “And think about all that yet awaits us.” And then I said, “And think about the fact that the pivotal event of human history is the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.” And then I said, “Now I can put everything within the framework of that great unfolding drama.” And my friends, let me say to you that unless as Christians we learn both to be engaged in the events of history and at the same time to be distanced from them so as to understand where a piece may fit or may not fit, then we fail to live and act Christianly.

Now, what I want to show you is that from verse 11 to verse 12, the comfort that was provided in the night hours for Paul was entirely appropriate and right on cue. Remember, we ended last time by noticing that “the Lord stood near Paul” and gave him a word of encouragement—“Take courage!”[2]—and also instructed him concerning his future. And he had his word to go on. The Lord had promised him that he was going to testify in Rome.

But that word of comfort that he received in the evening did not issue in a morning of tranquility. It did not issue in a day where everything started to go swimmingly well. I was thinking about this again this week in the singing of the song “How Great Thou Art.” And I thought, “I don’t know that I’m really keen on the verse ‘When through the woods and forest glades I wander and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees…’”[3] Now, don’t misunderstand me. It’s a good verse. But I was thinking we probably need another verse that counterbalances that. So, it’s something like

When through the skies in stormy flights I wander,
And hear the thunder peal around my head,
And see the lightning flash,
And think about the fact that I may crash,
Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:
How great thou art!

In other words, the refrain is easy “when through the woods and forest glades…” But how much of your time do you spend in the woods and the forest glades? What are you, a fairy, an elf, or something? You don’t spend much of your time there. It’s not that it’s a bad hymn. I’m not suggesting that—someone’ll write to me—but it just struck me this week: that’s an easy refrain from that verse to there. It’s a harder thing to convince ourselves of the nature of the wonder of God’s sovereign purpose when it’s not the experience of sunshine and woodland, but it is the experience of heartache and difficulty.

So the word of comfort is more than matched by the challenge that the new day brings. And we saw last time that Paul is God’s man. By some measure, he is a great man. But we also notice that he is not Superman, that he is heading for heaven the way you and I are heading for heaven: “through many dangers, toils, and snares.”[4] And before the day is over, he’s going to be making a familiar journey. Back in 21, we learned of how he went from Caesarea to Jerusalem. Here in 23, we’re going to discover how he goes from Jerusalem to Caesarea. His life, like your life and mine, was a series of comings and goings. All of our lives are about comings and goings. Sometimes you say to somebody as you’re walking in a crowd and trying to get in a doorway, “What are you doing? Are you coming or going?” And often the answer is “I don’t know.” And sometime that is emblematic of the larger issue of people’s lives.

It’s a harder thing to convince ourselves of the nature of the wonder of God’s sovereign purpose when it’s not the experience of sunshine and woodland, but it is the experience of heartache and difficulty.

The story of your life and mine is ultimately the story of coming and of going. We have come, and one day we will go. And all of our comings and all of our goings are ultimately preparations for our last great going. In the Songs of Ascent, the psalms that were sung as the Hebrew people made their aliyah, made their pilgrimage up to Jerusalem, they sang going up to Jerusalem, and one of the psalms that they sang, Psalm 121, was

I lift … my eyes to the hills—
 where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
 the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot [be moved][5]

and so on. And then it wraps: “And the Lord will watch over your coming and your going from this time forth, and even forevermore.”[6]

Now, Paul would have known that psalm. Maybe he took that psalm to himself as a reminder when he realized that as this day opened up before him, he was now up and out and on his way again.

Opposition

Now, I wrote three words down. Hopefully they’re helpful to you. I won’t spend too long on them. I just first of all wrote down the word opposition. It’s not difficult to get opposition out of verses 12–15. You’ll notice in the first five or six or seven words, we have the word “conspiracy.” And we recognize that Paul here, while he is, if you like, having his porridge, the Jews are hatching a plot. Of course, I don’t know that he had porridge, but I think if he could have had porridge, he would have had porridge. And as he begins his day, then, unbeknown to him, a group of about forty men or so are hatching a plot.

Now, of course, the plotting of the Jews we’ve become familiar with, haven’t we? Back in Acts chapter 9, when he is first converted, very, very quickly he’s on the receiving end of the hatred of the Jews. He who had once been the persecutor of the Christians has now become a Christian, and suddenly the tables are turned. We saw the same in Acts chapter 20: that he had been opposed by the Jews when he was in Ephesus. The Asian Jews were in opposition to him. In Acts chapter 21, we discovered that some of those Jews from Asia had shown up in Jerusalem, perhaps for the feast, and they were the ones who had begun the persecution against him. They were the ones who’d begun to say, “He’s opposed to the people of God, he’s opposed to the law of God, he’s opposed to the temple of God; he’s sacrilegious in all he does.” And that was what had given rise to this punctuated experience of being in and out of custody.

Now, when we come to this section, we discover that Paul’s opponents are frustrated by their inability to execute their plan, which was, of course, nothing other than to execute Paul. And so they recognize when they get together—they conspire together—that if they’re going to be able to kill him, they need to get him out of the barracks and onto the street. Perhaps on one of those narrow passageways coming up through Jerusalem, a crowd will be able to get around, one of them will be able to slip up in the middle of the crowd and take him out, and the whole crowd can scatter, leaving only a bloody mess lying in the street. Those of you who like Julius Caesar are familiar with these pictures, and as you read this, you may find yourself shouting out, “Beware the Ides of March!”[7]—you know, “Just be careful,” as you look over Paul’s shoulder.

But that was their plan. Their numbers were such that they could take comfort in the company of others who were equally vindictive, equally bad. They recognized that their conspiracy would not work absent the complicity of the chief priests and the elders there in verse 14, and so they go and seek to involve them in their plot, having already taken an oath not to eat or drink until they called Paul. They used that information as leverage. And in verse 15, they give the directive to the Sanhedrin and to these elders of the people: “Why don’t you send a petition to the commander to bring him”—that is, Paul—“before you on account of the pretext of wanting more accurate information about his case? We want to get him out on the street, where we can kill him. Why don’t you say we want to have a follow-up to the previous trial,” or pseudo trial, “and when we get him out there, we will be able to finally bump him off? We are ready to kill him before he gets here.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it? In fact, it’s very striking, the animosity and the hatred that is directed against Paul. First of all, remember, this was a trumped-up charge. Paul was not doing any of the things they said. He had not taken gentiles into the court of the Jews. He was explaining that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament law. He was working his very hardest to let it be known that when it came to his Jewish roots, when it came to his heritage, he was proud of his heritage, he was thankful for his heritage, and he identified himself as fully as he possibly could with his own people. He was later to write of how his heart was breaking that his own people might come to understand the truth of the Messiah Jesus.[8] So all of their animosity was on the basis of their duplicity, was on the basis of trumped-up nonsense. So why do they hate him so much? Why did they have to kill him?

Now, it’s the same question that you have in mind when you watch Jesus go to Jerusalem, isn’t it? “What has this man done?” That’s the question that Pilate asks: “I can find no fault in him. What are you folks on about? What’s the drama here? Why are you so opposed to him?”[9]

Now, again, our view of history is directly affected by the answer that we give to that question. It’s not time for us to tease it out, but I’ll just draw your attention to a phrase that you’ll find in 2 Thessalonians 2:7, if you care to look it up for homework. And there Paul talks about “the secret power of lawlessness” being “already at work.” He says, “The secret power of lawlessness is already at work.” He’s writing concerning the end of time. He’s writing concerning the events that will precede the return of Jesus in power and in glory. And he says, “Although I’m writing about stuff that’s in the future, I want to tell you that the secret power of lawlessness is already at work.”

I thought about that in the last few days, when I was in the company of a number of clergymen. And as I drove with my wife in the car, I said, “Why would a clergyman ever be a clergyman if he doesn’t believe what it is that’s written in the Bible?” I said, “Why does anybody do that?” I mean, why be a golf instructor if you don’t love golf and you don’t want to teach the elementary principles of golf? If you think it’s the silliest game you ever encountered, have the courage of your convictions and announce it from the rooftops. But don’t take people’s money from them, and don’t waste their time fiddling around. Why would a clergyman who does not believe in the authority of Scripture, does not believe in the exclusive claims of Jesus of Nazareth, does not believe in the personal, bodily return of Jesus in power and great glory, why would he ever be a clergyman? Answer: 2 Thessalonians 2:7. “The secret power of lawlessness is already at work.” When you cross-reference that with Matthew chapter 24 and what Jesus says about the end times, remember he says that there will be people who will be so masterful at their deceit that they would be able to deceive even the elect of God if they could.[10] That’s how good they are.

Now, all of that to point this out: that the reason for the vehement disregard of Paul and the design to have him killed can only ultimately be understood in relationship to his union with the Lord Jesus Christ. They hated Paul because they hate Christ. Well, they won’t come out and say it, necessarily, but that’s the truth: “Who does this man think he is? Who does he think he is to make these exclusive claims? We hate that, and we hate him. What we like is the kind of religion that has no exclusive claims. What we like is the kind of spiritual idea that simply says, ‘All is one, and we are one, and we are all, and we are all together.’ You know, kinda followed by the refrain, ‘Goo goo g’joob, goo goo g’joob.’”[11] That kind of notion, which I was listening to at about 5:40 this morning on a radio station I didn’t even know I could tune in, called 88.1, I think it was. I don’t know where I got it from. But as I drove in my car, I said to myself, “Isn’t this unbelievable hogwash that I’m listening to right now?” But I said, “You know, the average person in greater Cleveland will eat this by the spoon load. They will not take what the Bible says.”

And today, in Laos, in Vietnam, North Korea, China, Egypt, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia—to name just the first few that come to mind—those like yourself and myself who are prepared to stand in the footsteps of Christ are suffering persecution. And it’s not because they’re bad people. It’s because they’re Jesus people. And the fact that we do not experience this in that kind of vehement fashion now ought not to be, in the unfolding story of history, some great measure of security for us. For who knows what another two hundred years of American history will bring in relationship to the church?

But for the time being, we ought to at least encourage our young people to understand that if they’re prepared to take and nail their colors to the mast for Christ, then they will at some level experience persecution. “Oh, you’re not telling me you believe in moral purity, do you?” “Yes, I do.” “Why? “’Cause Jesus said so.” “Oh, really?” And you can trace that all the way down the line.

The challenge of some of you who are scientists, facing the inevitable persecution that comes because of your willingness to interact with the biblical material concerning the origins of the universe. And people say, “You know, I thought you were much brighter than that. I didn’t realize what an idiot you were, believing that nonsense.” Well, you say to the person, “But you’ve got to understand that if Jesus is the person he claimed to be and I am a follower of Jesus, then Jesus’ view of the Bible has to be my view of the Bible. I don’t have an option about having a different view of the Bible. If Jesus is Lord, then I have no legitimate right to believe anything other than what he told me to believe. If Jesus is Lord, then I have no right to behave in any other way than he told me to behave. If Jesus is Lord, then I have no prerogative to decide where I’m going to belong except where Jesus said I’m to belong.”

Now, Paul of all people understood this. Because when he went down the Damascus Road with letters from the authorities, with the same complicity, from the same people, in order to stamp out this fledging sect—the followers of Jesus, the few that remained—and he encountered the risen Jesus, remember, the great mystery to him was to hear the voice of Jesus saying, “Why are you persecuting me?”[12] And Paul’s answer would have been, “I’m not persecuting you. I’m persecuting these people.” He didn’t understand that these people were being persecuted because they were in Christ. And the secret power of lawlessness is unleashed against Jesus.

I mean, I was with people this week, and in the course of conversation, we talked about the argument for intelligent design and the desire to have intelligent design being taught in the schools. And, of course, the most striking thing of all is that although the Christian is rejected as being this horrible, rabid fundamentalist, actually, the fundamentalists are the Darwinians who refuse to allow any other view to be taught. That’s fundamentalism. I say, “Go ahead and teach whatever you want to teach. Just acknowledge the fact that what you’re teaching is a theory, and why don’t you—and since you believe this to be a collection of religious mumbo-jumbo, I don’t know why you’re afraid of it in the first place—but why don’t you allow somebody just to explain the Bible’s view of origins? Why such hatred? Why such opposition? Why such vehemence?”

“The secret power of lawlessness is already at work.” That’s the source of opposition. That’s why when Jesus said, “Blessed are [you], when men shall … persecute you, and … say all manner of evil against you falsely,” it doesn’t finish there. He says, “falsely, for my sake.”[13] Some of us are just obnoxious in and of ourselves. But it is to be as we’re tied to Christ.

Intervention

Well, intervention is the second word, and the last word, actually. Opposition and then intervention. Look at where the intervention comes from in verse 16. This verse should arouse everybody’s curiosity: the introduction to a member of Paul’s family. Some of us never even thought of Paul having a family. Certainly, there’s no record of his immediate family. This is the only time that Luke mentions anybody in Paul’s immediate family. And we’re introduced to the fact of his sister and his nephew. And the significance of this little lad’s appearance is found in the fact that he is a necessary link in the chain of God’s providence. It goes from the nephew to Paul to the centurion to the commander and from the commander eventually to the governor.

Now, I know that your curiosity will allow you to sit and think about this for a while. Most of it we should just move on from fairly quickly, but you have to say to yourself, “How did he learn about this plot? How did the wee boy find out about this?” Maybe Paul’s sister was soft towards him. Maybe he had a couple of brothers who hated him. Maybe some of his immediate family were involved in the forty-plus who were setting out to destroy him. We don’t know. Maybe it leaked down that way to the boy. Maybe he was just like the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, and he was always around, and he was always listening, and there was a little conspiracy there in the corner of the marketplace; he would sidle over and see what was going on. It might be worth a few shekels to get some information and be able to pass it down the line. Who knows? But when he finds out what’s happening, we should observe the wonder of his initiative and of his candor and realize that when he goes to his uncle, he goes under the direction of God’s providence, whether he recognizes it or not.

And how Paul must have been glad of the arrival of his nephew! “What are you doing here?” he must have said initially. Perhaps he hadn’t seen him for a while. It may be that he’d never seen him. We don’t know. But I like the fact that Paul immediately took the word from the boy, called the centurion, and put the wheels in motion, recognizing that God had supplied a remedy for his predicament—that God was protecting his life yet again, but he wasn’t doing so by reaching out from heaven in some sort of melodramatic fashion.

And some people are real big on that, aren’t they? Some of you are here today, and you love that. You love stories that are all about how God, you know, did something in a way that nobody could understand and nobody could explain. You think somehow that’s what really makes God look good. And God can do that if he chooses, but by and large, God doesn’t do that, does he? He works through very ordinary means, very simple means. And Paul, if he’d been interested only in some kind of miraculous intervention from heaven, he would have sent his nephew scampering. But he doesn’t. Because Paul recognizes, too, that God works in the little things of life, works, if you like, in the little people of life. And he intervenes here by means of an unknown boy.

His intervention is also by means of a peculiarly courteous commander. If you look at verse 19, it’s quite striking too, isn’t it? The centurion has taken the boy to the commander, and “the commander took the young man by the hand, [and] drew him aside and [said], ‘What is it you want to tell me?’” Now, the commentators are all over the place trying to work out what age the nephew is. Which is, again… It’s a worthless exercise, because we don’t know. But by inference, I don’t think he was a teenager. Certainly not in his high teens. I’ve watched enough movies, again, to think that, you know, a big, tough commander in the Roman army’s not going, “Well, come along, let’s just go over here and see what…”

Paul recognizes that God works in the little things of life, in the little people of life.

No, I don’t think so. He might do it with a little lad. I mean, I might be prepared to go out here and take the pudgy little paw of a guy who’s seven, eight, or nine years old, but I’m not going to go out here, start holding hands with a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old teenage boy coming down the corridor. He’s going, “Wait a minute. No, no, no, no, no.” But the pudgy paw of a wee one, you might. So I get the impression that he takes his pudgy paw, and he says, “Well, what is it?” The guy says, “Well, the Jews are doing a thing, and they’re trying, and they’re” so on; he says, “Thank you for sharing that, and I want you to go home, and don’t tell anybody you told me.” See, that appeals to a little boy: “I got a secret.” Running back through the marketplace: “Not telling, not telling, I’m not telling anyone. Not telling anyone.”

The intervention comes through an unknown boy, through a courteous commander, and through troops doing what they were told. Troops doing what they were told. This fellow puts together a letter—super letter, quite honest, but not entirely so. It has a self-centered element in it. If you read it carefully, you will notice that he rearranges history just a little—casts himself in a better light vis-à-vis the Roman citizenship of Paul. When you read the letter, he gives the impression that he discovered that he was a Roman citizen, and therefore, he intervened in that way. What he doesn’t say is that he discovered he was a Roman citizen when he had him all strapped out on the bench for a jolly good flogging. He manages not to mention that. But we understand that. You don’t have to put everything in, certainly not if you’re writing to “His Excellency, [the] Governor Felix,”[14] whom we will meet next time. So the soldiers carried out their orders. They became the means of Paul’s safe conveyance. He takes—the governor, that is—into his custody; he’ll hear the case as soon as the accusers arrive.

Now, I mentioned this to you before, but let me just point it out again, and I’ll say two things and we’re through. Consider again how the commitment of the Romans to law and order preserved Paul’s life. Consider how the Romans’ commitment to jurisprudence, to doing the right thing, saved his life. On four separate occasions between 21:32 and where we are now, it is the very fact of the Roman system of government and their commitment to excellence and their commitment to integrity that prevented Paul from being on the receiving end of the animosity and hatred of the Jewish people. “God moves in … mysterious way[s] his wonders to perform,”[15] yes, but he also moves along the lines that he has set in motion. That’s why the institutions of government and family and all the other elements that make up life are not insignificant to the Christian. And to have a Christian mind in relationship to history is to have a Christian mind in relationship to the institutions that God has put within the fabric and framework of society. We could say more about that, but our time is gone.

And notice this, finally: that in the middle of the hostility of his own people that is marked by this conspiracy, which is coming at him from the one side, and the relative safety and security that is provided as a result of the Roman’s intervention—in between these two polar forces you find Paul. “Well,” you say, “yes, what’s your point?” Well, you find Paul: a great man, God’s man, but not Superman. He’s not free to go where he wants to go, he’s unarmed, he’s trapped, and he’s completely vulnerable. And you look down at his feet as he’s standing there and say, “You know, I’m going to have to cut my toenails here before long; they’re sticking way out of my sandals.” In other words, he’s just a guy. He’s the apostle, he’s God’s man, but he’s a man!

Are you listening, men? Do you ever get scared? Do you ever get fearful? Have I ever been trapped on the receiving end of a plot to kill me, vulnerable before protection on one hand and animosity on the other? Not as far as I know.

And in the midst of all of that, we discover that God’s plans and purposes will not be thwarted, that God uses unexpected means to save his servant, to save his servants. And as difficult as it is to work our way through this narrative—because there is so much that is repetitive in it, and there’s nothing that is peculiarly didactic. I mean, it’s not like working through an epistle, where he’s saying, “And do this, and do that, and do the next thing, and do the next thing.” We’re just reading this unfolding story. “And then he went there, and then they said that, and then they said the next thing.” If it’s hard to listen to, it’s not easy to preach. I mean, in one sense, I can’t wait to get to chapter 28, and you’re probably even keener than I am.

But here’s the deal: don’t miss the obvious. In looking for the peculiar, don’t miss the low-hanging fruit. Who would have thought that a little boy would uncover the plot? Who would have thought that a Roman soldier would be so courteous and so kind? “Who would’ve thought that a Lamb [would] rescue the souls of men?”[16] Who would have thought that God would set his love upon me, his love upon you, to reach his world with the good news? Who would have thought? But he does, and he has, and he will.

Father, thank you for the Bible. Thank you for your grace and goodness to Paul. Thank you for the example of his fortitude and his courage. Thank you for the reminder that you work in the framework of our culture, using the structures that you’ve established, even as surely as you used them to protect Paul from the hatred and animosity of his enemies.

Thank you that you pick up unnamed and faceless people, even little ones, and use them to fulfill your plan. We think of the story of the feeding of the five thousand and the boy who was there. We don’t know his name, we don’t know where he came from, we don’t know anything apart from the fact that you showed how magnificent you are by taking what he had to offer and using it to display your power on that day.[17]

Thank you for displaying your power in these circumstances that we’ve considered today. And when we find ourselves under the challenge of the scrutiny of those who are opposed to the gospel, we ask that we might have the necessary grace and encouragement to stand firm; that we might arise in the way that we sang just a moment or two ago; that the church of God might be like a mighty army—not a bunch of wimps, not a bunch of folks running for cover or seeking only to be identified by what we don’t know and what we don’t believe and what we don’t like. But rather, Lord, fill us up with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Send us out in your power that we may have conviction and clarity in what we say, and that you will give us a genuine sense of compassion for those who are not like us, for those who do not believe—indeed, for those who are opposed to us.

May the grace and mercy and peace of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit rest upon each one, now and forevermore. Amen.

[1] See Revelation 7:9.

[2] Acts 23:11 (NIV 1984).

[3] Stuart K. Hine, “How Great Thou Art” (1949).

[4] John Newton, “Amazing Grace” (1779).

[5] Psalm 121:1–3 (NIV 1984).

[6] Psalm 121:8 (paraphrased).

[7] William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1.2.

[8] See Romans 9:1–3.

[9] Matthew 27:23 (paraphrased).

[10] See Matthew 24:24.

[11] Paul McCartney and John Lennon, “I Am the Walrus” (1967).

[12] Acts 9:4 (paraphrased).

[13] Matthew 5:11 (KJV). Emphasis added.

[14] Acts 23:26 (NIV 1984).

[15] William Cowper, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774).

[16] Dawn Rodgers and Eric Wyse, “Wonderful, Merciful Savior” (1989).

[17] See John 6:9.