Paul States the Facts

Father, grant that by your grace none of us will be missing on that great day when in the wonder of your presence we may declare you as our Savior and Lord. And we pray that you will use the study of the Bible now in each of our lives. What we know not, teach us; what we have not, give us; what we are not, make us. For Jesus’ sake we ask it. Amen.

I invite you to turn again to the portion that was read for us by Pastor McAlvey—Acts chapter 21, beginning at the twenty-seventh verse.

Although it’s fairly trendy to debunk the value of studying history, each of us, if we’re honest, knows that studying history is both important and beneficial. One of the number of books that I’ve purchased in the last month or so is a book by a contemporary historian, A. N. Wilson, whom I think some of you may read, and he has just written a book that covers the period between the era of Queen Victoria—the birth of Queen Victoria—and my own birthday in 1952. He didn’t actually put my birthday on the book, but it just so happens that it ends right around ’52. And so I was intrigued by it, and I thought, “Well, it would be useful to learn just what was going on in terms of detail, the underpinnings, that gave rise to the era in which I, along with others, have enjoyed living.”

This, of course, is true to the pages of Scripture. Again and again reference is made to the past, classically in Joshua chapter 4, where the stones are set up in the river, you may recall, and as a result of the priests doing so, the word of God to them is “In the future when your children ask you ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you will be able to tell them that this was God, the covenant-keeping God, who saw his people safely through.”[1]

Now, all of that to simply remind us that what we’re doing here in the Acts of the Apostles is studying early church history. We are dealing with the period of time that emerges from Pentecost and proceeds into the second century. And, of course, you need to read beyond that if you’re going to follow the line through to the conversion of Constantine at the end of the third century and then into the Dark Ages and then the period of the Reformation and so on. But this is at least a beginning.

And Luke, you will perhaps have noted, takes a quarter of his second volume—his first volume being his Gospel, his second volume being the Acts—and he devotes a quarter of this second volume to this particular period of time as it relates to God’s servant Paul, the experiences he endures, and the speeches that he makes. Clearly, under God, it is of extreme importance. And that’s why we’re studying it. We’re going to try and get, this morning, all the way through to 22:29. I know that will make some of you smile immediately, but watch me. I can assure you it’s going to happen.

Now, last time we observed Paul doing the right thing. James had suggested to him that so as not to incur chaos within the framework of converted Jews, he should go through the purification rites with these four individuals. You’ll need to go back and rehearse that for yourselves, but you can find it there in the early part of this chapter. And despite the conciliatory gesture which Paul makes in doing this, his circumstances, we discover now, take a swift downturn, summarized in a phrase there in verse 31, if you let your eyes follow it: “They were trying to kill him.” “They were trying to kill him.” So immediately we should notice that the idea, which is a very contemporary idea, that if you want to get serious about God and really follow him and obey Jesus and love him and serve him, that everything in your life will go swimmingly, is actually debunked by what we discover here in the life of Paul. He does the very right thing, he does the very best thing, he does the thing that God expects him to do, and as a result, he finds himself on the receiving end of this animosity.

Now, notice, then, that we discover him, first of all, assaulted by some Asian Jews. Notice there in verse 27: “When the seven days were nearly over”—that’s reference, again, to the purification rites, which you can read about above—“some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple.”

Well, have these characters just popped up from nowhere? No, if you look at 20:19, you will discover that when he was in Ephesus, which he was for a period of some three years, he “served the Lord,” Luke tells us, “with great humility and with tears”; he “was severely tested by the plots of the Jews.” So within the context of Asia, as he taught the Bible, as he was engaged in speaking evangelistically, as he moved about the community, the Asian Jews plotted against him then. Presumably, a number of them have come up to Jerusalem for the feast periods. Seeing Paul within Jerusalem, they become the catalysts for the riot which ensues.

And if you just allow your eye to scan the text and look at some of the verbs, you’ll get the picture of it very quickly. There in verse 27: “They stirred up the whole crowd”—the idea of fomenting trouble. We talk about people spooning things or stirring things up—often animosity between people—or stirring up a ferment. And this is exactly what they were doing. And in the course of that, they seized Paul. And seizing him, they began to shout for the rest of the men of Israel to come to their aid. And as they enlist the support of others, they do so by making two accusations, both of which are false and both of which you can see right there in the text.

First of all, there in verse 28, they accused him of teaching “all men everywhere…” That’s a fairly comprehensive allegation, which incidentally speaks to the impact of Paul’s ministry: that he was reaching all men, and he was apparently reaching everywhere. He was committed to seeing the message of the gospel getting out as loudly and as broadly as he possibly could. So there was an accuracy about what is in some measure hyperbole, exaggeration. “He teaches all men everywhere against our people, against our law, and against our temple.” Now, that’s like a red rag to these Jewish people: “Against our people: he is attacking our nationalistic basis. He is attacking, if you like, our theological foundations. He is attacking our law, which frames our way of life. And he is apparently tackling and attacking our temple, which is the symbol of God’s presence and the expression of our devotion to him.”

So in one sense, we can understand just why it is that they would react so vociferously. But in actual fact, this was a half-truth—a half-truth which, Luke is gracious enough to tell us, came about not as a result of them wanting to foist on their colleagues a deliberate lie but which came about as a result of an assumption that they had been making. And that assumption takes us to the second point of accusation: not only is he teaching all men everywhere against the people, against the law, and against the temple—pointing to the fact that they misunderstood Jesus, they misunderstood Stephen, both of whom they killed, and now they misunderstood Paul, whom they are trying to kill—and added to that, “he has apparently,” they said, “brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.”

Now, we sit here this morning in the twenty-first century, and we say, “This is a bit of a storm in a teacup, isn’t it? I mean, can it be such a dreadful thing to bring Greek people into a territory where Jewish people are privileged to go?” Well, the answer to that is yes. And between the court of the Israelites, the court of the Jews, and what became known as the court of the gentiles or the outer court, there had been constructed a barricade—essentially, a four-and-half-foot wall—to prevent the gentiles from stepping into a place that they weren’t welcome. Actually, it was more than that. If they stepped in, it was at the penalty of their lives.

In the last 150 years, archaeologists have discovered some of the inscriptions that were attached at the entryway to the court of the Jews. The inscriptions read as follows: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade …. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.”[2] So, there was no way to wiggle out of it: “If you step your feet in here…” And Roman law actually permitted the annihilation of gentiles who violated this instruction, without any further form of trial or legal proceeding.

So it was a significant allegation, but it was wrong. It was a significant accusation, but it wasn’t true. It wasn’t a deliberate lie, but it was a lie, and it was based upon this false assumption. They had seen Paul with Trophimus. He was a gentile. They had seen him in the city. Not everybody would have been able to recognize Paul. But these individuals who came from Asia, from Ephesus, had seen him over a period of three years. They would have known him very, very well. And they had seen him around, moving around the city with this fellow who was a gentile. Now they see him in the temple courts with four men, none of whom they recognize. So somebody at some point presumably said, “I think one of those four men is Trophimus, the gentile.” And as a result of that, they are able to expand the extent of their riot to the point where Luke tells us that “the whole city … was in an uproar.”

A Failure of Integrity

Isn’t it interesting how quickly people believe lies, especially when they support their prejudices? If I am prejudiciously oriented, if someone comes up with a good piece of information which supports my prejudice, even if it is untrue, I may be inclined to include it in my portfolio of animosity. Maybe that’s just me; I don’t know.

But can we pause, then, and just note something here? I wrote in my notes, “n.b. [nota bene]: the impact of a failure of integrity.” In other words, look at what happens when people don’t tell the truth. If we are going to state what someone has done, it should not be what we suppose they have done. If we are going to say what someone believes, it should not be what we suppose they believe. And if as God’s people we would stick simply to the facts—simply to the facts—many slanderous accusations would be prevented.

If as God’s people we would stick simply to the facts—simply to the facts—many slanderous accusations would be prevented.

Now, unrelated to this study—in fact, preparing for this evening’s study, first at the university and then here—I was reading some of the work of E. J. Young, who was a twentieth-century Old Testament theologian. And interestingly—and I went back to it because I remembered it; I did the evening before I did the morning—when I was studying the morning and I got to this, I said, “Oh, that reminds me of what I read concerning the evening in the work by E. J. Young.” And E. J. Young was a colleague of Gresham Machen. Gresham Machen was a theological professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who left the seminary in order to be part of the faculty group which began Westminster Theological Seminary and endeavored to ground it on strong biblical lines. As a result of that, he was on the receiving end of all kinds of smears. And E. J. Young, just parenthetically, gives us this wonderful contemporary illustration.

He says, “They”—that is, his [antagonists]—“they could spread stories about him that were not true, and those stories are hard to live down. People are willing to believe the falsehood rather than the truth, and this is the way that Satan fights.” And then this is the sentence that had struck me earlier in the week, and I’d made a note of it as I read it. Listen to this sentence:

Here is a good practical rule for us as Christians: when somebody says something derogatory to you about someone else, just forget it. Do not believe it. It may be true; it may not be true. Whatever you do, do not spread it; do not repeat it. Gossip is a terrible thing. At times I think it one of the worst of sins. You can destroy a person’s character by gossip, and Satan delights in that. The gossip simply eats the bones of another person and destroys him.[3]

Now, isn’t that exactly what unfolds here as a result of two accusations emerging from the Asian Jews, one a half-truth and the other a flat-out lie, albeit based on a misunderstanding?

Now, as a result of that, we find Paul not simply accused or assaulted by these Asian Jews, but we find him arrested by some Roman soldiers. The soldiers were garrisoned immediately adjacent to these temple precincts. The castle of Antonia was right there, capable of holding hundreds of soldiers. There was a commander there, and he would have sentries looking out over the community so that someone would be able to give the alarm if there was any reason for military intervention. And so from this vantage point they could watch for any signs of disruption. And as a result of that, they would then dispatch a group of soldiers to clean up the problem.

And some of you will have seen this. I had never seen this, but I was at a sporting event in New York not so long ago with about another seventy-five thousand people, and all of a sudden, animosity broke out in the row just immediately in front of me. I can’t go into the details of it now, but it wasn’t particularly tasteful. And before very long, a group of individuals all arrived wearing the same shirts, identified as, I think, the security detail or whatever it was, and suddenly a group of individuals who had come to see the game were somewhere entirely different from what they had planned. And the group had just gone shum!, gathered them up in a little group, and escorted them out.

Now, that’s exactly what the group was doing from the castle of Antonia. The commander said, “Okay, we’ve got a problem down here. Let’s get the group all with the same shirts. Down we go, let’s handle it.” And they immediately go to the central issue—the central issue being this Paul fellow. And you will notice in verse 33 that they immediately arrest him. There’s no reading of the Miranda rights. They arrest him, they bind him “with two chains.” And then, in verse 33 still, then they “asked who he was and what he had done.” So, all of a sudden he’s manacled, he’s under control, and then the inquiry comes: “And by the way, how are you doing, who are you, and what’s going on here?” Actually, providentially, it’s the best thing that could have happened to him. Because they were trying to kill him. And the intervention of these soldiers, the arrest that took place, dealt with the assault that he was experiencing.

Now, the concern of the commander, Luke tells us in verse 34, is to “get at the truth.” And since he can’t “get at the truth because of the uproar,” he says to his troops, he says, “Let’s take Paul up into the barracks. Let’s get him out of all of this squabbling and shouting and so on.” And as a result of that, Paul is carried to safety, with the sound of the crowd chanting in his ears, “Away with him! Away with him!” They are going to escort him up the steps. Presumably, they start walking, and when they get into the hullabaloo of the event, someone says, “You know, I think we’re going to have to pick him up and put a cordon around him. Otherwise, they’re going to rip him right out of our custody.” And so that’s exactly what happens to him. And here’s the mighty apostle Paul, having responded to James, gone up to Jerusalem, “What do you think I ought to do, James?” “Why don’t you do the purification rites?” “Seems like a good idea to me.” “Go ahead and do it.” And now the place is in complete chaos, and he is being carried bodily up onto the steps of the castle. Here is the great evangelist.

Remember Paul, when he writes in 2 Corinthians, he says, “You know, God gave me a thorn in the flesh so that I wouldn’t get a fat head.”[4] And there were a number of times in Paul’s life where there were things happened to him that would make it very difficult for him to get a fat head. You remember in Damascus he preaches, and they don’t like what he said in Damascus, and so they let him down through the wall in a basket, and he has to run for his life.[5]

“Who’s that running?”

“Oh, that’s the mighty apostle Paul!”

“Did he just come down in a basket?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Hm, interesting. Not what I would have expected.”

“Who’s the fellow that they’re manhandling up the steps—the bloody, beaten mass of humanity?”

“Oh, that’s the apostle Paul.”

“Oh, you mean the one that serves Christ?”

“Yes!”

“But I thought if he served Christ like that, he would be in a limousine or something! He would be moving around always in a chariot.”

“Well, apparently not. I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s certainly him.”

And so he’s carried to safety, and the cries of the crowd will sound strangely familiar to some. There will be déjà vu for somebody older in the crowd, won’t they, as they hear themselves joining in—“Away with him! Away with him!”—and their minds going back twenty-seven years to Jerusalem again and to another about whom they said, “Away with him.”

The Art of Diplomacy

And so, taken into the custody and safety of the barracks region, having noted the impact of the absence of integrity, I made another little parenthetical note for myself. I wrote, “Note well the impact of the art of diplomacy.” The art of diplomacy.

Don’t you see the way in which Paul tackles the circumstances? Look at how he begins, verse 37: “May I say something to you?” And in verse 39: “Please let me speak to the people.” In other words, he doesn’t come on his high horse, does he? He doesn’t say, “Excuse me, sir, but do you know who I am? I am Saul of Tarsus, the mighty apostle Paul, and I deserve to be heard! In fact, I don’t deserve these chains. Get them off me!” No John McEnroe in this. No “You cannot be serious! What do you think you’re doing to me?” No. No, there’s a lesson here, isn’t there? Oh yes, there is a lesson here.

And it’s in this context that we find the second case of mistaken identity. First, remember, they assumed that one of the four was Trophimus, and they deduced from that that Paul had violated the law. Now we discover that the commander had made his own deduction on the basis of what he discovered, and he assumed that the fellow that he had his troops arrest was none other than this false prophet Egyptian character who’d been around in the last little while, camping out with his followers in Jerusalem, telling his followers that if they followed him all the walls of Jerusalem would fall down. And after a few sunrises and sunsets, a few of the troops began to get a little disappointed that the walls hadn’t come down. Some of them figured out the walls weren’t coming down, and eventually the soldiers came in and chased them for their lives, killing some of them. And the Egyptian leader, the false prophet, he ran off and hid somewhere. The commander says to himself, “I think it’s the Egyptian chap back again.”[6]

And when Paul addresses him in this diplomatic way, he says to him, “Oh, do you speak Greek? I thought you were the Egyptian chap.” “Paul answered,” verse 39, “‘Well, no, I’m actually a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia.’” Now, choose your own city, but this is like saying, “No, no, actually, I’m Scottish from Edinburgh. No mean city.” You know? “Could I please speak to the people?” See, once again, the commander had put two and two together and got five. Let’s beware of false deductions.

God Uses Roman Law

Now, as we move on—and we must—I made a further parenthetical note. And it was this: note that the institution of Roman law became the vehicle employed by God for the protection of his servant. Remember, the Bible teaches us that God has established government, that God has established the fabric and structure of human society, both within the framework of the nuclear family unit and then within the larger framework of the principles that undergird true democratic life, if you like. And Paul later, when he writes to the church at Rome, points out that these are the very principles upon which our societal life is framed.[7]

The Bible teaches us that God has established government, that God has established the fabric and structure of human society, both within the framework of the nuclear family unit and then within the larger framework of the principles that undergird true democratic life, if you like.

Sometimes I listen to Christians, and it sounds in listening to them as though somehow or another these things are tangential to the purposes of God—that if there’s going to be any great deliverance, it will be as a result of a small group of Christians getting together and agitating or a small group of Christians getting together and working outside of the system or beyond the system or whatever it might be. And here, classically, we discover that the very institution that God has set in place becomes the vehicle for the protection of his servant Paul. Government does what government is supposed to do, thus protecting Paul first from a lynching—they were trying to kill him—and secondly (and this is verses 22–29) from a flogging which was going to be the end of his day.[8]

Now, once he’s been provided with this strange pulpit—he’s there on the steps, we’re told in verse 40 (he “stood on the steps”)—he then “motioned to the crowd.”[9] I wonder what the motion was. Not really very important, but was it a sort of Shakespearean motion, you know? I mean, was there a standard “My liege, and madam…”?[10] Or did he just go, “Hey guys”? But can you believe they were quiet? You know, from screams to silence? Can you imagine the commander saying to himself under his breath, “Yeah, go on. Silence them. Yeah, go on, speak to them.” He couldn’t get them to shut up. One group was shouting one thing, one was shouting another; he couldn’t hear himself think. That’s why he had taken him into the proximity of the barracks, and he’d got him there so they could actually have a conversation. But the hullabaloo is out there. Don’t you think the commander must have said, “What is it about this man?” when he motions to the crowd? And he addresses them: “When they were all silent…” He doesn’t talk over the ruckus. He’s not shouting the odds. From screams to silence.

Now, notice his diplomacy again. Look at what we’re told by Luke: “He said to them in Aramaic.” That was the language of the street. That was the vernacular. In some senses, this would be the equivalent of somebody being accused by the nationalist cause in the south of Ireland of disrupting their nationalistic agenda for whatever it is they want, silencing those who are opposed to him on this front, and, as soon as he’s got them quiet, addressing them in Gaelic. Then they say, “He speaks Gaelic?” Now, the buzz must have gone through the crowd.

Do you see what a lesson there is, incidentally, just parenthetically, in the way in which we approach people, the way we speak to people? The wonderful way in which God had ordered his servant’s life: that he had the facility of Aramaic, that he had the facility of Greek. Oh, in growing up, he wouldn’t have paid much attention. His mother said, “Now, have you been doing your Aramaic homework?” “Well,” he said, “I don’t know if I have or I haven’t.” She said, “Well, it’s going to be very important one day, Paul. And have you been doing this? Have you been doing that?” Just the things that children deal with all the time, and in the providence of God molding his life in order that at strategic moments in time he may be able to do that for which he’s been placed on earth to do. God works in the same way in your life. Oh, you’re not necessarily the apostle Paul. I’m certainly not. But all of the way in which God has ordered your steps

And so, both by his use of language and by his phraseology, he establishes for them his Jewish roots. Because that was the big issue, wasn’t it? It was the whole Jewish factor. And so he begins strategically. He begins diplomatically. He begins sensibly. It would have been a silly thing for him to stand up and say, “Now, I know a number of you are concerned about Judaism. Let’s just put that to bed to begin with.” No! No, look at how he starts: “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”

Do you know your Bible? Do you know where that came? On whose lips was that last heard in the Acts of the Apostles, “Brothers and fathers, listen now to me”? Guess who said that? Stephen. Stephen. Was Paul there to hear it? Yes. Do you think he marveled at it? At such a beginning, such intimacy, such contact? “Brothers and fathers, listen to me!”[11] And now Paul steps up, with all of the hatred and animosity spewing out against him, and he uses the very same phraseology: “Brothers and fathers, listen now…” He doesn’t say “to me.” He says, “Listen now to my apologia, my apologetic.” “Listen now to my defense.”

Paul’s Defense

And what’s his defense? Let me summarize it, and we’ll be through. Since, incidentally, this is one of three places in Acts where we have essentially this material—Acts 9 and Acts 26, to which we’ll come—I think we can safely move through it fairly quickly now. Let me summarize it for you in outline form.

It’s tremendous help in just stating the facts. Don’t try and dress them up. Don’t flower them up. Don’t fiddle with them. Just state the facts.

When “they became very quiet,” he told them—verses 2–5—who he was and what he’d been: “You need to know that I’m a Jew. I was born in Tarsus, but actually, I was brought up in Jerusalem.” That’s big. That’s a point. That’s actually five right there. “I was taught by Gamaliel.” For the intellectuals among them, they’re going, “That is significant.” We’re talking Ivy League here. You see? He’s not being boastful. He’s simply stating the facts. Incidentally, let’s come back to that phrase: stating the facts, you know. It’s tremendous help in just stating the facts. Don’t try and dress them up. Don’t flower them up. Don’t fiddle with them. Just state the facts: “First of all, this is who I was, and this is what I did.” He tells how thoroughly zealous he was, even to the point of being involved in these dreadful events that brought prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. So he was able to say to them, essentially, “I know that you would like to punish me. I know you tried to beat me to death. And I can identify with that, because my life was just like that. I was involved in trying to beat people to death. That’s what I was.”

Then, in verses 6–16, he moves from what he was to what had happened, and he tells the story of his encounter with Jesus. He had been kicking against all the influences of Jesus. He’d been kicking in his mind—in his conscience, presumably—against the considerable impact of the death of Stephen. Surely there wasn’t a day in his life when he didn’t think about Stephen and what he had said and how he had said it and how he had faced death. And how on the Damascus Road he had had an encounter which was unique to him. His companions had seen the light; they didn’t hear the voice, they didn’t get the gist of it all. He’s led by the hand into Damascus because he has been blinded by the light, and then he is introduced to “a man named Ananias,” verse 12: “[He] came to see me.”

Now, notice again how skillful he is here. This is not politics. This is just common sense. You know, he says, “And I should just let you know that the fellow that came to see me was,” number one, “a devout observer of the law and highly respected among the Jews.” You see this? I think sometimes I get myself in so much trouble because I miss just the simple art of diplomacy. I miss the simple possibility of stating things as they are. That must have made an impact. He mentions it. Ananias had the right credentials.

You may be an Ananias to somebody, incidentally. You may already have been an Ananias to someone—Mrs. Ananias or Miss Ananias, Uncle Ananias; the person that God has put in the exact position for the exact moment to be the bridgehead between somebody who is there moving to there. Oh, there may not be any great record of it, at least in time, but don’t worry about that. Eternity is where the record matters.

So he told them, he said, “This is what I was.” Verses 6–16: “This is what happened to me. I essentially believed in Jesus. I discovered that he is the Messiah, that I had been turned against him, that all of my animosity and my religious zeal was nothing other than a self-focus. And I realized that I was unable to save myself or keep the law, and here this Jesus had actually perfectly kept the law and had died as the substitution, had died as a lamb in my place, the way I understood it in the Old Testament sacrifices. And I actually declared him as Lord and Savior. I was baptized.” That was Ananias again.

“And if you’re wondering what I’m doing now”—and that’s the third piece of his puzzle—“if you’re wondering what I’m doing now, this is what I’m doing now.” Verse 21: “Then the Lord said to me [at the end of all of this], ‘Go; [and] I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” “Obeying Jesus is what I’m doing now. I’m obeying Jesus. And that’s why I’m telling gentile people. I know you’re very concerned about this, but the reason I’m doing it is because God has a plan and a purpose for me. And I’m fulfilling that plan.”

Now, you will notice in verse 22 that “the crowd listened to Paul until he said this.” Soon as he got back to the gentiles, off they go again! And you will notice that from their perspective, he didn’t finish on a very strong note. Not a good idea to finish just here, Paul. His talk is not particularly well received. They raise their voices again; they began to shout, “Rid the earth of him!” And someone else shouted, “He’s not fit to live!” And someone else said, “Let’s just rip our cloaks off and throw them in the air.” Someone says, “Let’s grab the dust of the ground and hurl it into the air as an expression of our reaction to his blasphemy.”

We say, “That must be quite a finish, huh?” Well, at least it’s something, isn’t it? It’s much to be preferred to the polite glances of a twenty-first-century suburban congregation allowing the Bible to wash over them, apparently inconsequentially. That’s why I always have enjoyed speaking in the open air, because when you speak in the open air and you don’t have the framework around you and you say something, somebody shout back, “You’re full of hot air!” Immediately! And you have to say something like, “Yes, that’s the second time I heard that today—the first time from my wife. But let’s put that aside for now. I want to tell you something.” And so it goes on. I’m looking forward to the university context. I hope the questions are fierce. I hope they’re hard. I hope they’re honest. I hope they’re real, every one of them. And I’m sure I won’t be able to answer but 5 percent of them. But that’s okay! Because this is where we point people. We do not have the answers. The Bible has the answers.

And the animosity that meets Paul ends with the prospect of his flogging—verses 23 and following. And you will note there that again it is the fact of his Roman citizenship under God that protects him first of all from being lynched and secondly from being flogged.

Converted, Protected, and Directed

Now, just a word in conclusion. It’s very possible for somebody to read this along with me this morning and to say, “Well, you know, this is very interesting, but it’s so far away from me. It’s obviously unique to Paul and unique to his circumstances. I am not him, and I have never experienced anything like this at all, truly.” But on one level, what we have here is a classic illustration of how God works in the lives of men and women throughout all of time.

Number one, look at this: God changed Saul’s life. Saul of Tarsus was soundly converted. I wonder whether that phrase with which he begins his speech had not actually rested in his conscience—“Brothers and fathers, listen to me”—and how, you will remember, after the death of Stephen, he then went out and engaged in a fierce persecution of the church.[12] He was enraged by what Stephen said. Now he’s using the very same phraseology that Stephen used. Words that he previously hated because they got to his conscience he now employs because they express his conviction. He’s been converted. He has been changed. He has been radically altered.

And that’s your testimony, some of you, this morning. I know because you’ve told me: “I used to hate it when my spouse had that Bible at the breakfast table. And on the few occasions that I came to hear you, I thought you stunk! I still don’t think you’re that good, but I hated it. I went out in the car; my family were sick of hearing me explaining everything away. And those songs! Man did I hate those songs! And those superficial, cheery smiles of those con people in the corridors, I hated them too, every last smiling one of them! But now I’m smiling like them. Now I’m singing those songs. Now I’m reading that Bible. Now the words that I once hated have become mine. What’s happened?” Been converted! Something God does. God changed him.

Secondly, God protected him. He did so not by making everything super for him. In fact, when he began to follow Jesus, things became insuperably difficult. They became dangerous. They became downright life-threatening. And I’m glad, again, that the testimony of many of you is not that you have committed your life to a God who indulges you, to a God who just looks out for you and makes sure everything’s super, but you’ve committed yourself to a God who uses people and purposes to accomplish his circumstances. And often, as we discovered last Sunday morning, those purposes come down the line of deep-seated pain and significant questions, but still we put the puzzle together: life is hard, and God is good, and he protects his servant.

And finally, God not only changed his life and protected his life, but he directed his life. Oh, the cries of the people were “Away with him!” But God has the last word. It’s as though he said, “You can say ‘Away with him!’ as much as you like, but when I’m good and ready, I will send him, and I know where he’s going.” And that’s the story of many within our church: that where you are, the people you now meet, the places you now go, the plans you now seek to complete are directly related to the fact that God has changed you, God continues to protect you, and God is directing your life.

But I don’t think that’s true of everyone here. Is this your profile? Converted? Protected? Directed?

If God has been at work in your life over a period of time, however brief or long, using the influence of family or a colleague or a student friend, perhaps showing you your own impoverishment through failure, through disappointment, through the fact that you’ve been making a royal hash of things, or perhaps showing you up to just be an intellectual snob, showing you up to be somebody who’s so stuck on what they know and how they’re able to perform—perhaps it’s your body that’s your god, and you can powerlift more than anyone else around you, and that’s what floats your boat and allows you to throw the bag in the car and drive away. That’s where you are. And God has been showing you the futility of that—showing you that, as Paul discovered, you’ve been kicking against the influences of God: the cares of a friend, the note of a grandmother, the influence of a colleague, the invitation to an event. And if in the course of that you’ve discovered, as Paul discovered, that you’re actually in the wrong before God, and you’ve found that you can’t run from him, then why don’t you run to him? Why not run to him? There is no refuge from him, but there is refuge in him.

Pray with me, will you?

There may be someone here this morning who follows the line all the way down. They say to themself, “I can’t believe what happened here. This is my sermon. I’m just expecting him to read from my day planner next. How does he know all of this?” I don’t know anything at all. But God does. And you know that God has brought you to this day in order that you might somehow or another, as Paul did, cry out to him and become converted. And if you’re looking for a vehicle to help you in that end, maybe you’d like to say this little prayer in your heart as I read it for you now: “Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I’m weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed, but through you I’m more loved and accepted than I ever dared to hope.[13] I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment, and offering me forgiveness. I turn now from my sin and receive you as my Savior.”

And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy—to the only wise God our Savior be glory and majesty, dominion and power, world without end. Amen.

[1] Joshua 4:21–24 (paraphrased).

[2] Quoted in Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary: New Testament (Colorado Springs: Victor, 2001), 2:24.

[3] E. J. Young, In the Beginning: Genesis Chapters 1 to 3 and the Authority of Scripture (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 100–101.

[4] 2 Corinthians 12:7 (paraphrased).

[5] See Acts 9:23–25.

[6] John R. W. Stott, The Message of Acts: The Spirit, the Church and the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 346.

[7] See Romans 13:1–7.

[8] See Acts 22:22–29.

[9] Acts 20:41 (NIV 1984).

[10] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2.2.

[11] Acts 7:2 (NIV 1984).

[12] See Acts 8:1–3.

[13] Attributed to Jack Miller. See, for example, Katherine Leary Alsdorf, foreword to Every Good Endeavor, by Tim Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf (New York: Penguin, 2012), xix.