Acts 23-24 (March 17, 2024)

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FBC Travelers Rest sermon from March 17, 2024 by Pastor Rhett Burns.

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We can open up the Bibles to the end of Acts 22. We left off there, went through verse 29 last week, so we'll pick up in verse 30.
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And then we're going to go through chapters 23 and 24. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we're kind of picking up the pace here at the end of the book of Acts.
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And the reason we're doing that is because there's some larger narrative section stories here at the end of the book of Acts that we just don't want to break up too much.
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And so you'll remember from chapters 21 and 22 last week that Paul, he kind of landed in hot water.
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He had landed in some trouble. He was seized in the temple. He was beaten by the Jews who had taken him there.
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The Romans saw and came and rescued him from that melee, but they kept him in custody.
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And as they were about to scourge him, they stopped upon learning about his
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Roman citizenship. And that's where we pick up in verse 30, Paul had made a speech to the
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Jewish crowd when he got to the point where he talked about Christ sending him to the Gentiles. That's when the mob broke out, when he's taken again by the
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Romans. And we pick up in verse 30 of chapter 22, when the next day, because he wanted to know for certain why he was accused by the
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Jews, he released him from his bonds, commanded the chief priests and all the council to appear and brought
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Paul down and set him before them. And so he, Paul is being set before the
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Sanhedrin. This is the council of political and religious leaders in Jerusalem. And he is before them.
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Now before we get into this story of what happens, I want us, I want to set it up for us just a bit by remembering that life, life is full of conflict between good and evil.
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It's been this way ever since the Garden of Eden, since it was pronounced that there would be enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpents.
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Now life is many things. There are many delights in life. There are many moments of respite, many moments of pure joy, but life is also war.
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It is war against our own sins, war against our own temptations. It's war against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, as first John 2 tells us, but also life is the war between good and evil, between the seed of the woman, which is
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Jesus Christ, the God -man, between him and that usurper, serpent,
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Satan, the devil, that old dragon. And being on the side of righteousness, being on the side of Jesus Christ, being on the side of the seed of the woman, will often lay in Christians, like Paul here in the latter chapters of Acts, will often lay in Christians in hot water, in conflict.
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2 Timothy 3 .12 says this, Yes, and all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
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John 15, Jesus said it this way, If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.
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If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
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Remember the word that I said to you. A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.
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These are the words of Christ to us. Now many Christians, we don't like these verses. We haven't seriously considered them and what they mean and what
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Jesus is promising to one who follows Christ in a hostile world. What Paul is promising us who follow
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Christ in a hostile world. Many Christians being conflict diverse, we're easily steered towards compromise.
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Anything to avoid the conflict and any resultant hardship or suffering or persecution or even just a little bit of push back.
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We want to avoid that. Now I say that very much understanding it. I don't really particularly like hardship either.
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There's a reason that bad guys use persecution. That's because people don't like pain. People don't like pain whether it's physical or emotional or relational.
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So they bend, compromise. Now I don't believe Christians ought to go out looking for trouble.
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We're not to seek out suffering and persecution, but neither are we to be surprised by it.
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Because the Bible tells us, we just read it, the Bible tells us to expect it. And so we can't take a posture of trying to avoid conflict at all costs or avoid hardship or avoid pain at all costs.
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Jesus didn't, Peter didn't, Paul didn't, and Christians down through the ages throughout church history didn't either.
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And so what I want us to do is we go through chapters 23 and 24. I want us to learn from Paul for when conflict comes for us.
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I want us to see some lessons for when conflict comes for us or even if it doesn't come for you personally, when it comes to someone else in the church, it comes to another
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Christian that you know. You know how to pray for them. You know how to support them and uphold them in that moment.
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Let's begin by reading 23 .1. Then Paul, looking earnestly at the council, said, Men and brethren,
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I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day. That's lesson number one.
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Be of good conscience. Have a good, clean conscience. Paul said that he had lived in all good conscience before God.
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Later in verse 16 of chapter 24, he will declare that I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense towards God and men.
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Paul seeks to have and has a clean conscience. Jesus told the disciples in Matthew chapter 10, he said to be wise as serpents and what?
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Innocent as doves. I want to focus on that innocent as doves part of Jesus' saying for just a moment as we think about how to have a clean conscience or the lesson to have a clean conscience before God and man.
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One of the best things that you can take into a conflict is a clean conscience. That way, you cannot be manipulated by your guilt.
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You can't be manipulated by threats of being found out. And so this lesson is actually prior to conflict.
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It must be practiced before the conflict comes. In peacetime. You see, Paul, he lived in all good conscience before God until that day, verse 1 tells us.
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Question then, how do we get a clean conscience? Well, we talk about two ways this morning.
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The first way is you do what's right. We obey God. We walk according to his commandments.
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We walk according to his statutes. We read what the book says. We do what the book says. If we do that, we're obeying
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God. We have a clean conscience. We read the word. We do the word. Second is this.
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We confess and repent when we don't. We confess and repent when we don't do what is right.
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Here's the thing. We all sin. Hopefully, we're making some progress in our lives and our fight against sin.
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We're winning some battles along the way, but we're going to have remaining sin within us until the day that we die.
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The key then is to confess our sins when we sin. When we don't do what the book says, we're to confess.
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We're to speak and agree with God, naming our sin as the Bible names it, and then turning from it, repenting from it.
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The reason we're to confess is because God is merciful and just to forgive us of our sins if we confess.
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When we hide our sins, Psalm 32 says, we waste away, but when we confess our sins, we're renewed.
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When we confess our sins, our consciences are clean. The good news is that God really does forgive us of our sins.
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This isn't just some kind of therapeutic speech that we tell ourselves to kind of get over the fact that we did something bad.
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No, no. Christ really does forgive us. The blood of Jesus Christ really does cleanse us from all our sin.
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It washes away, says it's not ours anymore. There really is victory in Jesus Christ for you.
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This isn't just a rhetorical game. Your sin is objectively dealt with by Jesus.
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Therefore, you can have clean conscience. You don't have to have these things that weigh heavy on you and disrupt your peace.
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You can be set free by Christ, by confessing your sins and turning from them.
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And then once confessed and repented of properly, if anybody tries to bring that against you, particularly in a conflict situation, if anybody tries to bring anything against you, one, they're doing the work of the devil, who is the accuser, and two, the power of that accusation
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Well, it's lost. There's no bite there to it because it's already been dealt with by Jesus because that sin is really forgiven.
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See, if you owe a debt and then the debt gets paid off and you have a note that says the debt's paid off, nobody can come collecting on that debt anymore because it's what?
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Paid off. Well, Christian, your debt's been paid by Jesus. Nobody can collect on that.
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It's been paid by Jesus. Live in good conscience and don't give the bad guys any ammo for the conflict.
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That's lesson number one. Lesson number two is to be cunning in a godly way, but be cunning. We see this in verses two through ten of chapter twenty -three, let's read.
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And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him,
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God will strike you, you whitewashed wall, for you sit to judge me according to the law and you command me to be struck contrary to the law.
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And those who stood by said, do you revile God's high priest? And Paul said, I did not know, brethren, that he was the high priest, for it is written you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.
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But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, men and brethren,
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I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead
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I am being judged. And when he said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.
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For Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and no angel or spirit, but the
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Pharisees confess both. Then there arose a loud outcry, and the scribes of the
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Pharisees' party arose and protested, saying, We find no evil in this man, but if a spirit or angel has spoken to him, let us not fight against God.
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Now when there arose a great dissension, the commander, fearing lest Paul might be pulled to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them, and bring him into the barracks.
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This is God's word to us. Remember the words we quoted from Jesus a minute ago, from Matthew 10, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
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Innocent as doves, let's have a clean conscience, but wise as serpents. Let's focus there for a minute.
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Serpents are crafty. And Jesus commends to us being crafty and shrewd in godly ways.
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Now it's important not to be crafty and shrewd in sinful ways, but in godly ways. And we see that, examples of that throughout the
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Old Testament, and I think we see an example of that here with Paul as well. He offers resistance to those who persecute him, but he does so in cunning ways.
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I think that's important for us to remember, that we're not obligated just to lie down and let evil prosper.
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But what we see here is Paul offering resistance to them, but he does so in some pretty shrewd ways.
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Let's see it. First, the high priest orders Paul to be struck, which is contrary to the law. And Paul calls him out for his hypocrisy, saying, if you set the judgment according to the law, you strike me contrary to the law?
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Let's pause here for one second. I think it's worth pointing out that those who abuse power really don't care about hypocrisy that much.
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That's kind of the point, is that they're exercising power, meant to demoralize those they're exercising power over.
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And so, conservatives today love to complain about hypocrisy of the left. They love to kind of just bemoan it, and, but the hypocrisy, it's not so much hypocrisy, as it is, it's about the hierarchy.
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In other words, what we perceive as hypocritical is often a power play, I think that's what
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Ananias is doing. He's got a power play that he's running on Paul, and he has him struck. It's a power play meant to demoralize the opposition.
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It reminds me of a quote from an old Soviet dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which said, we know they're lying, they know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they're still lying.
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It's a tongue twister. The point is to exercise power and demoralize those who are under it so that they don't fight back.
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Well, Paul, he resists, even under this, even under the hypocrisy of it, even under the power play where he's being unjustly struck on the mouth, he resists it by invoking one higher than Ananias on the hierarchy of power here.
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He says, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. God will judge you for this.
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He's pointing to a greater and higher power. Now, those standing by, they say, do you revile the high priest? And Paul said,
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I didn't know, brethren, that he was the high priest. Now, it's possible that Paul didn't recognize Ananias as the high priest because he'd been gone from Jerusalem for a while.
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That's one explanation. It's possible that maybe the high priest was out of eyesight, and so he heard him, but he didn't know that it was him who gave the order.
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It's possible that Paul's eyesight was so bad that he couldn't see and recognize Ananias the high priest.
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There's theories about that as well. It's also possible that he just kind of feigned ignorance, a shrewd move that allowed him to both call out the high priest for his acting contrary to the law, and then take the high road by quoting scripture, by saying,
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I did not know, it's written, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people, quoting from Exodus.
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And in all of this, if there were any on the council who were kind of on the fence, Paul delegitimized
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Ananias in their eyes, showing Ananias for the abuser, the one who abuses power that he is, and that they had seen previously at other times.
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He positioned himself as the one who's obeying the scriptures. He delegitimized
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Ananias there. In our conflicts with the world, I think that's a good lesson for us. We should look for ways to delegitimize our opponents and their tactics in the eyes of those who might be sympathetic to us, and we do that by upholding
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God's word and God's standard. Paul then does something else very cunning.
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He divides and conquers, crying out, I'm a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. It's concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead that I am being judged.
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Now this is a genius level move, because what he notices, he looks out into the council, and he sees there's a party of the
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Pharisees, a party of the Sadducees. The Pharisees affirm the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees affirm angels and spirits.
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The Sadducees do not. And right now, they're all united against him, and so what he's going to do is he's going to, with one sentence, he's going to turn their attention away from him to the doctrine of the resurrection, which then turns their ire against one another.
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He put them at odds with one another. He stoked the dissensions in the council for his own advantage, and they started fighting with one another instead of fighting against Paul with the united front.
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It's like one of those Old Testament battles where God confuses the enemy and they end up turning on one another, and they turn their swords on one another.
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It's like that, but here. This did three things for Paul that we can learn from.
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One, Paul assumed the center and shaped the discussion according to his own terms. He made the meeting of the council about the resurrection, where before it had been about what he had done or not done in the temple.
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It had been a referendum on who he was and his actions and the false accusations against him.
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Now he made it about the resurrection, which gave him better standing in the council because half of them affirmed the resurrection of the dead.
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So this is a lesson for us to assume the center and set the discourse, not to argue on someone else's terms, but argue on our own.
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Second thing it did for him, it made the case theological in nature, not political. This put him in better view and better standing with the
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Romans, who were the ones who actually were trying him. And so it put him in better light there, because the
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Romans, they wanted to stay out of the intramural Jewish theological debates, and this made it a theological debate at this point.
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And then third thing it did, it demonstrated, so this whole thing was really about Christ. Jesus rose from the dead, and they hate
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Jesus. They hate God, and that's what this is all about. They hate the mission to the Gentiles, they hate the mission of God, they've rejected their
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Messiah. It's really about Christ. And we need to remember it's the same thing today.
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People still hate God, they still hate Jesus, and that's why they persecute Christians. Now they might come up with all sorts of presenting reasons, ostensible reasons, they'll trump up all sorts of charges on all sorts of procedural grounds.
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But the real reason that they persecute Christians is because they hate God, they hate Christ, and they always have.
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So then the Romans, they rescue Paul from this, another mob scene, melee scene here.
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They're afraid they're going to rip him limb from limb, and so they go in, they take him, they bring him to the barracks. We'll read verse 11.
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But the following night the Lord stood by him, Paul, and said, Be of good cheer,
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Paul, for as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome.
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Third lesson for us, be of good cheer. Lesson one was to be of good conscience. Lesson two is to be cunning.
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Lesson three is to be of good cheer. The Lord stood by Paul and told him to be of good cheer.
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Why should we be of good cheer when we're in the midst of conflict? It's a question that comes up. One reason is because what the
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Bible tells us to. Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for my sake.
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Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, Jesus said. For great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecute the prophets who were before you.
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The words of Jesus encouraging us to be of good cheer even when we face hardship, even when we face opposition, even when we face enemy fire.
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James said something similar. My brethren, count it all joy when you face trials of various kinds.
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Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
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So we have biblical instruction to rejoice in suffering, but the specific reason given to Paul here is this.
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For as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness at Rome. And so this is the second reason he ought to be of good cheer and that is deliverance.
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You see the Jews are aiming to kill Paul, but God has promised him that he will be delivered, that he will go to Rome.
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I want to summarize verses, or excuse me, verse 12 and following of what happens to Paul after he receives this promise from the
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Lord. Then we see God working through means to keep his promise and keep his word.
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And so the Jews, they plot an ambush. Forty men took an oath that they would neither eat nor drink until they killed
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Paul. But Paul's nephew, his sister's son, heard about the plot and went and told
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Paul. Paul then sent his nephew with a soldier to go to the commander to tell the commander.
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And the commander hears that and he calls for two centurions, 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to escort
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Paul to Caesarea at night to deliver him to Felix the governor, thus delivering him from the hands of those who would kill him.
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He sent a letter to Felix along with the soldiers giving him the facts of the case and Felix put him up in Herod's Praetorium, kind of like a palace, pretty nice accommodations for being in custody.
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And he put him there until his accusers could come down and he could stand trial. You see,
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God used these means to deliver Paul from the dangers of the Jews into the watchful hands of Felix the governor.
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And so when you face conflicts or sufferings or persecutions or hardships, be of good cheer, the
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Bible tells us to. Be of good cheer, God will deliver you. Be of good cheer, do not despair.
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Do not black pill about the circumstances. Now it's true that we don't necessarily have the exact same promise of physical deliverance that Paul had in his specific situation.
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We can't just universalize that. But even so, we still have
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God's providence to cheer us. We still know that God is in control of all things, that He is working all things according to the counsel of His will,
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Ephesians 1. He is working all things together for good for those who love God or are called according to His purpose, Romans 8.
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We have the providence of God to cheer us. The control of God, the sovereignty of God to cheer us.
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And whatever happens to us, we have the assurance of ultimate deliverance and ultimate vindication.
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Because we have the resurrection from the dead. That God, He will deliver you when
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He raises you on the last day and He will vindicate you when He judges the world in equity and sets all things right.
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Therefore no matter what happens, even if the worst possible scenario happened, you can be of good cheer.
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Because it's all in God's hands. Then verses 1 -9 of chapter 24, the
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Jews make their case against Paul. They actually hired an orator named Tertullus to come and make the case for them.
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You'll notice absent from the trial are any of the original men who made the charges against Paul that he had defiled the temple.
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And Tertullus, he flatters Felix for the first bit of his speech and then proceeds to lie about Paul saying that he was the creator of dissension in Jerusalem and that he tried to profane the temple.
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It's interesting that he says tried to, it doesn't say that he actually did, which was the original charge, admitting some defeat there already.
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He makes a pretty weak case and then Paul moves to his defense. Beginning in verse 10 of chapter 24, let's read.
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Then Paul, after the governor had nodded to him to speak, answered, inasmuch as I know that you have been for many years a judge of this nation,
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I do the more cheerfully answer for myself. Because you may ascertain that it is no more than 12 days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship, and they neither found me in the temple disputing with anyone or inciting the crowd either in the synagogues or in the city, nor can they prove the things of which they now accuse me.
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But this I confess to you, that according to the way which they call a sect, so I worship the
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God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets. I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.
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This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense towards God and men. Now after many years
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I came to bring alms and offerings to my nation, in the midst of which some
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Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with mob nor with tumults. They ought to have been here before you to object if they had anything against me, or else let those who are here themselves say if they found any wrongdoing in me while I stood before the council.
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Unless it is for this one statement which I cried out, standing among them, concerning the resurrection of the dead,
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I am being judged by you this day. From this passage we find our fourth lesson, which is to challenge.
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Paul offers a defense, and in his defense he offers a challenge to his hearers.
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He challenges his opponents. He challenges their facts, pointing out that it had only been twelve days since he had arrived, and half of those he's been in custody.
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He didn't have time to create dissension, nor were there any witnesses that found him disputing in the temple or inciting a crowd.
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He pointed out that should there be a witness that found him doing these things, that they should be there that day.
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But as it stood, no one was to be found. He challenges those who did come down to produce any evidence or to make any witness, and they did not.
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He did make one confession in verse 14, where he says, that I confess to you that according to the way which they call it,
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I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and the prophets. But even this was a challenge, because he is speaking of Jesus, of whom the law and the prophets speak.
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All the law and the prophets are about Christ, and he is believing what the law and the prophets says. He continues the challenge even after this, challenging
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Felix with the truth of the Bible, and Felix comes to visit with him, hoping for a bribe. Paul should be let go,
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Paul would give him money. Paul didn't give him a bribe, but instead he gave him the gospel. See verse 24, and after some days when
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Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was Jewish, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ.
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So Paul is standing there before the governor, before the civil magistrate, and he is preaching the faith that is in Christ Jesus to him.
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Then he reasons from the scriptures, verse 25, and he reasoned about righteousness and self -control and the judgment to come.
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In other words, he made specific moral applications from the Bible, applications that were especially important for Felix in his role as governor.
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He would need to be righteous and self -controlled and have good and wise judgment. And so when given the opportunity,
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Paul didn't shrink back from preaching law and gospel to the civil magistrate, to the governor.
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Whereas Paul had a clean conscience, Felix did not. We see that he sent
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Paul away. Felix was afraid and answered, go away for now, when
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I have a convenient time I will call for you. His conscience was troubled and he sent Paul away and he would not believe.
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Notice that even when Paul is giving a defense, he's on offense. He's the one setting the discourse.
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He's poking holes in his opponent's case against him. He's speaking of Jesus. He's proclaiming the gospel.
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He's proclaiming the demands of the scriptures, the demands of the gospel, the demands of God's word on people.
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And so I would say no matter the conflict, let us press the claims of Christ on whoever is before us.
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Let us believe all things that were written in the law and the prophets. Believe all things that are written in the gospels and the letters and have a conscience that is without offense towards God and men, having given them both their due to God, right worship and obedience and to men, witness to the truth.
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The truth of God's word. The truth, what we see that there is a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.
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There's a resurrection of the just to heaven. There's a resurrection of the unjust to eternity in hell.
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Let us not shrink from proclaiming the truth found in this book. And may
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God use whatever conflict we may find ourselves in and may you use it for his glory according to his good counsel.
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Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, I pray that whatever situation we find ourselves in, that we will be faithful to you, faithful to your word.
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We will be a faithful witness as Christ is the faithful witness and we will follow Christ in that way.
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So give us courage, give us wisdom to be shrewd in godly ways, protect us from being sinful in any ways.
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I pray that we would have good cheer, trusting in your providential hand and I pray that we'd have a clean conscience, obeying what you say and confessing and repenting when we don't.
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And we thank you for the mercy that is in Christ Jesus who cleanses us from all sin.