Acts 21:27-40 Misrepresented and Misunderstood

We're going to take just some time here to kind of focus, shift gears a little bit, and get into the Word, read this text for this week, and I'm going to kind of lay out where we're going with it.

So I just want to start off with a question, it's kind of an obnoxiously strange question because it's just obvious what the answer is, but have you ever been misunderstood?

Now you understand why that's obnoxiously obvious, because we've all been misunderstood, right? Have you been to the place though where people assume that they know who you are before they've met you?

Have you ever been in that situation? I think it's awkward, right? Like where somebody's heard something about you and it's just apparent that they've already got you pegged before you meet them?

How does that feel? Not good? Infuriating a little bit?

Frustrating? Anybody tend towards the defensive side? Like you just want to explain yourself right away and get all of that out?

Now here's the question. Have you ever been on the assuming side of that one? Have you ever been on the other side where you're the one who is assuming that you understand somebody before you've even met them?

Okay, shame on us. We shouldn't do that, right? Because we don't like it when other people do it to us. But what

I find even worse is when people intentionally give misinformation to paint me in a bad light.

You ever been there? I mean, we're talking about degrees and circles of frustration here, right? To be misunderstood is one thing, but to have somebody actually spreading rumors or lies or misinformation about you, is that frustrating, infuriating, and also damaging to our character, right?

It can be damaging to our reputation. And then how we respond to that can be all the more damaging, right? We can get into this spiral and cycle of difficulty and basically painting ourselves into a corner.

I'm not a fan of being lied about, and I don't like being painted in a bad light, and yet that's what we're going to see happen to Paul here in our text.

We're going to see him painted in a bad light, and misinformation is going to almost take his life. Lies about him is going to put his neck on the chopping block, so to speak.

Paul's going to endure some significant misinformation being spread about him and almost get killed in the outer court of the temple for that.

And even when he is bloodied and bruised in our text, he gets rescued into protective custody by the

Romans. Then the Roman military leader assumes that he knows who Paul is, even before he speaks to him.

He assumes that he has him pegged. As we come to this text, it may be difficult to see how it applies.

I mean, if you were to just sit down and read this text like we're about to here in a moment, you might just kind of go, what does this have to do with me?

What does this have to do with us here in 2011 in Matawan, Michigan? But we'll see that we should be prepared to deal with misinformation and misunderstandings.

Not only should we be prepared to correct those misunderstandings, but we should consider whether or not our actions, our speech, and lifestyle is potentially leading some to misunderstandings about the church, leading some to misunderstandings about who

Jesus Christ is. So I want you to open your Bibles, please, to Acts 21. Acts 21, we'll read 27, verse 27 through 40.

That's page 797 in the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, 797 there. And if you don't own a

Bible or you don't own an English Standard Version of the Bible, now, I don't say this very often, but I just want to make a point. If you don't own a

Bible, you can take that one with you. But what I don't say is that I preach from the English Standard Version of the Bible.

I don't believe that this is any more divinely inspired than some of you have a King James Version or an NIV or anything like that.

This is my preference. So this is what I like. And so I don't think there's anything magical about you taking that ESV, like everybody needs to own an

English Standard Version. But if you don't have one, you can take that one with you. And we've got a box of those actually on the way being shipped here to just fill in where those go.

So I'll follow along as I read Acts 21, 27 through 40. When the seven days were almost complete, seven days of Paul's vow that he was taking, of purification.

We'll get into that. When the seven days were almost complete, the Jews from Asia, seeing him, Paul, in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out,

Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law in this place.

Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place. For they had previously seen

Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was stirred up and the people ran together.

They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple. And at once the gates were shut. And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all

Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating

Paul. Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done.

Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks.

And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd.

For the mob of the people followed, crying out, away with him. As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, may

I say something to you? And he said, do you know Greek? Are you not the Egyptian then who recently stirred up a revolt and led the 4 ,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness?

Paul replied, I'm a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no obscure city. I beg you, permit me to speak to the people.

And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the steps, motioned with his hands to the people. And when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the

Hebrew language, saying, let's pray. Father, we come to a text this morning that's fairly violent.

There's a lot of violence going on, and there's not just threats like we've seen in the past, but physical violence against Paul.

People literally with hands and feet attempting to take his life, and he's beaten and abused and almost killed.

And yet, what a reminder to us of another who was violently beaten, and not just for no cause, but violently beaten on our behalf, that he took the punishment for us.

And he was killed for us. But I praise you that even in this reminder of violence towards your followers in this text,

Father, that Jesus did not remain dead, but he rose again three days later.

And that as we sing this morning that we can celebrate the resurrection, we can celebrate the victory over death, we can celebrate the victory over violence, and celebrate the victory over sin because of what

Jesus has done for us. And so, Father, I ask that we would worship you out of hearts that are grateful, learning, striving to grow in faith, striving to understand grace, that it is a gift, nothing we can earn.

And I ask that you would be with our worship and allow our hearts to focus on you, in Jesus' name, amen.

Now, for the last couple of weeks, we've been marching through the book of Acts. We're up to, all the way up to Acts 21 here.

And the last few weeks, we've been seeing Paul kind of traveling, it's almost been like in slow motion, heading towards Jerusalem, where he's been told time and time again that things are not going to go well for him.

Now, I don't know why the things have seemed like they're moving in slow motion. Maybe it's because Luke, the author, has actually been present with Paul during these travels.

How many of you know that you can write with a little bit more detail when you're an eyewitness to the event? You're actually physically there versus getting it from secondhand.

So you're interviewing somebody versus you were there. You can write a little bit more detail. So that's what we're seeing going on.

But all along the way, on the road to Jerusalem, he keeps hearing time and time again that bad things are going to happen when he gets there.

Well, in our text this morning, the hammer falls, and we begin to see exactly how this is all going to go down for him.

He had taken a vow a couple of weeks ago in an attempt, last week, to attempt to appease the

Jews of Jerusalem. So they had spread all these rumors that he hated Jewish traditions and all this stuff.

So the leadership of the Christian church there that were formerly of Jewish background in Jerusalem came up with a plot, a plan, for him to prove to everybody that he was still behind Jewish practices.

He wasn't opposed to them. He wasn't angry about them or anything. So he goes into the temple, and he's doing this purification process, doing these rites and rituals.

And on the third day, he was required to go into the temple. And then on the seventh day, as a completion of his vow, finally, he was to go in one time, do a ritual purification.

Then the priest would actually declare him clean. So you're clean. You can bring a sacrifice in for Pentecost, which was the whole reason that he was coming to Jerusalem in the first place.

This celebration where Jews would come from all around the known world, like on a pilgrimage at Pentecost, to go into Jerusalem to bring sacrifices into the temple.

So he's kind of dovetailing with all of that stuff. And it's when he comes on the seventh day, the text tells us, for that ritual purification that everything is going to break loose for him.

Now, I think it's kind of important for us to get a view of what the temple is, because that's the setting. That's where this whole thing is going to take place.

So have any of you here ever been to Israel? If you've been there, and if you've been to Jerusalem, you'll notice that none of this is here except for the basic floor.

So let me just kind of show you what we've got here. We've got the court of the Gentiles here. This huge, massive area all the way around the temple.

This is the temple proper. This huge, massive area is called the court of the Gentiles. Now, when Jesus goes in, and maybe you're familiar with the story of him casting out the money changers, they basically made that a marketplace.

So that's like the marketplace where people are selling and buying and doing all this stuff and exchanging money and doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

And so that's where he goes in and he casts out the money changers. That's the court of the Gentiles. Anybody was allowed into that area of the temple.

The court of the Gentiles. Gentiles are allowed to go there. But then you start getting into kind of an inner circle.

I don't know if we can advance that slide one. So this is a little bit zooming in here. And then you see this is the court of women here.

So what we have is we have smaller and smaller circles of access in the temple.

And that's important because we're going to see that Paul's going to get in trouble because he's going to be accused of giving somebody access to a section of the temple that was not allowed.

So you have the court of the women here. This is likely where Paul would have come for purification. There would have been some washing bowls and some basins and things like that.

And the priest would have declared him clean there. Then you have this through these gates here. You have a court area where only

Jewish men were allowed. Then inside this building, this is the temple proper, inside there, there's two levels. So there's the holy place where it is the court of the priests.

Only priests were allowed there. And then you have the Holy of Holies. Now the Holy of Holies was taking things up a notch.

Only one man, one day of the year, was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. So you see how the access just gets smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where on the

Day of Atonement, one day for one sacrifice, the high priest was allowed into the

Holy of Holies. So that's what we've got going on in the text here is Paul is going in to the temple and he's going to make, he intends to eventually make a sacrifice, but he needs to go through purification rituals first, primarily because he's been traveling outside of Israel and in the

Jewish mind in that day, for anybody traveling outside of Israel, they became unclean, not able to go into that inner section for the

Jewish men. So he had to go through purifications in order to get access. Are you getting that picture?

Is that making sense to you? Now I know that we don't come from a Jewish context, and it's not super important that you understand all of that because we're not promoting

Jewish thought here. But understanding kind of the text helps. And so going into an unpermitted area equaled defiling the temple, which was punishable by death.

And in most situations there are Roman documents where Rome would turn a blind eye occasionally if somebody was actually put to death.

Now the Jews didn't have the right to put anybody to death without Roman involvement, but occasionally it says in documents that we have that are still in existence that they would occasionally turn a blind eye and just let that happen because, hey, the rule is posted.

A Gentile wanders into the wrong place. Signs were posted all over the temple. Go past this at your own risk.

Your blood is on your hands if you go past it. So they would sometimes just mob somebody.

We're going to see that fortunately the Romans decided to step in in this situation, and I'll explain why.

But another aspect of the setting that's important is for us to have in mind that this is happening at Pentecost. So this city is busting at the gills.

It's jam -packed with people all over. What do you know, you get people together, you get a mob and a large group of people together from all around, and you're going to have different ideas bouncing around, people who don't like each other in the same area, things like that.

What do you know that that can get dicey? Anybody here ever been to a rock concert? Okay. And I think we're going to see a semblance of a mosh pit here in just a minute.

It's going down in here, and this place is on high alert, so to speak, in the city of Jerusalem.

It is just packed. So that's part of the setting that we need to understand. So Paul needs to go to the court of the

Jews in order to go through the ritual of purification, and it's while he's there that some Jews, it says in the text, Jews from Asia, a place that Paul had frequented.

He spent three years in the district of Asia, particularly in the city of Ephesus. And he actually says in Acts 19, verse 10, if you're taking notes, you can jot that down and look it up later.

Don't need to turn there, but in Acts 19, 10, he says that he made the word of the Lord known to all

Jews and Gentiles alike throughout all of Asia. He says that.

So what are the chances that these Jews who are going to accost him in the temple, they're from Asia, don't know who he is?

They know him. They've got some history with him, and they don't like him. As a matter of fact, he actually said that there were plots against him by the

Jews in Asia when he lived in Asia. So you can kind of see, put the pieces together and you're figuring this out.

What we're going to see from their response in encountering Paul in the temple, it implies that he was on their most wanted list.

Like if they had the TV show, Asian Jews Most Wanted, he was on that.

He was right up there. And they found him. They found him. Their response implies that they were anticipating the day that they found

Paul in a dark alley. They were looking for it. Because look at how they respond. They have this extreme, visceral reaction in verse 28, crying out,

Men of Israel, help! The Greek there demands an exclamation point.

Help! A criminal is here. Help! This is the man who hates Jews. They're saying, help!

This is a man who despises the law of Moses. He's in the temple. And he hates us. And he hates our laws.

And he hates our rules. And he's disrespected this great temple. Help! He's defiled this holy place by bringing a

Greek into the temple. Consider how inflammatory all of those statements are.

And consider the phrase. Paul is accused of teaching everyone, everywhere, against the

Jewish faith. That's what they say. How many of you know that in an argument with your wife all the time, everywhere, when you start using those, those don't go real well?

You always, or... Yeah, don't do it. Well, I mean, wives don't do that to your husbands either.

It goes both ways. But the fact of the matter is, all this is misinformation. All of it is misinformation.

Some of it outright lies. Some of it just bending the truth a little bit. And it's likely, how many of you know, that sometimes, and I'm calling it misinformation,

I think it's a little bit of a stretch. Sometimes, I mean, maybe it really amounts to a lie, but how many of you have ever spread something that you thought, you thought in your heart, you really believed it was true, and then you found out that it was false later, and you've been guilty of spreading misinformation?

Gossip, yes. I don't know if you can call that lying, or if you just, you know, do you know what I'm saying? I mean, there's a technical line there. It's gossip at best.

It probably is kind of like an outright lie if you didn't really verify or know it. Are you getting what I'm saying? Am I the only one that's ever done that, by the way?

I mean, some of us have done that before. Okay, where you pass something along, and you didn't check the sources and come to find out, not true, ugh.

I think I've been guilty of that just this past week, so that's not cool. God forgive me.

But you have that happen here in the text where these guys are ganging up on Paul, and they're saying these inflammatory things.

And in verse 29, we see a significant assumption. They assume something about Paul.

They likely knew Trophimus the Ephesian. Okay, these guys, where are they from? Asia, Ephesus, the lead city, the capital city of Asia.

Where's Trophimus from? Ephesus. So there's a relationship going on here.

There's interpersonal stuff going on. And Trophimus, who used to be a Gentile and now is a follower of Christ, and they know who he is, and they saw him hanging out with Paul earlier, and they jumped to the assumption that Paul took him into the temple with him.

So, what's their logical thoughts there? You've defiled the temple by bringing Trophimus in there.

That's punishable by death, as I said before. Now, how many of you would like to be incriminated based on assumptions? You appreciate that?

You like it when people speak poorly of you based on just assuming something that you've done? Did Paul take

Trophimus into the temple? He's a pretty smart guy. What's he in the process of attempting to do as he's doing these ritual purifications?

To appease the Jews? To try to help them to see that he's supportive of their traditions?

Is it likely that he would have taken Trophimus and risked his death and Trophimus as well?

No. No, he didn't. And there's nothing in the text that implies that these are true accusations. So, there's assumption going on.

I'm guessing that Paul is not happy with the way that things are going here, but he has very little time to react.

Very little time. How many of you would be defending yourself? I didn't take him in! Too late. The crowd responds immediately.

And in that hotbed of nationalism, during a Jewish holiday, the city is quickly ignited into a riot, at least in the temple precinct.

They physically are going to manhandle Paul. If you can put the temple screen back up there for just a second.

They're going to physically manhandle him, dragging him out of the Jewish court, which requires them to physically drag him down a flight of stairs.

This is not just a gentle nudging him out the door. They're dragging him down a flight of stairs.

The temple gates were slammed shut, likely to protect the inner courts from further desecration. If blood is going to be spilled, it better not be human blood in the temple.

So, they're dragging him out into the court of the Gentiles. What you have the picture of are the images that they're dragging him out of a side door here into this area up here, into the court of the

Gentiles. I'll explain why. I believe that that's literally the physical location here in just a minute, because we're going to see the

Romans respond very quickly. Verse 31 tells us that they're literally seeking to kill him.

One point that I wanted to say is just how ironic it is that the messenger of the good news, the messenger of God who is there with the reality and the truth of how

God is providing salvation. You see the irony in that the gates of the temple are shut to him?

There's an irony in that, isn't there? That the central place of the worship of God in those days and in that time is actually shut to the man who is bringing the message and is his chosen emissary.

So, verse 31 says that they're seeking to kill him. It's a phrase that speaks of their intentions and not their ineptness.

Are they looking for a way to kill him? What's going on? It's not as though they're looking for a way to do it. They were in the process of trying.

They are literally, physically, attempting to end his life with their fists and their feet. They are attempting to kill him.

Now, word comes quickly to the tribune. A tribune is the commander of 1 ,000. It's a technical military term in Roman terminology.

He's the commander over 1 ,000 troops. He has 10 centurions under him, approximately 10, so then how many is a centurion?

Rule over? Command? 100? And so you have, that's basically the Roman structure.

And a bit of archeology helps us understand how Paul's life was saved in this situation because how many of you know that if a mob has their hands on you and desires to take your life, your life expectancy is measured in minutes, not hours, not days, not weeks, but minutes, right?

I mean, this is going to end quickly. I mean, Rome has to intervene. This has to be a quick intervention or else he's gone.

They're trying to kill him, physically trying to take his life, beating him senseless. So in the picture here you see the temple, but right over the shoulder of the temple is what's called the

Fortress of Antonia. This structure, I can't use a pointer, the structure that you see up there with four towers, do you see that up there?

That's the Fortress of Antonia. That's where the Roman soldiers were garrisoned in Israel. Notice how advantageous a location that is for observing the temple precincts.

Where do the Romans expect difficulty to arise surrounding the religious practices of the

Jews? And so they can literally look down on the Court of the Gentiles, see what's going on. They begin to see a mosh pit develop down there.

How many of you know that they'd be probably on heightened security with Pentecost going on? There's more than one person looking out those windows right there, observing the temple precincts, checking it out, and they see it start to boil down there and hear the shouting and they have steps, two staircases from that 60 feet vantage point, two sets of staircases that come right down and empty right into the

Court of the Gentiles. So they have immediate access into that area and it says that they come down the steps.

And we know that he brings, so the tribune himself comes down, but it says, and he came with centurions, plural.

And if he's bringing centurions, they're bringing their troops. So how many do we have? A minimum of 200 troops are going to filter out of that fortress right now.

They're ready. On the ready, they're coming down. It could be up to 400. We don't know. It's just a plural centurion.

So there could be 300 or 400 troops emptying down there. The fact that the tribune takes with him, like I said, one centurion,

I mean more than one centurion, shows the size of the force, shows how he expected this to turn hostile quickly and spread.

He respects the volatility of Jerusalem and he moves to immediately crush this thing quickly. Does he care about the life of Paul?

What's he concerned with? Peace and a riot. And if this thing spreads with as many people from all,

I mean you've got Jews united in Israel and Jerusalem right now. If there's a revolt, this isn't going to go well for these thousand soldiers because there's probably more than a thousand

Jews that have just inundated the city. So he's got to squelch this pretty fast.

By the way, we're actually given this guy's name, the tribune. His name is Claudius Lysias. We see that later in the text in Acts 23, 26, a real guy with a real name.

And his wisdom pays off because the crowd stops beating Paul. The tribune arrests him, likely taking him into protective custody.

He doesn't know what he's done or anything. He's not arresting him for any particular crime. He's bound between two soldiers.

The phrase that's used for binding him with two chains is a technical way that the Romans would arrest somebody. They would take two soldiers, one on each side, a chain on each arm, and he's now bound.

The tribune asks the crowd who he is and what he's done, but the commotion is so crazy that he can't get a direct answer.

Look at verse 34, what it says. Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks.

He was going to take him back up the stairs, but the crowd can't get their answer straight. When mob mentality takes over, there are probably people kicking him and beating him that didn't even know who he was or what he had done.

This is going nuts. They don't even know. Some people are shouting he did one thing. Some are shouting another.

Some people don't even know who he is and can't answer. And then there's this uproar and this commotion, and so he can't even get down to what's going on.

So he decides to take him up the steps for further questioning, but the crowd returns to its violence, we see.

And the word for violence that's used there is a picturesque word in Greek. It kind of paints a picture. It's used for the violence of the sea in the midst of a storm.

So the crowd is like huge breakers attempting to sweep Paul away. The soldiers end up literally carrying

Paul on their shoulders above the mob to keep them from tearing him away. This is a crazy situation.

How many of you sign up for that? Like you want to be involved in that? Not me. This has turned hostile quickly.

The crowd even followed up the steps shouting away with him. Now these are literal words, literally the exact same phrase that a crowd had used about 25 years prior to this in Jerusalem when a young prophet from Galilee was on trial.

You can look that up in Luke 23 .18 or in John 19 .15 if you're taking notes.

The exact phrase that was used by the crowd when they shouted crucify him, away with him, away with him, crucify him.

So this cry is not get him out of our sight. The cry is saying do away with him, finish him.

Give him what he deserves and be done with him. Why is Paul suffering right now? Why is this happening to him?

He's falsely accused, right? But falsely accused just like Jesus.

We have the potential in our lives to be falsely accused of things, right? What's our first tendency? Where do you turn when you're falsely accused?

What's your first thought in your mind? Defend yourself, right? I have rights.

That's the American way, right? We demand our rights immediately, quickly. Gotta defend those rights.

Well, hear me out. There's a time for defense, right? There's a time for us to give a reasoned response and an answer and I think that that's appropriate.

But consider that when you are falsely accused, you're in good company because even our

Lord and Savior himself was falsely accused and he actually went to the cross and paid the ultimate price for a false accusation.

So consider for just a moment where Paul is physically at this point. There's no clear explanation in the text of his physical condition but how many of you think

I'm stretching it a bit to say that he's in bad shape? You think that's a stretch? Probably not. Possibly some broken bones, bruises already showing, split lip, maybe spitting up some blood, separated ribs.

This is just not a pretty picture. He's been abused. On the way up the steps, putting him in that light makes what happens next all the more intriguing.

On the way up the steps, Paul addresses the tribune respectfully asking him permission to address him.

Following proper protocol, might I address you? Well, you already are addressing me but that's the way that they would do that in Greek for somebody who is superior.

His educated Greek dialect takes the tribune by surprise and so when you see the question in the text, do you know

Greek? It's more like, do you know Greek? Whoa, I mean he's speaking Greek and the tribune is surprised.

You see the tribune is surprised that he knows Greek because the tribune has already assumed that he knows who Paul is and who he thinks

Paul is shouldn't know Greek. It's not a good day for Paul in the assumption category.

Everybody's assuming something about him. Everybody assumes that they know who he is and what he's done. It's likely that the tribune has already had a mini celebration in his heart over capturing

Paul because he doesn't think Paul is Paul. He thinks he's someone else. He actually thinks he's captured the ringleader of a group called the

Dagger Men. The word assassins means dagger men and they've been for about three years historically documented three years about the time prior to this time an

Egyptian man of Jewish descent had led a revolt against the Romans but it was kind of a subversive guerrilla type warfare revolt where what they would do is they would infiltrate a crowd.

He had thousands of followers. They'd infiltrate the crowd with a dagger, get close to a

Roman sympathizer that is a Jew who liked Rome and they'd stab him with a dagger in a crowd.

So that's why they became known as this. So this Roman tribune thinks,

I've got him. This is the guy. I don't know if Paul looked Egyptian. I don't know why he assumed that he was who he was but he had that assumption.

Paul quickly corrects that misunderstanding by identifying himself as a Jew and not just a

Jew but a Jewish citizen from Tarsus. People were given prestige according to the city of their birth so when he says no mean city, no common city, whatever, he's just basically saying it's a good city.

I'm from good stock. Paul requests to address his accuser and although it might be incredible to us in this context,

I think that the tribune has thought he knew who he was and now that he doesn't know who he is, he's going to sit back and take some notes and go ahead and let

Paul address the crowd so that he might incriminate himself or at least say what's all this about? Now he doesn't know.

He thinks he knew. Now he doesn't know. So he's going to sit back and listen.

With a wave of a hand, Paul quiets the crowd and wisely begins to address them in what language? Hebrew. Paul's a smart guy.

He knows Greek eloquently. He knows Hebrew well and he's going to speak. You know it's not going to go well for him to speak

Greek to them. They don't like Greek. That's the language of the oppressor.

The occupying force speaks Greek. They like Hebrew and so he addresses them in Hebrew. And I'll leave that as a cliffhanger so you have to come back next week to find out what

Paul says. You have to think, what would you say? You're given an opportunity to speak to those who just beat the tar out of you for religious reasons and for misunderstandings.

What are you going to say? How many of you are like, I would just eagerly preach the gospel. That's what

I would do. Now be honest. Maybe a couple of you are like,

Paul, I don't know. I would struggle with that. The hammer fell for Paul in our text.

Just like everyone had been prophesying for the past two weeks in the text that we've gone over in Acts 20 all the way up through last week in the first half of Acts 21.

Paul's been arrested, brought into Roman custody. He was beaten and chained. A major theme in this text is the misrepresentation of Paul and the way that he was misunderstood.

It might not be fair to blame Paul or anyone for that matter for being misunderstood. How much of the blame do you take when somebody misunderstands what you say?

Think about that. Is it Paul's fault here? Is it your fault when somebody misunderstands?

But would you agree with me that sometimes misinformation and misunderstanding result from our own misrepresentation of ourselves or our own misrepresentation of our faith or our beliefs?

Would you agree with that? Sometimes we are. There is a kernel of blame that rests on us for the way that people think of us.

Are you hearing what I'm saying? I think sometimes that's the case. There's a little kernel in there of reality.

Sometimes I think we're guilty of saying we believe one thing and living a different way.

Do you see how that can make us kind of guilty of the things that people think about us that are inaccurate?

In reality, there are two types of misinformation. There's intentional misinformation and unintentional.

And the fact of the matter is some will speak poorly of us and literally make stuff up against us.

Have you ever had that happen? Raise your hand. Have you had somebody literally tell a blatant lie about you to discredit your character?

That's a hard thing. Okay, that's painful. And how many of you know that if people want to make stuff up about us, they can, and we can't do anything about it.

I mean, sure, we can try to correct those mistakes, those lies or those things, but when it comes down to it, anybody can say anything they want about us, right?

And then we have to deal with the repercussions of that. That's kind of like my friend who began a post on Facebook that basically posted something on Facebook that Christians are violent.

And I mentioned him before, but I bring it up again in this context to help you understand kind of what was flowing out of that.

The pastor friend of mine who has basically self -declared himself an atheist now. And he says that Christians are violent because the

Scriptures talk about Paul fighting the good fight of the faith. Now, he'd been a pastor for 20 years, and he knew better.

That was a direct, intentional, purposeful misinformation, a lie to discredit

Christianity. He knew better. He knows that Paul was not talking about taking up swords against people to fight the good fight of faith, but he used that in a post to suggest that all

Christians are violent. Could you get further from the truth on that? But that's what he did.

That's what he did. People can make up lies about Christianity all they want. There was a rumor going around in the first century church that people were drinking blood and eating.

They were cannibals. That Christians were cannibals. Why? Why would they say that? Communion.

So there was literally don't let your kids get close because those Christians might eat them.

That was literally a thought in the first, second century. That was the way that people responded to the

Christian faith. Keep them close. But what about those misunderstandings that are based on slivers of truth?

Sometimes misinformation has a shred of truth in it, like I said, or a kernel of truth. This past week, a postcard was sent out about the

Matawan Bond Proposal. Did anybody receive that postcard? A handful of people received that. I think it mostly went out to Texas township out that way.

It had some truth in it, but it also had some very significant errors in it as well.

Even if they were merely typos, how many of you know that those postcards have an impact? Even if it's a typo, even if it's just a casual mistake or I didn't crunch the numbers correctly or something like that, that can have a dramatic impact on our community for years to come.

Misinformation can be powerful. There are two angles that every Christian needs to take into consideration when we consider the human problem of unintentional misinformation, accidental misinformation.

First of all, we need to guard ourselves from believing misinformation. Guard yourself from that.

On an interpersonal level, we need to guard the integrity of others. We do need to be our brother's keeper. We do need to be our sister's keeper.

We should not entertain gossip and slander about each other, let alone be the producers, the factories of that junk.

We should not be the conduit for that junk. You see what I'm saying? Not even passing it along.

How many of you know if somebody comes to me and says something bad about you, where should I go? First, I should call them out on it.

I'm not putting up with that. But then it would be valuable for me to go and validate the facts, right?

Go to the person who's being maligned and say, I heard this. What's going on?

And get down to the bottom of it. Don't go to your friend then and share that with them and be the conduit for passing along crud and junk about other people.

We do need to be our brother's keeper. We do need to be our sister's keeper. Caring for them. Watching and guarding one another's reputations.

How many of you have ever heard somebody drug through the mud only to find that those things were lies? Have you been there?

I mean, we've talked about it happening to us. Consider what potential presidential candidate

Herman Cain has been going through. Probably some of us in this room have an opinion about where he is and what he's done and what he hasn't done.

What's really frustrating to me is when Christians act like they are in the know on these things. Anybody in this room know

Herman Cain personally? Anybody here ever have a personal sit -down conversation with him?

Anybody here know the lady who's producing these accusations? None of us are privy to the interpersonal relationships of these people.

So to land definitively on one side or to land definitively on the other is irresponsible of us.

Do you understand what I'm saying? But the problem is our media -saturated culture makes us feel like we know these people.

Can I suggest to you that that's kind of ignorant? When we do that? When we act like we know

Joe Paterno or we act like we know Herman Cain or we act like we know these people and we've just got it figured out and we ought to blog about it too.

Right? Because everybody ought to know our opinions about these people. Of course everybody wants to know what we think about them.

Do you hear what I'm saying? We act like we're in the know and we can be guilty of perpetuating misinformation because we just really don't know.

Is anybody in here willing to raise your hand and say, I really don't know anything about Herman Cain? Would you raise your hand and say,

I really don't know him? Okay, thank you. So I think that everybody who raised their hand ought to agree to some level of just not falling in and letting the detectives do their work.

Let them figure it out. Okay? Let the judges figure that out. I am not a judge.

So we've got to be careful about this. In our relationships with others inside the church and with others outside of the church, we should be gracious giving, gracious people who give others the benefit of the doubt.

Not entertaining rumors, but going back to sources of information. And sure, is it okay for you to be up to date on current events and things like that?

I'm not saying push news off to the side and don't be involved. I mean, people at work are going to be talking about this.

Be a reasoned, a reasonable voice at your workplace about these things.

Do you really know them? I mean, that's a legitimate question to ask as people are standing around the water cooler, you know, ready to slay

Herman Cain. Do you know what I'm saying? Do you know him? Have you ever met him? How can you have such a strong opinion about that?

You know, just getting back down to that. Misinformation also applies to beliefs and doctrines too, though.

We need to guard ourselves from the fact that there's a movement in evangelical Christianity among those who preach and proclaim the

Gospel that is kind of faddish. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like, you follow this fad for a while and then you follow this fad or you follow this evangelical rock star for a while and then follow this one and this one.

What I want to say is that not everything written by a Christian author is honoring to Christ.

Did you know that? Not everything that you can buy at family Christian stores is honoring to God. Not everything played on a

Christian radio station as if Christ came to save radio stations. Not everything played on a

Christian radio station is worship in truth. And by the way, the flip side of that works too.

Not everything... Raise yourself. Not everything played on a secular radio station amounts to Satan worship either.

Okay? What I'm pushing for here is for all of us to keep our thinking caps on and cozy up to the

Word of God. This is where we find who God is, what

He has to say about our culture and our society around us. This is our life to understanding reality and truth.

The big T, truth. The T in recast is truth. And that's not me.

That's not my voice speaking truth up here. That's the Word of God. This is the truth. I try my best to faithfully explain the truth to you, but this is your source.

Not me. Not Rob. Not Zach. Not your small group leader. This is the source of truth. Dig in.

Eat this stuff. Cozy up to it. Get to know it. And boy, please don't hear me. I used to sit out there and hear pastors time and time again say, read your

Bible, pray, evangelize. Read your Bible, pray, evangelize. Every single sermon seemed like it boiled down to that.

And I remember walking away from most sermons feeling guilty that I didn't read my Bible enough. Like it was a checklist or a duty or something that I had to get accomplished.

And when I say cozy up to this, this is your relationship with God. This is where you come to know

Him. And so, I want you to come to the Scriptures because you love

Him. I don't want you to just tack on something to your checklist to do things for the day.

Does that make sense? Don't even do it if that's what it's going to amount to for you. It's just, oh, I've got to do this.

Because you love God and you want to know Him more. And you need Him. You need Him in your life.

This is key. Cozy up to this. Lastly, though. So that's about us being misunderstood and misrepresented in the culture and understanding things like that.

But lastly, we should not only guard ourselves against believing misinformation, but what about our tendency to spread misinformation?

There's another group of people in the text that we can relate to. We can relate to Paul, the one who is misunderstood, but I think it's probably a stretch for us to see ourselves in those

Asian Jews, the ones who are misrepresenting Paul. But could we be there?

And we've all admitted that we've been able to do that in the past. Our own tendency to spread misinformation.

We can do this in a few ways. We can lie about others to make ourselves look better or for whatever reason.

We can just pass along junk without checking it out, like I mentioned. Or we can mislead people by the things we say and do.

The first two, lying and spreading gossip, are pretty clear. And can I please just speak to all of us on this one?

Let's ask for God's help to cut that behavior out. Pray and ask for His assistance and His help and by His Spirit alive in us to stop spreading gossip, to stop lying about others.

But the last one is more subtle. Do you know that you can misrepresent Christ by the way you live? Have you ever considered that?

By the way that you live, by the things that you do, and by the implications of your lifestyle. And then occasionally a word or a phrase that comes out paints that or colors that a little bit.

So let me give you an illustration. You can exude such a high level of self -righteousness that others around you are justified in assuming that you think you're perfect.

Did you hear that? Let me say that again. You can exude such a high level of self -righteousness that others around you are justified in their assumption that you think you're perfect.

Do you get what I'm saying by that? They can actually, it's reasonable that they think that you think you're all that and a bag of chips.

Because you exude this level of just, I am righteous.

I have it all together. Thank you very much. Everything in your life is always good.

Somebody asks you, how's it going this week? It's always great. It's going awesome. Is it?

Really? Always? I start to get kind of leery of that. Really? Really never had a bad week in the last six months?

Amazing. How about this? You're always giving advice, but you're never asking questions.

Think about what does that imply to others. You're eager and quick and willing to give others advice. How often are you willing to go to them and ask their advice?

How many of you know that that says something about you? That's painting something about your faith, something about who you are and the way that you interact with others.

Some of us, maybe because of the way we were raised, maybe because of our preferences or whatever.

Some of us take the rules and the lists in the Bible and we work to follow those, and what we do is we make rules on top of those to help us follow those rules.

Okay? Do you know what I'm saying? What does that communicate to people when we add rules on rules on top of the rules to keep ourselves holy and righteous?

We can lead people away from the gospel and into the assumption that we are too holy for them. And then there's a subtle difference, but we can equally lead people to the misunderstanding that the

Christian faith is a religion, and I don't use that word in a positive light in this context. When I'm talking about it being a religion,

I'm talking about a method, a way for us to reach God. Our attempts, our efforts, our works to try to get there and to please

Him and to make Him like us more. And that is not Christianity.

So you can be a person who doesn't consider yourself self -righteous or isn't really, you know, like,

I've got it all together, and that might not be your hang -up, but you can still lead people to religion because we can communicate to people that they should act a certain way, do certain things, and of course avoid certain things in order to please

God or be right with Him. When we define ourselves by a list of do's and don'ts, we are no longer pointing to Jesus Christ, but we're pointing to ourselves.

And is it any wonder that the majority of non -Christians, as Dave mentioned earlier, that the majority of non -Christians say,

I'm not going to go to church because they're a bunch of hypocrites. Well, does that stick?

Be honest. Does it stick? There is always room for one more.

I like that. Absolutely. We're not perfect. We don't always accurately reflect and image

God. We are broken mirrors that God is putting together one piece at a time. But how many of you know, any of you ever look at your reflection in a broken mirror?

It's not a good image. But as God is getting a hold of our lives, He's putting the pieces back together and He's molding that and shaping that so that we can better image

Him. We don't have a perfect reflection of Jesus Christ in our lives yet, do we? So why point to ourselves?

That's dangerous, isn't it? Hey, just act like me. And all my faults and failures?

No, I'm grateful that I've got someone higher, better, perfect, holy, righteous to point to.

Jesus Christ. Let me point you to the cross. The place where grace and justice meet.

It's at the cross where we're made whole and complete. That's our only hope. Aside from the cross, there is no hope.

There's no hope in me. Follow me? No, follow Christ. That's the point.

So we can be guilty of leading people away from the gospel by pointing to ourselves. So what

I want to encourage you to do is take some time this week to consider your interaction with others around you. What do your decisions, the way that you live, the things that you say, what do they communicate to them about your faith?

What about the things that you say? Do they see you pointing to Christ? Do they see you pointing to yourself?

And then maybe a more fundamental question, do they see you pointing at all? Most of them aren't even pointing.

Just like Paul, we run the risk of being misrepresented and misunderstood. But also, just like the Asian Jews, we can be guilty of leading people in the wrong direction.

So we need prayer. Let's pray. Father, as we contemplate and consider our testimony before others and the way that they view you through us,

Father, that's a humbling thing. And we know that people are watching our lives. We know that they see us.

And God, I pray that you would, those who are here and are followers of you, that Father, you would impress on our hearts the ways that we could be pointing to you better.

Father, protect us from being guilty of misinformation about you by the way that we live, of acting more holy than we are, not being authentic and real with people.

But Father, if there's anybody here who does not know you by faith, who has not come to the foot of the cross and laid their life down before you, as we sang earlier, that there's someone here who has not acknowledged that salvation is through Jesus Christ, that he is

Lord and he is Savior and he has the right to our lives, and that what he's asking for us is our allegiance, our faith in him, our trust in him, and that that's the simple step that leads us into a relationship with you.

Father, if there's anybody here who has not done that, I ask that you would work in their hearts to bring them to the place where they would bow their knee before you and say,

Jesus Christ is Lord. He died on the cross for my sins and I seek salvation in him and in him only.

I pray that as we come to communion and Zach comes to lead that, Father, that you would be honored and glorified through our remembrance of what

Jesus Christ has sacrificed. He's an amazing and awesome sacrifice for us. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen.