Paul's Arrest, Part 3
Acts 22:1-15
This morning we come again to the 21st chapter of the Book of Acts, Acts chapter 21, continuing in our study of Paul's arrest and defense. Throughout the history of God's people... whether you're starting from the very beginnings of the Old Testament or the New Testament, it has always been true that there are those who have been willing to give a testimony for God or for Christ against all odds. Didn't really matter what the situation was or how negative it was or how impossible it seemed, there were always those faithful who were willing to buck the situation to give a positive testimony in a negative situation. Whether you wanna go back to Daniel, who would not defile himself with the king's meat, who would not cease to pray, and was wiling to pay the price of a lions' den for that commitment; or his three friends, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego, who would not worship Nebuchadnezzar's image and, consequently, had to face a fiery furnace; or whether you come to the New Testament and find someone like Peter, who would not capitulate to the directives of the Sanhedrin, but rather would obey God and preach the Gospel, no matter what it cost him; or Stephen who, even in sinking beneath the bloody stones as they crushed the life out of his body, announced the living reality of the Lord Jesus to those who were throwing the stones.
Or whether even past that, you wanna go into the New Testament, the post-New Testament years of the early church and read about men like Ignatius, who, under the persecution of Trajen suffered unbelievable pain and was one of hundreds and hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who so suffered. He boldly presented the Gospel of Christ to the Emperor Trajen. He would not denounce it. He would not deny it, and so Trajen made him hold fire in his hands, and then he dipped papers in oil, lit them on fire, and draped them around his body, and took hot irons and poked his flesh, and when all that was done, threw him to wild animals. In the midst of all of that, Ignatius said, quoting really, or paraphrasing Paul, "Let the fire, the gallows, the wild beasts, the breaking of bones, the pulling asunder of members, the bruising of my whole body, the torments of the devil and hell itself come upon me, so that I may win Jesus Christ.
Or whether you wanna go even further than that, through the history of more modern days; and there's been suffering for Jesus Christ in many places in the world and continues to be so today. Perhaps into the Tribulation, which may not be very far away, where we find that those who name the name of Jesus Christ and refuse the mark of the beast will pay with their lives and; yet, there will be such great evangelism that people will be won to Christ at a rate unknown in any time previous to that Tribulation.
Throughout all of the history of God's people, beginning in Old Testament times and all the way through the end of the Tribulation till Jesus Raptures His church, there have been faithful people, willing to confront the system, willing to stand in a negative situation and give a positive testimony.
Now lemme add this...in most every situation of true confrontation...there is going to be a negative...so you might as well realize that to begin with; and I say that for this reason. You say, "Aren't there any positive times when you present the Gospel?" Yes, but whenever you are struggling to deliver somebody from Satan's domain, Satan will put up some kind of resistance. The presentation of the Gospel has a positive power, but it is a positive power in the midst of a negative situation, because Satan will do everything he can to hold on.
So people who are waiting for the absolute, positive situation, "Well, when the Lord makes everything just perfect, then I'll do it," are gonna spend a looooooong time waiting. Sooner or later you might as well realize that, if it is confrontation that we're talking about, if it is actually facing the world nose to nose and proclaiming the truth of the Gospel to somebody who is in Satan's domain, there's going to be a negative factor somewhere. So you might as well realize it and get on it.
If you were to study the Book of Acts with just that in mind, and we could go back - we won't take the time - we could go back and go all the way through the Book of Acts, and in all of the presentations of the Gospel, there is somewhere a negative factor. It is never easy. People say, "When I was young, they used to say to me when they would try to get me to go out and win people to Christ, say, "Well, the more you do it, the easier it gets." That isn't true. The more you do, the easier...that doesn't work at all. The more you do it, the more effective you get, the harder Satan works against you. And, incidentally, the longer you do it, the closer you get to the end of the age, and the closer you get to the end of the age, the worse people are gonna get. Isn't gonna get any...you're just gonna get tougher so you might as well do it. Do it now while it's easier than it's gonna be tomorrow...
You never rescue a soul from hell without putting up a struggle. Just that way. So if you're going to give a positive testimony, I mean something that really makes waves in the system, you're gonna have to be aware that there's gonna be a negative involved in it. Be willing to take a little flack.
You know, it's exciting to make waves, really. I imagine there are some Christians who don't know what that means, whose only testimony is given to other Christians. If you're gonna confront the system, you're gonna find it's always a negative situation, but you can just have a tremendous time seeing the power of God overcome that situation, and in the Book of Acts, we've seen that happen. The Apostle Paul, it's just one negative situation after another, never phased him. He just figured, "That's the way it's gonna be. I'll just go ahead with what I'm wanna do." And he gave a positive testimony in a negative situation. God blessed.
Now, he comes to Jerusalem in chapter 21 of Acts. It's the final step in his third journey, and the third journey is the last journey that he ever made as a free man. The last "missionary" journey. The next trip that he makes back toward Rome is as a prisoner. It's no less a missionary journey, because whether he was in or outta chains never changed what he said and never changed his effect at all, either; but, technically speaking, this is last of his three missionary journeys.
He's coming to Jerusalem. He wants to come to Jerusalem, because he wants to bring some Gentile converts who have money. He wants them to bring their money, which are love offerings from the Gentile churches, to give to the poor Jerusalem saints. He feels, one, it will meet the need of those saints. Two, it will...it will bring together in a beautiful act of love, the Jewish and Gentile Christians; and he believes they should be one, as he so aptly communicated from the Holy Spirit in Ephesians; and so he does this as an act of conciliation, to bring together the two parts of the church, Jew and Gentile.
It's is the great climax of his ministry. He has evangelized all over the area from Jerusalem west, as far as west as Achaia at this point, Macedonia, as far east as Seleucia, Syria, and then through Galatia, Pisidia, Asia Minor, and so forth. In all of those areas, he has established churches. He's gone back, built those churches up. They have began to go out like little feelers and establish more churches in more places, and there's a block of Christian churches that occupies the territory that his feet have touched...And as he comes back, the last act as a free man, as a free missionary, able to determine his own direction, is to bring this money to try to bring these two parts of the church together.
When he arrives in Jerusalem, he finds out that there are some of the Jewish Christians that think he's anti-Jewish, that think he doesn't believe in the traditions and the ceremonies of Israel. And some of those Jewish Christians, even though they had given their lives to Christ and were counting only on His perfect work for salvation, were still used to the customs of Israel, because it was hard to separate, you see, religious custom from just the custom of life, just the culture; and so some of them were still doing customs that were very Jewish traditions. They had no doctrinal consequence; and they had been told by the Judaizers that Paul was anti-Jewish custom; and so when Paul arrives, the elders of the Jerusalem church are very concerned that he's not gonna have any hearing at all with the Jewish Christians, and so he does something to try to gain their ears. He goes to the temple with some folks taking a Nazarite vow, which was an old-fashioned Jewish traditional way of separating yourself unto God.
And so he just joins in with them and goes through a Jewish ceremony in order to show these Jewish Christians that he was not against the customs and the ceremonies of cultural Judaism. But while he was in the temple doing this, he was seen, and he was seen by some people who knew him well. They were some Jews, non-Christian, antagonistic, Christ-hating Jews from Asia Minor; and when Paul had been in Asia Minor, he had dramatically affected the entire province. In fact, in the three years that he was in Ephesus, he had not only established the church at Ephesus, but from the church in Ephesus had been established the other six churches of Asia Minor. All seven are listed in Revelation 2 and 3. He had had such a profound affect on that province that seven churches had grown up in the years of his ministry. Jews had been converted from Judaism to Jesus, and the rest of the Jews had hated and despised him. In fact, there was a riot in Ephesus, and they tried to kill him once. And, now, here are some Jews in Jerusalem. They're there for the feast of Pentecost, which is occurring at this time; and while they're there, they spy Paul in the temple going through this Nazarite purification ceremony; and they feel they've got their chance to get him.
In the riot that began in Ephesus, Gentile heads prevailed and saved his life; but there wouldn't be any Gentile heads, they figured, around to stop this. This was a mass Jewish population...so we find that he is attacked beginning in verse 27 of Acts 21, and this becomes his arrest and first defense. From here on out to the end of the book, he's a prisoner in some sense or another; and, also, he gives six different defenses of himself. He defends himself six times. This is the first of those six. And we've divided the section beginning in 21:27 through 22:30 or 22:29, whichever, into five parts: the attack of the mob, the arrest of the Romans, the apology of Paul, the action by the people, and the attitude of Paul.
Now, these five things carry us through this first defense. Now, it's very hard to just give you little homiletical sermons on a lengthy thing like this. To break it up into little bits and pieces wouldn't be fair to Paul, because it all happened in one moment of time; and we must consider it as one unit; but we'll have to section it up week by week, because it takes me an hour to say what Paul said in a verse. But that's my problem. We'll have to live with it.
Now, to begin with, we see the attack of Paul in verses 27 to 30, the attack of Paul, and we'll just review for a minute by reading it. "When the seven days were almost ended...that is the seven days of the purification of the Nazarite vow that he was taking with four other men...the Jews who were of Asia Minor, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, laid hands on him...they attacked him...crying out, 'Men of Israel, help!...as if he'd committed some blasphemy...This is the man that teachest all men everywhere against the people...he's anti-Semitic...against the law...he's anti-Biblical...and this place...he's anti-temple...and, further, he brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place.'"
You say, "Did he do that?" No, verse 29 says, "They had with him in the city of Jerusalem Trophimus an Ephesian, whom they supposed Paul had brought into the temple." Of course he didn't. They just lied. "And all the city was moved and the people ran together, took Paul and drew him out of the temple; and at once the doors were shut." So they grabbed him, and they hauled him outta there right in the middle of the conclusion of his Nazarite purification vow. They did it for the purpose of beating him up, killing him.
Well, here, then, is the negative situation. He is being beaten up. That's about as negative as you're gonna get. The amazing thing about it is Paul expected it. He expected it, because every city he'd been in before this, the holy Spirit had witnessed to him that he was gonna get it when he got to Jerusalem. So he was just saying in his mind, "Wasn't it wonderful how accurate God's revelations are?"
So we see the attack of the mob. We also studied last time the arrest by the Romans. To the rescue came the Romans. You remember that above the temple grounds to the northwest corner was a great tower, which was the lookout station for Fort Antonia, which was right adjacent to the temple. In fact, the steps from Antonia came right into the courtyard. Since the courtyard was a potential bombshell because, when the Jews came at feast time, they could have two million in the city, and most of them milling and milling around and the courtyard jammed with people. That the...the Romans knew that one of the very primary targets for civil order that they would have to really conquer was the temple court, so they had a...a garrison there watching out. They had a well-trained riot squad of at least a thousand men at feast time who watched that temple ground, and anything happened, they came down the steps and fixed it.
Well, that's exactly what happens here. As they went about to kill him, their intention was obvious; and, you know, the mob didn't know what was going on. They had no idea what they were doing. They were just doing what somebody else was doing, so they were all trying to kill Paul. "Tidings came unto the chief captain," the chilliark. That means he was the head of a thousand men. He was the commander of the garrison, Fort Antonia. "And all Jerusalem is in an uproar," was the report. "Immediately, he took soldiers and centurions...Those would be leaders of a hundred men...and ran down unto them; and when they saw the chief captain and the soldiers, they ceased beating Paul."