Sometimes we scroll through the news shaking our heads. We can hardly believe the state of our world in which good is villainized as evil and evil is celebrated as good. It boggles the mind.
Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl reminds us that moral madness is nothing new. The Apostle Paul endured such chaos. Even so, Paul maintained unshakable composure while facing mob violence, assassination plots, and corrupt trials. For anyone navigating personal storms, these insights demonstrate how God's promises offer you islands of peace. Chuck titled his message, Thinking as Paul Thought.
I want to read for you an unusual section for scripture reading today. It's really a series of narrations as they appear, beginning in Acts chapter 21. If you'll be Nice enough to turn to that chapter, get toward the end of it, chapter. 21 verse 30 will begin there. Paul actually stands trial five different times.
in this uh setting in Uh in uh Acts. uh interesting uh Luke devotes uh Some six chapters to the five trials of Paul. And they all have to do with a man who thought straight. Who spoke straight, and as a result, those who accused him were left without a charge. But that's part of the message today, so wait for that.
Look at 2130. Then all the city was provoked, and the people rushed together and. Taking hold of Paul, they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. While they were seeking to kill him, A report came up to the commander of the Roman cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. At once, he took along some soldiers and centurions and ran down to them.
And when they saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped. beating Paul. Verse 34, but among the crowd some were shouting one thing and some another. And when he could not find out the facts because of the uproar, He ordered him to be brought into the barracks. Verse 37.
As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, May I say something to you? And he said, Do you know Greek? Then you are not the Egyptian who sometime ago stirred up a revolt and led the 4,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness. Paul said, I'm a Jew. Of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city.
And I beg you. Allow me to speak to the people. When he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand and when there was a great hush, He spoke to them in the Hebrew dialect.
Now he's just spoken Greek to the commander.
Now he speaks really Aramaic, which is the lingua franca of the Palestinian Jews in that era.
So he spoke. Fluent Aramaic to them and begins his first of five defenses. With these words, brethren and fathers, hear my defense. which I now offer you. Look at verse 30.
Of this same 22nd chapter. That's the last verse of the chapter. But on the next day, wishing to know for certain why he had been accused by the Jews. He, that's the commander, released him and ordered the chief priests and all the council. This would be the Sanhedrin, the Jews' Supreme Court.
And ordered the chief priests and all the council to assemble, and brought Paul down and set him before them. Paul, looking intently at the council, said, Brethren, I've lived my life with a perfectly good Good conscience before God up to this day. Verse six. But perceiving that one group were Sadducees and the other Pharisees Paul began crying out in the council, Brethren, I am a Pharisee. A son of Pharisees, I am on trial for the hope and resurrection.
of the dead. And if I may, just one more chapter twenty-four. And by the way, that was the beginning of the second defense.
Now the third is in chapter 24. After five days, the high priest Ananias came down and came down with some elders with an attorney named Tertullus, and they brought charges to the governor. against Paul. I find this interesting. Verse five.
Here's the charge. We have found this man a real pest. And a fellow who stirs up dissension among all the Jews throughout the world and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. And he even tried to desecrate the temple, and then we arrested him. We wanted to judge him according to our own law.
And the story goes on, and one more defense, if you will, verse 10. When the governor had nodded for him to speak, Paul responded, knowing that for many years, You have been a judge to this nation, I cheerfully. make my defense. That's the third defense if you're marking them chapter 25, verse 8. Is the fourth And chapter 26, verse 1 and following is the fifth.
We'll have time just to get into this, but You will find it, I think, fascinating as I have. Five defenses for the faith. Based on the facts, because he was one straight thinking. intellectual. Woo!
You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the life of the Apostle Paul on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook by going to insight.org slash workbooks.
Now, teaching from the book of Acts, here's Chuck with today's message. Thinking as Paul thought. I was at the hospital twice this past week. I was with a longtime friend of mine I've known since the, really, the very early 1960s. Dr.
Ron Allen. Uh Ron is one of these true intellectuals. He's on the faculty at Dallas Seminary, and he's one of those scholars that could teach in several fields and do a masterful piece of work in whatever field you may choose. He could teach theology. He's a Semitic scholar.
He could teach Hebrew. He could teach Greek. He's a collector of antiquities and a real student of history. I think he would be a wonderful history teacher. He's now teaching in the Department of Bible Exposition.
He has written often in the field of music and the fine arts and comes from a professionally musical family, and so his gifts are there as well. And I think would be a wonderful prof in the field of pastoral ministry.
So all of us were concerned when he was riding on his bike several weeks ago and he hit a patch of gravel and a wheel slipped out from under him and he fell. He shattered his helmet. He thinks the helmet saved his life. He broke several ribs, which seemed to be of greatest concern because that's where the pain was. He didn't realize that when he fell on the left side that he damaged the right side of his brain.
And uh recently uh Uh Neurosurgeon found, neurologist found, an enormous hematoma. That had formed, and the bleeding of the brain on the right side, and it had to be removed. He had no idea that that had happened. And so he went about his work and was continuing to prepare for the new semester and was still traveling. And he noticed pain began.
Uh and it intensified. He also noticed that there were A couple of seizures that happened, and then while reading the text on an occasion, as he put it, the print sort of drifted off the page. And when he turned his computer to work on the keyboard, one of the hands wouldn't, one of his hands wouldn't cooperate with the other. He went and found out about this need for surgery.
So, brain surgery for a scholar. Was of great concern to all of us. The day following the surgery, I slipped into the CCU unit, an isolated area, and a nurse followed me and I. I I walked over and looked at him. He had this gauze wrapped all over his head like a big turban.
He told me later, he says, I need to get this turban off really quick. That's another subject, but uh He was wrapped with this big white turban, came down under his neck, and I didn't know what I would find. And he opened one eye like this. I looked at him, he goes, yikto, tikto, tikto, tickle, yekto, yiktu luk, tikto, na, tikkalu, tikto, na, nikto. I mean, it made me so excited I want to go Bereshith Bara Elohim at Hashemayim with Haaretz.
Or Justo Sorry Gapa Thails ton cosmethoste ton we on ton money get a errigen. But of course the nurse was looking at us and Very concerned that maybe I was having a seizure at that moment. What he was doing was conjugating the verb catal in the Hebrew and the imperfect stem. And he was going all the way down the line, and he was making the. The sounds of a first-year Hebrew student that you hear around the halls of Dallas Seminary as you conjugate that particular regular verb.
And uh And he said to me after he finished, and we had a laugh about it, he said, Just want to make sure I'm still thinking straight. Isn't it interesting to prove that he's thinking straight? He didn't demonstrate laughter or weeping.
Some emotion Isn't it interesting that he didn't tell me of an experience that he had had two weeks ago or last week or even? Since coming out of surgery, He went to something that was evidential, something that was. factual Even something strictly intellectual to help him know that he was thinking straight. He then named all of his grandchildren and all of their birthdays. one after another.
The reason he did that is because neither emotions nor experience. are reliable proofs of Straight thinking. It was Francis Schaefer who caught this realization back when we were on a drift as a nation. And then a fine book that very few people have even heard of called The New Spirituality. Schaefer wrote, beware.
Neither experience nor emotion. is the basis of faith. The basis for our faith is that certain things are true. That, of course, will lead to an experiential relationship with God, but the basis is content. not experience.
Good reminder, especially for a world that has gone mad with emotions. And it seems to stake much of its theology on experience. It's good to remember that Faith is not a feeling. It's a set of facts that become evidence upon which we stake our whole eternity. They lead those evidences, lead to emotions, of course, and experience, but those grow out of the foundation of the facts.
It was Don Miller in his volume, The Authority of the Bible, who wrote a similar word of caution. Experience in itself is too subjective. Too changeable, too fleeting, too tied to physiological factors to be a trustworthy guide for faith. To trust our experience is to put our faith at the mercy of our liver. Or our endocrine glands.
or the quality of our sleep on any given night. or the state of our digestion or the problems at work. Experience must always be subjected to the authority of the saving work of God in Jesus Christ as set forth in the Bible. I love that quote. If you rely on your emotions and your experience, you're relying on your liver.
Or your glands. Or how well you slept last night. Nay Bailey, who is a member of our church and a longtime part of the Campus Crusade for Christ staff. has had her book Put back into print and is now being released called Faith is Not a Feeling. Good title.
Good reminder. Peter says something like that when he encourages us to defend the faith. I want you to turn to 1 Peter 3 before you go to Acts 21 and we get underway in Paul's defending of his faith. I want you to see Peter's Command in verse 15 of chapter 3. Just that single verse.
And you'll see what I mean. 3.15 of 1 Peter says, Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. It means Set Christ apart as Lord. in your life. And then it's followed with always being ready.
to make a defense. To everyone who asks you to give an account of the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence. Look at the words: to make a defense. Apologia, A-P-O-L-O-G-I-A, from which we get our English word apology. Comes directly from the Greek verb to make a defense.
or the noun a defense. But in our English language, uh An apology is an excuse. We feel badly about something we did or said. And we go to someone and we admit it. We confess that they're wrong.
That's our word, apology. But in the Greek, that's not the meaning. It's the idea of using words to set forth evidence. And here, Peter says, you need to be ready to make a defense. To state the facts of your faith.
By the way. Could you do that? If someone at work were struggling or finding that he or she is getting interested in an Eastern religion or is drifting from the roots of their evangelical past, would you be able to give evidence of faith? With the facts. That have led you to believe that Jesus Christ is, in fact, The Son of God and worthy of your.
devotion and commitment. Peter says we ought to be able to do that with everyone, but he's not looking for an arrogant. Kind of conceited presentation. He says, Yet do this with gentleness. and with reverence.
I'm suggesting, in order to do that, you have to think straight. Straight words come from straight minds. Especially in the day in which we live when so many things are being twisted, altered, shaded. compromised, it is important that we return to things that aren't up for change. I love it when we come to the 21st chapter of Acts, and I'd like to have you turn there now, that we come to a time when the Apostle Paul.
Is able to gather up what he truly believes. And before audiences Who were either hostile or ignorant. was able to set forth the truth. in plain straight thinking. You may be surprised to know that at the time we get to the 21st chapter, all of the missionary journeys have ended.
Unless you call the journey to Rome a missionary journey, which it could be. But the three missionary journeys are over. Six of Paul's 13 letters have been written. Take note of this. Galatians Both of the Thessalonian letters.
both of the Corinthian letters And the magnum opus Romans have been written. Paul has seven more to write, and he will do that while under arrest. or even in a dungeon. as he writes to Timothy. Seven are in front of him, six are behind him.
And having finished the third journey, he's come back to Jerusalem. We could call it perhaps home base. It's where he was schooled. It was as familiar to him as perhaps your hometown or the place where you've lived for many years. He's back in Jerusalem, and according to verse 17 of chapter 21, his friends were there to receive him gladly.
After we arrived in Jerusalem, note that we Luke is with him. Remember, we saw that earlier in our study of Paul. When you find that pronoun, we, Luke is included. He's writing the book of Acts, and he, interestingly, is there through all of the trials that Paul goes through.
So Luke is with him, and the brethren are receiving them gladly. It's a great time of refreshment. And a renewal and a reminder of what the Lord had done on that third journey, and perhaps on the others as well. But enemies also followed. Verse twenty seven.
When the seven days were almost over, that's referring to the seven days of purification connected with a feast mentioned in the context earlier. No reason to go there. But when those seven days were almost over, notice who emerges. From the shadows, Jews from Asia. We're not in Asia.
We're in Jerusalem. But they know where Paul is. And they are sick and tired of Paul's leading their fellow Jews to conversion to Christ. They want it stopped. In fact, they want him put to death.
I don't know if you've ever had a contract out on your life or if there has ever been a hitman out to get you. Probably you've not known that experience. I certainly hope you haven't. But if you have, then you can identify with how Paul must have felt. These are not just people who disagree with him intellectually.
Or in a few points of theology, these are people who have murder on their mind. They want to kill him. Is we're going to see more than once. And they're determined to make that happen. And so they stir up all the crowd and they lay their hands on him.
Maybe one grabbed one arm and one grabbed another arm, and they just escorted him to a place of danger. And you will notice they. begin to accuse him. None of the accusations are true. They turn to this mob and they say, Men of Israel, come to our aid.
This is the man who preaches to all men everywhere against our people. That's wrong. He didn't. And against the law, and he didn't. And this place, the temple, and he didn't.
And besides this, he even has brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place when he didn't do that. They saw him with Trophimus as he was coming toward the temple. And the next verse says, They supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Once again, criticism not based on facts. They were not thinking straight.
But they were uh Building the steam under the crowd so that a riot would break out. And all the city, verse 30, was provoked, and the people rushed together, taking hold of Paul.
Now, imagine this. And they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. If you're following along in your Bible, place a bookmark in Acts chapter 21. Chuck Swindall will continue his study right here. In fact, you'll hear from Chuck again in just a moment with a closing comment.
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I'm Bill Meyer. Chucksman Dahl presents a calming message about God's peace in turbulent times. Tomorrow on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Thinking as Paul Thought, was copyrighted in 2001, 2003, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc.
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