There are people who think that if you're a devoted, obedient Christian, should ensure an easy, happy life. Well, the Apostle Paul's experience suggests differently.
Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg walks us through Paul's assault and arrest in Jerusalem, and explains why it's always right to do what's right, even if the outcome seems wrong. One of the number of books that I've purchased in the last month or so is a book by a contemporary historian, A. N. Wilson, whom I think some of you may read. And he has just written a book that covers the period between the era of Queen Victoria, the birth of Queen Victoria, and my own birthday in 1952.
He didn't actually put my birthday on the book, but it just so happens that it ends right around 1952. And so I was intrigued by it, and I thought, well, it would be useful to learn just what was going on in terms of detail, the underpinnings that gave rise to the era in which I, along with others, have enjoyed living. This, of course, is true to the pages of Scripture. Again and again, references made to the past. Classically, in Joshua chapter 4, where the stones are set up in the river, you may recall, and as a result of the priests doing so, the Word of God to them is, In the future, when your children ask you, What do these stones mean? then you will be able to tell them that this was God, the covenant-keeping God, who saw his people safely through. Now, all of that to simply remind us that what we're doing here in the Acts of the Apostles is studying early church history. We are dealing with the period of time that emerges from Pentecost and proceeds into the second century. And, of course, you need to read beyond that if you're going to follow the line through to the conversion of Constantine at the end of the third century, and then into the Dark Ages, and then the period of the Reformation, and so on. But this is at least a beginning. And Luke, you will perhaps have noted, takes a quarter of the second volume to this particular period of time as it relates to God's servant Paul, the experiences he endures, and the speeches that he makes. Clearly, under God, it is of extreme importance.
And that's why we're studying it. We're going to try and get this morning all the way through to the twenty-ninth verse of chapter twenty-two. I know that will make some of you smile immediately, but watch me.
I can assure you it's going to happen. Now, last time we observed Paul doing the right thing. James had suggested to him that so as not to incur chaos within the framework of converted Jews, he should go through the purification rites with these four individuals.
You'll need to go back and rehearse that for yourselves, but you can find it there in the early part of this chapter. And despite the conciliatory gesture which Paul makes in doing this, his circumstances, we discover now, take a swift downturn. Summarized in a phrase there in verse 31, if you'll let your eyes follow it, they were trying to kill him.
They were trying to kill him. So immediately we should notice that the idea—which is a very contemporary idea—that if you want to get serious about God and really follow him and obey Jesus and love him and serve him, that everything in your life will go swimmingly is actually debunked by what we discover here in the life of Paul. He does the very right thing, he does the very best thing, he does the thing that God expects him to do, and as a result, he finds himself on the receiving end of this animosity. Now, notice then that we discover him, first of all, assaulted by some Asian Jews. Notice there in verse 27, when the seven days were nearly over—that's reference again to the purification rites, which you can read about above—some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. Well, have these characters just popped up from nowhere?
No. If you look at verse 19 of chapter 20, you will discover that when he was in Ephesus, which he was for a period of some three years, he served the Lord, Luke tells us, with great humility and with tears. He was severely tested by the plots of the Jews. So within the context of Asia, as he taught the Bible, as he was engaged in speaking evangelistically, as he moved about the community, the Asian Jews plotted against him then. Presumably, a number of them have come up to Jerusalem for the feast periods. Seeing Paul within Jerusalem, they become the catalysts for the riot which ensues.
And if you just allow your eye to scan the text and look at some of the verbs, you'll get the picture of it very quickly. There in verse 27, they stirred up the whole crowd. The idea of fomenting trouble.
Taking a large… We talk about people spooning things or stirring things up, often animosity between people or stirring up a ferment. And this is exactly what they were doing. And in the course of that, they seized Paul. And seizing him, they began to shout for the rest of the men of Israel to come to their aid.
And as they enlist the support of others, they do so by making two accusations, both of which are false, and both of which you can see right there in the text. First of all, there in verse 28, they accused him of teaching all men everywhere. It's a fairly comprehensive allegation, which accidentally speaks to the impact of Paul's ministry, that he was reaching all men. And he was apparently reaching everywhere. He was committed to seeing the message of the gospel getting out as loudly and as broadly as he possibly could.
So there is an accuracy about what is in some measure hyperbole, exaggeration. He teaches all men everywhere, against our people, against our law, and against our temple. Now, that's like a red rag to these Jewish people. Against our people, he is attacking our nationalistic basis. He is attacking, if you like, our theological foundations. He is attacking our law, which frames our way of life. And he is apparently tackling and attacking our temple, which is the symbol of God's presence and the expression of our devotion to him. So in one sense, we can understand just why it is that they would react so vociferously. But in actual fact, this was a half-truth—a half-truth which Luke is gracious enough to tell us came about not as a result of them wanting to foist on their colleagues a deliberate lie, but which came about as a result of an assumption that they had been making.
And that assumption takes us to the second point of accusation. Not only is he teaching all men everywhere, against the people, against the law, and against the temple, pointing to the fact that they misunderstood Jesus, they misunderstood Stephen, both of whom they killed, and now they misunderstood Paul, whom they are trying to kill. And added to that, he has apparently, they said, brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place. Now, we sit here this morning in the twenty-first century, and we say, This is a bit of a storm in a teacup, isn't it? I mean, is it going to be such a dreadful thing to bring Greek people into a territory where Jewish people are privileged to go?
Well, the answer to that is yes. And between the court of the Israelites, the court of the Jews, and what became known as the court of the Gentiles, or the outer court, there had been constructed a barricade, essentially a four-and-a-half-foot wall, to prevent the Gentiles from stepping into a place that they weren't welcome. Actually, it was more than that. If they stepped in, it was at the penalty of their lives. In the last hundred and fifty years, archaeologists have discovered some of the inscriptions that were attached at the entryway to the court of the Jews.
The inscriptions read as follows. No foreigner may enter within the barricade. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death. So, there was no way to wiggle out of it. If you step your feet in here, and Roman law actually permitted the annihilation of Gentiles who violated this instruction without any further form of trial or legal proceeding. So it was a significant allegation. But it was wrong. It was a significant accusation, but it wasn't true.
It wasn't a deliberate lie, but it was a lie. And it was based upon this false assumption. They had seen Paul with Trophimus, or Trophimus. He was a Gentile. They had seen him in the city. Not everybody would have been able to recognize Paul, but these individuals who came from Asia, from Ephesus, had seen him over a period of three years. They would have known him very, very well. And they had seen him around, moving around the city with this fellow who was a Gentile. Now they see him in the temple courts with four men, none of whom they recognize. So somebody at some point presumably said, I think one of those four men is Trophimus the Gentile.
And as a result of that, they are able to expand the extent of their riot to the point where Luke tells us that the whole city was in an uproar. Isn't it interesting how quickly people believe lies, especially when they support their prejudices? If I am prejudiciously oriented, if someone comes up with a good piece of information which supports my prejudice, even if it is untrue, I may be inclined to include it in my portfolio of animosity.
Maybe that's just me. I don't know. But can we pause then and just note something here? I wrote in my notes, en b, notre bene, the impact of a failure of integrity. In other words, look at what happens when people don't tell the truth. If we are going to state what someone has done, it should not be what we suppose they have done. If we are going to say what someone believes, it should not be what we suppose they believe.
And if, as God's people, we would stick simply to the facts, simply to the facts, many slanderous accusations would be prevented. Now, unrelated to this study—in fact, preparing for this evening's study, first at the university and then here—I was reading some of the work of E. J. Young, who was a twentieth-century Old Testament theologian. And interestingly—and I went back to it, because I remembered it, I did the evening before I did the morning.
When I was studying the morning and I got to this, I said, Oh, that reminds me of what I read concerning the evening in the work by E. J. Young. And E. J. Young was a colleague of Gresham Machen. Gresham Machen was a theological professor at Princeton Theological Seminary who left the seminary in order to be part of the faculty group which began Westminster Theological Seminary and endeavored to ground it on strong biblical lines. As a result of that, he was on the receiving end of all kinds of smears.
And E. J. Young just parenthetically gives us this wonderful contemporary illustration. He says, they—that is, his protagonist—they could spread stories about him that were not true, and those stories are hard to live down.
People are willing to believe the falsehood rather than the truth, and this is the way that Satan fights. And then this is the sentence that had struck me earlier in the week, and I'd made a note of it as I read it. Listen to this sentence.
Here is a good practical rule for us as Christians. When somebody says something derogatory to you about someone else, just forget it. Do not believe it. It may be true. It may not be true. Whatever you do, do not spread it.
Do not repeat it. Gossip is a terrible thing. At times, I think, it's one of the worst of sins. You can destroy a person's character by gossip, and Satan delights in that. The gossip simply eats the bones of another person and destroys him. Now, isn't that exactly what unfolds here?
As a result of two accusations emerging from the Asian Jews, one a half-truth and the other a flat-out lie, albeit based on a misunderstanding. Now, as a result of that, we find Paul not simply accused or assaulted by these Asian Jews, but we find him arrested by some Roman soldiers. The soldiers were garrisoned, immediately adjacent to these temple precincts. The castle of Antonia was right there, capable of holding hundreds of soldiers. There was a commander there, and he would have sentries looking out over the community so that someone would be able to give the alarm if there was any reason for military intervention. And so, from this vantage point, they could watch for any signs of disruption.
And as a result of that, they would then dispatch a group of soldiers to clean up the problem. Some of you will have seen this. I have never seen this, but I was at a sporting event in New York not so long ago with about another 75,000 people, and all of a sudden, animosity broke out in the road just immediately in front of me.
I can't go into the details of it now, but it wasn't particularly tasteful. And before very long, a group of individuals all arrived wearing the same shirts, identified as, I think, the security detail or whatever it was, and suddenly a group of individuals who had come to see the game were somewhere entirely different from what they had planned. And the group had just gone—shoom!—gathered them up in a little group and escorted them out. Now, that's exactly what the group was doing from the castle of Antonio. The commander said, Okay, we've got a problem down here. Let's get the group all with the same shirts. Down we go.
Let's handle it. And they immediately go to the central issue, the central issue being this Paul fellow. And you will notice in verse 33 that they immediately arrest him.
There's no reading of the Miranda rights. They arrest him, they bind him with two chains. And then in verse 33 still, then they asked who he was and what he had done. So all of a sudden he's manacled, he's under control, and then the inquiry comes, And by the way, how are you doing?
Who are you? And what's going on here? Actually, providentially, it's the best thing that could have happened to him, because they were trying to kill him. And the intervention of these soldiers, the arrest that took place, dealt with the assault that he was experiencing.
Now, the concern of the commander, Luke tells us in verse 34, is to get at the truth. And since he can't get at the truth because of the uproar, he says to his troops, he says, Let's take Paul up into the barracks. Let's get him out of all of this squabbling and shouting and so on. And as a result of that, Paul is carried to safety, with the sound of the crowd chanting in his ears, Away with him! Away with him! They're going to escort him up the steps. Presumably they start walking, and when they get into the hullabaloo of the event, someone says, You know, I think we're going to have to pick him up and put a cordon around him, otherwise they're going to rip him right out of our custody.
And so that's exactly what happens to him. And here's the mighty apostle Paul, having responded to James, gone up to Jerusalem. What do you think I ought to do, James? Why don't you do the purification right? Seems like a good idea to me.
Go ahead and do it. And now the place is in complete chaos, and he is being carried bodily up onto the steps of the castle. Here's the great evangelist. Remember Paul, when he writes in 2 Corinthians, he says, You know, God gave me a thorn in the flesh so that I wouldn't get a fat head. And there were a number of times in Paul's life where there were things happened to him that would make it very difficult for him to get a fat head. You remember in Damascus he preaches, and they don't like what he said in Damascus, and so they let him down through the wall in a basket, and he has to run for his life.
Who's that running? Well, that's the mighty apostle Paul. Did he just come down in a basket? Yes, he did. Hmm, interesting.
Not what I would have expected. Who's the fellow that they're manhandling up the steps, the bloody beaten mass of humanity? Well, that's the apostle Paul. Oh, you mean the one that serves Christ? Yes. But I thought if he served Christ like that, he would be in a limousine or something.
He would be moving around always in a chariot. Well, apparently not. I don't know what's going on, but that's certainly him. And so he's carried to safety, and the cries of the crowd will sound strangely familiar to some. There will be déjà vu for some of the older in the crowd, won't they, as they hear themselves joining in, Away with him!
Away with him! And their minds going back twenty-seven years to Jerusalem again and to another about whom they said, Away with him! And so, taken into the custody and safety of the barracks region, having noted the impact of the absence of integrity, I made another little parenthetical note for myself. I wrote, Note well, the impact of the art of diplomacy.
The art of diplomacy. Don't you see the way in which Paul tackles the circumstances? Look at how he begins, verse 37. May I say something to you? And in verse 39, please let me speak to the people.
In other words, he doesn't come on his high horse, does he? He doesn't say, Excuse me, sir, but do you know who I am? I am Saul of Tarsus, the mighty apostle Paul, and I deserve to be heard. In fact, I don't deserve these chains. Get them off me. No, John McEnroe in this.
No, you cannot. Be serious. What do you think you're doing to me?
No. Now, there's a lesson here, isn't there? Oh, yes, there is a lesson here. And it's in this context that we find the second case of mistaken identity. First, remember, they assumed that one of the four was Trophimus, and they deduced from that that Paul had violated the law. Now we discover that the commander had made his own deduction on the basis of what he discovered, and he assumed that the fellow that had his troops arrest was none other than this false prophet Egyptian character who'd been around in the last little while camping out with his followers in Jerusalem, telling his followers that if they followed him, all the walls of Jerusalem would fall down. And when Paul addresses him in this diplomatic way, he says to him, Oh, do you speak Greek? I thought you were the Egyptian chap. Paul answered, verse 39, Well, no, I'm actually a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia.
No mean city. You know, could I please speak to the people? See, once again, the commander had put two and two together and got five.
Let's be aware of false deductions. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. As we study Paul's story, do you ever try to put yourself in his shoes? Well, we want to recommend to you a book that invites you to journey back through time to travel along with Paul. The title is An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul, His Life, Ministry, and Missionary Journeys. This is a unique book that traces Paul's missionary trips as recorded in the book of Acts. It will help you more fully visualize Paul's experience as he traveled from place to place proclaiming the gospel. You'll learn from the maps and the photographs and the compelling historical facts about the culture and the places where Paul visited and preached. This is an illustrated guide that brings Paul's journey to life, so you'll get a deeper understanding of who he was, where he was, what he wrote many of his letters, and how God used him to reach the lost. Ask for your copy of the book when you donate to support the ministry of Truth for Life today. You can give your gift online at truthforlife.org slash donate. And if you're doing any vacation planning currently, let me encourage you to consider joining Alistair and me on the Deeper Faith Cruise coming in November.
It's a 10-day excursion departing out of Lisbon, Portugal. Alistair will be teaching from God's word as we'll visit beautiful ports in places like the Azores, the Canary Islands, Morocco, and Spain. To find out more, visit deeperfaithcruise.com. We're glad you've joined us today. God is always in control even when our situation seems out of control, and tomorrow we'll examine the signs of divine providence in the Apostle Paul's life. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
