The Bible assures us that God is in control even when our situation seems utterly unmanaging Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg examines the signs of Providence that appeared throughout the Apostle Paul's life. We'll learn how his experiences equipped him for ministry and prepared him to face trials.
We're studying from Acts chapters 21 and 22. 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. The commander says to himself, I think it's the Egyptian chap back again. 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. Just beware of false deductions. Now as we move on, and we must, I made a further parenthetical note.
And it was this. Note that the institution of Roman law became the vehicle employed by God for the protection of his servant. Remember, the Bible teaches us that God has established government, that God has established the fabric and structure of human society, both within the framework of the nuclear family unit and then within the larger framework of the principles that undergird true democratic life, if you like. And Paul later, when he writes to the church at Rome, points out that these are the very principles upon which our societal life is framed. Sometimes I listen to Christians, and it sounds in listening to them as though somehow or another these things are tangential to the purposes of God, that if there's going to be any great deliverance, it'll be as a result of a small group of Christians getting together and agitating, or a small group of Christians getting together and working outside of the system or beyond the system or whatever it might be. And here, classically, we discover that the very institution that God has set in place becomes the vehicle for the protection of his servant Paul.
Government does what government is supposed to do, thus protecting Paul first from a lynching—they were trying to kill him—and secondly, and this is verses 22–29, from a flogging which was going to be the end of his day. Now, once he's been provided with this strange pulpit—he's there on the steps, we're told, in verse 40—he stood on the steps. He then motioned to the crowd. I wonder what the motion was. Not really very important, but was it a sort of Shakespearean motion, you know?
I mean, was there a standard Milesian madam? Or did he just go, hey, guys? Can you believe they were quiet? You know, from screams to silence? Imagine the commander saying to himself, under his breath, yeah, go on, silence.
Yeah, go on, speak to them. He couldn't get them to shut up. One group was shouting one thing, one was shouting another. He couldn't hear himself think. That's why he had taken them into the proximity of the barracks, and he got them there so they could actually have a conversation.
But the hullabaloo is out there. Don't you think the commander must have said, What is it about this man when he motions to the crowd, and he addresses them, when they were all silent? He didn't talk over the ruckus.
From screams to silence. Now, notice his diplomacy again. Look at what we're told by Luke. He said to them in Aramaic. That was the language of the street. That was the vernacular. In some senses this would be the equivalent of somebody being accused by the nationalist cause in the south of Ireland of disrupting their nationalistic agenda for whatever it is they want, silencing those who are opposed to him on this front, and as soon as he's got them quiet, addressing them in Gaelic. Then they say, He speaks Gaelic?
Now, the buzz must have gone through the crowd. Do you see what a lesson there is, incidentally, just parenthetically in the way in which we approach people, the way we speak to people, the wonderful way in which God had ordered his servants' life, that he had the facility of Aramaic, that he had the facility of Greek? Oh, and growing up, he wouldn't have paid much attention. His mother said, Now, have you been doing your Aramaic homework? Well, he said, I don't know if I have or I haven't. She said, Well, it's going to be very important one day, Paul. And have you been doing this?
Have you been doing that? Just the things that children deal with all the time, and in the providence of God, molding his life in order that at strategic moments in time, he may be able to do that for which he's been placed on earth to do. God works in the same way in your life. Oh, you're not necessarily the apostle Paul.
I'm certainly not. But all of the way in which God has ordered your steps, the influences that he has brought upon you, the privileges he's entrusted to you, the education that he has given you, or the lack of education that you know, will become vehicles in his hand in the right moment for the right opportunity. And so, both by his use of language and by his phraseology, he establishes for them his Jewish roots. Because that was the big issue, wasn't it?
It was the whole Jewish factor. And so he begins strategically. He begins diplomatically. He begins sensibly.
It would have been a silly thing for him to stand up and say, now, I know a number of you are concerned about Judaism. Let's just put that to bed to begin with. No.
No, look at how he starts. Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense. Do you know your Bible? Do you know where that came? On whose lips was that last heard in the Acts of the Apostles? Brothers and fathers, listen now to me. Guess who said that? Stephen. Was Paul there to hear it?
Yes. Do you think he marveled at it? At such a beginning, such intimacy, such contact? Brothers and fathers, listen to me. And now Paul steps up with all of the hatred and animosity spewing out against him, and he uses the very same phraseology. Brothers and fathers, listen now. He doesn't say to me. He says, listen now to my apologia, my apologetic. Listen now to my defense.
And what's his defense? Let me summarize it, and we'll be through. Since, incidentally, this is one of three places in Acts where we have essentially this material, Acts 9 and Acts 26, to which we'll come, I think we can safely move through it fairly quickly now.
Let me summarize it for you in outline form. When they became very quiet, he told them, verses 2 to 5, who he was and what he'd been. You need to know that I'm a Jew.
I was brought up—I was born in Tarsus, but actually, I was brought up in Jerusalem. That's big. That's a point.
That's actually five right there. I was taught by Gamaliel for the intellectuals among them. They're going, That is significant. We're talking Ivy League here, you see? You're not being boastful. He's simply stating the facts. Incidentally, let's come back to that phrase, stating the facts.
You know, it's tremendous help in just stating the facts. Don't try to dress them up. Don't flower them up.
Don't fiddle with them. Just state the facts. First of all, this is who I was, and this is what I did. He tells how thoroughly zealous he was, even to the point of being involved in these dreadful events that brought prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.
So he was able to say to them, essentially, I know that you would like to punish me. I know you tried to beat me to death. And I can identify with that, because my life was just like that. I was involved in trying to beat people to death.
That's what I was. Then in verses 6–16, he moves from what he was to what had happened. And he tells the story of his encounter with Jesus. He had been kicking against all the influences of Jesus. He had been kicking in his mind, in his conscience, presumably against the considerable impact of the death of Stephen. Surely there wasn't a day in his life when he didn't think about Stephen and what he had said and how he had said it and how he had faced death, and how on the Damascus Road he had had an encounter which was unique to him. His companions had seen the light. They didn't hear the voice.
They didn't get the gist of it all. He's led by the hand into Damascus, because he has been blinded by the light, and then he is introduced to a man named Ananias. Verse 12, he came to see me. Now, notice again how skillful he is here. This is not politics. This is just common sense. You know, he says, And I should just let you know that the fellow that came to see me was, number one, a devout observer of the law and highly respected among the Jews.
Do you see this? I think sometimes I get myself in so much trouble because I miss just the simple art of diplomacy. I miss the simple possibility of stating things as they are. That must have made an impact. He mentions it. Ananias had the right credentials. You may be an Ananias to somebody, incidentally. You may already have been an Ananias to someone—Mrs.
Ananias or Miss Ananias, Uncle Ananias—the person that God has put in the exact position for the exact moment to be the bridgehead between somebody who is there moving to there. Oh, there may not be any great record of it, at least in time. But don't worry about that. Eternity is where the record matters. So he told them what I… He said, This is what I was. Verses 6–16, this is what happened to me. I essentially believed in Jesus. I discovered that he is the Messiah, that I had been turned against him, that all of my animosity and my religious zeal was nothing other than a self-focus.
And I realized that I was unable to save myself or keep the law. And here this Jesus had actually perfectly kept the law and had died as the substitution. It had died as a lamb in my place, the way I understood it in the Old Testament sacrifices. And I actually declared him as Lord and Savior. I was baptized.
That was Ananias again. And if you're wondering what I'm doing now—and that's the third piece of his puzzle—if you're wondering what I'm doing now, this is what I'm doing now. Verse 21, Then the LORD said to me at the end of all of this, Go and I will send you far away to the Gentiles. Obeying Jesus is what I'm doing now. I'm obeying Jesus. And that's why I'm telling Gentile people, I know you're very concerned about this, but the reason I'm doing it is because God has a plan and a purpose for me, and I'm fulfilling that plan. Now, you will notice in verse 22 that the crowd listened to Paul until he said this. As soon as he got back to the Gentiles, off they go again. And you will notice that from their perspective, he didn't finish on a very strong note.
Not a good idea to finish just here. Paul, his talk is not particularly well received. They raised their voices again. They began to shout, Rid the earth of him! And someone else shouted, He's not fit to live! And someone else said, Let's just rip our cloaks off and throw them in the air! Someone says, Let's grab the dust of the ground and hurl it into the air as an expression of our reaction to his blasphemy. We say, That must be quite a finish, huh?
Well, at least it's something, isn't it? It's much to be preferred to the polite glances of a twenty-first-century suburban congregation, allowing the Bible to wash over them, apparently inconsequentially. That's why I always have enjoyed speaking in the open air.
Because when you speak in the open air and you don't have the framework around you and you say something, somebody shout back, You're full of hot air! Immediately! And you have to say something like, Yes, that's the second time I heard that today.
The first time from my wife. But let's put that aside for now. I want to tell you something. And so it goes on. And the animosity that meets Paul ends with the prospect of his flogging, verses 23 and following.
And you will note there that again, it is the fact of his Roman citizenship under God that protects him, first of all, from being lynched, and secondly, from being flogged. Now, just a word in conclusion. It's very possible for somebody to read this along with me this morning and to say, Well, you know, this is very interesting, but it's so far away from me. It's obviously unique to Paul and unique to his circumstances.
I am not him, and I have never experienced anything like this at all. Truly. But on one level, what we have here is a classic illustration of how God works in the lives of men and women throughout all of time.
Number one, look at this. God changed Saul's life. Saul of Tarsus was soundly converted. I wonder whether that phrase with which he begins his speech had not actually rested in his conscience.
Brothers and fathers, listen to me. And how you will remember, after the death of Stephen, he then went out and engaged in a fierce persecution of the church. He was enraged by what Stephen said. Now, he's using the very same phraseology that Stephen used.
Words that he previously hated because they got to his conscience, he now employs because they express his conviction. He's been converted. He has been changed.
He has been radically altered. And that's your testimony, some of you, this morning. And I know, because you've told me.
I used to hate it when my spouse had that Bible at the breakfast table. And on the few occasions that I came to hear you, I thought, You stunk! I still don't think you're that good, but I hated it. I went out in the car.
My family were sick of hearing me explaining everything away. And those songs—man, did I hate those songs!—and those superficial, teary smiles of those con people in the corridors, I hated them too, every last smiling one of them. But now I'm smiling like them.
Now I'm singing those songs. Now I'm reading that Bible. Now the words that I once hated have become mine.
What's happened? Been converted. Something God does. God changed him. Secondly, God protected him.
He did so not by making everything super for him. In fact, when he began to follow Jesus, things became insuperably difficult. They became dangerous.
They became downright life-threatening. And I'm glad, again, that the testimony of many of you is not that you have committed your life to a God who indulges you, to a God who just looks out for you and makes sure everything's super, but you've committed yourself to a God who uses people and purposes to accomplish his circumstances. And often, as we discovered last Sunday morning, those purposes come down the line of deep-seated pain and significant questions, but still we put the puzzle together. Life is hard, and God is good, and he protects his servant. And finally, God not only changed his life and protected his life, but he directed his life. Oh, the cries of the people were, Away with him! But God has the last word.
It's as though he said, You can say, Away with him as much as you like, but when I'm good and ready, I will send him, and I know where he's going. And that's the story of many within our church. That where you are, the people you now meet, the places you now go, the plans you now see to complete are directly related to the fact that God has changed you, God continues to protect you, and God is directing your life. But I don't think that's true of everyone here.
Is this your profile—converted, protected, directed? If God has been at work in your life over a period of time, however brief or long, using the influence of family or a colleague or a student friend, perhaps showing you your own impoverishment through failure, through disappointment, through the fact that you've been making a royal hash of things, or perhaps showing you up to just be an intellectual snob, showing you up to be somebody who's so stuck on what they know and how they're able to perform. Perhaps it's your body that's your God, and just you can power lift more than anyone else around you.
And that's what floats your boat and allows you to throw the bag in the car and drive away. That's where you are. And God has been showing you the futility of that, showing you that, as Paul discovered, you've been kicking against the influences of God, the cares of a friend, the note of a grandmother, the influence of a colleague, the invitation to an event. And if in the course of that you've discovered, as Paul discovered, that you're actually in the wrong before God, and you've found that you can't run from him, then why don't you run to him? There is no refuge from him, but there is refuge in him.
Pray with me, will you? There may be someone here this morning who follows the line all the way down. They say to themselves, I can't believe what happened here. This is my sermon. I'm just expecting him to read from my day planner next. How does he know all of this? I don't know anything at all, but God does. And you know that God has brought you to this day in order that you might somehow or another, as Paul did, cry out to him and become converted. And if you're looking for a vehicle to help you in that end, maybe you'd like to say this little prayer in your heart as I read it for you now. Lord Jesus Christ, I admit that I'm weaker and more sinful than I ever before believed. But through you I'm more loved and accepted than I ever dared to hope. I thank you for paying my debt, bearing my punishment, and offering me forgiveness. I turn now from my sin and receive you as my Savior. And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy to the only wise God, our Savior. Be glory and majesty, dominion and power, world without end.
Amen. Life is hard, but God is good and he protects his servants. That's an important reminder from Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. Maybe you just prayed along with Alistair that you'd like to be converted, directed, protected by God.
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You can sign up through the mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash Truth Partner or you can call us at 888-588-7884. When you sign up, be sure to request the book we are recommending today. It's titled An Illustrated Guide to the Apostle Paul, His Life, Ministry and Missionary Journeys. The book is our way of saying thanks for your support. And we're glad you've joined us this week. The Apostle Paul often preached that in all things God works for the good of his people. But did he really believe it himself? We'll find out on Monday. Until then, we hope you have a great weekend and that you're able to worship with your local church. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.
