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Chapter uh twenty three, Beginning to read there in verse six. But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisee, touching the hope and the resurrection of the dead, I am called in question. When he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both.
There arose a great clamor, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' part stood up and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man, and what if a spirit has spoken to him or an angel? When there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing lest Paul should be torn in pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them and bring him into the castle. Chapter twenty four now, please, and verse fourteen. But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our fathers, believing all things which are according to the law and which are written in the prophets, having hope toward God, which these also themselves look for, that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and unjust.
Herein do I also exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense towards God and men always. And finally, for the moment, chapter twenty six, beginning in verse two. I think myself happy, King Agrippa, that I am to make my defense before thee this day, touching all the things whereof I am accused by the Jews, especially because thou art expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews. Wherefore I beseech thee to hear me patiently. My manner of life then from my youth up, which was from the beginning among mine own nation and at Jerusalem, know all the Jews, having knowledge of me from the first, if they be willing to testify, how that after the straightest sex of our religion, I lived a Pharisee.
And now I stand here to be judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our Father, unto which promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God, ma- night and day, hope to attain. And concerning this hope it is that I am accused by the Jews, O King. Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead? God give us good understanding of his holy word. The final chapters of the Acts of the Apostles contain some of the most vivid writing in the whole of the sacred canon of scripture.
Leaving aside the fact that Luke was inspired of the Holy Spirit, or so I believe, as he wrote this book, what he has produced reveals Luke to us as a consummate artist, as well as an exceedingly accurate historian. Chief among the delights of those who love literature and good things, of course, is his description of the tremendous storm through which Paul and his fellow passengers had to survive on their way to Rome. It is famous world throughout for the vividness and accuracy of its nautical technical details, for its knowledge of the way a ship is handled, for its knowledge of tides and winds, for its accuracy in plotting the journey of that wounded craft until it arrived eventually through the storm in the cold light of a morning on the shores of the altar of Malta.
Seamen have found it a wealth of information on the nautical methods of the ancient world. Geographers delight in it because they can trace with accuracy the voyage, the journey, the route that the short ship was driven and where it eventually landed. And historians, and many of them compelled to admit that Luke, being not a seaman himself, must have been, as he claims to have been, incidentally, a witness of this very voyage, because he was there on the ship traveling with Paul and noticed with keen observant eye, in spite of the conditions, all that the captain and the sailors did. In these chapters, Luke creates for us, often with a mere stroke of the pen, characters that live and move in our imagination.
I hope they do at least in yours. There is that delightful description of that fox Felix coming down after the trial where he had deliberately not given a verdict so as not to offend either party, and, uh, pretending to be interested in spiritual things. Haven't you missionaries known such people? And getting a long way into the explanation of righteousness, uh, and self-control and judgment to come, when he suddenly found he had a meeting to attend and said, I will, uh, see you again on this matter. But, uh, it is all so obvious, isn't it, as we read the story, that he suddenly found Paul's preaching getting uncomfortably near his consciousness.
For all the while he hadn't been interested in spiritual things. The purpose of his supposed spiritual interest was the hope to get a bribe. Or is there is the commander in chief of the forces in Jerusalem, astonished to find that Paul was a Roman citizen by birth, and in the heat of the moment confessing that he got his by a bribe. I paid a great deal of money, says he, for my citizenship, and it opens a window on the corruption of the civil service of the Roman Empire, where Roman citizenship was up very often, uh, uh, for grabs if you could pay the appropriate official a big enough bribe.
And there's that delightful touch when he wrote his letter to the governor of the province. He had arrested Paul, and not knowing he was a Roman citizen, he had in fact committed a very grave crime, had the commander-in-chief, in having Paul bound and stretched, ready for a scourging. And Paul had stopped him by revealing he was a Roman citizen, and the commander had been very frightened because it was a most serious offense under Roman law to, uh, bind and stretch and scourge a Roman citizen, particularly when he hadn't been tried, let alone condemned. And the commander in chief writes a letter, you will see, to the, uh, consul, the the governor in charge of the province.
And he said, you know, I came upon Paul when the crowd were trying to murder him in the temple, and knowing he was a Roman citizen, I delivered him. Managing us to cook the books a little bit and get the chronology and timetable wrong. And the marvelous thing is that Paul never blabbed on him and let out the secret. Then, of course, there is Paul himself, isn't there? In the court where the investigation was being carried on by Festus in the presence of King Agrippa, and beginning so, uh, stately, but in the end coming round to see the opportunity to preach the gospel.
And as he tells, uh, uh, uh, Agrippa what it is he preaches throughout the Roman world, he lapses into the language that he would use for the titles of his lectures on the billboards in Ephesus or elsewhere that advertised his lectures. City, it doesn't come across in English. It is exceedingly vivid Greek, and I can't resist mentioning that pomposity of a lawyer. They're not all pompous, our lawyers, but this one was, uh, hired by the jewels to represent their case before Felix at the see the rear, and beginning his speech with a marvelously pompous bit of, uh, oration that somehow got his Greeks intact or muddled up and came haltingly to an end.
We see these figures. They move before our imagination. They were real men. It's a real world that Luke is reporting, uh, for our instruction. That said, when we have read these stories as interesting stories, vividly told, we could perhaps be forgiven if we found some of the chapters a little bit confusing. For there is apparently so much repetition. There are two judicial inquiries, not just one. There are two formal trials, not just one. On no less than two occasions does Paul rehearse his conversion in detail.
While it's all very interesting, the, uh, layman like myself can fall to wondering, why all this repetition anyway? If he's told he's conversion once, why go into all the details twice? And why do you have, anyway, an investigation followed by a trial, and then a further trial and another investigation? And what is the difference between a judicial investigation, anyway, and a trial? What is the point of all the massive repetitions? Further study, of course, will reveal that there is order in this apparent chaos of detail. The central chapters in this last section of Luke's book deal primarily, as we have now said many times, with Paul's defense of the gospel.
Defense now in its semi-legal sense of demolishing the accusations that had been leveled both against him personally and against the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The middle chapters fall into three parts. There is, of course, the first part, what happened to Paul at Jerusalem, the riot in the temple, the investigation before the Sanhedrin, uh, to find out, if possible, why the crowd in the temple tried to murder Paul. Secondly, there is what happened to Paul at Caesarea. He was taken there for formal trial before the Roman governor Felix, and an account is given us of the trial.
There is no verdict. Felix was too sharp a politician to have attempted to give the verdict, though in his heart of hearts he knew that Paul was innocent, only he proved he preferred to leave him in prison in the hope of getting a bribe for Paul, or else to please the Jews by the continued imprisonment. There is finally what happened to Paul at Caesarea, eh, two years later under the governorship of the Roman Festus. The formal trial that Festus held, though here Luke spares us many of the details and merely summarizes it, followed by the lengthy account of Paul's statement before the judicial investigation held under Fe- under Festus before King Agrippa.
It is true, of course, that in all these investigations and trials, much has to be repeated. Indeed, the repetition is important when it comes to the statement that Paul gives on each occasion of what the real issue at stake was. He had been accused of all, all kinds of things, both vague and specific, and particularly with very damning indictments that he had been a leader of political subversion. It was exceedingly important, therefore, that Paul should make clear on each occasion what was the nub of the difference between him and the Jews who sought to prosecute him in the court.
Three times over, we have read it this morning, as we hear Paul brush aside the accusations that were false and expose to the court the heart of the matter. I stand here today, he said to King Agrippa, charged primarily for this, for the hope of Israel, the hope that the nation desires to come to, the hope that is vested in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, risen from the dead. It was for that and that message, really, he was being prosecuted. He does what Peter tells us to do. Let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer.
Your enemies will try to fasten all kinds of accusations against you. See in the first place, of course, that they are not, uh, based in fact, but also see that you don't put up with that kind of accusation, but that you clear your name whenever it's possible. And why so? You must be ready to show what is the real nub of the question between Christianity and all its detractors. That is, of course, the fundamental doctrine of the gospel, Jesus Christ and his resurrection from the dead. If you are called upon to suffer for that, blessed are you.
Dance for joy, says our Lord, when men speak evil of you for the Son of Man's sake. But in these three major movements of thought in the middle chapters of this section, closer study shows that there were slightly different basic issues at stake. First in the investigation in Jerusalem, and then on the two or three occasions in Caesarea. In Jerusalem, the context shows us that the, a prominent question at stake was Paul's attitude to Old Testament religion, to the commandments laid down in Old Testament by, as we believe and Paul believed, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God.
What attitude would Christianity take to these regulations laid down by inspiration of God? And as Luke records the detail, he is asking us, his readers, to judge Christianity, to judge it and its message by its respect for conscience. In Caesarea and the trial before Felix, the context is different, of course. This was a civil court, not primarily interested in matters of religion. There, the Jews accused Paul of having attempted to desecrate the temple at Jerusalem.
This was a fit subject to be tried in a Roman civil court because the Romans themselves had laid down the law that if any Gentile attempted even so much as to enter the restricted courts in the Jewish temple at Jerusalem, then the Romans themselves would hand over the culprit to the Jewish authorities for summary execution under the law. It would have been a civil offense as well as a religious offense if Paul had, in fact, brought Gentiles into the temple and thus have desecrated the temple. Felix therefore properly tried this case in his civil court.
But there in the civil court, Paul once more shows what the real nature of the gospel message is. Herein he says, I exercise myself, that is, in my Christian hope. I believe all things that are written in the law and the prophets, having hope towards God, which these also themselves look for, that there shall be a resurrection both of the just and the unjust. Here is Christianity talking of its ultimate expectation. There shall be a resurrection. That resurrection shall not only bring delight for the believer, it shall eventually summon and lead all to stand before the great white throne of God's final judgment.
Christianity preaches it in its gospel. And now Paul points out to Felix the governor, I who preach that gospel, seek by God's grace to live consistently with that gospel. There's going to be a final judgment, and therefore, because I believe in that final judgment, I exercise myself to have a conscience void of offense, not only before God, but before men. I have not broken the civil law, your honor, says Paul to Felix. And why haven't I broken the law? And why didn't I bring Gentiles into the temple and desecrate the temple?
Not merely because God, the, the Jewish ceremonial law said I mustn't, but because the civil law said I mustn't. And being a believer who believes that the powers that be are ordained of God, and being a Christian who believes the Christian message, there's going to be a resurrection and a judgment when men shall stand before God. I scrupulously train myself to have a conscience not only clear before God, but clear before my fellow men. I have deliberately observed the civil law. Of course, it is an important part in Christian apologetics, isn't it?
In whatever country we are. Christianity and its gospel message will be judged by many according as they see our attitude, who profe- who profess to believe the message, towards the regulation of the civil government. Finally, in the investigation before A- Agrippa, the context was again slightly different. In the trial before Festus, the Jews had added a specific charge, apparently, for Paul rebuts it, as we gather from Luke's summary.
Says Paul to to Festus, neither against Caesar have I done any wrong. Now the issue was not, uh, the ceremonial law given by inspiration of God in Old Testament. Now the issue was not merely a civil and, and a, a, a question of whether Paul would obey the civil law. The question was a political question. The Jews apparently here, as they had done in Philippi, had accused the apostle of being a ringleader in subversion. These men that turned the world upside down was never meant as a compliment to missionaries. It means these are men who have fomented political subversion all around the Roman world.
Saying there is another king in treasonable opposition to his majesty, the Caesar at Rome. If that had been true, Festus wouldn't have waited to send Paul to Rome. The case being proved, Festus would have executed him there and then. It was therefore of the utmost importance that Christianity should clear itself, and clear itself at the highest level, to show to the Caesar of Rome, bad man that he was, but one of those authorities appointed by God, that Christianity is not a message of political subversion.
It does not work by political means to unseat the government of the day. And it is still important, is it not, as you will know better than I, for the progress of the gospel in many a land. The Christianity should take its stand very clearly. The Christian gospel is not an arm of Western democratic. Christianity is not the agent of some tyrannical system. Christianity preaches a king, but not a king in competition with the governments of this world.
It is not reasonable, not even to Her Gracious Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, for an Englishman like me to stand and tell Her Majesty that Jesus Christ is King. Oh, one day he's coming. And when the King comes, then all earthly governments will be put aside, and our blessed Lord shall reign from shore to shore. Oh, what a day when the king comes back. Until then, we, his servants, must follow in his blood-stained tracks and see to it that we preach the gospel and make it clear so that the world can judge of the gospel by the reality of its actual message of hope for the world at large, unobscured by political consideration.
We shall not have time, of course, to consider in detail Paul's defenses in these three areas. Let me just sum them again. The gospel judged by its attitude to conscience, men's conscience, in regard to the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. Christianity judged by its attitude to the civil law. Christianity judged by its attitude to politics and by its message for the world at large. We can briefly look at numbers two and three and then turn our attention solidly on number one, because it's no secret that it's Paul's defense in number one that has caused most searching of heart among the serious-minded students of scripture.
Number two therefore, is the trial before Felix that you find in chapter twenty four. The Jews had brought all sorts of accusations against Paul. They said, for instance, uh, in chapter twenty four, uh, that this man was a pestilent man, Dorsey. We have found this fellow, twenty four five, a pestilent man. The word in Greek is a smear word. It carries political connotations, but it is exceedingly vague, you see. Pestilent plague. The kind of word when you want to suggest that the man is, uh, somehow politically doubtful, but you can't think of any particular thing you can charge him with, so you try to smear his character by using a word like this.
Paul had the wisdom not even to attempt to answer it. Then they said that he was a ringleader of riots among all the Jews throughout the world. That was a bit more speech, because the fact is that in many cities where Paul went to preach the gospel, there had broken out riots following his preaching. Luke, of course, has already made it clear who was responsible for starting the riot. Paul himself never lifted a stone to stone anybody, at least not after he got converted. In some places, there were no riots, like Berea, for there, where Paul expounded the scripture in a godly and responsible fashion, the Jews of Berea were more noble-minded than the others, and they searched the scriptures daily whether these things were so.
The Jews were ar- were aware in Berea that what Paul said carried the most far-reaching implications, but they had the good sense and good behavior not to get excited and cause a riot, but to study scripture logically and thoughtfully, whether these things were so. It was the Jews from Thessalonica that came down, stirred up the crowd, and started a riot, and so it was everywhere. Paul doesn't, uh, choose to answer the questions about riots around the world, because the riots in other provinces of the Roman Empire didn't fall under Felix's jurisdiction anyway. And Paul hadn't started those riots, it was the Jews who started them.
And Paul had himself been absolved from charges of any governor, mainly Gallio and Corinth, riots elsewhere. What he does say is that when in the temple, he hadn't even preached, hadn't lectured, hadn't caused any commotion, hadn't brought Greeks into the temple. It would have been foolish, wouldn't it, for Paul to have had an open-air meeting, even with those delightful and effective sketchboards in the middle of the temple in Jerusalem. For they weren't inclined to get converted. It would have caused a riot immediately, and few folks, if any, would have heard the gospel message. There are times and places for all things.
Paul hadn't even preached. Then they said he was a sect. Now, sect is a many-colored word of many meanings, isn't it? The Sadducees were in the habit of looking upon the Pharisees as a sect, but they didn't mean it in a bad sense, they meant it in the reli- sense of a religious party. But sect, of course, even in Greek, can have a bad sense, and in modern English, if you want to damn any religious movement, call it a sect. It's frequently used as a tactics in, uh, Austria, for instance, where the churches and the newspapers delight to call the missionaries, uh, leaders of a sect, was it?
I like the reply of Floyd Schneider. When, uh, doing his friendship evangelism, uh, some gentlemen acquaintances of his turned around on him and said, but you're, you're, you're, you're a sect, aren't you? Yes, he says, of course I am. Oh, what, what, you admit you're a sect? Well, he says, I might as well, because that's what you believe, isn't it? And nothing I could say would tell you otherwise. Tell me, said Floyd, please would you define what a sect is for me? Uh, uh, well, uh, and then they couldn't. Mm. So did Paul. All right, I'm a sect then. But gentlemen, that fee- uh, but uh, your honor, he said to Felix, I do believe all that the prophets have spoken.
It's a thing, you know, not seldom happen that sects, as the establishment is pleased to call them, manage to believe the Bible from beginning to end. Well, very often the religious establishment that contemptuously calls them sects doesn't actually believe much of the Bible at all. Curious. And if it's sectarian to believe the whole of the Bible, then brothers and sisters, let us be sects. Rather be a sect and believe the whole of scripture than be establishment and ca- cast doubt upon its sacred message. As I said, he came to the point, I did not desecrate the temple.
Why not? Not out of mere policy so as not to start a riot, but because of the implication of the very gospel I preach. I believe there's going to be a resurrection and a final judgment. I believe the authorities are appointed by God, and I obey the authorities, not merely for fear that if I don't, the authorities will imprison or even execute me, but I obey it like I pay my taxes for conscience sake. Masterfully appropriate defense of the gospel message.
God give us grace, as Bill was saying last night, to see that our gospel message carries its implication into our own behavior. Difficult sometimes, isn't it? These Jews that stood accusing Paul in Felix's court of having broken the civil law, what marvelous gentlemen they were. Do you know why Paul was standing before Felix and not being judged in Jerusalem? Why? Because a band of religious fanatics had put themselves under oath not to eat or drink until they had assassinated Paul, and they'd hit upon a scheme, and they went to the Sanhedrin and shared it with them, and the Sanhedrin agreed, if you please.
They were going to ask the commander in chief to bring down Paul to the Sanhedrin once more, as though they were interested in finding out more about what he preached, and on the road there was this bunch of terrorists, they would leap forward and snatch Paul from the Roman soldiers that killed him. They were determining, therefore, to break both the law of God and man, and they were in a Roman court, suggesting and accusing Paul of having broken the civil. And what about Felix himself? Roman governor, judge in the court, responsible to maintain justice in the Roman province.
A man who had heard that Paul had come to Jerusalem with a collection of money from the Gentile believers for the Jewish believers in Rome, and knew there was a lot of money about, and pretended interest in the gospel so that he might eventually pop the question to Paul and suggest that if he really wanted his case to be heard a little bit more quickly, he could bring to some persuasion to bear upon Felix, and he might perhaps, uh, put the case forward a little bit. Paul, who reasoned with the man of righteousness, self-control, and judgment to come, refused to bribe his way out of prison and give a gift to the man who was supposed to be upholding the law of the country.
And Paul was left in prison two years as a result of it, and was still in prison when Felix left the province. Difficult, isn't it? But we preach a gospel, and part of our defense of the gospel is that we obey the civil law out of respect of conscience and God. The case before, uh, Festus and Agrippa was, as I say, different. Paul had been accused of preaching political messianism, treasonable to the emperor himself. Paul was delighted to get the opportunity to explain to King Agrippa what the Christian gospel really is.
Delighted to explain it to him because Paul knew the purpose of that investigation. Paul had appealed to Caesar, for he wasn't going to have the case settled in a corrupt Jewish court. If he was accused of political treason against the Roman emperor, then he would be tried before the Roman emperor himself, and not have some corrupt verdict delivered upon the gospel by corrupt priests and a corrupt governor working in cahoots in Jerusalem. He appealed to Caesar. And that meant, therefore, that Festus the governor had to rewrite a report for Nero Caesar on what the charges were.
As far as Festus could make out, there didn't seem to be any charge relevant to Nero's court, but he had to write something. So with Agrippa in attendance, he held the investigation to find out what he should have to tell Nero Caesar when he sent the prisoner on to Nero. And Paul knew that every word he spoke before Agrippa would be taken down in evidence, and it was not only for the court's ears, it was the for the ears of the highest authority in the Roman Empire, Empire. Here the gospel stands on trial to be judged by its message for the world at large.
And what is that message? The last week of little time to consider it. I stand, says he, for the hope of Israel. Oh, what a tragic thing it was. How the tears would have started in the eyes of the apostle. His own beloved nation, having been chosen of God to exercise its unique role, to carry the line of God's redemptive purpose for our world, to hold the torch of hope for mankind. There is a hope for our world, to carry the tor- hopelessness of the ancient pagan world, to hand on the torch of hope to Christians, to blaze it in our modern world, that ultimately is as hopeless as the ancient pagan world.
What hope is there for our world? Buddhism knows nothing of it. Hinduism has no hope. All it can say is that this world is an illusion, and our highest wisdom is to escape from it as fast as we can, never to return. Science has no ultimate hope. Ah, I'd like to take my atheist friends sometimes and rub their noses a little bit in their hopelessness. Yeah. What hope have they? They say there's no God. So what does control us humans then?
How did we come here? What will decide our destiny? They reply, the blind forces of the universe, working without any purpose on the mindless material of the universe. So our marvelous intellects can come round to see that they are prisoners in an ultimately mindless universe. One day, the scientists tell us, the sun will explode and Earth will evaporate, and that will be the end of humankind as we have known it.
We've got the intelligence to see it will happen. We haven't got the power to stop it happening. Men without hope. It's worse than that, isn't it? One day, sir, one day, madam, a little virus will get into your body. It hasn't got two penny worth of sense in its brains. It will proceed to tear you apart, to tear your brain apart, all your aesthetic sense, all your ability to purpose, all that you have counted dear, it will tear it apart and leave you a corpse. And the irony is that when it's done it, it won't even know it's done it.
And you have the intelligence to see what is happening, what this senseless, mindless bit of stuff is doing to you, and you won't have power to stop it happening. Hope less. Oh, I say to my atheist friends, come with me, come and talk to this lady here. She's a woman of thirty five, mother of two children. She's just been diagnosed as having incurable cancer. Come on, we'll speak to her. What will you say? I shall say, my dear, I'm very sorry, but you know there is hope for you. You were made in the image of God.
Like the rest of us, you've sinned, but there is forgiveness, and there is redemption. Forgiveness now and bright hope for tomorrow, for the blessed Lord Jesus has risen from the dead, and God himself has already begun the great process of restoration of all things, for the dead body of the human Jesus Christ our Lord has come out of the grave. It's already started. And one day that, uh, first fruit shall be followed by a harvest, when creation herself shall be delivered from her bondage to corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Let's hope for you, my dear, I say. And if you will have God's son as your savior, you shall be transformed and conformed to his image, and one day have a new body. And what is more, your very suffering, meaningless as it might appear, can be taken by God and to work for you this suffering that is for a moment a far more and exceeding and eternal weight of glory. There's hope. And I say, come on, atheist, you talk to the woman. And what will he say?
Sorry, my dear. But that's that. There's no hope for you. You might as well blow your brains out. Where is the evidence for the hope? Not in man's politics, I assure you. All the millions and multi-millions that have been destroyed, not only in the past, but in modern days, by men who had theories of bringing in a paradise and tried to implement their theories at the cost of multi-millions of lives slaughtered on our planet.
There is hope. Where shall I look to see evidence of hope? In Israel, of course, the bearer of God's purposes of redemption through the ancient centuries, leading on to Jesus Christ our Lord, now risen from the dead. Here is hope. What a tragedy that Paul stood in a court before a Gentile judge and governor, accused by the Jews of the very hope that Israel stood for. It's a very sorry thing to see modern Judaism likewise having abandoned its hope.
But I must not be tempted to stay too long, for I have difficult business ahead. And we come finally to the first group of stories, Paul's defense of the gospel in Jerusalem. And here I might as well be honest, because you all know it, it's no secret, that serious students of God's word have held that on this occasion, Paul, alas, got it all wrong. Which, if it be true, seems a pity, doesn't it? Paul compromised the gospel, went to the temple, took part with certain men in the execution of their vow, and was prepared, though he never got round to it, to stand with them in the offering of their sacrifices on the altar in the temple.
The charge is that, of course, it did no good. Instead of placating the Jews, it enraged them and led to a riot and led eventually to Paul's being arrested and for the next four years finding himself in prison. Whereas if he had not done this unfortunate thing, he could have witnessed as a free man for the rest of his days. He was well-intentioned, therefore, but not only wrong, seriously wrong, for in being prepared to discharge that vow and offer sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem, he was denying the sole sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ upon which the gospel rests.
I repeat, various theologians have held this view, Campbell Morgan, to name just one of them in the past. And for all I know, many of you here present this morning may hold the view. I must speak with more than usual respect, therefore. I take the contrary view. I shall need your sympathy. When I was in Zaire, I was due to preach on a Sunday and attended, taken by mine host Rex Crogdon, to the local prayer meeting. And one of the African brethren, realizing the difficulties of translation, prayed earnestly to the Lord that as I preached, my translator wouldn't go off into heresy.
You better pray for me now in this moment, that in trying to defend Paul, I don't go off into heresy either. But first of all comes the charge, uh, uh, as we are given it. Rumor had it, according to chapter twenty one, verses twenty and twenty one, Rumor had it, thou seest, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of them which have believed, and they are all zealous for the law. And they have been informed concerning thee that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the custom.
Notice, please, this is not the general public. This is what the believers in Jerusalem have heard. The believers have heard that Paul everywhere insists that Jewish believers cease circumcising their children and compel Jewish believers who live among the Gentiles to forsake the Mosaic traditions of food laws and other things. The question arises, is that true? The answer is, of course, it is absolutely false. Luke's history has shown us quite clearly. What Paul preached in the gospel was that man is justified by faith without the works of the law.
No work of the law, circumcision or anything else, could, uh, was necessary for salvation, nor could it contribute to salvation. Paul was as clear as daylight, and when certain people from Jerusalem came down to Antioch and tried to tell the believers that you have to be circumcised to be saved, Paul and Barnabas resisted them all the way up to Jerusalem and back. Paul was absolutely clear. To preach that circumcision was necessary to salvation or help salvation was absolute fundamental falsehood. But that being said, Paul did not insist that Jewish believers refrain from circumcising their children.
Indeed, he himself took Sir Timothy, grown man that he was, and had him circumcised. What for? Well, not to get or help Timothy's salvation, but out of respect for the conscience of his fellow believers. Why had their conscience? Because the Old Testament that they believed was inspired. It said the Jews ought to circumcise their children. And though they had become Christians, they still felt that as Jews they ought to obey the inspired Old Testament scripture. All right, Paul respected their conscience. There are similar things today, aren't there? You go to certain parts of Scotland, they think that the Sabbath is part of God's moral law.
You may not think so, but if you want to preach the gospel to them, you better not, uh, come riding down on your motorcycle or Mercedes-Benz to preach the gospel because they wouldn't listen to you. They will have to learn to adapt to their conscience and respect it. Paul is exhibiting the same balance of the gospel over the fundamentals of salvation, absolutely unmovable, justification by faith, thereafter complete respect for people's conscience. And why so? It's not an accidental part of the gospel.
As Paul explained in Romans fourteen, discussing such things, we must all stand before Christ. He died for us that he might be Lord. When we stand before him, we'll want to know, why were you circumcised? Lord, I thought that you said I had to. You did it because you thought you were obeying me. Well, you needn't have been circumcised actually, but uh, ah, marvelous. You did it to please me. Why weren't you circumcised? Lord, I didn't think it would please you. I thought I was free from it. I genuinely thought I was free from it. You were, says Christ. You didn't have to be.
Oh, that's good. Why weren't you circumcised? You really thought you ought to be, didn't you? Yes, Lord. Well, why weren't you then? Well, there was that Gooding. He said I wasn't to be. And the Lord will say, excuse me, who did you say? Gooding. Who on earth or in heaven is Gooding? Did Gooding die for you? What's he doing, lauding it over your conscience? All this is no small matter.
The freedom of the believer. The duty of the believer in matters of this type. To decide it personally before the Lord as a direct exercise of conscience. You say he, Paul went and went too far in that direction. He went and and helped people to offer a vow. He shouldn't have undertaken a vow in Old Testament. Well, Paul hadn't undertaken that one, had he? The men had already taken the vow when he arrived. What does Christianity and the Christian gospel say to men who have taken vows?
That when they become Christians, they can disown their vow. Yes? Here's a young lady, she's a believer. She oughtn't to marry an unbeliever, but in disobedience to the Lord, she's gone and married an unbeliever. That's too bad. Now you come along, and the girl is repentant. What do you tell her to do? You say, ah, my dear, you're saved by grace, so you took vows at your wedding? Yes, I did. Well, you're saved by grace, so they don't matter. Abandon your vow. Is that what you say? Of course you don't.
Christianity is not antinomianism. It will say that we have to discharge our vows. Oh, you say, but he he he compromised the gospel. He he was prepared to offer sacrifices in in the temple at Jerusalem. And why do you object? Oh, you say that to offer the symbol of a sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem is in direct contradiction to the sufficiency of the sacrifice of our Lord. The sacrifice of animals was a type of the sacrifice of our Lord, and you can't have types along with the reality. Oh. What about circumcision then? Wasn't circumcision a type?
Yes, of course it was. Colossians chapter two says so expressly. You were circumcised with the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him by baptism into death. Circumcision too was a type. But as long as believers, Jewish believers, saw that circumcision didn't, uh, promote their salvation, was not a condition of salvation, so long as he saw that they weren't doing it in order to be saved. Then he was happy for the Jewish believers to continue with that type. Wasn't he? My point is that circumcision was just as much a Jewish type of the work of Christ as were the animal sacrifices.
You say that cannot be, you are getting into heresy, and isn't there a book somewhere about this establishment written by a, an Englishman who lives in Ireland on the Epistle to the Hebrews that says that God called all Jewish people out of the temple and that can to continue with sacrifices now that Christ has offered his is a denial of the gospel. Yes, there is such a book. It isn't a very good book, but it it's so poses. said. But it would not be altogether to the point to quote it here, would it? Because Hebrews wasn't written when Paul stood before the Sanhedrin. Hebrews would be written perhaps around AD sixty four.
In the early days, God was gracious, wasn't he? Peter and the apostles, even Stephen, went up to the temple at the hour of prayer when the sacrifices were being offered. Stephen began to see that one day the temple would disappear. It was becoming obsolete, but God didn't force his people that very minute to leave it all, but gave them a period in which to decide. Why did he do it? Because God is a respecter of people's conscience. He's given them his holy inspired word. Demanded obedience to that word.
He wasn't necessarily going to ask the early Christians to scrap it and leave it. He would give them time until they were fully convinced in their own minds that it was his will that they drop the animal sacrifices and the temple ritual. To force it on them before their conscience approved before God would have got many a Jew living in secret fear and disobedience of the Lord. Now, as Paul stood before the Sanhedrin, that time of, uh, interval was getting towards its end. Indeed, when they tried to murder Paul, dragged him out of the temple and slammed the doors, perhaps the crowd were doing more than they knew.
Soon the time of interval would finish, and the Roman armies would come and destroy the temple. Until then, God gave his people time for their conscience to be biblically. Therein God himself sets us a list, and I conclude with two things. Paul's witness to the mob at the foot of the stairs of the castle. They had tried to murder him. They were baying for his blood. He asked permission of the commander to address them.
To say, Paul, why ever do you bother to do it? Man, you're a lump of flesh and bone, you've just been skull dragged. And this crowd is in absolute fury. What good do you think you're going to do trying to defend yourself and talking to the crowd? What good would he do? Or would you don't understand Paul if you talk like that? With every bone in his body in agony. He loved those people. I could wish myself a curse from Christ for their sake. I must tell them the gospel, you say, Paul, it won't do them any good. What do you mean?
Well, a lot of raving lunatics, like a wild pack of wild animals. I was like it once, he said. I'm going to tell them my conversion. Who knows that some of them might get saved. Oh, why was there the interval of those long years and before the temple was destroyed? Because God had mercy, even though they had murdered his son. And Paul knew his Lord, and he would bring even them the gospel of the Lord Jesus. He told them how God had saved him and delivered him from this religious frenzy and madness, and now we're sending him to the Gentiles.
At that they erupts! You think he would have the audacity to take their sacred Jewish things and take them to the Gentiles? They erupted like a pack of wild animals. It was jealousy, wasn't it? Well, you say, Paul, you might have expected it. Fancy telling a sectarian Jerusalem mob like that, that you were going to take the treasures of the Jewish gospel and give it to the Gentiles. What would you expect other than to get jealousy? Whatever did you do it for? Well, says Paul, I did it on purpose, if I might provoke them to jealousy, that I might save some. At last he stood before the Sanhedrin, and who can measure God's mercy to those guilty men?
Their predecessors in office have been responsible for crucifying the blessed Lord of glory, and now these wicked, disreputable, unprincipled money mongers who were the aristocracy among the priests were falsely accusing Paul. What was he doing standing there? Because the wisdom of God had said that after the crucifixion of Messiah, God would send the messengers, messengers, messengers. Now the day of judgment was drawing near. In a few years, the temple would be destroyed. And more than that, one day these men would stand before. Oh, what shall they say? When they see the wound marks in the hands of our blessed Lord, what will those Sadducees and high priests say?
Ah yes, but what will the universe think of God, God the Almighty, when he has to condemn them to eternal position? Will the universe say, but it didn't fair God? They didn't have a chance? No, they never will. Just as they were slamming the doors against Paul and the Christian gospel, God had Paul in the very midst of the Sanhedrin, showing the Sadducees that their accusations were false. They were a lot of humbug. The real reason is they refused Jesus Christ, their savior.
Before they would be banished eternally, God would give them one more chance. And if they refused it, that witness would justify God and his mercy in the coming day. You have a double ministry, my brothers, my sisters, a double ministry. You are a saver of Christ to God in them that are saved and in them that perish. How marvelous the fragrance when you go and preach the gospel and men and women turn to Christ. Wouldn't we all love the ministry?
How heartbreaking it'd be on times when you've preached your heart out over many years, to see men and women finally reject the gospel. And you say, I've been a failure. I never did get results. They're those other missionaries, and I got results, but I never got results. People would seem to get so far, and then they turn against God. I've been a failure. No, you haven't, my brother. No, you haven't, my sister. You're a saver to God. And when those people stand before the final judgment and must be consigned to perdition, and the universe looks on and say, how can God do such a thing as to consign them to perdition? They didn't have a chance. Then you will be asked to stand up as a witness, and they will be reminded of those moments when you stood with them at last, pleading with them to be saved.
And they could have been, but refused. And your witness has forever justified the name of the merciful God when he must confine rejecters to perdition. It is a solemn ministry, but it is a fragrant ministry if it serves to justify the ways of God to men. Shall we pray? We thank thee, Lord, for these stories of those who preceded us in the faith. We thank thee for being part of this long historical and noble tradition.
Help us in our day, so to think deeply of the love of Christ, so to be near him, to feel the pulsating of his heart, whose heartbeats are the heartbeats of God himself, that we shall rightly represent thee in the world and be a fragrance to thee of Christ, both in them that are saved and in them that perish, for his name's sake. Amen.
