Previously
we have seen that Paul had come to Jerusalem, back from his ministry to
the gentiles in Asia and Greece and Macedonia. His
intention was to bring a monetary gift, collected by the gentile churches who
had it in their hearts to help their impoverished Jewish brothers in Jerusalem.
Paul went to Jerusalem against all human advice. Everyone,
and Paul knew that he was going
into the lion’s den (21:13).
And so, just as it was said, it happened. Paul was recognized in the temple and
falsely accused of teaching against the law of Moses, and also accused of having brought
a gentile into the court of the Jews. An angry mob gathered around him, and he
would have been killed then and there, had it not been for the intervention of
the Roman garrison from the Antonia fortress adjoining the temple precincts.
The Roman soldiers (once they had established that he was not an Egyptian
terrorist cf. 21:38) permitted Paul
to defend himself, but his defense (21:40
– 22:22) resulted in a repeated call by the Jews to have him done away with
(22:22). Again the Romans protect him. But they wanted to know the reason as to why the Jews hated Paul so much, and so in 22:30-23:10 we
find that Paul is given an opportunity to address the Sanhedrin, the
council of 70 Jewish leaders made up
from the sect of the Pharisees and the
Sadducees.
That meeting does not go well right from the start, and it ends with
the Sadducees and Pharisees disagreeing among themselves concerning the matter
of the resurrection. And so, as chaos ensues among themselves, Paul is saved
once again in the midst of it all.
The
writer of the book of Acts, the Gospel
author Luke, shows us that behind it
all there is the divine hand of God,
frustrating the schemes of human beings and ordering all things so that His
purposes for the advance of the Gospel will prevail . And so Paul is taken back into custody again
at the Antonia Fortress. A dramatic
story now unfolds.
A Deadly Plot (23:12-15)
By now
the Romans have rescued Paul twice from the Jews. (21:32-36; 23:10; see also 22:22-24). But the Jews are not giving
up. They are fiercely determined to do away with Paul, and not just Paul. They want to do away with
the Gospel of the Jesus whom they
had crucified. Luke consistently highlights Israel's rejection of the
gospel as it was preached by Paul.
And so it
is that we read that more than forty men take an oath (anathema) - a curse oath- an
imprecatory oath. They were prepared to
die in order to see this oath carried out. According to this oath they swore
that they would not eat nor drink until Paul was dead (23:12,14,21). In their minds, Paul was an offender against the holy
law and against the holy temple. In their minds there was the thinking, that they
needed to get rid of Paul because he had defiled law and temple. In their minds only Paul's death
could atone for this, and so hey are prepared to take on themselves that curse, if God's
offended holiness is not avenged. One commentator says that this vow is an extension of a commitment to
remove the curse of God from a defiled temple by seeing to it that the
perpetrator will experience death "at the hands of heaven" [1]
We need
to stop here and think this one through, because this is precisely the
reason why many religious groups justify their killings in the Name of God.
I don’t know whether you remember
the writer, Salman Rushdie (who calls
himself a lapsed Muslim and now even a hard core atheist[2]), who
wrote the book , “Satanic Verses”. Many Muslims took offence at this book
and they
accused Rushdie of blasphemy and in 1989 the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa (a Muslim clergy ruling) ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie. Numerous
killings, attempted killings, and bombings resulted from violent Muslims over
this book. The motive is very similar.
Muslims felt that the Qu’ran and the honour of Allah were at stake, and so in their minds Rushdie needed to die. Rushdie
is no saint and no Paul, by the way, and he
is not a faithful husband, having 4 failed marriages behind him.
But what is
the common issue behind both these stories? It is this. Men are forever trying to
defend the honour of God and His
institutions upon the earth. They feel themselves to be His spokesmen and
agents and executioners.
But here is the BIG question. If God is God, the
living, all powerful, all seeing, all present sovereign God, intimately involved in the
history of this world, then who needs to
defend Him?
Indeed who can defend Him?
Surely God can defend himself! And He will not need to defend Himself as one who is accused, for God in His very essence and being cannot be accused! He does not
need human zealots and armies to defend Himself. God needs no defender. In fact, He is the Judge! The Bible teaches that He has
appointed a day in which He will bring His own terrible wrath to bear upon all
the enemies of the gospel, and upon all who have failed to embrace and kiss the Son
(Psalm 2), who is the ONLY Saviour from
the wrath of God.
So then, behind this story in Acts is a Jewish faith that is so far gone and so very far removed
from God. This is no faith. It is a religious system which has God in a box. It has a small view of God. Their god must be defended.
How different is Paul’s view. He knows that God is sovereign . He knows that God's purpose will stand. He knows himself to be in the hands of the true truth of Almighty God (see 23:11)
So then,
those who place themselves under a curse in order to remove a curse assume
that they are in the will of God, but they are really revealing what is true of them. They know nothing of the One true God. They are enemies of the
cross of Christ. They are brute beasts, ignorant fools, dead in their sins and therefore they
are under God's condemnation and they
will only increase their punishment by taking such action against Paul, a
messenger of the gospel. He was once one of them. But his eyes had been opened
(Acts 9).
And
so they ask the chief priests and the elders to get Paul
from the Antonia fortress to come
to them yet again under the pretext that they
wish to get more accurate information, but the real purpose will be to kill him[3].
Persecutors
of the gospel have no interest in hearing the truth. All they know is that it
conflicts with their views of the small god which they have created in
their minds, and whom they need to defend in such violent ways.
What did Paul ever do to these men? He simply
declared
what the OT already had said about the Messiah. He simply preached that
which the OT taught
and showed implicitly: no one
can be saved by the works of the Law, but by faith alone
in the Messiah, Jesus Christ alone. That is what had offended the Jewish people, and the result was this violent reaction. The violence that the
unconverted heart is capable of - there's something satanic about it.
Divine Providence (23:16-22)
Paul's
nephew, a young man (yes! Paul had family- he had a sister and a nephew that
we know of from this text), heard of this plot (literally
"ambush"). He reports it to Paul, who then sends him with a message by by way of a centurion to the Tribune, the Roman commander. In a kindly (by the
hand) and discreet way (he drew him aside), the commander interrogates the nephew.
The commander takes the plot seriously, asking the young man not tell anyone about this. In all this
we see the Hand of God as He rules and overrules fulfill His saving purposes. “No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can
avail against the LORD.” (Prov.
21:30). All this does not mean that human beings do not play an essential role. They do! The nephew, the apostle,
the centurion and the tribune all are essential to seeing that this evil plot is foiled. Paul must testify also in Rome!”(23:11)
Roman Precautions& Protection (23:23-35)
The
commander calls two of his centurions and orders them to prepare for Paul's
transfer to Caesarea. Two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred
spearmen indicate that the Romans take this threat very seriously. They are to leave under the cover of darkness for
Caesarea on the coast, the provincial capital for Judea. It is amazing to see this, isn’t it? God uses the
Roman government to protect His prime witness to the Lord Jesus. It all
shows us who is really in charge in this world.
The next
step in Paul’s witness is that he needs to appear before Felix, the
Roman governor of the province. The attached letter from Claudius Lycias, the
commander of Fort Antonia in vv.25-30 provides the open door into the
governor’s presence. This governor, Felix was once a slave, but he was freed by
the emperor Claudius, probably because
he was a very competent man and loyal servant of Rome. Felix's tenure as
governor was marked by ongoing
disturbances among the people, whether from
Jewish terrorist groups
against Roman outposts and sicarii,
i.e. assassins with their
"short daggers", or from messianic impostors and false prophets. He responded in brutal kind and this
made him even more unpopular, and it stirred up more unrest.
Tacitus (c. 56
– c. 120 AD) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire and said that he "practiced every kind of cruelty and lust, wielding the power of
king with all the instincts of a slave" .
The
letter gives the essential introduction
and details to Paul’s situation. His assessment, is accurate. The
charges brought against Paul and the Christians by the Jews are theological, stemming from an internal
religious disagreement (see also 18:15;
25:19). As far as Roman law is concerned, Paul is innocent.
By
example and testimony the commander reminds us of three things concerning the
interrelationship of the Christian and the state: (Source: footnote 1)
1. The state's proper role
is to protect the rights of its citizens (Rom 13:4; 1 Tim 2:2-4). This the
Christian may insist on.
2. The state is
incompetent to make judgments on theological/religious matters. The things of Caesar belong to Caesar. The
things of God belong to God (Lk. 20:25).
3. Christians must follow
their Lord's example in guarding their innocence before the laws of the state (
see Acts 25:8, 10-11, 18-19; 26:31-32)
The 60
kilometre journey to Antipatris happens without incident. The topography and most
suitable to Jewish ambush lie behind them now. Ahead lies a flat coastal plain
inhabited predominantly by Gentiles. The infantry and spearmen can return home
while the cavalry takes Paul the remaining 40 kilometres to Caesarea. There the officers delivered the
letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him. God has
used the Roman empire to protect his gospel messenger.
We have
learned two great lessons from this text:
1.
Killing in the Name of God,
such as it is displayed here and in many modern examples is based on a poor
understanding of the one true God. The killing in the Name of God in the
Old Testament is of a very different kind and origin. In those cases God Himself, after much warning , forbearing and patience with evil nations directed Moses and Joshua and David to exercise His judgement upon them. It was a unique time and commission in biblical history. All that is a foreshadowing of the great judgement to come at which time the sovereign God of the Universe will dispose of all His
enemies. New Testament Christians have no such mandate, and they do not have to protect God. They do not have to kill God’s enemies. They do not
have to go on Crusades to drive
their enemies away from any holy land. The earth IS the Lord’s, and His
judgement is coming.
2. God is able to vindicate His own cause and protect His
Gospel witnesses. They are immortal until their work is done.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/IVP-NT/Acts/Plot-Uncovered-Paul-Taken
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie
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