The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): It would be natural to think that if one was to be taken captive, it would be better to be taken captive by one’s own people. In the case of the Apostle Paul, however, he was to fare much better in the hands of the Roman Empire than in the hands of the Sanhedrin.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Unable to comprehend the argument that Jews raised against him, the Roman commander ordered Paul to be flogged in order to get the truth of the charges. But that all changed the moment Paul revealed his true citizenship. Keep listening now as Dr. Boice takes us through this volatile period in Paul's ministry and shows us God's hand playing out in the midst of human chaos.

Dr. James Boice: Our last few studies in the book of Acts have shown us how the Apostle Paul, who up to this point had enjoyed nearly 20 years of freedom as an ambassador for Jesus Christ, largely among the Gentiles, passed into Roman hands as a captive. From a human point of view, that was hardly a good situation, though in the providence of God, it was greatly used in bringing the gospel to certain segments of the Roman population that probably would not have been reached at this early time otherwise.

But it was nevertheless difficult for Paul. We would think, I am sure, that being in Roman hands would be far worse than being in Jewish hands, for example. And yet we're going to see as we look at this next section of Acts that Paul was far better off in the hands of the secular authorities than he was in the hands of his own people.

Let me give you an outline to these verses that we're going to look at and then go through it section by section. It falls into three parts. First of all, we see Paul and the Romans, and there's some interaction there. That is in chapter 22, verses 23 to 29. Secondly, we see Paul and the Sanhedrin, that is the leaders of his own people, and that story is in Acts 22:30 through Acts 23, verse 10. And then finally, the third part of this outline, we see Paul and his Lord. And that is important, though stated quite briefly in Acts 23, verse 11.

Those go together as I hope to show. The first portion of this concerns Paul and his Roman captors. We know the story, we know how he got to that point. He had been attempting to go into the temple precincts in order to complete a vow that he had taken upon himself and to offer a sacrifice together with a number of men who were undergoing a rite of purification with him. There were Jews from Asia, perhaps from Ephesus where Paul was very well known, who started a riot, saying that he, a Jew, had gone into the temple area. That was all right, but that he had taken a Greek with him. That was untrue as Luke points out, but nevertheless that's what was said.

And these Jews from Asia stirred up such a riot that the commander of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem had to dispatch two centurions with their soldiers, that is at least 200 men, down into the temple area to rescue Paul. They took him into the barracks as they were leading him away. Paul asked to have a moment to speak to the people. He began in their own Aramaic language, which initially quieted them down. But when he got to the point of recounting how the Lord Jesus Christ had appeared to him and had instructed him to go to the Gentiles, with the mention of that one word, "Gentiles," the riot broke forth again. And Paul was in danger once again of being killed, and the Romans once again had a necessity of intervening and Paul was led away.

Now the commander was in a bit of a dilemma. His job was to keep order in the city. In order to do that, he had to understand what was going on. He had thought, no doubt, that when Paul stood up and began his address to the people in Aramaic, having first spoken to the commander in Greek, obviously recognizing that he was a very learned man, he perhaps thought that the worst was over. Paul, by addressing the people in their own language, had quieted them down. He probably didn't understand Aramaic, or at least didn't understand it well. But suddenly this great commotion broke forth again, and it must have been an utter puzzle to the commander. Even if he had understood Aramaic, he wouldn't have understood why it was that when Paul got to that particular moment in his address explaining how the Lord of glory had appeared to him and had given him a commission to bear the gospel to the Gentiles, that suddenly at that point the commotion should start all over.

He must have thought that there was something underneath all this that had just not been said, something the Apostle Paul was guilty of but had not confessed. And so he said, "The only way we're going to get to the bottom of this is by torture. We have to force him to tell what it is that's causing the trouble, and I have to do that because until I get to the bottom of it, I'll never be able to restore order in the city." So they took Paul, we're told about it in the section. They stretched him out to flog him. This was not the normal Jewish flogging, which was bad, or the way in which as Paul says on other occasions he had been beaten by rods by other Gentile authorities. This was the dreaded Roman flagellum. It was a beating so severe that in some cases it produced death in the victim. It's what was done to Jesus before his crucifixion. It so weakened him that he, apparently a strong man, was after the flagellum unable to bear his cross to Golgotha.

At any rate, this is what they were about to do to Paul. Paul was stretched out, his hands were tied, and as they were about to begin this dreaded punishment, Paul asks a simple question. He said, "Is it legal, is it lawful for you to beat one who is a Roman and who has not been found guilty by formal trial?" Now it was not lawful. Paul of course knew that, and the commander knew it, and the soldier that was in charge of the beating knew it. So when he heard it, he immediately left off what he was doing. He went to the commander and he said, "You better be careful what you do, this man is a Roman."

The commander went down, he intervened, he said, "Is this true? What I hear, are you a Roman?" Paul said, "Yes." That of course was something that a man would not lie about. Sometimes people have said, why did the commander simply believe him when he said so? Wouldn't anybody claim to be a Roman citizen under those circumstances? The answer is no, because to claim that on unjustified grounds was something which in itself merited the death penalty. You just didn't do that under Roman law. So if he said it, it was true and no doubt Paul could have proved it. And so this commander now with quite a different attitude, recognizing now that he's dealing with one who like himself is a Roman citizen, began to enter into a dialogue questioning Paul as to how he secured his citizenship.

He volunteered the information. He said, "I had to pay a great price for it." We saw in our last study that to judge by his name, his name was Claudius Lysias, that he was a Greek who had no doubt procured his citizenship under Claudius, who was reigning at this time. And he said, "I secured my citizenship by the payment of a great price." The commentators say that this fits well, perfectly, with what was going on under the reign of the Emperor Claudius. This is something that was happening quite often at that time in order to raise money for the state. At any rate, this man had done it. And Paul replied that it was not a question of having purchased citizenship on his part, but rather he was freeborn. It means that his father was a Roman citizen. How did his father become a Roman citizen? We don't know. It might be that he was awarded it because of some great service to the state. It might be that his father before him had been a Roman citizen. It might be that Paul's father had himself purchased his citizenship, in which case Paul would have come from a family of some means, which we have reason for thinking on other grounds. But we don't know the answer. All we know is that Paul was a citizen and on the basis of that, he was immediately released because it certainly was a crime to punish a Roman without trial. It was even a crime to bound him without trial. But the lesser offense was of course forgotten and Paul was not about to press it.

Now when we read this portion of the story and reflect on the behavior of the Romans in these circumstances, what we are impressed with is the wisdom by which this commander conducted this entire business. Indeed, when we look at the Roman state in these circumstances, we find here the secular state functioning as it ought. What is the role of the state? Oh, we have great ideas of what we think the state should do for us today. But the role of the state, at least as the Bible speaks about it, is twofold. The state exists to establish, maintain, and assure justice. That's the first thing. And to provide for the defense of the citizens, or as we would say, promote the general welfare. Justice and defense. And of course, this is exactly what this Roman commander operating on behalf of the government in Rome itself had done, or at least was in the process of doing.

There can be different kinds of disorder. There can be disorder without and then you have to defend against enemies. There can be disorder within and then you have to defend against disorder within the state. In this case, there was disorder within and this Roman had behaved himself quite admirably. He had intervened, he had rescued Paul, he had quieted the citizens. And now as we see, he's going to proceed further. Moreover, he was concerned with justice. That is, he was not operating arbitrarily. He was operating under the strictures of Roman law, indeed strictly under those strictures. We're going to see that when he called the Sanhedrin together to find out what their accusation against Paul may have been, he was trying to pursue this concern for justice even a step further.

The problem today, you see, is that we look to the secular state for things that the state was never intended to do. And the state, perhaps in part by its attempt to do those things, sometimes neglects that for which it is chiefly responsible. We have entered into a day in American life and history, American culture, where we have looked to the state to provide us with all things. We speak of social security and that is much more than a program. We really mean it. We expect the state to guarantee us security, to take care of us, to take care of us from the birth to the grave. And the state was never meant to do that. We think of ourselves as having rights, not merely rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as our Constitution says, but rather the right to be cared for, the right to be preserved from even the consequences of our own deeds. And the state was never created by God to do those things.

Matter of fact, when we are talking about the care of people, that duty is a duty which God has passed upon his people, upon the church and upon families to care for their own. It's not something that the state is to do. And as I say, the tragedy of our day is not only that we look to the state to do things which actually we are supposed to do and could do much better if we would do it, but that the state also is failing to do the things that God created it to do. Maybe we have a certain defense from enemies without, but today it's chiefly in the area of justice that our system fails. I think we need to face that. As a matter of fact, I believe we're going to have to face it increasingly in years to come.

You know, as I look back over a period of 10 or 20 years, I can remember a day when the minorities in our country were saying something like this. They were saying, "You know, you all speak of justice and you think you live in a country that provides for justice, but that is only because you're well-off. The minorities don't get justice, the poor don't get justice, only the rich get justice." I remember hearing that 10 or 20 years ago and thinking that it was basically unfair. Maybe true, I thought, that there are miscarriages of justice among the poor and certainly they don't get quite the same attention. But I said it isn't really right to say only the rich get justice. Certainly we're a nation ruled by law.

I must say as the years have gone by, I have become increasingly aware that that is true. Or at least it's true to a far greater measure than we would like to think. Most of us have never been in a legal proceeding and therefore we don't know how much money it takes. But just get sued, for example, and find out how difficult it is to defend yourself in a court of law. It's not a question at that point for many people today, law costing what it does, of it being merely a matter of time or justice. It boils down to a question of money. Do you have enough money to sustain your case?

I know of a Christian organization that was in my judgment wrongly, utterly wrongly sued by an organization that was simply trying to destroy it because of what it was saying. This suit took $400,000 on behalf of the Christian organization just in the period of discovery. That's a period in law where you're trying to get out the facts. And the reason was that this other organization that was trying to destroy it had means at its disposal and just kept it up and kept it up and kept it up until $400,000 were gone on the other side. The time came when it was time to appear in court. Court was going to cost another $100,000, and at this point the Christian organization had simply run out of money. They had no more money and all they could do at that point was go into chapter 11 and declare bankruptcy because they couldn't proceed. That, may I say, is not justice. And yet that is the way our legal system is functioning increasingly in our day. We look at this Roman Empire and we say, "Oh, what a cruel empire it was," and of course it was capable of great cruelty. But I look at this instance and I find here a state which for all its ignorance of the true God was nevertheless operating correctly and perhaps in a way which is an example even to our own.

So that's the first thing, Paul and the Romans. We move to the second stage of the story and here we find Paul with his own people, Paul and the Sanhedrin. Because the commander of the Roman garrison, recognizing that he still didn't have the story and couldn't understand why it was that they were so incensed against Paul, commanded the Sanhedrin and the chief priests of the people to assemble. He said to himself, "I'll bring Paul before them, I'll let them argue their case and then when they have an actual concrete accusation to make, then we can proceed with it as seems best."

It's an interesting contrast. This contrast between the Romans on the one hand, into whose custody Paul had fallen, and the Sanhedrin, the so-called people of God and the leaders of the people of God on the other. I've spoken of the proper function of the state, the state's job being the promotion of justice and the maintenance of order. Here, when we come to the Sanhedrin, the leaders of the Jewish state, such as it was in that day, we find that neither of these two elements were present. Not justice certainly, they weren't interested in justice. They just wanted to get rid of Paul. And not order either, because the disorder that had taken place out in the courtyard of the temple earlier and was repeated even after Paul's address to the people in Aramaic, now as we're going to see, burst forth also on the floor of the court among this very August body.

The story is worth pursuing. Paul was brought before them and given a chance to speak. And he began as we read in verse 1 of chapter 23, "My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day." That undoubtedly was an opening line of an address that Paul certainly hoped to deliver. But he didn't get a chance to deliver it. The high priest who was there, Ananias, a most ungodly man and a man who perished eventually at the hands of his own people at the time of the Jewish rebellion, ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth.

Paul retorted, "God will strike you, you whitewashed wall. You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck." Justice? You're going to get justice? It would be far better in this situation to get it at the hands of the Romans than to get it at the hands of this high priest of the only true God. Paul was probably referring to a verse in the 19th chapter of Leviticus which said that if you strike an Israelite on the cheek, it is in effect striking at the glory of God. We don't know what he was referring to, but it was probably that verse.

At any rate, when he had spoken his words, somebody who was standing nearby reproved him for speaking in a disrespectful tone to the high priest. Now the high priest may have deserved it, but Paul was aware that that was improper. Indeed, it was against the law. His only defense was that he had not recognized that it was the high priest. And so in effect he apologized, acknowledging that what he had done was contrary to the law of God, since in Exodus 22:28 it says, "Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people." Commentators and Bible students have raised the question why Paul didn't recognize the high priest.

After all, he was standing there as it says in verse 1 looking straight at the Sanhedrin. Why didn't Paul recognize him? Well, several answers have been given. I'm not sure it really matters a great deal, but in case you're raising the question, here are the answers. Some have suggested that Paul couldn't see very well. We have reason for suspecting that on other grounds because, for example, at the very end of Galatians, there's a verse which says, "See I am writing this myself, even I Paul with large letters." Now that obviously is a personal signature to the letter, a letter that was being written by a scribe for Paul, an amanuensis. And here Paul at the end in his own handwriting authenticates what was written so they know it was from Paul.

The puzzling thing about that is the reference to large letters. Now it may be that all that means is that they were untrained letters. Paul was not a professional scribe. On the other hand, it may mean large, and if that's the case, well then Paul couldn't see real well and so very carefully he's writing out with large letters. A number of people have thought that, and if that's the case, Paul here in the Sanhedrin looking at them may not actually have recognized the high priest.

Second explanation is that Paul is being sarcastic. When Paul says, "I didn't realize that he was God's high priest," what he means is the true high priest would never talk like that. Why, when he spoke that way, I hardly realized it was the high priest. Something of that nature. Third explanation, probably the best one, is that Paul had simply been away from Jerusalem for 20 years and he didn't know Ananias personally. He had been there among the leaders of the people at a much earlier period, but perhaps he didn't know Ananias personally. We find that hard to imagine today because our leaders have their pictures in the newspaper and we see them on TV, all of that. But in those days, of course, Paul wouldn't have mingled freely with these people and perhaps though he was there he didn't actually recognize him. People have said, "Well, he must have been wearing the high priest's robes. He would have been wearing those if this had been a formal session." But it probably wasn't. This was a session of the leaders called by the commander of the Roman garrison and that certainly would not be recognized as a formal court session by the Sanhedrin itself. At any rate, he didn't recognize him and when he was rebuked, he immediately placed himself beneath the law, which he himself was most anxious to uphold.

And now occurs this interesting point. Paul, we are told, recognizing that some of them were Sadducees, that is the materialists or modernists of the day, and the other Pharisees, that is the conservatives of the day, brought up a point which was a contention between them. And he said, "Brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, and I stand on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead." That was a blatant appeal to Pharisaical support and it worked because the Pharisees, hearing that the basis of his appeal was something that they maintained over against their more liberal brethren, said naturally, "Why, this fellow's all right. We don't find anything wrong with him." And the Sadducees, who were thus confronted by what they regarded as a heresy, immediately took odds, and so there was a falling out, a second or third great commotion, and that portion of the trial was over.

I do want to turn back to two things that are in this account. I've told the story, but let's look at just two things. The first is this: in verse 1, Paul says, "My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day." That really is a very striking statement and a bold one. Paul saying before the Sanhedrin, "I have lived in good conscience before God until this very day." He meant all my life until this very moment. People have looked at that and said, well how in the world could Paul say that? What in the world was he thinking of? Paul had been in great error during his days in Judaism.

Even to the degree of turning his attention against the church of Jesus Christ and persecuting it, even hauling off some of the Christians to arrest and eventually to death. He had been present when Stephen, the first martyr, was stoned. How could he say, "I have done that in good conscience"? Well the answer to that question is that Paul did indeed do all of that in good conscience. He was very wrong of course and it required the intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ and the road to Damascus to show him how wrong he was. But in those early days, he didn't think he was wrong. Paul was operating in good conscience so far as he knew, according to his understanding of the laws of his people. That is why he could say when he summed up his life in Judaism, "So far as the righteousness that is in the law is concerned, I was blameless." Wasn't blameless in God's sight, he was a sinner like the rest, but so far as he knew, in good conscience, he had kept all those things.

The reason I come back to that is to say that while conscience is something to which we could listen and should listen, it is not an infallible guide. Conscience will tell you that you shouldn't do what's wrong, but conscience cannot tell you what is right. What we need is the word of God where alone we learn what is right. And then when we have the word of God and have the Holy Spirit shining upon us, teaching us what it really means, then conscience will tell you that you ought to do it. But if you don't have the word of God, if you don't have a true guide which only the word of God provides, then conscience will tell you to do the right, but you won't know what the right is, and so you can easily be led into the same kind of error that the Apostle Paul was in in his early days. I say to Christians, don't count on your conscience. It's a good thing to follow, but only when it's wedded to the word of God. You seek what God says in scripture.

And then the second thing I want to focus on in this section we're dealing with is this matter of the resurrection to which Paul appealed and which divided the Pharisees from the Sadducees. Some of the commentators are very unhappy with this. One man, W.A. Farrar, has taken issue with Paul here, saying it was hardly worthy of a man of his character to do something like this. It was stooping to a dirty trick to throw out something that was irrelevant and thus divide the court before which he was appearing.

What I want to suggest is that that was not the case. It is true that the accusation that caused the riot was that Paul had brought a Greek into the temple area and that was against the Jewish law, a law recognized even by the Romans. But of course Paul had not done that and of course fundamentally that was not the real problem. The real problem actually was summarized by this matter of the resurrection. And the real issue, the issue of the day, was the very issue that had divided the Sadducees from the Pharisees.

When we talk about the resurrection you see, and when Paul talked about the resurrection, he was talking not merely, and certainly the way in which he presented it here was not merely, a matter of a unique resurrection, that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, though it had bearing upon it, but rather the matter of the resurrection of the dead itself. What that means to put it into our kind of terms is that there is life beyond what we see and know now.

We live in an age which focuses on what's visible, believes in what can be seen and what can be measured. And the great division in Paul's day as well as in our own time is a division between those who are willing to be bound only by what they can see and measure and touch and feel and those who believe that there is something beyond the tangible. That which is intangible, eternal life, God, and values that flow from those sources. That's involved in the resurrection you see. Because if a person dies and then if they come to life again, obviously there was an existence of the soul or spirit of the individual somewhere in some form beyond the tangible. The tangible is dead.

And if they leave the body and are gone and then they come back and the body is raised again, well that in itself is proof of the fact that there is an intangible order. The reason I come back to that is to say and say as strongly as I can that that is the problem we are increasingly facing in our age. Let me refer to something Francis Schaeffer said. Francis Schaeffer spoke of a line which he called the line of despair, which divides reality and divides it in this way: above the line is the area of faith and that which is intangible and below the line is that which concerns the area of reason and which is tangible.

Schaeffer pointed out that this line of despair has been drawn historically in philosophy through the work of Hegel, but also in art and literature and all other things that flow from it. Before that line was drawn, said Schaeffer, men and women regarded all things as subject to reason. That's to say you could reason even about spiritual things. You could reason about God, you could give reasons for his existence. That sort of dialogue could take place. Once that line was drawn, the region of faith was separated from the area of reason and now while it is true that you could talk about God or believe in God, that's not the sort of thing that you could actually work with in any tangible or rational way.

And Schaeffer bemoaned that, saying that of course that was a great decline and a great loss for Christianity. When Schaeffer began to think and write along those lines, people had divided the two realms of reality. The area of faith and the area of reason, both were true, but you just couldn't apply rational criterion to that which was above the line. The reason I refer to that is to say that what has happened in the meantime is that that which lies above the line, that is the intangible, God, absolutes and such, is not merely now in our day something that is there to be believed but which cannot be demonstrated by logical means, but now is no longer something even to be believed.

Because you see, if you can't talk about it, if you can't feel it, if you can't measure it, well then according to the thinking of our age, how do you even know it exists? You have perhaps heard, a lot of people have referred to it, of the parable of the British philosopher and theologian Anthony Flew. He makes a little story up that goes like this: two explorers are making their way through a jungle and suddenly in the midst of the jungle they come upon a clearing and there in the clearing is a garden. One explorer says, "Well, look at this garden. It's all in order. There must be a gardener somewhere who takes care of it. Let's stick around here and see if we can meet him." So they stop in the area and they wait for the gardener to appear. But he never does.

And yet the garden is tended, everything is in order. And the other explorer begins to argue along these lines. He says, "Look, we never see this gardener. I think probably there is no gardener." "Oh," says the first, "there must be a gardener. The garden is well-tended. Perhaps this gardener is invisible." Well, that is certainly an hypothesis worth exploring. So they set up to see if they can devise something that will detect the presence of the invisible gardener. They set up traps or lines which if he crosses he will break and they'll be able to find them in the morning. But the lines are never crossed or never broken. They set up devices which will give an electric shock to an intruder. But there's never a scream in the night betraying the presence of someone or some presence who has touched the lines. Everything they do comes up empty.

But still the first explorer believes. He says this, "There is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensitive to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." To which the skeptic, who is now quite distressed that he can't seem to get through to his believing friend, replies, "But what is left of your original assertion that there is a gardener? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"

And that's the end of the parable as Flew gives it, and he says the belief in God and even the existence of God dies by reason of a thousand qualifications. Now that's what has happened today. People in our secular world, particularly in the universities but elsewhere, say, if you cannot measure him, if you cannot see him, if you cannot touch him, if he does not trip your wires, then God does not exist. There is no realm above the line of despair, there are no absolutes, and all that exists is what we see and know now, what we can touch and measure.

That is the great division of the day. And we who are Christians stand and say, I hope we say, as the Apostle Paul did, "I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee and I am on trial because of my hope in the resurrection of the dead." Now you may say, if we can't feel and see and touch the eternal, invisible one, why should we hold to such a hope? The answer of course, which Flew introduces in his parable but never actually talks about, is the existence of the garden. Maybe that the skeptic says your qualifications at least so far as I am concerned do away with the need to believe in this great gardener. But still there is the garden and it is being tended and somehow it does grow.

You see, the believer at that point is not operating irrationally, though he's dealing with that which is beyond and above reason, but he is operating in a very rational way indeed. And moreover, as we profess, we believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, one who was killed but who rose again, who appeared, who was seen, and who has said to his followers, "I am coming back again." That's the battle of our time. That's the battle you and I are going to have to fight increasingly in the days to come.

But now let me say this. I've talked about Paul and the Romans and Paul and the Sanhedrin, but in the very last verse of this section, Acts 23:11, we find Paul and the Lord. That risen one, you see, that one whom the skeptical world will not believe in, that one, the Lord Jesus Christ, appeared to Paul and reassured him. The following night, verse 11, the Lord stood near Paul and said, "Take courage, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem so you must also testify in Rome."

I suppose that when the Lord Jesus Christ spoke those words to Paul, all he was really doing was giving a practical application of what he had said earlier to the original disciples in what we call the Great Commission. Very end of Matthew's gospel we're told that the Lord, when he had gathered his disciples together, said, "All authority is committed unto me in heaven and on earth. Therefore go to all the nations teaching them all things whatsoever I have commanded you, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world."

That's what Jesus was saying to Paul on this occasion. On that earlier occasion, he had stressed four absolutes. He said all authority is given unto me. I am sending you to all the nations to teach them all the things that I have taught you and remember as you go that I am with you always, that is all the days or until the very end.

You see when Jesus came to Paul, though Paul now was in custody, Jesus did not say, "Well Paul you did a very good job, thank you, now you're off duty because after all you're arrested and how could you bear witness for me here?" No, he said, "I've called you to be a witness. Your task as a witness is not something that ends ever in this life. You are to be my witness until the very end, until death. Even though you're now in Roman hands, even though you're a prisoner, you're to bear witness for me there." And Paul did and he was greatly blessed in that witness. "But," said Jesus, "as you witness, remember that I am with you. Take courage, bear witness, and in my power that witness will be blessed."

I'm glad for that. I must say when I look at the world today and the way in which our culture has fallen away, not only from spiritual values but even from rationality, because you see if you lose contact with the absolute, eventually you lose the ability even to reason, because reason is itself built on absolutes. When I look at a culture which has lost the ability even to reason as well as falling away from spiritual values, I almost, at least humanly speaking, despair. How can you speak to a culture like that? How can you speak words of reason, words of scripture which are certainly reasonable?

Well humanly speaking I don't know how. But you see these words are for us. "Take courage," Jesus said. "Take courage, don't give up, keep witnessing because I am with you and I will bless your witness even unto the end of the age." When Paul stood before the representatives of Rome, he appealed to his citizenship. And when he stood before the representatives of his own people, he appealed to his conscience. But over and above all of that, Paul appealed to God, and Jesus the Son of God blessed him in his witness as he will bless us. Let us pray.

Father, we live in difficult times, perhaps all the more difficult because we don't always even understand the times in which we live. Our world in its unbelief has gotten itself into such a state that it requires a major, major turnabout even to have people begin to listen to the gospel, let alone believe it. But you're able to accomplish that, with you all things are possible. Do give us not necessarily the wisdom or the winsomeness to witness but the courage to do so. Help us to stand even as the Apostle Paul stood in his day and to be blessed in so doing. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

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