The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): 40 men took a solemn oath to neither eat nor drink until they had taken the life of a fellow Jew who had threatened the very core of their system of belief.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Though God had not spoken and must have seemed very distant to his servant Paul, his care was quite evident in the circumstances which only the Lord could have orchestrated to save the life of his beloved apostle. Listen now as Dr. Boice shows us how God cared for Paul in the most formidable circumstances and how in the same fashion he protects and cares for us.

Dr. James Boice: Some years ago, I heard a sermon on Christian marriage in which the minister began by saying, "This sermon is for everybody who is married and for those who hope to be." I thought when I heard it that that included just about everybody and so was a good attention-getter. And yet, it's possible that there are people who don't hope to be married, and what I want to begin by saying tonight is that this sermon is for even those people.

It's about hardships. And what I want to say is that it is for those who are going through hardships or for those who will be going through them. Now, you may think at the time, especially if things are going well for you, that there are not going to be any difficulties in your life. But there are going to be, if you've not had them already. The Book of Job says, "Man (and I think that includes women as well) is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." It's a way of saying that it is just a fact of life that we have hardships as Christians, even as non-Christians. And what we're going to see is how the Apostle Paul went through such times and how God undertook for him.

Now, we've already seen, we come now to Acts 23, but we've already seen how Paul has begun to enter into these dark days. They're days of imprisonment, days of restriction on his movements as an ambassador for Christ, and even days of suffering. It's true that when he was free and going about from city to city, that he often experienced uncomfortable circumstances and did suffer. He certainly was unpopular. He was the victim of mob action on more than one occasion. He was beaten, stoned, later he's going to be shipwrecked and other such things, but we might say during those days, at least he had his freedom.

Now he enters into days when he does not have his freedom, a period of long imprisonment. And in the chapter that we're going to study, we find him taken from the city of Jerusalem, to which he had gone and where he had been arrested, to Caesarea, where as we learn later in the story, he spent two long years. To make the matter even more serious, we observe if we read this section carefully, that the name of God, the name of Jesus, is not mentioned once. God does not speak to Paul. He has no special revelation, no direct word of comfort during the incident and events that are recorded in this chapter.

Harry Ironside, in his study of the Book of Acts, when he gets to this, points it out and makes this great point of introduction to what he wants to say because he says, and we know that by experience, that there are times in our lives when not only are things dark, but God doesn't seem to be speaking to us. Ironside says God is never closer than when we can't see his face. And that is true. But nevertheless, there are those times when we can't see his face, when it seems that we're just plodding along in this weary path from day to day and we wish somehow we could break out of it and God doesn't answer. Even when we pray, God doesn't seem to intervene. Now, there was something like this in the case of Paul.

It is true, however, that in the verse that immediately precedes this section, God had spoken to him. We're told there in verse 11 of the chapter that that night, that is, before these long days and years of discouragement, that the Lord stood near Paul and said to him, "Take courage, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome." It reminds me, when we think of it, of that great Paul of the Old Testament, Abraham, the father of the faith, and of that appearance of God to him that's recorded in the beginning of the 15th chapter of Genesis.

Abraham was in a similar situation. His nephew Lot had been attacked in his city of Sodom by a coalition of kings from the east. They'd carried him off. Abraham had retaliated by pursuing them, falling upon them suddenly by night, and recapturing his nephew, his family, all those who had been taken and all the goods. It was a military stroke of genius, as we would say. Nevertheless, Abraham was vulnerable. He had only a small force. His success was due to surprise and he certainly was in danger of retaliation. In addition to that, he had met with Melchizedek on the way back and had returned to Melchizedek a tenth of all they had received and then he had dispersed the spoils to those who had gone with him, keeping nothing for himself.

It must have been a grim time for him, dark days as we would say, similar to these dark days that were now being entered into by the Apostle Paul. But it was on that occasion that the Lord appeared to him and said, "Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward." Now, we know there were many days after that that God didn't speak to Abraham, so far as we know. And here we have days that the Apostle Paul is entering into where, so far as we know, God did not speak to him again in a special way.

And yet, those words that are there at the beginning, "Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward," "Take courage, Paul, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you will bear witness in Rome," those words were meant to stay with these men and strengthen them to live and trust God even in the dark times. And I'm sure by now you have the drift of where I'm heading. Those words are spoken to you. And if you are going through dark times as many are, or if you are anticipating them or when you do, you are nevertheless to live by these things and trust in God.

Now, the circumstances of the story are straightforward. Paul had been almost lynched by the Jerusalem mob and yet had escaped from their hands because of the intervention of the Romans. It was the Romans' job to keep peace in Jerusalem, especially in volatile times like this, and they were doing a very good job. Paul was taken into their custody and it would seem to all in Jerusalem that in the hands of the Romans with their large military force, he was certainly very safe.

And yet, there were men in the city, Zealots as they were called, who were determined that the Apostle Paul should not escape their hands. These men got together, there were about 40 of them, and they took a solemn oath to this effect: that they would not eat or drink until they had killed Paul. And then they went to the Sanhedrin, the rulers of the people, they said what they had done, and they made this suggestion. They said, "Why don't you contact the Romans? The Romans will listen to you. And you say you want to interrogate Paul and investigate this a bit further. Ask that the Romans bring Paul once more to the Sanhedrin, to the court. And while they're doing that, we 40 who have taken the oath will fall upon the company of soldiers, who won't be real large, and we're willing to risk our lives in the attempt. We'll scatter the soldiers and we'll kill Paul." And so the Sanhedrin agreed.

Now, these Zealots were an interesting party there in the Jerusalem of that day. They were the ancient equivalent of what we call terrorists. They proceeded in exactly the same way: in secret, apart from the law, and they were quite willing to do anything that was necessary, particularly assassinate people to accomplish their political objectives. Here we find them setting about to kill Paul, and on other occasions, not only did they set about to do it, but they accomplished that in trying to advance their goals, which were in essence a sovereignty of a Jewish state without the Romans.

We know something about them. It has been suggested that Judas, who was a member of Christ's band of disciples, was in his earlier days one of these Zealots. It's because his last name, Iscariot, very well may be a reference to this body, using a name that was used for them that meant assassin. Now, that's questionable. That word could also be a place name and it may simply mean that Judas was from a place that had a name like that. And yet it seems more likely that in his early days, that is, before he met with Christ, he was something of a Zealot. It might explain, by the way, his later betrayal of Christ, because if in his early discipleship he was thinking of Jesus as being the Messiah who would accomplish his political goals, and if along the way he discovered that this is not what Jesus Christ intended to do, then he might well have been disaffected and betrayed him. At any rate, that would be the kind of character these people had.

Someone has raised a question whether these Zealots of the day could actually have operated in collusion with the Sanhedrin, as they seem to have done in the story, because they weren't very supportive of the Sanhedrin. As a matter of fact, there were times in Jewish history where they were quite opposed to the ruling forces because, after all, the Sanhedrin was cooperating with the Romans and their objective was to drive the Romans out. Ananias, the high priest, exemplified this spirit of cooperation. And at the time of the rebellion years later, when the Zealots actually managed to take over the city in a period when the Romans were gone, they had Ananias murdered because they were so opposed to the Sanhedrin's policy. People have said, "Well, could men like this, these terrorists of the day, have cooperated even for such a limited objective with those who were their actual enemies?" And the answer is yes, of course they could have, just as terrorists cooperate with various governments in the world today.

The terrorists are a threat to the governments as well as to those without that they oppose, but there's a certain amicable kind of tension simply because in some ways the terrorists are useful to the governments and so they shield them and allow them to operate under the blanket of their own political authority. At any rate, what we had here in Jerusalem is exactly what we have in our own time and that is how it operates. Now, these were Paul's enemies. These men were setting out to kill him. It's certainly worthwhile reminding ourselves that although we may not have a band of 40 Zealots or terrorists opposed to us, we nevertheless have a far greater enemy than that, and that is Satan, who the Bible says, like a roaring lion goes about seeking whom he may devour. And he's all the more dangerous because he's a spiritual being and because we can't see him.

Moreover, if I may point it out, although Satan is for himself and not even for the world of unbelievers (he wants to use the world but he's not going to serve the world), he nevertheless has a certain amicable kind of tension with the world so that he uses it and the world uses him and those two are allied against us in much the same way that these terrorists were allied along with the Sanhedrin against the Apostle Paul. As a matter of fact, it is even worse in our case because Satan and the world have a certain beachhead in us, which has always been spoken of in Christian theology as the inclination of the flesh. That's why temptation is said to come to us from these three sources: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Together they are a formidable opposition to the Christian life. And yet you see in this story God protected and cared for Paul, and in the same way he protects and cares for us.

Now, how he did it is interesting. We read here in the story that Paul had a nephew, the son of his sister, living in Jerusalem. It's interesting that that should be mentioned. Up to this point in the story, and in all we read from the pen of Paul himself, we have no intimation whatsoever of Paul's family. All we know is that Paul received his Roman citizenship from his father, who was a Roman citizen before him, and that's all we know. Now, there are places in Paul's writing where we might read into it some kind of experience that he had with his family. They were Jewish. How did they react to his conversion to Christianity, particularly when he had been so prominent and as we would say, they had invested so much in his education?

They had sent this boy to the best universities, they'd given him the best religious training, he was a distinguished rabbi, he was on his way up among the people and then suddenly he goes over to the other side. How did they react? We might suppose, even if we didn't know it, that they simply disinherited him. Maybe that Paul refers to that in one place in his writings where he said, "I count all things but loss for the sake of knowing Christ my Lord." Generally, I've taken that as a spiritual loss. He gave over any claims for himself before God. But it may be that it also includes this loss of an inheritance, possessions, and perhaps even the fact that his family no longer even acknowledged him as a relative. We certainly don't find references to them anywhere before this.

And yet suddenly, here in the midst of the story, there's this boy, this nephew. And not only is there this young boy present in Jerusalem, perhaps having been sent by the family to Jerusalem to study the same way Paul had, not only is he there, but somehow he is present to the things that are going on in the Sanhedrin. So he overhears what these Zealots are plotting and what the Sanhedrin wants to do. It may indicate, incidentally, though this is certainly a parenthesis, that Paul's family was rich and in a very high station. Because if they had now sent this boy to Jerusalem to study the same way years before they had sent Paul to Jerusalem to study, and if he seems to have had an entrée to the highest levels of the leadership of the people, well then, it may have been a very distinguished family indeed. At any rate, here is this boy. He overhears the account, and the story tells us that he went to the barracks, he told Paul, Paul told the soldier who was guarding him, the soldier who was guarding him went to the commander, and the commander operated immediately to remove Paul from danger.

It's worth pausing to think about that just a little bit because here you have another of those startling biblical cases where God, who is able to use the great as well as the little, uses small things to accomplish his own purposes. I wonder if you've ever thought about that in terms of scripture. Certainly, God does not hesitate to stoop to use small things, small objects for his purposes. When he made the first man in the Garden of Eden, he stooped to use the dust. He could have made him, I suppose, of far more noble substances, but in order that he might be reminded later, "Dust you are and unto dust you shall return," God chose the dust. When he appeared to Moses to reveal himself and to call Moses to go and be the deliverer for the people and to go back to Egypt, he appeared in a burning bush on a hillside in a remote barren area of the world, a wilderness.

When he sent David forth to kill the Philistine giant Goliath, he sent him with a sling and five small stones. Samson killed the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Many, many of the great people of the Bible were, at least in their early days before God began to work with them, hardly great people at all. Abraham, the father of the faith, was simply an idolater who lived in Ur of the Chaldees like everybody else, worshiping idols until God called him. Moses was the son of slave parents. He miscalculated when he tried to take his destiny into his own hands. He had to flee. He spent 40 years in the desert as a shepherd, a nobody. And yet God called Moses to be the great deliverer. King David was the youngest of the sons of an obscure family in an obscure town in Judah. And yet God called David to be the greatest king of all. And when God was ready to send his own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to this earth, he chose a poor virgin of Nazareth, Mary, to be Jesus' mother.

You see, that's the way God operates and it's worth reflecting on it. Why? Because if that's the way God operates, if God delights to use the little things, then it means that God can use us. The Apostle Paul states the principle in First Corinthians in the first chapter, where he says, "You see your calling, brethren, how not many wise, not many noble, not many mighty have been chosen, but God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the things that are weak to bring down the things that are strong, and the things that are not to confound the things that are." And he does it in order that no flesh might glory in his presence. You see, that means there's hope for us. Here's God using the boy, God using Paul, God using all sorts of people, and simply because they were his and because he was delighted to do it. Don't ever say, I know we're tempted to, but don't ever say, especially when you go through dark periods, "All things are really bad for me, I'm not accomplishing anything, God certainly can't use somebody like me and especially not in the situation or circumstance in which I find myself now." Because what we often find is that it is usually people like that who are in circumstances like that that God most uses.

Now, not only in this story do we find God using little things, that is, this boy, but we also find God using circumstances. Not only, you see, was the boy there, but the boy happened to be at the right place at the right time in order to hear the plot. So he could take the message to Paul and be the vehicle by which God used the deliverance. You ever think of circumstances as being something that is set against you, something that God can't control? Have you ever found yourself thinking, "Well, if the circumstances of my life were different, perhaps then I could have been somebody, or then I could have triumphed in the particular difficulty in which I am"? Don't ever think that, because circumstances are not independent of God, but rather God is the God of all circumstances.

I think the greatest illustration of that in the entire Bible is the story of Joseph in the latter half of the Book of Genesis. Think of the amazing circumstances in Joseph's life that God used to raise him from the pit of slavery, indeed the pit of an imprisoned slave, to become the Prime Minister of Egypt. The circumstances are as small as the fancy coat his father gave him that provoked his brothers' jealousy. The fact that the cistern in Shechem was dry at that season of the year so that when he was thrown into it he didn't drown but his life was preserved. Circumstances that involved the passing of the Midianite caravan at precisely that moment so his brothers said, "Look, here's a caravan on its way to Egypt. Let's not kill him," that's what they had thought they wanted to do originally. "Let's sell him to these traders instead. At least we can profit on the deal, and they'll take him off to Egypt and we'll never have to look at him again."

Circumstances as small as his being purchased not by somebody of no consequence in Egypt but by Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guards. The circumstances of the attachment that Mrs. Potiphar had for him, the accusation that he was thrown into prison, but not just any prison, the prison where the political prisoners were kept. Circumstances so small as the chief cupbearer and the chief baker being in prison along with him, and their dreams, and the fact that he interpreted their dreams, and then the one was raised to position in Pharaoh's court once again and the years passed, two dark years for Joseph. And then Pharaoh has a dream. And this man whose dream had been interpreted when he was in the prison with the Hebrew slave remembered and said, "Oh yes, I remember now. Several years ago, when the Pharaoh was unhappy with me, I was in prison and there was a man there who was able to interpret dreams." And so they sent for Joseph and he was elevated and became what we would call the Prime Minister, the second in power in the entire land. Small circumstances? Yes. But circumstances that are in the hands of God. Don't ever say, "Oh, God can't deal with my circumstances," because it is probably in those precise circumstances that God is most working with you.

Well, we see what happened. The commander received word of what was up and so he did what he could. It was his job to keep Paul safe, and so he prepared an escort for him. We read about it, it becomes almost amusing. Get ready, verse 23: an attachment of 200 soldiers, that is, foot soldiers, 70 horsemen, that is, cavalry, and 200 spearmen to go to Caesarea at 9:00 tonight. 470 of the crack troops of the Roman army. Foot soldiers and spearmen and even men mounted on horseback to bear Paul safely out of town. And that's what they did. This great troop took him about 35 miles downhill by night away from Jerusalem to a staging area for troops that had been built by Herod called Antipatris. There the men on foot left him and returned to Jerusalem to the garrison there and those who were on horseback now that the danger was passed led him on to Caesarea.

There's an interesting letter here from this governor whose name as I pointed out in an earlier study is Claudius Lysias. Lysias being a Greek name, Claudius a Roman name, probably a Greek who had been freed by purchase under the reign of the Emperor Claudius. It's an interesting letter I say because while it is mostly accurate, it is nevertheless at the same time rather self-serving. He says, "This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him." Thus far, of course, that is absolutely accurate. But now notice, "For I had learned that he is a Roman citizen." Well, it's true he learned that he was a Roman citizen, but it wasn't beforehand. It was afterwards. And as a matter of fact, he very carefully leaves out the fact that he was about to have him flogged in order to discover the truth, and only let off having Paul beaten when Paul himself revealed that he was a Roman citizen. But nevertheless, it is generally accurate and as I say he acted in a very responsible way and had Paul delivered.

And so he passed to Caesarea, where we find for the first time so far as we know in all Paul's life where that promise of the Lord Jesus Christ to him 20 years before at the time of his conversion began to be fulfilled. Because our Lord had said to him on that occasion, "I'm going to send you as my ambassador and apostle to the Gentiles and you will testify," he said, "even before kings." So far as we know, Paul had not to this point testified before a king. But now, you see, Paul the prisoner, the man as we would say who was the victim of circumstances, this very Paul testifies in chapter 24 before Felix, in chapter 25 before Festus, and eventually before Agrippa, all before he passes on to Rome.

I can't tell you what God is doing in your circumstances of course, I can't see the future any more than you can, but God is doing something in your circumstances. And if you're going through dark times as Paul was, if you're discouraged, if the way seems dark, if you are weary with the struggle, the message of this chapter is to continue to trust in God and serve him regardless, because his purpose will be accomplished, the day will brighten, and the will of God will be done. You know that great hymn written by W.H. Burleigh? We don't know it well, I think, because it's not in our hymnbooks, but it was in the old InterVarsity hymnbook which is where I learned it. I want to read you two verses of that hymn in closing. Burleigh wrote this:

Still will we trust, though earth seem dark and dreary,

And the heart faint beneath His chastening rod;

Though rough and steep our pathway, worn and weary,

Still will we trust in God.

Let us press on, in patient self-denial;

Accept the hardship, shrink not from the loss;

Our portion lies beyond the hour of trial,

Our crown beyond the cross.

Let us pray. Our Father, we don't know why it is that we get the idea that we should wear the crowns here or why we should enter into paradise on earth when we're told so plainly in the scripture that this life is only a pilgrimage and that these are days of battle before we enter into glory. So we need to be reminded of that and to see your hand in the lives of others who have trod that path before us. Here we have studied this episode in the life of the great Apostle Paul, a period in which he fell into imprisonment with loss of liberty and in which so far as we can tell, you didn't speak to him in any special way. And yet he trusted you, lived on, bore a witness, and is now in your presence in glory, having heard the commendation of Jesus, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Our Father, we would have that be our pathway and our commendation too. Give us grace to press on, worn and weary if necessary, but nevertheless pressing on and trusting you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to this message from the Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of believers that hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, select the appropriate link at thebiblestudyhour.org. Write to us at 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. Your financial support makes our broadcasting, publishing, online, and event ministry possible. Please consider making a gift at our websites, by phone at 1-800-488-1888, or by mail. Canadian listeners can reach us at P.O. Box 24097, RPO Josephine, North Bay, Ontario P1B 0C7. Thank you for your prayers and gifts and for listening to the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.