A warm welcome and a message about God's faithfulness and the song Waymaker. A brief mention of Nigeria and the Waymaker songwriters. Reflections on broken promises in the world, disillusionment, and doubting God's promises. The big idea for today's passage is introduced. Discussion of God's promises to the Apostle Paul and the reliability of God's promises. Overview of the passage in Acts 23, including Paul's presence in Jerusalem, the intervention of the Roman commander, and the chaotic meeting with the Sanhedrin. Description of Paul's protection from Roman torture and the contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, leading to Paul's safety. Examination of God's intervention in providing Paul with legal status and exploiting the contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The message from the Lord Jesus to Paul to take courage and the reassurance of divine support. Paul narrowly escapes an orchestrated attempt on his life by religious assassins, aided by the overwhelming force of Rome's armed soldiers. God fulfills his promise to Paul, protecting him from various perils and using state bureaucracy, factional conflicts, and chance encounters to make a way for him. A list of eight red letter promises from Jesus, including eternal life, abiding peace, and His return. God's promise to restore all of creation, as described in Romans 8, and Tim Keller's perspective on the new earth. Assurance of God's presence, purpose, and plans secured by His Holy Spirit, as outlined in 1 John 3. God's promise to never stop caring for us, whether we are worried or carefree, as stated in 1 Peter 5.

Introduction and Waymaker

- The speaker talks about the song "Waymaker" and the reliability of God's promises
- He discusses the Apostle Paul's experiences in Acts 23, where God keeps his promises despite Paul's hardships
- The passage describes Paul's arrest, interrogation, and protection by the Roman commander
- A conspiracy to murder Paul is foiled by his nephew, and Paul is taken to Caesarea for legal proceedings
- The passage from Acts 22 is read to illustrate these events

- After receiving a promise from the Lord to testify in Rome, Paul is targeted by a group of Jews who plot to kill him.
- Paul's nephew overhears the plot and informs the commander, who then sends Paul to Governor Felix in Caesarea for his safety.
- The Roman commander's actions are influenced by the political pressure and volatile situation in Jerusalem, as well as the complex religious and political dynamics between the Jews and Romans.
- Despite the challenges and threats, God's promises to Paul remain reliable and he is ultimately kept safe.

- Paul, a Roman citizen, is subject to a brutal flogging, but is spared when his citizenship is revealed
- He is then brought before the Sanhedrin for trial, but the proceedings devolve into violence and he is saved from harm
- Paul receives a message from the Lord Jesus to take courage, and is warned of a plot to assassinate him
- Various political and religious factions in Jerusalem are involved in the plot, including the extremist group, the Sakari, who were known for their violent tactics

- The piece discusses the political motivations of revolutionary-minded Jews to resist occupiers and punish collaborators through violence
- It describes the miraculous intervention of God in saving Paul from a plot to assassinate him
- It highlights eight red letter promises made by Jesus to believers, including eternal life and his eternal presence
- The piece encourages readers to cling to God's promises and trust in his faithfulness, even in the face of disillusionment and anxiety

Living by faith rather than sight is difficult for Christians. Trusting in God's promises is key, as he never breaks his promises to us. This trust in God's promises can bring about gospel change.

- The speaker discusses the reliability of God's promises using the example of Apostle Paul's experiences in Acts 23
- Despite hardships and threats, God keeps his promises to Paul, ultimately keeping him safe
- The passage describes Paul's arrest, interrogation, and protection by the Roman commander, as well as a foiled plot to murder him
- Various political and religious factions in Jerusalem are involved in the plot to assassinate Paul
- The piece emphasizes the importance of trusting in God's promises and encourages readers to cling to them, even in the face of disillusionment and anxiety

Acts 22:30-23:35 - Paul's defence before the Sanhedrin

That song, Wakemaker, that's my message today.

I don't know what kind of service you use to listen to music, but just listen to Waymaker this week.

And I want to just call out very quickly to my beloved brother, Balaji, his wife Temi, from Nigeria.

I found out in researching this that the group responsible for writing and composing Waymaker is from Nigeria.

There's so many good things that come out of Nigeria.

Jollof rice, the Jegede family, their children, and the Waymaker song.

My wife always tells me to take a second and do it, but I never think about that.

I don't like old Danishes, but I like old Danish sayings.

The saying is that eggs and oaths are easily broken.

Our world today is in no short supply of examples of promises made and promises broken.

Our politicians will famously promise you the sun and the moon and the stars to get your vote, and then they'll suddenly develop amnesia for the next 4 years as you wonder when it's going to come true.

And corporations, they'll routinely pay for government fines for breaches of public trust and integrity, only to repeat the same behavior the next year and just write it off as a cost of doing business.

And sadly, so many marriage vows to love and to cherish are broken long before couples are parted by death.

It's easy to get disillusioned by broken promises.

And we can even fall into the error of doubting in God's promises as if he were a fallen human like we are.

The big idea for today's passage is that God's promises are absolutely reliable, even when it isn't clear how or when these promises will come to pass.

What we're going to see in today's passage in Acts 23 are 4 examples of God keeping his promises to the Apostle Paul, even when Paul seems tossed from 1 peril to another peril.

By the time we leave this church today, I hope that we'll get a renewed sense of God's faithfulness and that we find comfort and courage and strength in Jesus' promises to you and to me.

So we have a large passage to read through today because we're also going to dip back into Acts 22.

I didn't read the last few verses last week, and we're going to spend time on it today because I thought it was more appropriate and more contextual to spend it with Acts 23.

So what I'm gonna do to make this more manageable and hopefully more memorable is to briefly describe with you the people and the places and the problems in this longer passage before I read it in its entirety.

So if you remember from last week, if you were here, the Apostle Paul, he's in the Jewish capital city of Jerusalem.

In last week's message, his presence outside the Jewish temple sparked this massive scene, summoning a very angry mob around him, stirred up in opposition against him.

Intervening between Paul and his accusers is the Roman commander Claudius Lysias and a handful of his soldiers.

Since the Romans can't discern the root cause behind all this mayhem, they arrest Paul and bring him into their nearby barracks to interrogate him through torture to figure out what was going on.

At the threat of torture, we're going to see that Paul declares his Roman citizenship, which gives the Roman commander pause and thinking twice before he carries out this Roman flogging.

Instead of resorting to violence then, the Roman commander demands that the Jewish Sanhedrin Council have a special meeting with Paul again to discuss their charges against him and to decide whether or not what's happening here is a matter of internal Jewish ruling by the Sanhedrin stewards, or whether this is a state matter for the Romans to decide in their own tribunal.

The meeting that they held quickly devolves into chaos, violence.

The Roman commander still has no answers, so once again he trots Paul out from that scene and brings him back to the Roman barracks for his own protection.

And this is where the plot's going to thicken.

While Paul is in protective custody in the Roman barracks, there are a group of frustrated Jewish vigilantes who are frustrated with how long it's taken for the court system to prosecute Paul, and so they want to take matters into their own hands.

You'll see that they make a pact with 1 another to not eat or drink until they are successful in killing Paul.

They conspire with the religious authorities, the Sanhedrin, to draw Paul and his Roman captors out of his holding and where he's protected in the barracks under the pretense of asking him more questions.

And the plan, or the plot, the conspiracy, is to murder Paul while he's en route from the barracks to the place of interrogation.

But little do they know, Paul's nephew, of all people, is miraculously within earshot of this conspiracy.

So the young man discloses this information to the Roman commander, who swears the boy to secrecy and then orders a large company, 10 times what the conspirators have, of Roman soldiers to take Paul out of Jerusalem under the cover of night to Caesarea where he will transfer jurisdiction for Paul's legal trouble from the Jewish capital to the Roman capital for the whole province of Judea.

That's pretty much in a nutshell what we're gonna hear about, but I wanna read it word for word from the word of God so we allow the Holy Spirit to speak to us directly from his word.

I'm gonna start reading now from Acts 22, verse 24.

You can see it behind me, you can read along on the screen, And I'm always reading from the new international version when I preach.

The commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks.

He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting him at him like this as They stretched him out to flog him Paul said the centurion standing there Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn't even been found guilty?

When the centurion heard this he went to the Roman commander and reported it.

The commander went to Paul and asked, tell me, are you a Roman citizen?

I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.

Those who were about to interrogate Paul withdrew immediately.

The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.

The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews.

So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble.

Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.

And Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin.

And he said, my brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.

At this, the high priest Ananias, He orders those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth.

Then Paul said to him, God will strike you, you whitewashed wall.

You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the very law by commanding that I be struck.

Those who were standing near Paul said, how dare you insult God's high priest?

And Paul replied, brothers, I didn't realize he was the high priest.

For it's written, do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.

Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sadhedrin, my brothers, my brothers, I am a Pharisee born of Pharisees, descended of Pharisees.

I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.

When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.

You see, the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees do believe all these things.

There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law, who were Pharisees, stood up and argued vigorously.

"'We find nothing wrong with this man,' they said.

"'What if a spirit or angel has spoken to him?' The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them.

So he ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.

The following night, the Lord stood near Paul and said, take courage, as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.

The next morning, some Jews formed a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul.

More than 40 men were involved in this plot.

They went to the chief priest and the elder said, we have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we've killed Paul.

Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of winning more accurate information about this case.

We are ready to kill him before he even gets here.

But when the son of Paul's sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.

Then Paul called 1 of his centurions and said, take this young man to the commander, he has something to tell him.

The centurion said, Paul, the prisoner sent for me and asked for me to bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.

The commander took the young man by the hand, drew him aside and asked, what is it you want to tell me?

And He said, some Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting more accurate information about him.

Don't give in to them, because more than 40 of them are waiting in ambush for him.

They have taken an oath not to eat or drink until they've killed him.

They're ready now, waiting for your consent to their request.

The commander dismissed the young man with this warning.

Don't tell anyone that you've reported this to me.

Then he called 200 of his, excuse me, then he called 2 of his centurions and ordered them, get ready a detachment of 200 soldiers, 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to go to Caesarea at 9 tonight.

Provide horses for Paul so that they may be taken safely to Governor Felix.

Claudius Lysias to his Excellency Governor Felix.

This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him.

But I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen.

Anyway, I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin.

I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment.

When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once.

I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case to him." So the soldiers, carrying out their orders, took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatrus.

The next day, they let the cavalry go on with him while They returned to their barracks.

And when the cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him.

The governor read the letter and asked what province he was from.

Learning that Paul was from Cilicia, he said, I will hear your case when your accusers get here.

Then he ordered that Paul be kept under guard in Herod's palace.

All right, that's the end of our passage and again I hope that little preamble will help retain the major events in our minds.

Remember that the big idea for today is that God's promises are absolutely reliable, even when it isn't clear when or how they might come to pass.

But how does that relate to our passage today?

I'm going to suggest that in the book of Acts, God makes 2 promises to Paul.

The first promise was made about 25 years before the events in this passage and was communicated from the Lord Jesus through the disciple Ananias.

And here in Acts 9.15, the Lord Jesus said to Ananias, Go, this man Paul is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles, and to their kings, and to the people of Israel.

The second promise was made during the events of this passage in Acts 23.11.

In the barracks the following night the Lord Jesus stood next to Paul and said, take courage as you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.

These are 2 promises that God made specifically to Paul.

Paul would preach far and wide throughout Jerusalem and all the way to the seat of the Roman Empire.

And God would keep him safe and alive, at least alive, until he sees Paul through with that purpose.

Now Hearing a promise from God is an amazing thing, but holding on to that promise and believing that it will come to pass, despite all evidence to the contrary, that's a very different thing indeed.

Imagine how difficult it would have been for Paul to put his faith in Jesus' words when his fate seemed to be teetering between death at the hands of the Jewish fanatics and the religious order or imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Romans.

But as we drill deeper into the text We'll notice how God's will and his purpose can use any individual in any situation to come to his desired outcome.

He will make a way no matter how grim things may appear to our human perspective.

Puts us back in the Roman barracks where Paul is being prepared for flogging and interrogation.

Why would the Roman commander jump to such extreme measures?

Why didn't he just ask Paul to explain himself before resorting to violence?

I'm not actually going to be able to fully explain that, certainly not justify the commander's actions.

I can take a moment to clarify and give a bit of context as to what kind of pressure he may have been put under, as well as what the law permitted him to do.

We can put ourselves from Owen into the shoes or into the sandals, as the case may be, of this Roman commander, Claudius Lysias.

Now we have to take a note that Jerusalem had first been conquered by Rome in AD, sorry, in BC 63 by the Roman general Pompey.

Controlling Jerusalem was integral to extending Rome's influence and growing its wealth over the entire province of Judea.

But this didn't come without a cost to the Romans.

In his famous work, the antiquities of the Jews, the ancient historian Flavius Josephus, he describes the many challenges that the Romans faced over the decades in maintaining law and order and control with the conquered Jews living in Jerusalem.

First and foremost, we know that the Jews, the Romans discovered that the Jews had very complicated religious laws that meant very much to them.

More than the Romans could comprehend or care to enforce.

And so they left the policing of the Jews, according to their religious practices, to the Sanhedrin, their religious, highest religious court, which would be led by a high priest.

Now, leadership struggles within the Sanhedrin abounded all the time.

It often involved manipulation and political maneuvering between the different Sadducee and Pharisee religious factions within the Sanhedrin.

And it didn't help that the Romans often interfered and meddled in appointing or removing high priests to make sure that they were friendly with the Roman occupiers.

It's important to note that yes, Jerusalem was policed by the Sanhedrin, but Roman governance was done by the Judean governor, Felix.

That included taxation of the Jews, that included installing a military garrison in Jerusalem, and that included the regular cultural differences that would exist between the Jews that lived there and the Romans who had their own culture and ways of being.

This led to wave after wave of popular unrest.

By the time of Acts 22, this led to the emergence of a new revolutionary group of Jews called the Zealots.

This group would ultimately spark the Jewish-Roman War, not many years after the events of Acts 22, from 66 to 70 AD.

For the Roman commander, this all added up into a formidable amount of political pressure for him to ensure that the city, Jerusalem, remained lawful and orderly, free of crime, definitely devoid of any political uprisings or political sentiments against the empire.

And if he couldn't maintain law and order, if he couldn't quell any uprisings, guess whose head Caesar would be calling for?

He sees the tremendously volatile response Paul received on his arrival to the temple back in Acts 22.

People were ready to murder Paul in the streets, completely unacceptable behavior in a Roman-controlled city.

Now the commander assumed that the root cause of this strife was religious in nature because of how the Jewish community was, but he couldn't actually understand what was going on.

No charge was laid that he could hear or understand, So he figured he would take matters into his own hands.

And as barbaric as it sounds, Roman law made it perfectly legal for this commander to have someone flogged to extract information from them or to get a confession.

If that person happened to be a slave or an outsider, what they would call an alien, someone who is not native to Jerusalem.

And while Paul has received beatings in the past, he's been beaten by a rod, he's been beaten by a whip, he has never faced up against a Roman scourge.

Now according to New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III, which is a very lofty and pretentious name, but he's an excellent, excellent commentator, This Roman scourge, which is a noun, it's not just a verb, but it's a noun, this scourge was often constructed with a wooden handle and with lead pellets or knuckle bones, but could also be made with wires with ends bristled.

This instrument would be used on the subject's back and could tear flesh and so maim a person for life or even kill him if used repeatedly.

He doesn't have much time at all as the Roman soldier stretch out his back to have a full surface area to administer this flogging.

Where Roman law allowed for this to happen, as I said, to slaves and to aliens, absolutely would have been forbidden for them to do this to a Roman citizen, particularly when that citizen didn't receive a court hearing, a fair trial, and a charge against them.

The ancient Roman lawyer Cicero once said, to bind a Roman is a crime.

So suffice it to say, when the soldiers learn that Paul might be a Roman citizen, they all take a couple steps back, even before the commander ordered them to do so.

In this scene, God keeps his promise to Paul by providing him with a legal status at birth that would spare him from Roman torture as an adult.

This is God's way of making a way for Paul, the first of 4 that we'll see.

Here we see God's intervention completely outside of Paul's control.

God orchestrated something before Paul was even born that would come to help him later in his adult years.

Have you ever heard the expression going from the frying pan into the fire?

That's what is pretty much what's going on with Paul here.

He barely escapes this Roman flogging, and then he's expedited to an exceptional hearing of the Sanhedrin at the order of the Roman commander.

As it stands, it still isn't clear, as I said to the Roman commander, what the specific transgression or charges are against Paul.

Even though the Romans completely controlled Jerusalem and the surrounding area of Judea, they found it a matter of convenience to let the Sanhedrin decide on these types of religious charges.

Stephen, the disciple, went before the Sanhedrin.

The Sanhedrin itself was composed of approximately 70 members.

It included scribes, elders, and a single high priest selected from both the Pharisee and the Sadducee religious backgrounds.

Now according to Bible scholar Craig Keener, the Pharisees apparently had a little bit less power and representation at the council at this time.

But the number of religious and philosophical arguments between these factions still made for extremely heated discussions.

Not long after Paul declares he's on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead, the situation quickly devolves into shouting and violence.

Verses 9 and 10 of Acts 23 tell us that there was a great uproar between the 2 factions.

The dispute became violent, and the Roman commander had Paul quickly escorted once away to the barracks for fear that Paul would be torn to pieces by the religious leaders.

God keeps his promise to Paul in this case by taking advantage of the contention between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, make it impossible for the Sanhedrin to come to any kind of conclusion or judgment.

For Stephen and Jesus before him, a trial to the Sanhedrin led to a guilty verdict and execution, but Paul's outcome was different.

On this point, I've discovered a new commentator that I want to share with you.

Must zealousness or zeal always be aligned with violence?

I've come to really appreciate Jennings' insights on the Book of Acts.

His commentary complements a traditional study of the passage with a deeply revealing take on the underlying social and cultural context at the time.

He particularly looks at the world of Acts as a time of brewing revolution and injustice between Diaspora Israel and the Roman Empire.

And Jennings, he continues with this assessment of the situation.

I put it on the screen so you could read with me.

He says, something terribly tragic is being played out in the scene where theological disagreement has entered absolute brutality.

This is where the integrity of theological disagreement, this discourse collapses.

It doesn't collapse in its coherence or its incoherence of the ideas or at the warrants for its claims.

It breaks apart precisely at the place where fear becomes focused on just 1 person.

And then hatred gives birth to desire to silence and destroy.

This, he says, is the well-worn path of theological minds that must have their way, so utterly convinced by their clarity that they listen to their opponents only to find an opportunity to shut them up or unleash violence on them.

You see what I mean by this being a riveting commentary?

It's quite the condemnation that Jennings has for the Sanhedrin, and it's a warning to the present-day church, too, on how to wield power and influence over the vulnerable.

Nevertheless, this is a situation that God has exploited.

Once again, he has made a way to fulfill his promise to Paul, to keep him alive and to carry both him and his gospel message on through Jerusalem and into Rome.

Back in the Roman barracks, Paul is left with nothing more than his thoughts and a Roman centurion to keep him under observation.

Now the following evening, Luke records another miraculous appearance of the Lord Jesus to Paul.

After being kept from the angry Jewish mob outside the temple, spared from Roman torture, and free from any charges by the Sanhedrin, what message do you think that Paul would have needed to hear from the Lord Jesus?

The message he gets is this, take courage.

As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so must you also testify in Rome.

I interpret this 2 ways, bad news and good news.

All these near death experiences that you've been having in Jerusalem You're gonna have them again you in Rome, but good news.

Keep it up I'm sure that Paul slept better with the divine encouragement and the reassurances that Jesus provided.

And that following day, Paul got an unexpected visitor.

We heard the story of how his nephew, his sister's son, somehow, miraculously, Out of all people, what are the odds that he would hear this very specific plot from these Jewish zealots?

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