This is a series of 24 teachings on the book of Acts by the Reverend John W. Howe of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia. The teaching is entitled, On Trial for Christ, and the scripture reference is Acts chapter 21, verse 17, through chapter 26, verse 36. We're in the middle of chapter 21 of the book of Acts and in this last portion of that book we're moving at a fairly rapid rate. We're trying to see the forest and not get lost among the individual trees. There's a tremendous amount of detail in the last third of the book, and we're trying to capture something of an overview, even though it might be very fruitful to spend a longer time.

We're trying to see the broad strokes of what's happening in this final third of the book. We got as far as verse 17, chapter 21 and verse 17. When we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly.

On the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified God.

It's been repeatedly prophesied to Paul as he's making his way back to Palestine, back to Caesarea, back to Jerusalem. that when he gets there, he's going to be imprisoned and afflicted. It may well be, as he understands it at this point, that he is to face death.

He goes anyway. He goes anyway. He's concerned to report back to the mother church, if you will.

The center of things still, even though the great base of missionary operations has moved to Antioch, the center of things is still Jerusalem. and he's concerned to report back and share with them all that God has been doing. And also, though it hasn't been mentioned at this point in the account in Acts, we learn from reading 2 Corinthians and from reading Philippians and various other places that an additional reason for going back to Jerusalem at this time is to bring an offering for the relief of the saints.

And he has sent Titus on ahead of him to be gathering monies from all of the churches and Paul himself has also shared in that effort to gather up monies and to personally bring them back to Jerusalem which is even now under the double burden of an experiment in community which sort of backfired and the heavy persecution which had been laid against the church. Even now, we read about that in the very early part of the book of Acts even now it continues to be a problem and so he's coming He makes reference to this over in chapter 24 when he is standing before Felix. 24 and verse 17.

That he's come to bring relief to the saints. Somebody asked me last time about the verse in the beginning of the chapter, verse 4, where it says, Through the Spirit they, that is a group of disciples that he came to attire, they told Paul not to go to Jerusalem. And we had passed over that quickly.

that they apparently had received similar prophetic word to that which he was getting at every point along the way. That when he gets to Jerusalem, big trouble awaits. And they warned him on the basis of that, don't go, don't go.

But in spite of that warning, he was obeying what he understood to be God's call. I'm willing to go and be imprisoned. I'm willing to be afflicted.

And if need be, as we saw last time, I'm willing to die. In verse 13, he had said, I'm ready not only to be imprisoned, but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. So he comes to Jerusalem, and when he gets there, he recounts what God has been doing among the Gentiles.

What a tremendous story of these several missionary journeys, and they enter into great joy in receiving this news. But at the same time, it's a fairly cryptic report, and scholars have debated exactly what's going on. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, but it appears that the brethren in Jerusalem, while on the one hand they're rejoicing over what God has been doing, primarily through Paul's ministry among the Gentiles, they're extremely sensitive to the accusation that he's destroying Judaism.

He's not really. He is destroying a misunderstanding of Judaism, he's coming very boldly head on against some of the distortions of Judaism but he doesn't want to destroy it outright he wants to see it come into its fulfillment in Christ they're not trying to bring him back into that distortion but they are trying to salvage what is salvageable and so they ask Paul to do something which appears on the surface a little bit odd they ask him to assist some Jewish converts they're Christians, but they're strict Jews who have been converted to Christ. They ask him to assist them in the fulfilling of a vow which they had made publicly in the temple.

And it appears that what's going on is that they hope that if he's willing to do that, in fact, to pay a kind of a ritual tax in offering of a sacrifice at the conclusion of their vow, that if he will ally himself with them in the public fulfillment of that vow, the inference will be drawn that Paul, like Jesus, came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it. Okay? That's apparently what's going on.

And he agrees to do that. He allies himself to them. At just exactly this moment, however, the Jews who have been dogging Paul's footsteps all over the Mediterranean world, especially from Ephesus, arrive in Jerusalem.

So the plot thickens. They begin to stir up the crowd against him there as they'd been doing everywhere else. Their accusation is in fact a patent lie.

What they say Paul has done is to bring Gentiles into the temple where Gentiles were forbidden. He has not done that. That is not true.

But that's what they accuse him of doing. You may know that in the temple there was in fact a physical wall built beyond which Gentiles could not go. And it had a sign on it that said any Gentile who goes beyond this wall shall be killed.

So it was very clearly understood that that's a point of no return. And by the way, you might just plug in your understanding. It's that to which Paul gives reference in Ephesians chapter 2 when he talks about Jesus Christ breaking down the wall of hostility between Jew and Gentile.

But Paul is speaking in a spiritual sense. He's not talking about going in with a sledgehammer and knocking down physical bricks. And he has absolutely no need to bring Gentiles beyond that physical wall.

In fact, he's talking about spiritual realities. You need to understand that that's what's going on. You can hear, in other words, in the accusation, you can hear an element of the truth, but it's been distorted.

It's very similar to what was going on way back when Stephen was on trial. And you could hear sort of an echo of what Stephen really was saying, but they twisted it into something quite different from what he really was about. I want you, in fact, just to sort of bear in mind all the way through this, the parallel between what's happening to Paul at this point and what happened to Stephen.

You may remember when we were at that point in the book that I suggested to you that the influence of Stephen continued with Paul throughout the rest of his life. That the long shadow of Stephen's witness to which Paul bore eyewitness experience. He stood there consenting to Stephen's death, holding the coats of those who took up stones to stone him, continued with Paul as an example and an encouragement all the way right to the end of his ministry.

A fascinating set of parallels going on here. Well, they come in, these Jews, antagonistic to Paul, with this twisted accusation about what he's been up to. It's interesting to be aware of the fact, back in Ephesus, when they first stirred up the crowds, their accusation was that Paul was destroying the worship of Diana by bringing Christ to the Gentiles.

Now, in Jerusalem, their accusation is that Paul is destroying Judaism by bringing the Gentiles to Christ. Interesting balance, isn't it? Now, when he arrived in Jerusalem, I want you to just notice what the elders said to him.

Verse 20, When they heard it, they glorified God, and they said to him, You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed. They are all zealous for the law, and they have been told about you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to observe the customs. Thousands of Jews in Jerusalem have been converted.

Yet they remain zealous for their Judaism, and they're under this confusion about what Paul is really up to. Now arrive these Ephesian Jews and start stirring things up, and we read that in a matter of very short time, the whole city is up in arms against Paul. So thousands have been converted, and yet they're receptive to accusations against Paul.

They drag him out of the temple. They drag him down the steps of the temple. They're seeking to kill him.

It doesn't say so, but I read into that that they are en route to the very place where they did the same thing to Stephen. I mean, where else would they be going? Just bear that in mind.

They're dragging Paul off to be killed. They're en route to the very same place where he stood and watched them kill Stephen. At this point, the tribune, or the commander of the Roman police force, a fellow by the name of Claudius Lysias, breaks up the riot.

As in Ephesus, Paul asks if he can address the crowd. You got to picture this. In Ephesus, they filled the amphitheater.

25,000 people screaming for his death. And he wants to address the crowd. They don't let him do it there.

Here, the whole city, whatever that means. Okay, how many hundreds, how many thousands? He asks permission to address the crowd.

And he's given permission this time. He recounts his whole witness from the time of his conversion. And everything is fine until you hit verse 21 of chapter 22.

22 and verse 21. I'm just skipping over this because the story is well known to you. He's just simply recounting his initial conversion experience.

And then it says, He said to me, he being the Lord Jesus, said to me, Depart, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. Up to this word they listened to him. Then they lifted up their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he ought not to live.

And as they cried out and waved their garments and threw dust into the air, the tribune commanded him to be brought back into the barracks and ordered him to be examined by scourging. They got no problem with Paul being converted to Christ. What they got a problem with is that that should involve the Gentiles.

It's often said by some that Paul was anti-Semitic. It sure looks to me the other way around. He enters into a series of five trials, five in a row, and I'm just going to move through them very quickly.

Note the protective role of the Tribune, this Roman police officer. The first is a trial by ordeal. it's recounted quickly in verses 24 to 29 in the Roman barracks itself the theory of it was that you whip a guy and if he survives he's innocent that's a terrific trial isn't it and we've already talked about the way the Romans carried out a whipping it was not limited as was the Jewish punishment which would be 40 stripes minus 1 39 stripes but the Romans had no such limit they take a cat of nine tails with bits of bone and glass and stone and even metal objects tied into it and just lacerate you until, you know, in most cases you died.

Paul pleads his Roman citizenship and escapes. You could do that to a Jew or to one of the other conquered peoples. You could not do that to a citizen of Rome.

They're quite astonished, as a matter of fact, to find out that this Jewish preacher of Christ is also a citizen of Rome. The tribune says, how much did you pay to become a citizen? And Paul says, I was born one.

And he's astonished because he himself had paid heavily for the privilege. So he escapes that first trial, trial by ordeal. The next thing is he's taken in before the Sanhedrin, chapter 23, verses 1 to 10.

And he does a rather neat thing at this point because the Sanhedrin, you'll remember, was primarily composed of Sadducees, but also a number of Pharisees were involved with it. And Paul says, the real issue in my ministry is not the issue of the Gentiles. The real issue, the central question, is whether or not people rise from the dead.

Immediately, he seized on one of the principal points of division between Pharisee and Sadducees. Sadducees don't believe in resurrection. They don't believe in life eternal.

They don't believe in heaven and hell. They don't believe in angels. In some ways, very orthodox, but in all of those ways, not at all.

And the Pharisees do. So when Paul says, you see, you've totally misunderstood the issue. We're not talking about Jews and Gentiles.

We're talking about resurrection. Now he's got Pharisees and Sadducees fighting amongst themselves. And once again, he escapes the problem.

I want you to note verse 11. The following, the tribune, by the way, just takes him out of that whole scene as they're about to turn on Paul after this dissension. The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, Take courage, for as you have testified about me at Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also at Rome.

Now that's an interesting statement. Paul now knows, and this is the first time that he knows it, that he's not going to be killed in Jerusalem. He didn't know how it was going to come out.

I'm willing to die. Now he knows he's not going to die in Jerusalem. It says take courage.

Because as you've testified to me here, so you will testify to me in Rome. So he knows he's going to get to Rome. He wants to get to Rome.

That's part of his agenda. We saw that last time. But I don't know how much courage you can take from that.

Because up to this point, the way in which he's testified in Jerusalem is under threat of scourging and being dragged before the Sanhedrin and so it implies to me that he's facing some very difficult straits when he gets to Rome as well. As you've testified here, so you will bear witness there. But that means imprisonment.

That means possible scourging. That means possible death. Take courage.

Paul learns at this point of a plot to kill him his nephew who has connections throughout Jerusalem. He learns of a plot to kill him. As a matter of fact, 40 Jews have entered a pact that they'll fast until they've got his death.

That fast obviously ended before they had their wish. But that's how serious they were. They were out to get him. Now God has just assured him that isn't going to happen in Jerusalem.

But the plot is to kill him. And so he appeals yet again to the tribune, to Claudius Lysias for protection. And Claudius Lysias sends him off to Caesarea on the coast, a little bit to the north.

Notice verse 23. He called in two of the centurions and said, at the third hour of the night, get ready 200 soldiers with 70 horsemen and 200 spearmen to go as far as Caesarea. One little itinerant preacher.

They got 470 Roman guards to protect his life. Off he goes to Caesarea for the third trial. This one is before Felix, the Roman governor.

Now this man had approximately the same kind of authority as Pilate had when Jesus stood before him. It's not in the same area. he's up in Caesarea, Pilate was in Jerusalem.

But approximately, that would give you a sense of the scope of his authority. He's the Roman governor, he serves at the pleasure of Caesar, but he has the power of life and death. So this third trial is recounted from verse 1 to 21 of chapter 24.

And again, Paul goes through the whole story. There is no evidence against him, But we read that Felix wanted to do the Jews a favor. Does that sound vaguely familiar?

Remember Pilate coming out and saying, I find no evil in this man. But he wasn't willing to offend the Jews, and so he turned Jesus over to them. Felix wants to do the Jews a favor, verse 27.

And so he leaves Paul in prison for two whole years. So the trial just kind of slides into a lengthy incarceration with no resolution of guilt. There have been no witnesses brought against him who can prove any law-breaking.

We also read in the last verse of the chapter, no, not quite the last verse, 25 and following, Go away for the present. When I have an opportunity, I will summon you. at the same time he hoped that money would be given by Paul.

So on the one hand doing the Jews a favor and on the other hand hoping for a bribe. He's got these friends all over the Mediterranean world. He's good at raising money.

Perhaps he can grease my palm. Felix is then succeeded by a man named Festus. And there is yet a fourth trial.

The whole thing is recounted all over again. Festus comes in, verse 6 of chapter 25, and here's the case all over again. Again, there's no evidence against Paul.

And once again, the Roman governor wants to do the Jews a favor. Verse 9, but Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me? Again, a kind of an echo, isn't there?

You remember how Jesus was passed back and forth between Pilate and Herod. As a matter of fact, it says that on the morning of Good Friday, Pilate and Herod became fast friends that day over the miscarriage of justice. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God.

What should have been rendered unto Caesar is a fair trial and a just verdict. That's what they were responsible to do as governors. But in failing to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's, they also failed to render unto God what is God's. At this point, Paul appeals to Caesar.

That is his right as a Roman citizen. He's given the option of going back to Jerusalem. He knows what's going to happen if he goes back there.

He also knows from two years earlier that God said he was going to go to Rome. And as you have testified before me in Jerusalem, so you will testify before me in Rome. So he knows that he's going to do it in a court of law.

So he says I take my right as a Roman citizen to appeal to Nero Caesar. And Festus, verse 12, when he had conferred with his council, answered, you have appealed to Caesar, to Caesar you shall go. Now, just at this point, King Agrippa arrives.

And if you wonder who King Agrippa is, his full name is actually Herod Agrippa II. He is the son of Herod the king, whom we met in chapter 12, who had James the son of Zebedee put to death. He is the great-grandson of Herod the Great, who dealt with Jesus.

His authority was in Samaria and Galilee, and remarkably parallel to the first Herods. So he goes primarily by the name of Agrippa. And there is yet one more trial before Paul ever gets to Rome.

A trial before King Agrippa. And that takes the whole of chapter 26. Paul goes through his total testimony yet again.

And as we come to the end of that, Festus, the Roman governor, who's in on the trial, verse 24 says with a loud voice, Paul, you are mad. You're crazy. Your great learning is turning you mad.

But Paul said, I am not mad, most excellent Festus, but I am speaking the sober truth. For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely. He's speaking right past Festus to Agrippa.

For I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner. He's aware of the scriptures. He's aware of the prophecies.

He's aware of the history. he appeals directly to Agrippa King Agrippa do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe and Agrippa said to Paul in a short time you think to make me a Christian?

there's an element of scorn there and Paul says whether short or long I would to God that not only you but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am except for these chains then the king rose and the governor and Bernice and all those who were with them. And when they'd withdrawn, they said to one another, this man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment. And Agrippa said to Festus, this man could have been free if he had not appealed to Caesar.

Interesting, isn't it? In order to fulfill that goal of getting to Rome and the word of the Lord, Paul appealed to Caesar the total miscarriage of justice in the midst of this. And there's just the hint of a rebuke from Agrippa to Festus.

He's saying, you know, he's been here for over two years and there was no reason to hold him. He could have been let free, but he's made the appeal. The machinery is already in motion.

He's got to go and see it through before Caesar. With that, we come into the final phase of the book. We'll pick it up next time, but I want to ask, what is going on here?

Five trials, one after another. Two years of sitting around waiting. miscarriage of justice after miscarriage of justice.

What is going on? First of all, Jesus' own prediction is being fulfilled. Do you remember that he said they will haul you before magistrates?

They'll speak evil of you on my account? Those who seek your death will think they're doing God a favor. Didn't come as any surprise to Jesus.

Secondly, the prophecy to Paul that he'll bear witness before kings and rulers is being fulfilled. You remember that when he was commissioned to go about as an apostle, it wasn't just to bring the gospel to the Gentiles. You're going to stand before those in authority.

It's being fulfilled. No doubt he would have loved it to be fulfilled in some other way, but it's being fulfilled. God has his own way.

I'd suggest to you thirdly that Paul is on trial for all Christians. And he knows it. And that's part of the reason for the appeal.

His hope is, he has no guarantee that it will work out this way, but his hope is that he'll be vindicated before Caesar. And in the process, that will give a legal legitimacy to the gospel that he's preaching. And it will open the door to Christian missions throughout the whole of the Roman Empire.

He knows that the gospel itself is on trial. And fourthly, Paul is in fact preparing the way for a ministry so vastly in excess of anything that Paul has ever imagined. See, Paul wanted to go and be vindicated so that he could get on with the business of personally visiting cities and pushing the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth.

That was not to happen. So far as we know, he may have been released briefly in Rome and re-imprisoned. He died there.

He did not do any major traveling after this. He sat around languishing in a Roman prison. But in the process, chained to one soldier after another, God reproduced Paul and sent out little missionaries all over the known world at the expense of Rome.

And, by the way, he wrote a few letters. I doubt that it ever went through Paul's mind that you and I would be reading some of those letters today. I doubt that very much.

I suspect that, humanly speaking, Paul was nagged by a sense of failure throughout his whole ministry. The only thing that kept him going was, I know whom I have believed. And I put my trust in him and he's able to work it out.

I don't know how he's going to work it out. But my trust is in him, not in my own success. I suspect that Paul could not have borne the weight of glory had he known the way that God would use those letters.

Could you? But that's what God was up to. Preparing for a ministry that would go on feeding Christians for the rest of this era.

And here was Paul in the midst of human frustration and imprisonment being multiplied by the Spirit of God. Paul is saying, I want to get on with the job! Satan is saying, I want to crush that guy, going to get him thrown in prison.

And God is saying, I'm so glad that we finally got him to sit still so he could write those letters. Let's bow our heads together. Father, thank you for the boldness of this man, Paul.

For his willingness to face imprisonment, affliction, and even death. For his joy in the midst of frustration. for his willingness to use absolutely every means at his disposal to get on with the job as he understood it, and yet at the same time to trust that if that job turns out to be vastly different, that it was still in your hands and you were able to accomplish your purposes.

Thank you, Father, that all the machinations of those who gnash their teeth against God and all of the encumbrance of unwieldy secular government cannot frustrate the promises you make and the fulfillment of your purpose. Lord, we would live this day in the light of that for your name's sake. Amen.