So Acts chapter 23, verse 1 to
11. And Paul earnestly beholding
the council said, Men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience
before God until this day. And the high priest, Ananias,
commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth. Then said Paul unto him, God
shall smite thee, thou whited wall, forsittest thou to judge
me after the law, and commandest me to be smitten contrary to
the law. And they that stood by said,
revilest thou God's high priest? Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren,
that he was the high priest, for it is written, thou shalt
not speak evil of the ruler of thy people. But when Paul perceived
that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried
out in the council, men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a
Pharisee, of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. And when he had so said, there
arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
and the multitude was divided. For the Sadducees say that there
is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees
confess both. And there arose a great cry,
and the scribes that were of the Pharisees part arose, and
strove, saying, We find no evil in this man, but if a spirit
or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God.
And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain,
fearing lest Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them,
commanded the soldiers to go down and to take him by force
from among them, and to bring him into the castle. And the
night following, the Lord stood by him and said, Be of good cheer,
Paul, for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou
bear witness also at Rome. Amen. May God bless to us this
portion of his word. And here we find Paul before
what is called the Council or the Sanhedrin. And at the end
of the last chapter, we saw that this Jewish council, it was a
council or a gathering of 70 leaders, 70 elders. and they
had been called together with all the multitude by the chief
captain to explain what Paul's crime was and why everyone was
so angry against him. Now, we don't have time to go
into too much detail with respect to this Sanhedrin, this council. There's a lot of history and
tradition present at this meeting. But what we can see is that immediately
Paul begins to defend himself. So he doesn't wait until there
are any formal charges brought. He simply begins to defend himself
there in front of this council. And in his defence he is not
saying in this opening verse that he was a man who never had
any sin, but he is saying that he had lived honestly according
to the Jewish religion and he was zealous for God's law. And we know, as Paul knew, that
everyone is a sinner. So no one is perfect before God. And Paul did not imagine himself
to be. And all men are sinners. But
there had been an integrity, an honesty about Paul's life. To the extent that he understood
the law of God, he had been careful in his efforts to uphold and
be obedient to it. But then we see that immediately
the high priest has Paul silenced by asking or instructing someone
that was standing close by the apostle to slap him in the face,
to slap him in the mouth. And Paul reacts against the high
priest sharply, and we might say with good reason, although
we then find that the apostle backtracks when he is told that
this Ananias is actually the high priest this year. And so
we can see that Ananias, he demanded respect for his office from those
around about, but he himself was abusing his office by not
upholding the very rules of the council under which Paul was
being tried. So having been denied his right
to defend himself, The Apostle Paul notices something else.
He notices that, or he realizes that there would be no fair hearing
given to him on this day. And so he very cleverly exploits
the divisions that he knows exists amongst the members of this Sanhedrin. He knew that some of these people
believed in the spiritual world and some did not. He knew that
some of them believed in the resurrection of the dead and
some did not. And so he says to them that what
this accusation, what this council was really all about was the
hope and resurrection of the dead. Now this was true because
what Paul was being accused of was being a follower of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ had indeed risen from
the dead, as indeed all believers shall. And when Paul stopped
speaking about why he was being tried, these silly men began
to argue amongst themselves. Of course they had no true spiritual
understanding but all they wanted to do was to win the argument
and to win the fight and it seems as if the debate got wilder and
wilder to the point that the chief captain became concerned
that Paul would be killed amid the furore and the rumpus that
was taking place and he sent the soldiers back amongst the
Jewish people again in order to rescue Paul and to draw him
out from the midst of the trouble that was beginning to take place.
And then the most important aspect of this whole episode came before
us. And we're told that that night,
in the quietness of Paul's cell, where he was, the Lord Jesus
Christ came to him and stood beside him. And I think this
is lovely. Those of you who have read letter
Bibles will see that these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ
that Luke, the writer of the Acts of the Apostle, now recounts
to us. And undoubtedly Paul had told
Luke what the Lord said to him. These are the words of Christ.
He stood beside his friend as he had done before on several
different occasions. Remember this was the same Lord
that had met Paul in the Damascus road. It was the same Lord that
had given him a vision of his presence in Corinth. And now
it had happened once before in Jerusalem and now it happens
in Jerusalem again. You know, sometimes we might
wish that the Lord Jesus Christ would speak to us in this way,
that the Lord would come and speak to us personally, but that
is not how the Lord chooses to speak to his people these days.
Rather, the Lord speaks to us in the Bible, in the Gospel,
in the preaching of the Word of God, and he calls upon us
to listen, and he gives us faith and he gives us spiritual insight
and understanding and understanding that we may hear his word and
as it were by faith see his person in the Gospel and in the Word
of God. The very Word of God becomes
lively and real to us and it is as if we hear the very voice
of Christ speaking to us through the Gospel message. So verse
11 says, the night following the Lord stood by him and said,
be of good cheer, Paul. You see how he knew his name?
The Lord knows all his people by name. He knows us personally
and he knows the needs that we have personally. He says, as
thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear
witness also at Rome. And I want you to learn this,
just from that little verse, that the Lord cares for his people. You know, the providence of God,
the way God's will was going to work out, Paul would be alright. But the Lord came to him and
told him he would be alright. The Lord spoke to him and comforted
him in the depths of the night. He came and stood beside his
bed and whispered words of comfort to his soul. And so the scriptures
whisper words of comfort to our souls and the gospel whispers
words of comfort to our souls. Whether that's in the daytime
or in the depths of the night, the Lord speaks to his people
in such ways and encourages us when we need his help. And the
other thing that this tells us is that hereby the Lord confirmed
his purpose. You see, it was God's purpose
that Paul should go to Rome and testify of him, and that's what
the Lord says. The Lord says, you have testified
of me in Jerusalem. That was what I wanted you to
do. Now, I want you to notice something there. The Lord didn't
say to him, you've won converts for me in Jerusalem. He didn't
say to him, you've enlarged the church in Jerusalem. He didn't
say to him, you've made disciples in Jerusalem. He didn't say to
him, you've become a soul winner in Jerusalem. He said, you've
testified of me. And that's what the Lord calls
his church to do, to testify of Christ, to testify about the
things that Christ has done, to witness to the things that
Jesus Christ has done, whether that is to the saints of old
or whether that's in our own lives. As Paul gave his personal
testimony, we witness of the things that we have seen and
heard in our lives and in our experience. And that is what
Paul would be called to do now at Rome. The Lord tells Paul
that he must now go to Rome and bear witness there. And that
shows us that our lives are in God's hands. Someone once said,
I am immortal until my work is done. And that was true for Paul
and it is true for you and for me. We will live in this world.
And we will bear witness, as we read in Psalm 70, we will
bear witness to this generation and to the generations to come
until the Lord is pleased to say, your work is done, well
done, my good and faithful servant, and gather us to himself. We
do well to live with a sense of humility. We have nothing,
nothing, but that which the Lord has given to us. And yet also
we should live with a sense of destiny because we are the Lord's
people and we have the richness of his blessing upon us. We are ambassadors of a king
in this dark world. We are sons and daughters of
the Most High God. We have good reason to trust
in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation from sin and for deliverance
from our enemies as the Apostle Paul found out. Paul still had
troubles to face and so will we. but he could face them more
confidently because the Lord Jesus Christ had come to him
in the night and encouraged him and comforted him. And the Lord
will encourage and comfort us in the gospel and in his word
and in the preaching and in the reading of his word as he is
pleased to come by his spirit and minister it to our hearts. Amen.