Acts chapter 22 and we'll read
from verse 22. You'll perhaps recall with me
that Paul has just been giving his testimony to a huge gathered
crowd in Jerusalem. It's a time of the Passover feast. Jerusalem is full, it's at the
temple, there's been a little bit of a riot and Paul has now
found himself giving his personal testimony and the words of the
Lord to the gathered Jews and also to the Roman soldiers that
had to protect him from the attack that he faced. So, The people
gave him audience, we're told. They listened to what Paul was
saying as he spoke to them in the Hebrew tongue. And verse
22 of Acts 22 says this, And they gave him audience unto his
word, and then lifted up their voices and said, Away with such
a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should
live. And as they cried out and cast
off their clothes and threw dust into the air, the chief captain
commanded him to be brought, that's Paul, to be brought into
the castle and bade that he should be examined by scourging. So
he was going to get a whipping, that he might know whereof they
cried so against him. And as they bound him with thongs,
Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, Is it lawful for
you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? When
the centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain,
saying, Take heed what thou doest, for this man is a Roman. Then
the chief captain came and said unto him, Tell me, art thou a
Roman? And he said, yea. And the chief
captain answered, with a great sum obtained I this freedom. And Paul said, but I was free
born. Then straightway they departed
from him which should have examined him. And the chief captain also
was afraid after he knew that he was a Roman and because he
had bound him. on the morrow, because he would
have known the certainty whereof he was accused of the Jews, he
loosed him from his bands and commanded the chief priests and
all their council to appear and brought Paul down and set him
before them. It is clear as we read these
verses that the hatred of the Jews for Paul was very intense. But did you notice how the Lord
gave Paul the opportunity for the gospel to be preached, for
the message of the gospel of God's grace to be declared before
these people? Here was a crowd that was really
angry, and yet when Paul spoke to them, there was a quietness
came upon that great crowd. And there's a lovely truth in
that, I think, for even although we find that the world is such
a noisy place, and the world is such a chaotic place in times,
The Lord is careful to maintain his witness and to give that
little gap, that little space for the preaching of the gospel
to be done. And the reason for that, I believe,
is because God uses the gospel both to gather his people to
himself and to bless his people, to help his people, to comfort
his people as the preaching of the gospel goes forth. And so
even although this world is very chaotic and noisy and riotous
and there are so many things going on in it and it seems as
if the very word of God itself will be crowded out and overwritten,
Yet the Lord providentially and sovereignly gives us that space,
that opportunity to hear the preaching of the Word of Truth. It very likely is the case that
when Paul told these people that God would have the Gospel go
to the Gentiles, that that was when they started to shout out
again. And that was when they said that they wished Paul dead. But with Paul, we believe that
God has the right to send his gospel to whomsoever he will,
because the gospel, and indeed the gospel of salvation, is God's
gift to give it to whomsoever he pleases. And that's why we
are so confident when we preach the gospel, when God gives us
opportunity to preach the gospel, when the gospel goes out, whether
it's in the confines of a building, when we gather together, when
we meet for church, or whether it's over the internet as we
preach and share together on occasions like this. That gospel
is going out at God's behest. and no man can stop it. The chief captain, we're told,
gave orders for Paul to be whipped and to be tortured in order to
extract from him a full confession as to why the Jews were so upset. And it seems that there was a
centurion and a number of examiners that were given the responsibility
of whipping Paul in order to get this confession from him. But as these men began to bind
Paul, and they would have tied him to a pillar, they would have
tied him to some sort of post in order to whip his back and
scourge him with their whips in order to put him into so much
pain that he would tell them anything that they wanted so
that the whipping would stop. Paul asked the centurion a simple
question and we read it there in verse 25. He said to the centurion,
is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? See, Paul asked it as a simple
question, but he already knew what the answer was. It was very
much against the law for these Roman soldiers to bind a Roman,
far less to whip him or to kill him without trial, and already These soldiers were in a very
precarious position because anything that they did to Paul could be
done by law to them and to the captain of the guard who was
in charge. If Paul really was a Roman, then
the very fact that they had arrested him and bound him up meant that
the captain of the guard was already in big trouble. And this
little incident shows us again how all things work together
for good to those who love the Lord and to those who are the
called according to his purpose. Tarsus, you'll remember from
our previous talks together, Tarsus was a city in modern day
Turkey, it wasn't Rome, but Tarsus had the privilege of being what
was called in the times of the Romans a free city. It was a
privileged city in the Roman Empire and Paul's parents were
free citizens of that city of Tarsus. Now the captain of the
guard, he also was a Roman citizen, but he tells Paul, I had to pay
a large amount of money to buy my citizenship to become a citizen
of Rome. He was probably a Syrian or perhaps
a North African or a Greek, but he had had to buy his citizenship
of Rome. He was wondering how Paul, a
man of Tarsus and a Jew by his own confession, could really
be a Roman. And Paul says, I have my Roman
citizenship by my birthright because I was born a free man
in the free city of Tarsus. You know, as I was thinking about
that, I thought that that was a lovely picture of man-made
religion and the grace of God. We cannot buy the benefits of
the Gospel by our efforts or our good works, because they
are freely given to us as a privilege of the new birth by the Holy
Spirit. And you know, we have many privileges
because of who we are and where we are born. We might be a citizen
of America and that's a very privileged citizenship to have.
Or we may possess a British passport and that too is a privilege to
have. But it is better far to be a
free-born child of the Kingdom of Heaven. This captain had no
grounds to condemn Paul and he therefore decided that he would
call him before the Jewish council. The chief priest and the Sanhedrin
were called upon to give an explanation as to why Paul was being attacked
by the Jews. And having first sought to murder
Paul, now this Jewish council must appear before the Roman
captain of the guard and defend their actions and give an account
of themselves. And I think there's something
wonderful here about us being under the protective hand of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Psalm 118 verse 6 says this,
The Lord is on my side, I will not fear. What can man do unto
me? And I want us all to remember
that little verse today. The Lord is on my side. If we
trust in the Lord, if we trust our well-being, if we trust our
health, if we trust into the goodness of God, the Lord is
on my side and we have no need to fear. You know, Paul was getting
to be quite an old man by now. He was well into his 60s probably
around this time. I probably shouldn't say that
that's old because I don't feel that old. But anyway, he was
getting on in years. But God used the very place that
he was born all those years before to be the reason for his deliverance. Such is the providential goodness
of God. He has all things working together. He is on our side. and we have
no need to fear and trusting Christ is having confidence in
his saving power and in his continuing help towards us. So there's a
few thoughts for the younger people perhaps, but for all of
us to draw some comfort from that the Lord is on our side
and Paul was delivered once again because he was a Roman citizen
and a free-born citizen of Tarsus. Well, thank you for listening.
Let's just have a wee word of prayer together.