Acts 22:30-23:11 - Infighting and Stupid Politicians

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Last we were with the Apostle Paul in Acts 22. He had just given a sermon to an angry mob of people.

He did not manage to win them over. Instead, his speech, his sermon, ended with them yelling that he needed to be killed. As they say in verse number 22, he isn't fit to live.

And so then Paul is brought back into relative safety by the Roman commander, and they're going to beat the information out of him as to why he has so riled up the people. But he informs them about his Roman citizenship, and so they do not beat him.

And that's where we find ourselves now in Acts 22 and verse number 30. It says, the next day, the commander ordered the leading priests into session with the Jewish High Council, with the Sanhedrin.

The commander wanted to find out what the trouble was all about, so he released Paul to have him stand before them. Gazing intently at the Sanhedrin, Paul began, Brothers, I have always lived before God with a clear conscience.

How could Paul say that? We just heard yesterday how Paul had done things that he now looked back on and went, man, I was in the wrong. Like I stood by while they killed Stephen and I held the coats.

I gave the approval for them to kill him. How could he say this? Here, your conscience is not always correct in what it tells you.

Our conscience is given to us by God in its best state. It communicates God's law into our hearts. So we can read about that in Romans 2, among other places.

In its best state, our conscience tells us God's law and only gives black and white answers. But like, yes, approval or no, that wasn't good. Those are the things that our conscience gives us.

Our consciences can be malformed, that it can feed us information that is inaccurate and untrue based on our upbringing.

If we are brought up thinking adultery is okay, sexual immorality, having intercourse with all sorts of people, whoever you want, whenever you want, all of that is A-okay.

If you grew up in a household like that, that suppresses God's law in our hearts of that faithfulness and fidelity to one person for life, you might be able to engage in sexual immorality with a clear conscience.

Like that doesn't seem like a bad thing to you, but you would never imagine lying to someone or you couldn't imagine killing someone. It's not that all areas of your conscience are malformed. It's in this area, there's a malformation.

So here with Paul, even though he basically kidnapped people and brought them into, threw them into prison, put them under trial, that they died as a result of their faith in Christ, he did it with a clear conscience that he thought because of his

malformed conscience, this is a good thing to do. We see this many times in our world today with those that are deeply offended by the fact that some people would be against abortion, that they can't imagine how someone could try and take away, as

they would phrase it, someone's bodily autonomy and, quote unquote, force them to give birth and to have a child because of a malformed conscience that would say murder in this instance is okay. That's what their conscience tells them.

And their conscience tells them it's bad to infringe on what they deem bodily autonomy as a result of this. So it's a malformed conscience. Here Paul is saying, everything I've done, I have done because I thought it was the right thing to do.

We can read in the Book of Judges where it says, in those days, everyone did what was right in their own eyes. I want to give one quick caveat here on the conscience. Mentioned in its best state, it communicates God's law to us.

It can be malformed if we shut down our conscience enough. If it says, hey, that's bad, don't do that. That's bad, don't do that.

Or that's good. You should do this, you should do this. And if we ignore it enough times, then we can sear our conscience that it no longer, or it's not that it's no longer telling us anything, but we're just dead to it.

That we aren't even listening to what kind of the inside voice says is right or wrong. The Holy Spirit speaks to us through our conscience. You can read about that in many of the letters that Paul writes.

That God wants to renew our conscience, to give us a clean, a new, a clear conscience that is subservient to the Word of God. That as we come to God's Word, we say, Oh, God says this is a problem. God says this is good actually, and this isn't bad.

And so I should follow what God says and allow that to form my conscience, not just my upbringing or my personal thoughts or what my culture says. I'm going to let God's Word form my conscience. So those are a couple of thoughts.

If you would like to learn more about the conscience, there's a great little book called Conscience by Andrew Nisseli, and Crossway publishes that if you search Crossway Conscience, great little book on that topic. All that stems from 23.1.

Brothers, I've always lived before God with a clear conscience. Instantly, Ananias, the high priest, commanded those close to Paul to slap him on the mouth. But Paul said to him, God will slap you, you corrupt hypocrite.

What kind of judge are you to break the law yourself by ordering me struck like that? Those standing near Paul said to him, do you dare insult God's high priest? Paul replies, I'm sorry, brothers.

I didn't realize he was the high priest, for the scriptures say you must not speak evil of any of your rulers. And that particular verse, I want to look it up real quick just because Exodus 22, 28.

That's a verse that by and large in America, we have horribly failed to obey. Ananias here. So Ananias does not hold ultimate political power.

That would of course be the emperor. He is not the Roman governor or overseer. He is not, you know, Herod or one of those ones that's over those areas.

He's not the mayor of the city. He is just an authority, a ruler. And yet, Paul says this specific scripture, you must not speak evil of any of your rulers, applies to this person.

I would like to encourage you today. This was something that my dad instilled in me from God's Word since the time that I was little.

We have deemed it acceptable today to say, I can speak evil of any ruler in the United States because I get a say in who the rulers are, and so if I didn't pick them, then I can speak evil about them.

That, okay, well, I guess we don't have a king, and so I can insult anyone that's not a king, and hear from God's Word how Paul applies this scripture is he's not even allowed to say, God will slap you, you corrupt hypocrite, which here is accurate.

It's a very accurate thing to say, but Paul describes what he said as speaking evil of this person. I'd like to challenge us today. We all have rulers that we don't disagree with here in America.

This is an election year. In November, we're going to get some new rulers or maybe maintain some of the same rulers. Do not speak evil of those rulers.

Don't insult them. Don't insult their intelligence. Don't insult them in ways that isn't dealing with policy.

Hey, I believe this is an unbiblical policy. That's a completely fine thing to say, but insulting the person instead of insulting, don't insult policies.

Insulting the person is not the same thing as contradicting or arguing against a particular policy. As Christians, let's have the same heart as Paul that says we're going to obey Exodus 22 and not speak evil of any of our rulers.

Verse number six, Paul realized that some members of the High Council were Sadducees and some were Pharisees. So he shouted, brothers, I am a Pharisee, as were my ancestors. He's a Pharisee, comes from a family of Pharisees.

He says, and I am on trial because my hope is in the resurrection of the dead. So he starts off a really bad foot that he just says, hey, I have a clear conscience. The high priest is like, slap him, guys.

They slap him. He goes, hey, you corrupt hypocrite. According to God's law, you can't slap someone you can't slap someone on trial.

That's not how this works. They're like, how dare you call the high priest a hypocrite? And he's like, oh, my bad, guys.

That's that's against God's law, too. Exodus 22 says that. So he realizes this is not this is not going well at all.

So here the high council, the Sanhedrin, is supposed to be telling the Roman guard why Paul is here, like what he's in trouble for. So now Paul is less like, hey, I'm really going to share the gospel with these guys and more. All right.

They're not here to hear from me, like the Roman centurions here to hear from them. So I'm going to spread some holy dissension in here.

So he shouts out, hey, I'm here because I believe in the resurrection of the dead, which was one of the big divides between the Sadducees who didn't believe in the supernatural, didn't believe in angels, didn't believe in the resurrection from the

dead, and the Pharisees who were very by the book, by the law, they did believe in the resurrection from the dead and angels and everything else miraculous that the Old Testament spoke about. So verse 7, this divided the council, the Pharisees

against the Sadducees. For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection or angels or spirits, but the Pharisees believe in all of these. So there was a great uproar.

Some of the teachers of religious law who were Pharisees jumped up and began to argue forcefully. We see nothing wrong with him, they shouted. Perhaps a spirit or an angel spoke to him.

As the conflict grew more violent, the commander was afraid that they would tear Paul apart. So he ordered his soldiers to go and rescue him by force and take him back to the fortress.

That night, the Lord appeared to Paul and said, Be encouraged, Paul. Just as you have been a witness to me here in Jerusalem, you must preach the Good News, the Gospel in Rome as well.

Here, many things we could learn, obviously, about the conscience, then about speaking evil, insultingly, rudely, demeaningly about our rulers. Here about some of the interesting things that Paul does here.

Normally, it's not a good thing to spread infighting among people. Scripture would discourage that. One of the seven things that God hates is the one that sows discord, that causes infighting among brothers.

In this instance, though, it tends to look a little bit more like what God does many times in the Old Testament, where there are troops or armies surrounding God's people, and God confuses them so that then they turn on each other.

So in the Book of Judges, you have Gideon, where they say, the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. They blow a horn. They open the torches, and everyone freaks out.

And there you have the Midianites, and they turn against each other because they're not paying attention, and they just think they're under attack and that the enemy is in the camp, and they infight amongst themselves.

I'd say maybe one takeaway that we could have from that today is, let's not be the one that are busy infighting among ourselves. This is something that here the world's systems do. This is something the world's religions engage in infighting.

God's people make peace. I've been listening to the Bible projects. They're going through the Sermon on the Mount this year.

It's been a wonderful study so far, but the episode I'm on right now is talking about blessed are the peacemakers. And that should be who we attempt to be as Christians.

If you're on trial for the Christian faith and people are, you know, bringing reports on it and you feel like saying, hey, I'm here because I believe in the resurrection of the dead. And that causes infighting among the jury or among the lawyers.

Feel free to do that. If you're not in that situation, let's take Jesus's words to mind and attempt to be peacemakers in our life. And then verse 11, just the encouragement from the Lord.

Paul must have been feeling down, must have been feeling discouraged if the Lord told him, be encouraged. Says you've been a witness here in Jerusalem.

You're going to be a witness of the Gospel in Rome as well, which is where he will write the book to the Philippians and many other books that we can find in Scripture. Tomorrow, we're going to see what some of those next steps look like for Paul.

I would encourage you to tune in tomorrow to that. Have a clear conscience. Don't speak evil of your rulers.

Be a peacemaker. Pray for God to work in incredible ways. Pray for him to confound the enemies.

Don't you go around trying to manipulate that. Ask for God to work on your behalf.

And then realize that just like God encourages Paul here, maybe there's someone in your life that you can encourage, that you can say, hey, you've been a blessing to me. I know you've been going through a health struggle.

I know you've been going through a relationship struggle. But know that God loves you. I love you.

I'm for you. Anything I can do for you would love to help. Hope that would be an encouragement to you today.

Tomorrow, we start in Acts 23 and verse number 12.