Acts 22:22-30 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 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 at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to 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 commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.” The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I am,” he answered. Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.” “But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied. Those who were about to interrogate him 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.
At the end of Paul’s explanation of his conversion to Christianity on the road to Damascus, he mentioned that Jesus sent him to the Gentiles to preach the Good News. This comment infuriates the mob. “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’” (Acts 22:21) For them Christianity was an apostate religion, attacking Judaism as the only way to be right with God. For the Jews anything less or more than following the laws and regulations given by Moses was an anathema. Consequently, they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” As angry as bulls in a bullring, they threw dust in the air and snorted the fire of judgment on Paul. “Get rid of him!” To calm down the riotous crowd, the commander of the Roman’s soldiers arrested Paul and brought him into the barracks. He assumed Paul had to be a dangerous criminal, a threat in someway to the community of Jews. To find out what criminality Paul had done to the Jewish community, he ordered his officer to interrogate Paul by flogging him. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. But the officer in charge of the effort to find the truth of Paul’s misdeeds discovered that Paul is a Roman citizen. To punish a Roman citizen before giving him his right to defend himself before a magistrate or responsible authorities was an illegal act, and probably carried severe consequences from Rome to those who allowed such a scene. Therefore, when the commander heard that Paul was a citizen of the Roman Empire from birth, he grew fearful. His soldiers when hearing that Paul was a citizen withdrew immediately from the scene. The Commander rescinded his order of flogging but kept Paul in custody. 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. Paul had been punished many times, in many cities, for spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ being the Lord. He was on a mission to reconcile all people to the Creator. This message resonated with many Jews and Gentiles. However, most of the Jews in these Greek communities where he ministered were very hostile to the message that Jesus was and is the long awaited Messiah promised in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. They considered the preaching of Jesus being the Messiah was an apostate message, a cruel hoax upon those who would accept such deviation from serving God through laws and regulations. But Paul’s message revolved around John 3:16-18: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. For the Jew this theme of the Good News of Christ only put away their efforts to be right with God through obedience to the law and its regulations. Something they could not accept.
Paul’s message was straightforward: you must be born again to be right with God. The blessings of God would come only to those who are in right standing with him, and that does not come through obedience to the law and its commands and regulations. No man can stand before God in right standing with him through their own effort. Why? Because mankind can never fulfill the complete requirements of the law. Jesus told the people who were listening to his sermon on the Mount that you must be perfect as God is perfect. No flaw of human nature will ever enter the kingdom of God; eternity will not accept imperfection of any kind. Therefore, Paul preached that only Christ fulfills that requirement of being perfect to enter the kingdom of heaven. Only those who find themselves IN CHRIST through faith in his work on the cross will be introduced to God by Jesus the Christ. The Kingdom of God will be the home of those who are as God is: perfect. Jesus said, people must be born again; they cannot come to God in their old tent of the flesh. Paul says, anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:17) As Jonah said after being rescued from the depth of the ocean, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’” (Jonah 2:9) New life comes only through the Lord; no other activity or idea can save a person from the depths of sin. Only God has the power to conquer evil. David met Goliath with a mere sling. He faced the giant not with strength of his own, no physical power or dexterity to defeat this symbol of the enemy. David proclaims by faith, “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (1 Samuel 17:45-47) Jesus would not knuckle under to Satan’s power either. In the wilderness, weak with hunger, he wields the sword of God’s word toward Satan, Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only. (Matthew 4:10) As David, Jesus seems weak, but faith in the mighty power of God makes all believers strong and dangerous to the devil. Paul puts this new power of a Christian very succinctly, anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! The old life, the old tent is controlled by the works of the devil: filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice; slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; inventing ways of doing evil; disobeying parents. In the devil’s control, they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Romans (1:29-31) Salvation in Christ brings a new life to us in the present, not later but now, a new life has begun. In this new life we have a responsibility to that new creature inside of us. We are to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. The display of God’s Spirit will emanate from our new creation: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Our tent will be different from all the others in the wilderness.
When the children of Israel were released from Egypt and after they cross the Red Sea, they lived in tents. When they would settle down, hundreds of tents would spring up in that hot, dry land. But there was always one tent that would be different; it would be called the Tabernacle of God. In this tent, the voice of the Lord would dwell. The Tabernacle might not have looked a lot different from the other tents, except for its size, but it was completely different, for a new and different life was inside that tent. Moses would enter that tent often to hear the voice of God, to find the direction to the Holy Land and to deal with the rambunctious nature of the people he was leading to Canaan. As a friend of God he entered the presence of God often. He was always in the reconciling mode of delivering the Israelites to God. We who are alive in the Spirit possess the power and presence of God all of the time. We are the tabernacle that crossed the wilderness. In us exists the voice of God. And as Moses, we are in the reconciling business. Paul writes to the Corinthians of our responsibility to God, to display God to others and to call them to be reconciled to the living God. God reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. (2 Corinthians 5:18-21) We see after the cross, God is not counting people’s sins against them, for Christ has paid the full price of redemption for every soul. But then what does God count against us? God will not allow anyone to come in their own clothing, their own tent, even though cleaned up. The marriage feast is for those who come in the clothing of the Holy One Jesus Christ. His garment is the appropriate one in the kingdom. What is the ultimate sin, rejecting the gift God has given us. The gift of Jesus on the cross was for all of mankind; He alone paid the ransom cost for for every person. God is merciful and loving to even the worst of humans. Jonah was extremely angry because God was merciful to a city that represented the darkness of evil: Nineveh. Jonah had paid a tremendous price to cry out to the people of Nineveh of God’s impending judgment on them. Jonah had spent three days in a large fish, a sentence of death on him from God. Now he is disgusted with God for treating this city with mercy rather than judgment. God tells Jonah of his everlasting mercy to the wicked to help stifle Jonah's anger about life, should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:10-11) God’s mercy to a world in darkness has been revealed to us through the gift of his Son on the cross. Paul tells us to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. We are to stay in our reconciling mission, even loving our enemies, the Nineveh’s of the world, regardless of the cost. In the above focus, we see Paul once again in the hands of the enemies of God, but Paul’s stays on course, for he must go to Rome and reconcile others to God. Friends around this table, let that be your mission today: fulfill God’s plan for your lives regardless of the cost.
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