Acts 22:22-23:5. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on October 6, 2024.
Last week, we stopped right as the crowd listening to Paul begins to riot again. Paul is on the northwest side of the temple courtyard of the Gentiles and is standing on the steps that lead up to bridges, connecting to the Antonia Fortress.
The final straw is his depiction of the Lord telling him to leave Jerusalem because they wouldn’t listen. Instead, Paul was to go to the Gentiles. Regardless of whether or not they believed the Lord actually spoke to him, the message is that God’s grace would be taken from them and given to the Gentiles. This ignited a new flurry of rioting.
Let’s pick it up there and look at our passage.
The Jews had been under the dominion of Gentile powers for a very long time, just over 600 years. It started with Babylon, then Persia, then Greece, and finally the Romans. There was a brief period of throwing off dominion under the Maccabees, but that was short-lived.
At the same time, they had a promise from the prophets of an Anointed King of the line of David that would set all things right in Israel and in the world. The prophecies have a mixture of judgment and salvation that would go to the ends of the earth.
The unique position of having great things promised to you and yet enduring great persecution can breed bad things in your heart. The average person would generally give up on such prophecies, or at least, treat them as never happening in your lifetime. It can also create an overdeveloped sense of entitlement to being on top. Yet, anger that it is not happening. It can lead to an inability to see God’s love for those others, especially those who have dominion over you. However, it also happened among themselves. It can lead to having great zeal and passion, yet without the wisdom of God. It can lead to a person becoming unable to hear and follow the Holy Spirit.
Do we have some of this in our hearts and denominations within Christianity?
This crowd is angered by the idea that they had crucified the Messiah and that Messiah would send grace away from them to the Gentiles. We have to be careful as Christians that we don’t develop that same entitled attitude that ends up raging against the work of the Holy Spirit.
As Pentecostals, we can look back to the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox splitting and see a lack of following the Spirit of God. We can look back to the Protestants and the Roman Catholics and see it again. We can even see it among Protestant groups that railed against Pentecostals. Can we be doing it again among ourselves? Are we filled with a sense that we are the ones on the cutting edge of God’s work, and yet stand in the way of the Spirit in the name of God? Of course, we can!
At this point, the Roman commander has Paul brought into the fortress to the shouts of, “Away with such a fellow from the earth, for he is not fit to live!” It is not likely that the commander understood Paul’s speech, at least immediately. But, he could read the reaction of the crowd, and it wasn’t good.
The commander then gives the order for Paul to be interrogated under scourging. Paul has been beaten in the past. He was beaten with rods in Philippi. However, the scourge was basically what they did to Jesus. It had metal and bone tied into a leather flail. This would easily break the skin and even tear off chunks of muscle. Scourging often left a man maimed for life, and could even lead to death. At this point, the commander will be absent, as a centurion has Paul tied to what is probably a post. The centurion will run the interrogation while soldiers do the whipping.
It is at this point that Paul reveals his Roman citizenship. He warns the centurion that he is about to break the law. Of course, he is talking about Roman law. No Roman citizen could be bound, much less beaten without a proper trial. This piece of information brings the proceedings to a screeching halt as the centurion makes sure that the commander is aware of the full weight of his command. This leads to the commander coming in to question Paul himself.
It is not clear exactly why he makes the statement about having obtained his citizenship with a large sum of money. He could be implying that anyone with money can obtain citizenship (though it was technically illegal. Roman citizenship was not officially for sale.) It may be a derisive statement that doesn’t see Paul as capable of having citizenship. Yet, Paul answers that he has Roman citizenship by birth.
This brings up a question. Is Paul’s motivation purely out of fear of scourging? Is he trying to get out of pain and suffering? He hadn’t brought this up in Philippi until after his beating (Acts 16). Of course, there is no indication that Paul ever pressed charges against any of these breaches of Roman law. I believe Paul’s statements stand for themselves. He is ready to suffer here in Jerusalem. It was the Spirit of God that had led him to come. Thus, it is very likely that the Spirit of God is moving him to plead citizenship.
Since we are on the subject of governments and rights, let’s notice that Roman rights were given by law, and they could be taken away by a change in the law. Whereas, in these United States of America, our history has always held that these are from God and unalienable (at least without breaking the law).
We Americans love to holler about our rights, but we haven’t thought this all the way through.
If God has given us rights, then he has a purpose a good effect in mind. If we exercise those rights, then we have a duty to work towards the good He intends. Take rearing children for instance. The government doesn’t give you the right to have children. It is given to you by God. However, if you exercise your right to have a child, then you have a duty to raise that child for the good thing that God desires out of it. Essentially, you are to raise up godly offspring to be a source of God’s love and truth into the next generation. Thus, there is a flip-side to the coin of rights and it is called Duty, or Responsibility. Precious few Americans are screaming about their duties.
Yet, even duties are intended to lead to a good effect. That good effect then brings joy both to the duty-bound person and the recipient of that duty. When the good fruit comes, it is a time of rejoicing.
We must keep our eyes on God’s good purpose and the joy it brings while we are doing the duties. You could lose heart, but to do so would be to give up on the joy.
In fact, Paul purposefully chose to endure rods. Why? Well first of all because he knew that Jesus had given him the right to take a beating for the Gospel. I am not being funny. The elders of the city took a completely different view of Paul and his teachings when they realized that he could take them before Caesar and they would not fare well. Paul was working and enduring much difficulty for the joy of souls being saved from darkness.
At this point, the commander has Paul’s bonds loosed, though he is still in custody pending investigation. He is not condemned yet, but there are charges against him. What are these charges? This is what the commander wants to find out. Thus, the Jewish legal body, the Sanhedrin, is called to answer for the treatment of Paul, and so that they can clarify the charges.
Paul is allowed to speak first, and he opens by declaring that he has “lived in all good conscience before God.” This is not a statement of perfection, but of a lack of guile and intent to offend on his part. Paul will later explain this in Acts 24:16. “I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.” He doesn’t believe that he has done anything that he feels should offend them.
However, notice his point. We shouldn’t purposefully offend people, but we should even more so not offend God. Have you ever noticed that choosing to please God can tick some people off? It is impossible to please all people while pleasing God. Some of the things that I would have to do to keep from offending you may offend God. In his conscience, Paul has worked through this and believes that he has done a good job.
The high priest is offended that Paul would present his claim this way. Most likely, he believes that Paul of all people should know that his actions are offensive to them. Does the high priest actually believe Paul brought a Gentile into the temple? That is not clear. Is he more concerned about Paul pushing Jesus, who was condemned to death as a heretic by the Sanhedrin? Or, is he thinking about Paul stirring up trouble in the synagogues within Gentile lands? Regardless, the high priest calls for Paul to be struck on the mouth, and he is.
Commanding Paul to be struck in the middle of his testimony, i.e., no trying of the facts that could lead to a true judgment, demonstrates just how comfortable this man has become with having power and abusing it.
What he has commanded is against the Law of God. Deuteronomy 25:1-2 says, “If there is a dispute between men, and they come to court, that the judges may judge them, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, then it shall be, if the wicked man deserves to be beaten, that the judge will cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence, according to his guilt, with a certain number of blows.”
There has been no presentation of evidence and dispute between the parties. There has been no trying of the facts and judgment of the judges. Paul has just opened his mouth to give testimony and he is struck. Does not this kind of thuggery create the affect of squelching testimony? It is not enough to demonstrate that you rightly have power or position (though that is questionable in this case). One must also exercise the power of the position rightly, or justly, as God would have it done.
Of course, it would have been illegal for them to strike Paul as a Roman citizen, but he would have never held that over his own people.
Paul turns and rebukes the man who gave the command. “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! For you sit to judge me according to the law, and do you command me to be struck contrary to the law?” This rebuke may have been led by the Holy Spirit, but it is also possible that Paul simply lost his temper. Who could blame him? Paul was not a perfect man like the Lord Jesus. He may have spoken to soon out of anger.
It is interesting though that Paul’s declaration that “God will strike you…” did happen. Ananias would later be assassinated by rebel Jews for working with Rome.
Why does Paul call him a whitewashed wall? Jesus spoke of a whitewashed tomb in Matthew 23:7. It looks clean and nice on the outside, but inside it is full of rot and corruption. It is a picture of a man who uses the color of law and the color of morality externally to cover up their internal lawlessness and immorality. This man purports to sit in the judgment seat of God, while breaking God’s command for there to be a trial of the facts first. Intimidating a witness in the middle of their testimony is a age-old act of corruption.
Of course, they can’t see the irony. A rebuke comes back to Paul that he is speaking ill of the high priest, contrary to the law. There is an unequal weight and measure here, as they seem to have a big problem with verbal abuse, but none at all with physical abuse.
Yet, notice that Paul backs down and apologizes for his outburst. Did he really not know that this was the high priest or did he lie when he said that he didn’t? I don’t think that Paul is telling a lie. In any address, a person is often looking to the larger group. He could have easily not seen who gave the command. Plus, it is clear from his letters that he does have eye-sight problems. Between not expecting to be interrupted and poor eyesight, it is quite feasible, if not probable, that Paul did not know who had given the command.
It is also possible that Paul is making a back-handed point. I didn’t know he was the high priest (stated) because a true high priest would never give an unlawful command (unstated). At the least, we should recognize his heart. He backs down and he apologizes. He even quotes the passage that backs up the point of his enemies.
The wicked will always do wickedly. Yet, the temptation is for us to respond in kind. Paul isn’t this kind of man. In the middle of this antichrist group, he models true repentance, acknowledging that he went too far.
Just as Paul’s accusers weren’t so kind and fair-minded, so our accusers may not be so kind. No matter how well you do in trying to love others and not be an offense to them, many will be offended anyway. We will be challenged to be about the purpose of God, rather than about our rights. In fact, sometimes it is the very abuse of rights that opens people’s eyes to wickedness that is parading as righteous.
May God strengthen our hearts to stand with Him in this day, while being a light to all we come in contact with.