I never dreamed when I started following Paul on his journeys that it would turn into such a long, drawn out, study. Nor did I anticipate the work that would be required on my part to get it completed. When I first began to follow Paul, I figured it would take a week or two at the most. Instead of the week or two I anticipated, this study has stretched out over months.
Just yesterday I was telling my husband how glad I will be to finish Paul's journeys, not because I'm not enjoying this study, not because I'm not learning a lot, but because this study and the writing that I am doing along with it is taking much out of me. This has been a lot of work and it has been time consuming, so much so that there are many times when I simply don't have the time to put into it. Writing of Paul's journeys has been different than my other writings too. With all of my other writings, even the long ones that take me days to write, I can pretty much write them and be done with them. I am writing my thoughts and experiences in those posts, writing what I'm learning at the moment, and then moving on. Paul hasn't been that way. Paul is challenging me, pushing me to the limits of what I want to do, has even pushed me to the limit of wanting to complete this study. There have been days when I wanted to just throw my hands up and walk away from this, days when I wanted to just say, 'I'm finished'. But I started this project, this study, and I will finish it, one way or another, sooner or later.
I may finish it in one long bout of writing and studying or I may finish it in tiny increments but finish it I will.
And so I move back into Paul, into my study on his life, and where I left him. Despite being warned about the dangers waiting for him in Jerusalem, Paul headed there anyway. He wasn't there long before he was captured, removed forcibly from the temple, being accused of defiling it. The Jews that captured him had intention of killing him but heard that all of Jerusalem was in confusion, a tribune came to Paul's rescue, causing the Jews to stop beating Paul and arresting him. The crowd of people in Jerusalem was so violent that Paul had to be carried into the barracks.
We see in these verses, chapter 21:27-36, that there was much confusion and violence because of Paul, but we do not have any idea of how Paul reacted or what he thought or felt. We are simply given bare facts, almost as if Paul is of no more importance than a rock would be, he is simply there, the center of what is happening, but his thoughts and feelings on what is happening are shown no importance or consideration. They simply are not the important part of this section of Scripture. Here is what Paul was warned would come, here is the violence, imprisonment, and possible potential death of Paul that he knew to expect in Jerusalem, here is what Paul walked into the midst of.
There was a greater plan being worked out around Paul than what Paul thought and felt. Paul was a man, made of flesh and blood. He had emotions, he had preferences, he had hurts. He had just been beat, had people violently clamoring for his demise...he had to be experiencing very human emotions and physical feelings, and yet we are given no insight into those things.
Paul tells the crowd, in Hebrew, which seemed to be important as we are told of the language he used, that he is a Jew. He tells them that he was brought up according to the law, that he persecuted the 'Way' to the death. Paul admits that he was responsible for the death of Christians. And he still identifies Christians as the 'Way'. I can't help wondering what importance came from that term. Why did he call Christians the 'Way'? And why do we not hear that definition today? Why are true Christians never referred to as the 'Way'?
Paul summarizes his experiences for the Jews, tells them how he came to be a part of what he called the 'Way'. And they still called for his death, saying he should not be allowed to live. This resulted in Paul being taken into the barracks for the purpose of being flogged. But Paul asked them if it was lawful for them to flog a Roman citizen. So Paul has now said he is both Jew and Roman. This caused some confusion and fear in the tribune and saved Paul from being flogged.
Paul then faces a council. Paul tells them that he has lived in good conscience before God, to which he is struck in the mouth. How does Paul respond? Does he sit back and do nothing? Does he quietly accept the treatment he just received? Does he tell the council that God loves them?
No. Paul does not physically fight back. Whether he wanted to or not we are not told but we do see that he verbally fought back. He responded to this attack on him by telling the council, 'God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!"
I recently had someone leave some comments on my blog telling me that what I believe is heresy and an abomination to God, this person also accused me of trying to indoctrinate them into my beliefs, and essentially told me that by responding to them in a true and to the point sort of way, that I had not shown them love. Did Paul show the council love here? I'm not Paul. I'm not even close to Paul. Paul had a job in the Lord's plan that I don't begin to hold, and quite honestly would not have wanted to hold, but...Paul shows here that when someone attacks our faith in God, something that Christ himself said was persecution to Him, that we do no have to sit back and lovingly give a response. Paul, through his example, something he said he set before believers many times in the way he lived, although he did not say that about this encounter, has not gently loved those attacking him. He told them that God would strike them. He called them whitewashed tombs.
I was told that my beliefs are heresy and an abomination to God for...I don't even know what reason. The arguments the person leaving comments on my blog used never really seemed to be about the Gospel but about all these little points of what they thought were ways to follow Scripture. If I had been denying Christ I could have understood their statements. If I had been speaking of a Christ contrary to Scripture I could have understood their comments but I did neither of those things. Instead they took offense at things that are not, to me anyway, the main points of salvation. And then they got upset because I wasn't loving.
Paul wasn't loving here. He told the council that God would strike them. How much less loving can a person be than to say God is going to strike someone. I would not ever want to be on God's strike list. Paul also said these men were whitewashed tombs. He told them they were clean holding cells for dead bodies. I'm not sure what whitewashing meant in Paul's day but I know what it means in our day. To whitewash something means you put a coat of white paint over something, often something old and ugly, and make it nice and pretty and new on the outside, hiding the old that is on the inside. That sounds to me like a pretty nasty insult that Paul just hurled at the council.
That is not the love that the commenter on my blog said I should have showed to them. That isn't the love that so many of today's so-called 'Christians' claim Christians should show, and it isn't the love that those opposed to Christianity in any form demand from Christians. That is straight up truth coming from the mouth of a very important man in Scripture.
There's your Christian love.
Did Paul refrain from judging those men? Did he treat them with kindness and human love that told them that what they were doing, what they believed, was okay? That it was acceptable to God? That God loves them no matter what they do or how they act? Or did he hurl insults at them and all but call down God's wrath on them?
And he wasn't finished!
That was a single sentence. Paul didn't stop there. He went on. He told them...'Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?' Paul went on to use their own law against them. He told them that they charged him according to a law that they were violating.
The comments that were left on my blog were not loving. They did not meet with the standards that the person leaving them accused me of not meeting. My situation was nowhere near what Paul's was. I'm not really comparing comments left on my blog to Paul being persecuted and standing before what amounts to a courtroom of people trying him, with a death sentence hanging over his head. I'm just trying to point out the similarities of people today, of their actions and expectations, and those of Paul's days. The situations are nowhere near the same. I had nothing to gain or lose by engaging in conversation with the person leaving comments on my blog. It crossed my mind, many times, to cut my losses and not approve the comments that person was leaving on my blog, but there was something there, in those comments, that tugged at me. That person felt the need to say what they did, for whatever reason they felt the need to say them, and I felt like I should allow the comments on my blog and to reply to each one of them.
And so...that person basically came to me, accusing me of things, and then got offended and essentially told me that I was unloving and straight out said that I was self-righteous, all while doing exactly what they were accusing me of doing. And saying that I was violating Scripture.
Maybe I was. But here, in Acts 23, is a man that set great examples in Scripture, and he is not responding in a loving way to those that are speaking against him. This is a subject I have been wanting to write on for some time. It is a subject I expect I will write on when the time is right. But for now...Paul did not...I repeat, because it is well worth repeating a hundred times...tell those treating him in such a horrible manner, speaking against him because of what he believes and teaches, that God loves them and He did not treat them with love. Not the human emotion kind of love that strives not to offend their human feelings anyway.
Paul then went on to lay claim to the status of being a Pharisee. So we now see that he is not only a Jew, not only a Roman, not only a Pharisee but he is all three. In those times these titles all seemed to be of great importance. I don't mind admitting that all the titles and connections those titles bring in Scripture still confuses me. I can't keep the Pharisees straight from the Saducees. The Romans from the Jews. They all seem to run in the same circles to me and yet they are all distinct groups of people. And here, Paul lays claim to three different distinct groups of people, people with different rules and customs.
The Pharisees found nothing wrong in Paul but the Jews still wanted him dead, so much so that they vowed to neither eat nor drink until Paul was dead. This almost makes me want to laugh. It sounds so stupid. What does anyone care if the Jews did not eat or drink until Paul died? Why would any ruler care? It is much like a child that tells an adult they won't breathe until they get what they want. I've seen kids do this and quite honestly it has less than zero effect on me. Do you know what happens to a child that holds its breath until it gets its way? It will either grow tired of holding its breath and breathe or it will hold its breath until it passes out. Either way...there is no repercussion to the adult the child is trying to manipulate. And unlike most childhood fits, breath holding doesn't even require the adult to listen to the child scream. Quite the opposite actually, a child that is holding its breath is a silent child.
And a Jew that won't eat is nothing but a hungry Jew. Why would anyone care if they refused to eat or drink. In fact, it would seem to me, that any group of people demanding to have their way to the point that they refuse to eat or drink until they get what they want...will soon take care of themselves. If the Jews truly did not drink until they killed Paul, and if the leaders refused to let them kill Paul, than...the Jews would kill themselves through dehydration in a matter of about three days. Problem solved.
That is a pretty unloving thing for me to say. I know that even as I write it. But it's not my aim to be loving. I don't mind saying straight out that I don't believe that loving someone means treating them the way they think they should be shown love. And I don't mind saying that if a group of people are demanding their own way to the point of throwing what amounts to one massive sized group fit...then let them do it. Why should those in charge care? What does it hurt for the Jews to not eat or drink? They will either get over it, having learned a lesson, or they will take care of themselves.
None of that, of course, was the point to that section of Scripture. In fact we go from seeing the threat, or decision, or whatever you want to call it, that the Jews made to seeing what they did. They tried to manipulate their leaders into doing exactly what they wanted. Again...I ask why would any leader care if a group of men, Scripture says there were about forty, that are obviously troublemakers, starved themselves to death, or if they let themselves die of thirst. Why would the leaders care? It seems to me that they would not want to let these men manipulate them that way, that they would want to make an example of them. I can well imagine my reaction if someone, anyone, came to me saying that they were not going to eat or drink until I gave them what they wanted. I'd most likely spread my hands and tell them, 'have at it'. What's it to me. Why wouldn't the high priests and leaders have done the same to these men?
We really don't see the reaction that the leaders have though because we go from this group of men making demands on the priests and leaders and telling them of the self harm they intend to do if they don't get their way, to seeing that Paul's nephew, at which point we learn that Paul has a sister, learns of this plan and he goes to those holding Paul captive and tells them of this plan.
This resulted in Paul being moved under heavy guard in the dark of the night to another location. The tribune sent him to the governor with a letter that essentially said he found Paul innocent of any wrongdoing but that the governor should decide what to do with him. To which the governor agreed to give Paul a hearing once his accusers arrived and placed him under guard.
To be continued...
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