There is nothing new for us in Paul's speech in Chapter 22 except the warning from God he received in the Temple to leave Jerusalem.
As Paul recounted his path from chief prosecutor of Christians to their chief advocate, the Hebrews listened intently right up to the moment when he mentioned taking the message to the Gentiles. While the nation had been told at the foot of Mount Sinai that they would be a nation of priests to the Gentile world, they had managed over the centuries not only to neglect that mission, but had perverted it into a vile hatred of Gentiles. By the time of Christ, it had already become Talmud Law that no Jew could ever do anything good for a Gentile by choice. But they were hardly honest about it, hiding this as a secret teaching, as they do even today. While the Romans might sense that spite, they seemed to have had no idea it was a doctrine of Jewish Law.
Once the commander got him inside the fortress, Paul just barely dodged being tortured by claiming his Roman citizenship. Now the battalion commander had a formal duty to protect Paul from the Jews. But he needed to know what had gotten such a hysterical reaction from the crowd, and so proposed to have Paul face the Sanhedrin in a Roman setting. This was apparently going to take place in the Sanhedrin's public courtroom. Paul himself had been trained as a lawyer and magistrate, so he surely had a real advantage.
Paul's customary declaration of a clear conscience offended the arrogant High Priest, so he signaled for Paul to be struck in the mouth. Paul's protest was legally justified, referring to the High Priest as no protection against injustice at all (a badly stacked wall of rubble with a thick coat of whitewash). When the lackeys asked how Paul dared to castigate the High Priest, he answered with sarcasm. Paul had worked directly with the Sanhedrin before, so he knew everyone by face and name, and all their dirty secrets. Still, his claim to not recognize the High Priest would protect him from being prosecuted for cursing the anointed ruler.
Paul knew their game too well. He knew the deck was stacked against him and that there was no point in letting things continue. Thus, he struck at their weakest point: the bitter spite between the Pharisees and Sadducees on the council. Claiming that he was a Pharisee, and that this whole prosecution was a baldly partisan attack, he was actually speaking the truth. His faith and witness for Christ was a matter of doctrine that the Pharisees already supported, in theory. But it wasn't exactly pertinent to the case.
Still, that complaint immediately divided the Sanhedrin and anything they planned to accomplish dissolved into a very raucous argument. The bitterness of the feud got physical enough that the Roman commander ordered troops to pull Paul out of the courtroom by force. That night in safe custody of the Romans, the Lord appeared to him and encouraged him. Having now testified of Christ to the high and mighty in Jerusalem, he would also do the same in Rome.
Paul's abuse of the Sanhedrin formal process was wholly justified. Forty Jewish men put themselves under a vow to neither eat nor drink until Paul was dead. They reported this conspiracy to the chief priests (who were Sadducees), and they agreed to play along. The idea was to have Paul brought down to the Sanhedrin court again, but between the fortress and the court, these forty men would overpower the small squad of Roman soldiers and murder Paul. They were all willing to die in the process, and would become fugitives if they survived. They were that determined to silence Paul, and the chief priests were in on it.
If Paul was the kind of man to have previously been a magistrate of the Sanhedrin Court, it's no surprise his sister was married and living in the city somewhere. His whole family was no doubt on the fringes of the Jewish ruling class, so her son -- Paul's nephew -- overheard this conspiracy. He came to the fort and reported it to Paul, who then had the lad share the intel with the Roman battalion commander. Given the Jewish restiveness of late, he took this whole thing quite seriously. The commander also kept whole thing secret to avoid any spies in the fortress from catching wind of this.
He then ordered two centurions to mobilize their entire units for a dangerous escort mission to the current governor, Felix, at Caesarea down on the coast, and to order up reinforcements. Paul was to ride among the seventy Roman cavalry, while two hundred heavy and two hundred light infantry marched in formation with these.
Luke cites the letter the battalion commander wrote, and we learn his name was Claudius Lysias. We should not be surprised this man painted his behavior as better than it actually was, but the rest was a spare factual report of the problem. The commander needed to justify bothering the Governor with a Jewish Roman citizen whom the Sanhedrin wanted dead.
As ordered, this huge military cohort moved out at about 9PM that night. They went about halfway to Caesarea to a town called Antipatris. Those mounted would have traveled rather slowly on the twisted hilly route down to that point, and the mass of infantry was to protect them. They stopped overnight. Antipatris stood at the transition from the Judean Hills to the coastal flatlands. As they moved out the next morning, the cavalry could now move more quickly and the infantry were no longer needed. The forty conspirators never had a chance.
Felix never got along with the Jews. Staying down in Caesarea was simply a good idea to avoid the need for a heavy bodyguard in the confines of Jerusalem. The letter from Lysias painting the Sanhedrin as out of control was accurate and not news to Felix. It turns out that this letter was actually an excellent opportunity to remind the Jews just who was in charge. Felix had full jurisdiction over Cilicia, too, and could have simply decided Paul's case immediately, but chose to drag the Sanhedrin down to see him on his home ground.
He ordered Paul to safe custody in the adjoining Praetorium Herod had built for himself. This was a sumptuous palace that the Romans had commandeered, so Paul had a nice vacation on his way to Rome.
All of Ed's paperbacks will increase in price a little bit, come this June 20. Amazon is increasing the cost per page, which I expect to happen a little more regularly now, given inflation, and probably shrinking supply and labor. So, that increase you might see in the books isn't me slyly trying to increase revenue.
The books are still being sold as low as possible. Amazon, still for some reason, won't let a publisher offer anything "at cost," so I am making a few cents per book sold. For full disclosure purposes, I did send Ed some money some time ago to cover whatever revenue comes in to me personally from those sales. If for some reason his books start to really move, I'll work something out with Ed to send him more.
I attached an Excel sheet of Ed's lifetime sales. Check the "Paperback Royalties" tab: 31 books sold, a few cents profit. The rest of the document probably isn't of much interest. Maybe I will do this yearly or quarterly, just so we are all aware of how things are doing in that channel.
We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.
You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.
Lyn is now doing his dialysis at home. For those of you unfamiliar with the procedure, suffice it to say that it takes weeks of classes at a dialysis facility to practice and to learn how to "do it". The machine is complex and complicated and everything has to be done exactly correctly and in the right order and error codes do not get ignored. You have your electrical system and plumbing system inspected and confirmed that dialysis can be done safely and properly at home. Then you spend 3-5 hours in a recliner in your living room having your blood removed and replaced by the machine - however many liters per hour. And you do this 4-5 days a week. I have been to his house to visit or to bring him some homemade supper and seeing it all with my very own eyes is/was not only way overwhelming but so very sad. He is in horrible pain also because both of his shoulders need replacing; not repairing. Replacing. His shoulder joints are rubbing so badly that spurs have formed and have torn most of the ligaments to shreds. It is almost impossible for him to comfortably move his arms. His physiatrist (pain mgmt doctor) keeps "bugging" him to get the surgery done, but seriously - he is supposed to have surgery while his kidneys have failed and he is on dialysis at home???? Sorry. Had to vent for a minute.
So, several prayers needed here:
May Father give Lyn all the strength, courage and will he needs to continue down this path
and that
He ensures that Lyn qualifies to be on the national and regional donor lists until.....
the Lord wills that
He either receives a kidney via someone's death or
He receives a kidney through a living donor match.
I cry a lot for Lyn. Well, for a lot of folks - but it seems like a lot of tears for him these days.
Thank you family. And always remember I am here for all of you - anytime, for any thing.......
PS. Some friends run an "Angel Flight" organization that flies out of a nearby regional airport and they have offered to fly Lyn to wherever so Lyn can get to a kidney if it is too far away to drive to (you have a 4-6 hour window).
The rest of the voyage to Jerusalem was uneventful. The only thing Luke remarks on were the two more times people made it a point to warn Paul that he was heading for trouble in Jerusalem. The last was Philip at the port of Caesarea. This was one of the seven Hellenized elders who had fled Jerusalem with all the other Diaspora Jewish Christians when persecution arose from the execution of Stephen. This man was the one who had led the Ethiopian eunuch to faith.
Paul and his entourage stayed at Philip's home in Caesarea for a few days. It would seem Paul had made good time and was no longer in such a hurry. In their company was Mnason, a Gentile believer from the early days, born in Cyprus, who owned a house in Jerusalem. He could host the Gentiles in the entourage without raising any difficulties. The atmosphere in Jerusalem was tense; it was not the time to flout Jewish traditions by having Gentiles lodge with Hebrew Christians.
They brought their love offerings from the churches abroad, but the disciples in Jerusalem were more thrilled by Paul's report of his missions work. However, the Jewish zealots were hostile. There were rumors that Paul had taught Jews to abandon their national identity and transgress the Judean laws. The leaders mentioned this agitation from Jewish nationalists and proposed a way to take the heat off of Paul by showing he was still an observant Jew.
In their church were four men who had recently completed vows related to a Jewish ritual. As Paul had done not so long ago, these four were to have their heads shaved. If Paul went with them to the Temple and paid for it, it would be recorded publicly that he was the sponsor, which in itself was another ritual act. At the same time, the church leaders steadfastly stood by their decisions from Acts 15, that Judiazing Gentile believers was wrong.
The issue was treading a fine line. Jesus clarified and taught Moses. The Talmud was not Moses and did not reflect God's stated will. However, some of the Talmud was enforced as Judean civil law, and should be obeyed in order to keep peace. It was to be treated as man-made law, not as the Word of God. Despite the current customary Jewish spite for Gentiles, God had commanded that Jews should be tolerant and work alongside Gentiles who kept the Covenant of Noah, thus the letter in Acts 15.
And among Jews, the Talmud was still subject to partisan debate. So Paul was standing on that fact by keeping the rituals of Moses, while treating the Talmud as simply the law of the land. If anyone among the disciples of Jesus knew how to split hairs on such things, it would be Paul.
The rituals for completing the vows took seven days, involving public head-shaving, some days of ritual cleansing, and then specified offerings presented in the Temple. There were radical nationalist Jews from Asia Minor who spotted Paul in the Temple with these four men. They had seen Paul often in the company of Trophimus, a Gentile whom we have mentioned previously in this study. These zealots made the hasty assumption that Paul had brought Trophimus with him into the Court of Israel.
They started a ruckus, and given the Pentecost crowding and general tensions, it immediately turned into a riot. The activist crowd dragged Paul through the Court of Women and out into the Court of Gentiles, and pushed the doors shut behind them to prevent defiling the Temple proper with the violence.
They surrounded Paul and began beating him with the intention of killing him. The noise came to the attention of the battalion commander in the Antonio Fortress on the other end of the Temple Plaza. That man himself lead a company of troops out to stop the riot, at which the Jews pulled back to avoid bloodshed. You can bet the Roman troops would be delighted at any excuse to use their weapons against the Jews, especially at this festival season when they could be insufferably arrogant.
When the commander asked what it was all about, he couldn't get a single straight answer. For his own safety, Paul was chained between two Roman soldiers, who then had to carry him to get him away from the crowd. As they mounted the steps on the outside of the fortress, Paul spoke to the commander in Greek, which was the one language they would likely have in common. The commander was surprised that he spoke Greek.
A couple of paragraphs from my previous commentary:
For some reason, the officer had assumed Paul was the Egyptian fellow who had led a small army of assassins out to Mount Olivet, declaring that the walls would come down miraculously so they could invade to wipe out the Roman cohort. Instead, the assassin army was attacked and wiped out, but the leader got away. That Paul spoke in Greek was proof enough that he was not the same man. So Paul identified himself as a Jewish man from Tarsus, and thus a Roman Citizen, and wanted to address the crowd, in hopes of taming their rage. Since the soldiers were blocking the stairs below, it sounded reasonable to try.
Paul offered the signal that he wanted to address the crowd, and they grew rather quiet. As he began speaking in the local Aramaic dialect of Hebrew, the crowd grew hushed, as many had no idea what was going on, and had not expected that.
We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.
You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.
Luke tells us Paul eventually got to Corinth, but refers to the wider region simply as "Hellas" after mentioning Macedonia separately. Thus, he spent three months in this return tour, most of it likely in Corinth. While there, he wrote his famous letter to the Christians in Rome. The Jews in Corinth had cooked up a murder plot against Paul as he was about to set sail for his home church of Antioch in Syria. So, he slipped out of town overland and made his way back up the way he came. Along the path he picked up an escort of men who stayed with him all the way to Philippi and across the sea back to Troas.
What Luke doesn't tell us is that the churches had gathered up a relief offering for the first Christians back in Jerusalem; the area suffered a drought. This would go a long way to calm any residual tension between Jewish and Gentile Christians. It was this escort, each of whom their church appointed to carry this offering so that Paul could justly claim he never touched the money. The trustees carrying the offering went on over to Troas directly.
Then Luke inserts himself back into the narrative. He and Paul celebrated Passover and Unleavened Bread in Philippi, then they rejoined the trustees in Troas. We get a feel for how taking passage on a ship was a matter of just heading off in the right direction. It took five days on that boat to reach Troas. Then they all stayed a week there. In Troas there was a church that hosted them.
During one meeting, Paul must have had a lot to say, because he kept teaching into the night. One of those listening had been sitting on a window sill and dozed off, falling three stories to the ground below. Everyone rushed down, and someone declared him dead. But Paul dropped down and hugged him, then announced that this fellow was still alive. They all went back up; you can imagine the mood. They ate a late night snack and stayed up talking until dawn.
Luke boarded a ship with their entourage, but Paul decided to hike overland to the next port at Assos. It was a day long hike, still one of the most beautiful routes to this day. He joined the entourage on the ship and they set sail down the coast. Paul was in a hurry to make Jerusalem for Pentecost, and so had chosen a ship that didn't dock in Ephesus at all, but landed somewhere south at the port of Miletus. It was a full day's hike (30 miles) or more from Ephesus; Paul wanted to avoid any risk of conflict again.
It's likely there was a small church in Miletus. Paul sent a message to the church leaders in Ephesus to come join him there. The ship must have stayed a couple of days; it would have taken at least that long for the messenger to go and the leaders to return with him.
Luke records a very touching message that Paul gave them. They knew what kind of man he was, and that he didn't consider his life that important. He knew this was the last time he would see them. He wasn't sure what would happen, but that it was not possible to avoid this visit to Jerusalem, for he was driven by the Holy Spirit. There were plenty of warnings that bad things would happen, but it didn't matter; Paul was not intimidated.
He admonished the men to maintain their vigilance over the flock, because Paul knew that Jews had already made plans to infiltrate the churches. And then, there would be hucksters simply looking to make a buck from Christian generosity. He reminded them that he had paid his own way during his long stay in Ephesus. The whole point was that it's simply preposterous for anything to think Paul might have tweaked the message for personal gain. He delivered what God had put into his life; it was all he had and all he would ever need.
Of course, the Ephesian elders were grieved and this was one long tearful departure.
Celebrate with us! Thanks to your faithful prayers in support of my request, we now have a newish car for Veloyce. It's a 2017 Ford Fusion Hybrid -- painted dark red. We were able to make a substantial down payment thanks to a private gift sent to us last week. Now, we trust that the Lord will enable us to pay it off early. May this bring glory to His name!
By the way, I have inherited her old VW Jetta. We hope this one will continue working longer than the last one I bought, which became fatally stricken after that long trip to Texas and back last summer.
We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.
You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.
We insert here an interlude to explain some background. During Paul's time at Ephesus, he wrote a letter to Corinth that he mentions (1 Corinthians 5:9), but which we do not have today. We guess that whomever was the messenger carrying that letter returned to Paul with disturbing news. The church wrote back to him. Our 1 Corinthians is Paul's response to this exchange.
This second letter -- 1 Corinthians -- does not solve the problem. It's likely Paul made a hurried visit (1 Corinthians 16:5-8; 2 Corinthians 13:1-2), but either way, he exercises his apostolic authority to demand some changes. It is quite a painful experience for everyone involved. We believe this is the source of those who complained that Paul was so forceful in his letters, but lacked the kind of social charisma that would match such writing. If Paul came in person, he didn't thunder vocally, but simply fell on his face in front the whole body and prayed, weeping in the Spirit until people began to break down with him.
The chronology isn't quite clear at this point. It would appear that this was about the time Paul left Ephesus and headed for his planned trip through Macedonia (today's northern Greece). He seems to have gotten as far as Troas before taking ship. Things were still not right in Corinth, so Paul dawdles there, and writes a third letter that, again, we do not have today (mentioned in 2 Corinthians 2:4, 7:8). It is the "strong letter" that caused even more sorrow. He's not going to go back to see them with another humiliation scene that caused so much distress. This third letter was delivered by the hand of Titus.
Paul continues on his journey to Macedonia and waits for Titus to return. Titus comes back finally with a good report. Still busy with the churches in Macedonia, Paul writes his fourth letter -- our 2 Corinthians -- to celebrate with the church their recovery back to the right path. He's promising to make his way to them in a while.
The basic issue with the church in Corinth was apparently two-fold. First, there was the influence of a highbrow philosophical analysis of the issues God had revealed. It's the same basic fundamental rejection of revelation in favor of human reason that constitutes the Fall. We believe this may have been the birthplace of the Gnostic heresy. This was rooted in the Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah. The fundamental reasoning was that Jesus could not have been God and man at the same time. Either He was a phantom spirit that simply manifested in human form, but left no footprints in the sand, or He was just a man who lied about being divine. The core of Mediterranean Gnosticism comes from this false dichotomy.
Second, this left the door open for creeping paganism. People in the church brought with them the loose pagan social mores that were common in the moral filth that was native to the City of Corinth. The church at Corinth was quite large and encompassed the same cosmopolitan mix as lived in that city. The church began dividing into factions, miniature tribes that insisted on keeping some part of their fleshly identity intact.
Thus, when the church leadership sought to discipline anyone according to the ancient Hebrew morals of Christ, there was an organized resistance that nearly broke up the church. This is where we learn the perils of mixing too many different backgrounds into a church body. At the very minimum, such a church must demand that people ditch their human ethnic identity and human capabilities to embrace a new identity that is more of Jesus and His background. You are marrying into a New Nation of Israel. A single church body cannot function with mixed identities.
Of course, the other issue is that the nature of holiness is not up for debate. One of the specific issues Paul addressed was the morality of marriage (1 Corinthians 5:1-8). Under the Law of Moses (Leviticus 18:7-8), a man and his son cannot have sex with the same woman, even if it is not the son's actual mother (the father's additional wife). It doesn't matter if the father has died. This defiles the woman and the men involved, along with the whole household. As far as Paul was concerned, this Old Covenant requirement carried over into the Covenant of Christ.
Thus, we again see that, at the very least, Christians must seek to understand the underlying issue with the demands in the Law of Moses. Some do not translate into parables, but remain literal. There is a strong continuity between the Old and New Testaments.
