This past week,
something happened that came as a surprise to many of us. I am, of course,
talking about Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the
United States. This development raises concern in the hearts of many Americans,
including many of us here today. I say that not simply based upon my own
personal observations, but based upon the polls. (I know, I know. We discovered
this week how wrong some polls can be.) Nonetheless, I think it is significant
that in a national poll, 60% of Americans said that Trump was not qualified to
serve as President. 37% of Americans said they would feel scared if he was
elected and 21% said they would feel concerned. That means that well over half
of the people in our nation today are feeling at least a little bit unsettled.
For people of faith who
did not vote for Trump, his election may raise the question: “Where is God in
all of this?” The answer that resounds throughout Scripture is that God is
still in charge, God is still sovereign, even in uncertain times.
Oftentimes
God uses what seems like our greatest defeat to bring about God’s good
purposes. In our reading last Sunday, we saw what seemed to be the great defeat of all Paul’s plans. He was arrested in Jerusalem. But in Acts 23 we will begin to see how God, in sovereign
goodness, used this seeming defeat to bring about the kingdom purpose. Listen for God’s word to you….
The next day, since the commander wanted to find
out exactly why Paul was being accused
by the Jews, he released him and
ordered the chief priests and all the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul
and had him stand before them.
Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him,
“God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!
You sit there to judge me
according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
Those who were standing near Paul said, “You dare to insult God’s high priest?”
Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about
the ruler of your people.’”
Then Paul, knowing
that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. I
stand on trial because of my hope in
the resurrection of the dead.” When he said this, a dispute broke out between
the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but
the Pharisees acknowledge them all.)
There was a great uproar, and some of the
teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they
said. “What if a spirit or an angel
has spoken to him?” The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops
to go down and take him away from them
by force and bring him into the barracks.
In Acts 23 we see several
truths that flow out from the sovereign
rule of God. By God’s sovereignty I mean God’s good rule over all of his
creation and God’s ability to bring about whatever God desires. Paul talks about
God’s sovereignty in Ephesians 1:11 where
he mentions “the
purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.” God has given
human beings freedom. We are free to
reject God’s plan for our lives or to accept it by his grace. Yet, at the same time, God works in and
through and beyond the free choices of human beings to bring about God’s
purposes. So let’s examine how God’s
sovereignty and our human freedom work in a specific situation by looking at Acts
23. The first thing I see here is that because of God’s
sovereignty we can be bold.
Paul knew
that God was in charge of his situation and that no one was going to harm him unless God allowed it for some good reason.
So Paul dared to be bold in his testimony before the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin.
I wonder:
are we like Paul? Do we realize that
God is fully in charge of our lives
and that therefore we can dare to be bold for him? I’m not talking about
being obnoxious in sharing our faith and purposely offending other people. I’m just talking about being
clear. When I highlight something in bold print on my computer
that word stands out more than all the rest. The print is darker, clearer, easier to read. It jumps out from the paper. That’s the
way we need to be when it comes to living and sharing our faith. And we can
afford to be bold because in Jesus we have nothing to lose.
In this time of national
and even global uncertainty, Christians need to be bold in speaking about and
living out the love of God embodied in Jesus Christ. One thing that concerned
me throughout the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, and I know it
concerned many of you, was how Trump spoke about and acted toward women,
Mexicans, Muslims, people with disabilities, and refugees. Now I understand
that we live in a time of fear, and in such a time some people are drawn to
authoritarian figures who promise them safety. I get that. But how does God want
us to act as God’s people in a time of fear? I believe God wants us to act and
speak in faith. I believe God wants us to act and speak in love. Rather than
fearing the “Other”, God wants us to reach out to the “Other”, to those who are
different from us, to the most vulnerable among us, and God wants us to speak
and live out his love in Jesus Christ. I believe God wants us to build bridges
instead of walls.
None of us have the opportunity that a president has to set the tone
for our country. None of us have the opportunity the Apostle
Paul had to set the course for an entire faith movement. But by God’s grace we
can all be bolder in our witness for
Jesus Christ, bolder in showing and declaring his love for all. And as we band
together as a people of faith, and become bolder in our witness to God’s love
for all, even we, the little people of this world, can change the course of our
nation and even our world.
I know we
do not all view things the same way politically in this congregation. I know we
don’t all share the same attitude toward our current president or our future
president. But I would like to share with you a story I heard our current
president share this week that touched me.
In June
2007, then-Senator and presidential hopeful Barack Obama visited the small town
of Greenwood, South Carolina (population 29,000) as part of his campaign
efforts. When he arrived at the town’s civic center, late at night and in a
driving rain, he was surprised to find a room of only 30 supporters. An older,
African American woman named Edith Childs, noticing the look on the candidate’s
face, yelled out to those assembled, “Fired up!” The room responded, “Fired
up!” Obama, surprised by the enthusiasm, turned around to see Childs as she
continued, “Ready to go!”, to which the room again responded, “Ready to go!”
Soon after the campaign stop in Greenwood, the same chant was repeated at a
larger Obama rally in Aiken, South Carolina. Before long, volunteers were
carrying signs and wearing shirts printed with the slogan. The national and
even international press picked up on the craze.
President Obama
shared this story this past week as an example of how even one person’s voice,
one person’s boldness, can change the world. The story makes me wonder: Are we
fired up? Are we ready to go … for the kingdom of God? Paul certainly was. And
we can be too as we seek a spirit of bold love from the heart of God.
After Paul
gave his bold testimony to his faith in the resurrection of the body before the
Sanhedrin, we read in Acts 23:11, “The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in
Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.’”
The missionary Jim Elliot, who gave his life trying to communicate the good news about Jesus
to the Auca tribe of South
America once said: “Your life is immortal until your job is done.” Hear this encouraging word: Because of God’s sovereignty our lives are immortal until
our job is done.
No one
could take Paul’s life away from him until God’s purposes for his life on earth were fulfilled. Part of God’s purpose and plan
for Paul was for him to communicate the good news about Jesus Christ in Rome,
the capitol of the empire. How encouraging it
must have been for Paul, after enduring the abuse of the Sadducees, to hear this
comforting word from the Lord. He was finally going to get to go to Rome and
share his faith in Christ just as he had long desired to do.
I believe
the Lord wants to speak a comforting word to us today as well:
Take courage! Take heart! God’s purpose for our lives will be fulfilled if we
allow him to work in us. As Paul said in Philippians 1:6, “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of
Christ Jesus.” Salvation doesn’t mean we will
always be safe, in physical terms, but it does mean God’s purposes will be fulfilled
in our lives.
A third
result which flows from God’s sovereignty is that: because God is sovereign, human
beings cannot foil his plan. Let’s see
what happened with Paul after God gave him his word of assurance….
The next morning
the Jews formed
a conspiracy and bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul. More than forty men were involved
in this plot. They went to the chief priests
and elders and said, “We have taken a solemn oath not to eat anything until we have killed Paul. Now then, you and the Sanhedrin petition the commander to bring him before you on the pretext of wanting more accurate information
about his case. We are ready to kill him before
he gets here.”
Paul’s own
people were determined that Paul should pay with his life for taking the good news about Jesus to the
Gentiles. However, this story goes to show that no one can thwart God’s plan. As it says in
Isaiah 14:27, “For the Lord Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him?
His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it
back?” The Lord was determined
that Paul should testify to Jesus Christ in Rome, and there was no human being
that was going to be able to foil God’s plan.
A fourth aspect
of God’s sovereignty that we see exercised in Acts 23 is that God
uses people to make certain his plan is carried out. Listen to the rest of Paul’s story and see the unique people God used to carry out his plan for Paul.
But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of
this plot, he went into the barracks and
told Paul.
Then Paul called
one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the commander;
he has something to tell him.” So he took him to the
commander.
The centurion said, “Paul, the prisoner, sent
for me and asked me to
bring this young man to you because he has something to tell you.”
The commander took the young man by the hand,
drew him aside and asked, “What is it you want to tell me?”
He said: “The
Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul before the Sanhedrin tomorrow on the pretext of wanting
more accurate information about him. Don’t give in to them, because
more than forty of them are waiting in ambush for him. They have taken an oath not to eat
or drink until they have killed him. They are ready now, waiting
for your consent to their request.”
The commander dismissed
the young man and cautioned
him, “Don’t tell anyone that
you have reported this to me.”
Then he called
two of his centurions and
ordered them, “Get ready a detachment of two
hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two
hundred spearmen to go to Caesarea at nine tonight. Provide mounts for
Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.”
He wrote a
letter as follows:
Claudius Lysias,
To His Excellency, Governor Felix: Greetings.
This man
was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill
him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that
he is a Roman citizen. I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I
brought him to their Sanhedrin. I found that the accusation had
to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. When I was informed of a plot to
be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once.
I also ordered his
accusers to present to you their case against him.
So the soldiers,
carrying out their orders,
took Paul with them during the night and brought him as far as Antipatris. The next day they
let the cavalry go on with him, while they returned to the barracks. When the
cavalry arrived in Caesarea, they delivered the letter to the governor and handed Paul over to him. The
governor read the letter and asked what province he was from.
Learning that he was from Cilicia,
he said, “I will hear
your case when your accusers get here.” Then he ordered that Paul be kept under
guard in Herod’s palace.
God used quite a number of different people
and each had their different motives, but God used each of
them to carry out his purposes for
Paul’s life. First of all, there was Paul’s nephew. I’m sure
he had the best of motives for wanting to protect the life of his uncle.
And he was in the right place
at the right time, under the
sovereignty of God, to render great service to his Uncle Paul. This just goes
to show the truth of the statement once made by Francis Schaeffer: “There are
no little people and no little places.” Paul’s nephew may have seemed to others
like an insignificant person, but he wasn’t insignificant in God’s plan. And
neither are we.
Secondly,
God used Claudius Lysias to protect
Paul more than once. At least four times in Acts 21 through 23 the Roman commander Claudius
Lysias rescued Paul from almost certain
death. As we gather from the letter
Claudius wrote to Governor Felix, he had mixed motives at best. He lied
about the order of events, for he only learned after he was about to flog Paul that Paul was a Roman citizen. To be sure, Claudius would do whatever was
necessary to make himself look good and to save his own skin. But God used him,
nonetheless, to protect his servant Paul. And that just goes to show that God
can use all sorts of people in his
plan, those we think wicked as well as those we think good.
Thirdly, God used the Roman
army to protect
Paul. Paul’s travel insurance
was provided by the Roman
government! Imagine it—200
soldiers, 70 horsemen and 200 spear-men. That’s pretty heavy-duty travel insurance!
I believe
there are at least two ways people
can look at these events in the life of Paul. We
can look at it and say: “Oh, Paul’s life just worked out naturally,
according to his own free will and the
free will of other people.” Or we can look at Paul’s life and
say, “There is obviously another hand
involved here.”
Many years
ago the following story appeared in The London Observer,
Imagine a family
of mice who lived all their
lives in a large piano. To them in
their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony.
At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the
thought that there was Someone who made the music—though invisible to them—above, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player
whom they could not see.
Then one
day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how music
was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must
revise all their old beliefs: none but
the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player.
Later,
another explorer carried the
explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing
and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they
lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth.
But the
pianist continued to play.
Were the events of Paul’s
life merely the product of wires and hammers or was there really an unseen piano
player “behind the scenes”? And what about your life and mine?
I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe God, the great pianist, in
his sovereignty, will continue to play beautiful
music using the keys, the hammers
and the strings of our lives, if we allow him to do so. He will add line upon line until the concerto
is complete in the day of Christ Jesus. No one will be able to stop his music in our lives until the symphony
reaches its triumphant conclusion.
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