In Chains for Christ

Paul Confession before Agrippa

This week’s scripture reading takes a little different structure than my typical order because there is some brief background info y’all need to have before I read this portion of the scripture. This is at the end of Acts and Paul has been in prison in Caesarea for about 2 years at this point awaiting trial. In an effort to kill him, the Sanhedrin try to commit the local authority, Festus, to send Paul to Jerusalem to face trial there so they can kill him along the way. Festus interviews Paul and here’s the same story we’re about to hear and he thinks Paul is crazy. Paul then shakes things up and lets them know that he is, in fact, a Roman citizen and he makes his appeal to be heard by Caesar. This shakes things up because it’s illegal to hold a Roman citizen for that long without trial so Festus is worried, and he wants to make sure the doesn’t send a crazy person to Rome, potentially upsetting both Caesar and all of his Jewish constituents, so he appeals to King Agrippa and Paul stands trial a second time before King Agrippa II, the great-great-great grandson of King Herod and the current ruler over the region of Judah. Hear now the word of the Lord.

Read Acts 26:15-32

Acts 26:15–32 NIV

“Then I asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen and will see of me. I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and then to the Gentiles, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and demonstrate their repentance by their deeds. That is why some Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen—that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.” At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.” “I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied. “What I am saying is true and reasonable. The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.” Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.” The king rose, and with him the governor and Bernice and those sitting with them. After they left the room, they began saying to one another, “This man is not doing anything that deserves death or imprisonment.” Agrippa said to Festus, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.”

Let’s Pray.

Over the past few weeks of Lent, we’ve been talking about what it looks like to be resiliently devoted to God. No matter what is going on in our lives or how unjust it may seem because we understand that God’s justice is greater than our own understanding, like Job. We’ve talked about the bravery and the devotion that Daniel had to pray to God no matter who was watching or why, and last week we talked about the three amigos not only stepping into fire for God but staying in the fire with him on his behalf.

And we’ve touched upon this topic a little bit in each of these stories, but this morning I want us to shift the focus of our devotion a little bit. We are still remaining devoted to God, but we need to understand what that looks like when it’s played out in our lives. We need to start to explore what resilient devotion looks like for us in our day-to-day life, because when we think about devotion the first thing that pops into our modern Christian heads is “devotional time.” That time we spend with the Bible or in prayer or in our car worshipping, and those are all forms of devotion. Those devotional tasks of orienting our heart to God is exactly what we’ve been talking about for the past few weeks, but the view our devotion has to be expanded. It has to widen to include those things that God told us to do if we are going to show him that we are devoted to him. Yes, worship him and make ourselves a sacrifice unto him. All of that is good, but he also told us to love others if we love him. If we’re going to remain devoted to him, then we have to love others, love the ones he loves for him, and the greatest form of love in this world is simply a sharing of the Gospel truth through our actions, our words, and our lives. It’s about spreading the Gospel, and I know that’s such a churchy thing to say and when I say it out loud, I hear how corny and “churchy” it sounds, but its true. It’s true because when we know Jesus we feel a love that we don’t feel anywhere else and, frankly, can’t feel anywhere else. It’s a love that stays with us when we fail. It’s a love that stays with us when we’re sick, when we’re alone, when we’re hurting, when we’re confused, and when we’re afraid. No matter what, that love, the love of Jesus remains in our hearts and even in the worst of moments we know that we have somebody to talk to, somebody that listens, and somebody that loves us so much he was willing to lay his life down for us.

Y’all that is a love that surpasses anything, and the greatest part is we have the ability, the capacity, and the calling to share that love with the world so they can feel that love too. So yes, it may sound corny to say that spreading the Gospel is the greatest form of love, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

And there has never been any better at it than the man we’re talking about today, the man formerly known as Saul and while on trial in front of Agrippa, he was called Paul. The Roman citizen, the Jewish Zealot, and the man on fire for Christ Jesus. Paul.

And this is one of the last known stories we have from Paul’s life. After this he is shipped off to Rome and in route there is the shipwreck and the storm, but beyond those two tidbits, this is the last major episode of Paul’s life that we have recorded, and it is a fascinating story to dig into. It’s a story that I’ve come to think of this week as I’ve been diving into it as “Paul and Order” because it feels like I’m listening to a legal show, which is how it should feel. Paul is defending his life here and if he messes this up, he’s getting executed. The Pharisees aren’t playing around with Paul. It’s been 28 years since he defected from the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees by now, and they hate him just as much as they did then.

But this is a really cool story because not only does listening to Paul’s testimony give us an understanding for how we build a resilient devotion towards sharing the gospel like he has, but this is also when of the best historical glimpses, we have into the Roman court rooms of the day. It never ceases to amaze me how much history we get out of the biblical texts.

My nerdiness aside though, I want us to really focus on what Paul is communicating before the courts. We’re catching him in the narratio portion of his defense where he is narrating the events interaction with Jesus and the basis for his case. And he has told this story multiple times in Acts already and each time the story changes just a little bit depending on who he is telling, but here Paul changes the commissioning of his ministry. Previously he’d mentioned Araneus commissioning his ministry, but now it comes directly from Jesus himself on the road toe Damascus. And the very next thing is something that we pray for often and something that we need to be aware of. Paul says that Jesus told him that he would rescue him from the Jews and the Gentiles. Often, we pray for rescuing of a kind. We pray for healing, we pray for deliverance, we pray for these things and God offers them to us, but we need to understand that if Jesus is telling us he’s going to rescue us, that means that there is some really terrible stuff coming that we’re going to need rescuing from.

But he rescues Paul for three things: To (1) open eyes and introduce people to the Gospel, to (2) turn them from darkness and transform their lives so they might worship God instead of putting themselves under the power of Satan – i.e. to tell them to repent, and to receive forgiveness. That others might receive and feel the same love and forgiveness that Paul himself experienced. Those are what, like Paul, we have been called to profess and to dispense to the world. And, frankly, if we’re going to profess and dispense the Gospel to the world, we need to make sure that we’re receiving it ourselves. That we’ve walked through those three steps of knowing the Gospel, because Paul didn’t experience all three of those things immediately on the road to Damascus and we skip over that part too often.

Paul’s eyes were opened on the road. He experienced Jesus in a new way and that took shaking him out of the zealousness for God. Paul’s experience was unlike any of the other experiences we see with any of the other apostles, but I think it’s not supposed to tell us that Paul was singularly chosen but reveals to us that each person has to receive the gospel in their own way. There is no blanket statement or blanket method that you have to go through to receive it. Not everybody needs to be told they’re a sinner who is going to hell unless they hear the gospel and repent. Some people need to be told that they’re seen. Some people need to be told they’re not broken, but each of us needs to see Jesus in a new light the way that Paul saw Jesus on the road that day.

The 2nd and 3rd steps – turning from the darkness into the light and receiving forgiveness – those take more time. We don’t turn from the darkness on a dime. Sometimes it feels more like trying to turn a broken-down old tractor with no power steering, just cranking on that wheel while you barely start to turn at all. It takes time. It took Paul time. It took Paul somewhere between 14 and 17 years in fact. Acts tells us that Paul went away to Tarsus and Egypt. He spent that time in devotion like we’ve been talking about. He spent that time connecting the dots and reading scripture and seeing how this seemingly new thing that God was doing had, in fact, just been the newest episode in a work that God had been doing all along. He spent that time learning to trust the Lord and experiencing the power of his confession – to open, to turn, and to be forgiven.

That last one can be the hardest part of the gospel to hear. It can be hard to hear because we don’t feel like we deserve forgiveness, and it can be hard to hear because it means that if we’re going to share this gospel message that you have been forgiven, it means that we need to be able to say those words to people, “You are forgiven.” And we are called to forgive and we are called to tell people that they are forgiven.

So everything Paul gives in his narrative are things that build his devotion to the Gospel message as well as inform us better what the gospel message is and how it is to devotedly delivered. But what happens next is where it gets really fun. Most of that stuff we’ve heard 2-3 times already through Acts. Now Paul begins his probatio – his proof, and in his proof we see yet another call to devotion. His first argument is that he has been spreading the good word because he was being obedient to what Jesus had commanded him to do. The entire reason he’s on trial is because he is being obedient to God and, as a Jew, disobedience to God was not an option for a Jew – especially a Pharisee – who’d accepted God’s revelation. It was a must for him, to be disobedient isn’t an option to spreading the Gospel, amen!?

He provides proof of his obedience by sharing where he’s shared this story in Antioch, in Jerusalem, and in Caesarea where we are in this story as well as other parts of Judah, and he tells Agrippa that he has been saying the same thing no matter where he goes. This is his testimony and in a brilliant moment of legal brilliance, Paul brings Agrippa in as a witness to Paul’s own faithfulness and after a brief interruption from and angry Festus, Paul lays out the final argument for why he is innocent and the final reminder to us about how to live a devotedly gospel centered and gospel sharing life: to do it in the open.

Paul is telling them about Jesus’ resurrection and this is the most written about, concrete occurrence in human history agreed upon by historians as a fact. Jesus was crucified and, at a minimum, 500 people claimed to have seen him after he’d risen from the dead. He says, “it was not done in a corner.” The resurrection – a resurrected life must be lived in the middle for all to see. We can’t be devoted on Sunday mornings or Tuesday nights or when its convenient. We must live a forgiveness offering, repentant sharing, heart centered, glory tongued, gospel-centered life.

And we need to be reminded that it was in the sharing of this gospel centered life that Jesus offered Paul is protection. I’m not saying that sharing the gospel is going to keep us safe and happy-go-lucky all the time. What I’m saying is that there is a power that descends on us when we take hold of the gospel and share it with a devotion. When we share it with a devotion so strong that it causes others to be uneasy – and we have to learn to be calm in that unease.

But the final part of this story is probably the most profound. Paul was found innocent, but he never saw another day in without chains. First Festus found him innocent, now Agrippa sees the same, but in order to keep himself alive, in order to give himself the opportunity to share the gospel more, Paul had to appeal to Caesar himself so that he could present that beautiful, eye opening, heart transforming, soul forgiving gospel one more time in the heart of Rome. Paul shows us the keys to a gospel centered life and he invites us to take part in it with him. That last interaction he has with Agrippa, Agrippa says, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?” Paul replied, “Short time or long – I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, but for these chains.”

That we might all become the resiliently God and Gospel devoted sons and daughters that God has called us to be. God has put a gospel call on each and every one of our lives and we have the invitation and the power of the Holy Spirit guiding us to live it out fully and faithfully. And the good news for us, and I can see Paul raising his hands and showing the chains as he made this statement in court, “But for these chains.” We had no chains y’all. We have been set free by the gospel truth now let us go and be confessors for the world offering forgiveness and God’s love.

Let’s Pray.