Take Courage
Acts: To the ends of the earth • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Claim: The risen Lord Jesus personally sustained Paul’s witness by standing beside him and commissioning him onward — demonstrating that no human opposition, however organised or violent, can derail the gospel’s advance.
Focus: The courage to keep witnessing to the risen Christ is not self-generated bravery but the risen Christ himself, who is present with all who bear witness to him.
Function: to stop looking inward for courage to witness and start looking to the risen Christ — trusting that the same Lord who stood beside Paul stands beside us.
Acts 22:30-23:35
Introduction
When did you last tell someone — anyone — that Jesus rose from the dead?
For most of us, if we’re honest, the answer is: not recently.
And the reason, more often than not, isn’t that we don’t believe it.
It’s that we lack the courage.
But courage is what is on offer in this passage today
Luke, our author of Acts,
has been building toward todays passage for several chapters now.
Paul the apostle,
has been traveling around the world teaching about repenantce and faith in the Risen Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of sins.
And since chapter 21 he’s been in Jerusalem again and it’s not going well.
becasue of his teaching about the risen Jesus,
has been arrested, mobbed,
dragged from the temple,
almost flogged again,
and now he stands before the Sanhedrin — the highest Jewish court in the land.
Accused of blasphemy and distrubing the peace.
What we’re about to watch is his faithful witness under real, grinding pressure.
Not heroic in a movie sense.
Ordinary faithfulness in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
And right at the centre of this long, turbulent passage
— between the chaos of the courtroom and the violence of a conspiracy — there is a single, simple, decisive moment.
The Lord stands beside Paul in the night and says two words: - in v11: “Take courage.”
Everything in this passage orbits that moment.
And I want to suggest that those two words
— rightly understood, grounded in who says them and why
— are words spoken for us today too.
Not because we are apostles, like Paul.
But because we share his Lord. And his Lord Jesus is risen.
1. Expect Opposition to the Resurrection - Acts 22:30 – 23:10
1. Expect Opposition to the Resurrection - Acts 22:30 – 23:10
The commander, a Roman official, is confused.
He has a prisoner - Paul — a Roman citizen, no less — whom the Jewish crowd want dead,
but he can’t work out why.
So he does what any reasonable Roman official would do: he convenes a hearing.
He brings Paul before the Sanhedrin (the Jewissh leaders) and lets them sort it out.
It doesn’t go well.
Paul opens with a statement that sets the tone for everything that follows.
Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, ‘My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.’
Paul isn’t making a claim about private godliness. He’s saying:
my whole life, lived publicly, has been lived rightly before God.
The High Priest Ananias immediately orders him struck on the mouth.
How dare he say he is serving God - when they the Jews want him silenced.
Paul’s response is sharp v3: “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall!”
Meaning, he accuses the High Priest of being a hyposcrit, you look right, whitewashed - but the wall behind is a mess.
Now, Paul hasn’t realised that he was speaking to the High Priest:
Those who were standing near Paul said, ‘How dare you insult God’s high priest!’ Paul replied, ‘Brothers, I did not realise that he was the high priest; for it is written: “Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.”’
The officeholder is corrupt — but Paul respects the office anyway.
It’s a small point in the bigger passage here,
but it’s important to see that Paul respects divinely ordered authority even when it is being wielded unjustly against him.
We struggle to accept any authroity over us, whether it’s a boss, a husband, a church elder, a parent if we’re still a child.
Godliness calls us to respect all authority, even if it’s not weilded well.
But notice, Paul while respecting authority will not compromise God’s truth.
So he now does something that looks, on the surface, like a clever tactic.
He looks at the court — half Pharisees, half Sadducees — and declares:
New International Version: Anglicised Edition (2011) Chapter 23
‘My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.’ 7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
The dispute becomes so violent the commander fears Paul will be torn apart, and pulls him out, v10.
Was that just a clever move by Paul to divide the room and escape?
Perhpas that was a side benefit - but more importantly - it’s the main point Paul has been making all through his teaching in Acts.
Paul has seen the ‘risen Christ’.
He isn’t being evasive — he’s naming the real theological problem they don’t want to hear.
The dispute isn’t about Paul’s behaviour. It’s actually about whether Jesus rose from the dead.
When our faithful witness to Jesus meets opposition
— maybe in a courtroom,
but more likely in an office,
around a dinner table,
at school
— it is ultimately opposition to the resurrection of Jesus.
The world can tolerate a great deal of religion.
What it cannot comfortably tolerate is the claim that a man died and three days later walked out of a tomb.
That claim is either the most important thing ever said, or it is intolerable nonsense.
There is no comfortable middle ground. You reject it or do something about it!
We can expect the opposition - if we truely try to convince people of the resurection.
If you are bearing witness to the risen Christ, you will meet some resistance.
We’re not a religion that talks about spiritual things as if they can be taken or left - whatever suits the hearer.
No - We are faith that demands a real response to real truth and fact.
People don’t react uncomfortably to Jesus’ resurection becasue you talk to them about it badly.
The Sanhedrin didn’t erupt because Paul was provocative. It erupted because the resurrection is the claim that divides the world. end of
I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.’
2. The Courage Comes from Him - Acts 23:11
2. The Courage Comes from Him - Acts 23:11
Verse 11 is short. It is easy to read past it. Don’t.
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.’
Everything in this passage —
the chaos of the courtroom,
the violence of the sanhedrin,
the Roman bureaucracy
— everything orbits this single verse.
Notice first: ‘the Lord stood near’
NOT “Paul had a sense of God’s presence.” Not “Paul received a comforting impression.”
The Lord stood near him.
This is the risen Christ — bodily risen, personally present — coming to stand beside his servant in a Roman military barracks in the middle of the night.
After a day of violence, false accusation, and bewildering chaos, Jesus shows up. In person.
And what does he say?
“Take courage.”
When I hear the words “Take courage” I hear like a command.
Don’t be a wimp - buck up your ideas - take courage and get on with it.
But God does not say “come on, find it somewhere within yourself.”
It’s more of a ‘here you go - take it from me’
BEcasue the one who commands the courage is the one who supplies it.
The risen Christ standing beside Paul is not just the source of the instruction — he is the source of the courage itself.
His presence is the courage.
You cannot separate the command from the commander.
This is why this isn’t just a pep talk.
A pep talk tells you that you have what it takes.
In fact that is the message of the world today - you be you.
You just have to look inside yourself.
JEsus says - nonsense - don’t look in at yourself - look out at me!
It is the risen Lord himself, the one who conquered death, telling Paul: I am here. I am with you. That is enough.
“Take courage!
And look what the courage is for:
‘As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
That word — must — is doing a lot of work. In Greek it is the word ‘dei’ {THEY},
and Luke uses it at every hinge point of his gospel and Acts.
It is the word of ‘sort off’ divine necessity. Not possibly. Not probably. Necessity. It’s going to happen.
When Luke tells us that the Son of Man must suffer and be rejected and rise on the third day — that is dei.
When the risen Christ on the Emmaus road says "Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things?" — that is dei.
Luke has been using this word to trace the route of God's sovereign, unbreakable plan all the way through his Gospel and now into Acts.
And now he uses it here. Of Paul. Of Rome.
In other words, Rome is not a contingency back up plan
Ahh well, Paul is arrested and it’s all going wrong - so why not use this oppertunity to preach in Rome.
No, rather, Nothing is wrong, you must suffer, for you must go to Rome.
All Paul’s seemingly lucky escapes in the rpevious chapters are not luck but providence.
Paul's Roman citizenship in last weeks passage that saved him,
or Pauls statement that confused the sanhedrin are not ‘lucky escape’ routes that God decided to use when things went wrong in Jerusalem.
The conspiracy, the arrest, the imminent transfer of Paul to Rome — none of it is outside the dei. God’s MUST.
God’s Gospel is unstoppable - and suffering along the way is not an error - it’s used by God for his purposes.
Finally, notice one more thing — perhaps the most important of all. What is Paul being commissioned to keep testifying about?
The resurrection.
The ‘risen Christ’ is telling Paul to keep proclaiming the ‘risen Christ. ‘
The content of the testimony and the source of the courage are one and the same person.
Jesus risen is both why Paul can take courage and what Paul is to keep saying.
Now — we need to be careful here.
We are not Paul. We do not share his apostolic office.
We have not seen the risen Christ with our own eyes as he did.
The specific commission — you must testify in Rome — belongs to Paul alone.
We cannot simply step into his shoes and claim a divine ‘must’ for our own plans and ambitions.
But here is what we do share.
We share his Lord.
We share the content of his testimony
— Jesus is risen;
that is the confession every Christian is called to make and share.
And we share the promise implied in this short verse
— that the risen Christ draws near to those who bear witness to him.
That promise is not Paul’s alone.
It is the promise of
And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’
‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’
So the next time you feel the courage draining away to speak of Jesus,
— the question to ask is not “where do I find more courage?”
The question is: ‘am I persuaded that Jesus is actually risen?
Am I persuaded that he is actually present?
Because the courage comes from him. It always has. It always will.
Weak witness is rarely just cowardice.
More often it is a resurrection problem.
We have lost our deep trust and joy in the fact that Jesus is genuinely, bodily, personally alive
— and therefore genuinely, personally present with us when we speak his name.
Recover that, and the courage begins to follow.
"The Lord stood near Paul and said, ‘Take courage!’” (23:11)
3. His Purposes Will Not Fail - Acts 23:12 – 35
3. His Purposes Will Not Fail - Acts 23:12 – 35
Morning comes. And with it, a conspiracy.
Forty men gather and bind themselves under oath — no food, no water — until Paul is dead they say.
So They go to the chief priests and elders with a plan.
‘Request another hearing. We will ambush him on the way. ‘
This is deadly serious isn’t it.
Forty men, one oath, and the backing of the religious establishment.
From the outside, this looks like the end of Paul’s story.
But the Lord has already spoken. And his word outranks forty oaths. You Must - Dei.
What does God use to dismantle the conspiracy? Not an angel. Not a miracle. Not a dramatic divine intervention that leaves everyone speechless.
He uses a young man — Paul’s nephew, unnamed, probably a teenager — who happens to overhear a conversation.
That’s it. A boy in the right place at the right time,
with the ‘courage’ to walk into a Roman barracks and ask to speak to his uncle Paul.
But when the son of Paul’s sister heard of this plot, he went into the barracks and told Paul.
Luke doesn’t linger on this. He doesn’t make it more dramatic than it is.
And that’s the point.
God’s purposes do not require spectacular miracles, just faithful obedience.
Ordinary people, in ordinary moments, willing to do the next faithful thing.
The nephew then warns the commander of the plot -
and the commander,
fearful of a murder of a Roman citizen under his watch,
arranges Paul’s transfer to Rome - You Must - dei - testify in rome.
And look at the scale of the response of The commander.
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.
From a purely Roman perspective, this is the machinery of the mightiest empire, protecting a Roman citizen from an illegal threat.
But inside God’s story — which is the story Luke is telling — this is the empire pressed into the service of the gospel.
Unwittingly, unknowingly, Rome is doing the Lord’s work.
Lysias, the commader, writes a letter to Felix the governor.
It is, to put it charitably, somewhat self-serving.
He omits the fact that he had Paul bound and was about to have him flogged before discovering he was a Roman citizen.
Makes’ himself sound like more of a hero than a villan.
But even a self-serving letter serves God’s purposes.
Paul arrives safely in Caesarea.
Felix agrees to hear the case.
And Paul waits — one step closer to Rome, one step further into the divine ‘must’. dei
All this does something important for us.
It shows us what the courage of verse 11 actually looks like in practice.
It doesn’t actually look like triumph.
It looks like a man being transferred under armed guard from one place of detention to another, with no resolution in sight,
But Paul is sustained by the word of God spoken to him in the night.
And the passage is asking us: is that enough for us?
Is the ‘word of the risen Christ’ enough to sustain faithful witness through the long, unresolved, bewildering muddle of our lives —
For Paul, when the conspiracy is real and the outcome is unclear and the journey to Rome is going to take a very long time - will he trust God’s word?
When we are faced with decisions to follow God, or not, will we trust His word in the Bible.
When we are given the chance to speak of the risen Christ - even if’t s awkward - will we trust His Word, the Gospel or not?
Because that is where most of us live.
Not in the dramatic moment of decision, but in the long ordinary stretch of faithful witness of life.
The colleague you’ve been praying for and speaking to for years, with no sign of movement.
The family member who changes the subject every time you mention church or Jesus.
The school friends who just don’t understand their need for repenrtnace, forgiveness, salavtion, the cross of Jesus - the Risen Lord.
The community around, that is indifferent or hostile.
The sense that the gospel is getting nowhere and you are getting tired.
This passage says: his purposes will not fail. The Gospel Must ‘dei’ go to the ends of the earth.
And becasue it Must - it will!
The forty men with their oath came to nothing.
The machinery of empire moved Paul toward his destination without knowing it.
The unnamed nephew,
the self-serving letter, the 2 hundred soldiers and seventy horsemen, 200 spearmen
— all of it,
all of it,
in the grip of the risen Christ’s sovereign must.
Your faithful witness
— your ordinary,
costly,
sometimes-stumbling witness to the resurrection
— is also in that grip.
The risen Christ who said “you must testify” to Paul is the same Lord who calls you to speak his name where you are.
And he is not managing your witness from a distance.
He stands near. He is present. His purposes will not fail.
he Lord stood near [fill in your own name] and said, ‘Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in …’
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