Acts 23:1-11 “Divide and Conquer”
WE pick up this week from where we left Paul in Roman custody in Jerusalem after a mob tried to kill him. The Romans do not know what to do with him because they are not sure why the mob is angry with him. So, they decide to order the Chief Priest of the temple to hold a hearing, a trial, in order that the truth could be made known as to why Paul was about to be killed. Everything that happens from this point on is for the edification and instruction of the Roman tribune. I think that this is a very important point. Everything that happens is a witness of faith to a non-believer.
In our Scripture for today, we see that Paul cleverly uses the fact that the council is made up of two different groups; that is, the one group are the Sadducees, and the other group are the Pharisees. These two groups have very different understandings about God and religion. They are rivals in theology, if you will. As we heard from the Scripture, the Sadducees do not believe in spirit, angels, God’s judgment, or hell. They maintain their position on this in spite of the biblical evidence to the contrary.
Why don’t the Sadducees believe in these things? The best answer might be that they have never experienced such for themselves. This almost makes me feel sorry for them that they have apparently had no true spiritual experience. They have also had no experience yet with divine judgment.
They can perhaps get away with this lack of faith understanding because of the fact that when they strike Paul on the mouth, nothing happens. Let me explain what I mean: God did not intervene at that moment. There was no bolt of lightening that came down and scorched the hand of the man who hit Paul. In fact, what happened to the chief priests in the temple when they murdered the Son of God? Nothing really. I think that they thought that they could act with divine impunity!
What we know though is that God’s judgment is not always immediate. God is patient and kind. God would rather not punish us but show us grace and mercy, but judgment is His in the end. The chief priests seem to take God’s mercy as impunity from judgment. Whatever you do in your life, don’t believe that just because God does not shoot you down with a lightning bolt that you are exempt.
Revelation 20:12-13, “Then I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne [of God] and books were opened. And another book was open, the book of life. And the dead were judged according to their works as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them and all were judged according to what they had done.”
When Paul tells the chief priest in essence “God’ll get you,” he knew what he was talking about. Not long after this the Sadducees were attacked in the temple by the Romans. The temple fell and was never rebuilt. There are no more Sadducees left in the world. There are no more Pharisees. There are plenty of Christians though—praise God!
When we read this story of Paul being struck in the temple, and we see that this eventually led to violence between the Sadducees and Pharisees, we are left with a question that must be considered: Does violence ever really work?! Does violence ever solve a conflict?
This question is so appropriate in light of the recent shooting in Kapaa. This is the island’s first ever drive-by shooting. Thankfully nobody was injured or killed, but what has the affect been on the population here? How do we feel now? I was out in Kapaa on Tuesday to look at a busted organ at another church there. After I was done, it was already two o’clock and I had not had anything to eat for lunch yet. I stopped at an eatery on the highway for a bite. As I got my tray from the food counter and looked for a place to sit down, my old Los Angeles mindset kicked in—I heard myself thinking “sit in the back of the restaurant with my face to the street to see if anything is coming.
I noticed some kids with their mother in a booth right up against the front window and I thought, “Easy targets if there is a bullet coming in.” My quick lunch at a local eatery became a flashback to when I did ministry in East Oakland and would try to take the youth out to lunch. The first time I did this, the youth in the church van said that we could not go to McDonalds because it belonged to a certain gang that might make trouble. We could not eat at Burger King, because one of the youth’s cousins was just shot there two weeks earlier. We ended up eating at Taco Bell, and not because the kids especially liked Mexican food. It was the only place left to go that did not have some recent violent event attached to it.
Violence traumatizes our lives. Not too long ago I had a conversation with someone who still struggles with the violence she experienced as a young girl. She had been abused by her father. But, what she remembered most was how her dad would beat up on her mother. Her most vivid childhood memory is of father pinning her mother on the floor and hitting her. Her life is still traumatized by that event.
I will just share with you that saddest times of my ministry have been responding to domestic violence events. I once got a call from the girlfriend of another woman asking me to go over to her friend’s house and just sit and have coffee with her because her husband had threatened to kill her, but he probably would not if the pastor were in the house when he got back home. So, I went. And, no, she was not killed.
I have responded on more than one occasion to a home where the door had been broken down by an enraged husband threatening to do the worst to his wife and children. I have seen the bruises while visiting those women in the emergency ward. I have seen the fear in the eyes of the children, their broken hearts, and broken homes. Violence is the enemy. It serves no purpose but to beget more violence.
In this day and age, I think and hope that we can finally come to the realization that the only real enemy is war itself. It is not this or that country or this or that religion. The enemy is the threat of war itself. Jesus himself told us that Death is the enemy. We must heed his words. Death is the enemy. Violence is the enemy.
The last thing I wanted to talk to you—well maybe second to the last because I want to bring up the introduction to the sermon again—is that in the end of our Scripture for today, the Lord speaks directly to Paul and says: “Keep up the courage for just as you testified for me in Jerusalem, so must you also bear witness for me in Rome.” You mean there is more? Paul must have felt great frustration at that moment when he heard that he would have to face more angry mobs wanting to kill him, more tribunes, more fighting just to get the message out. Jerusalem was just the first trial that God would set before him.
This raises the question: “What is God saving for me in His divine plan?” I bring this up because I have always felt that God could stamp my ticket at any moment. He could take me out of the game right now in the middle of this sermon—so I better preach like I mean it! Part of my thinking this is that I know I have had my share of near misses in my life. I share this in all humility and with utter faith: I have been in two emergency plane landings. I have been shot at on while driving on the freeway. I narrowly missed a mortar attack from the Burmese army while visiting a Christian School on the border. I have fallen off a cliff and did not even break a bone. Truly the list goes on, but I think you have already got the picture. My thought in retrospect is that the Lord is not done with me yet in this world. Lord knows that I have more to do. God will stamp my ticket when it is the Lord’s time, until then. . . .
What is God saving your life for? Let me ask that again just in case you missed the question: What is God saving your life for?
I have to say that I am so pleased that we are reading whole books out of the Bible rather than jumping from one text to another or one theme to another out of context. When we just pick up a book from the Bible and read it straight through, this question always comes up. Just as Jesus was saved for the Cross and Paul was saved to witness to the Romans, we ask ourselves: What is God’s plan for my life? Where is the accumulation of days leading to? When will come my sacrifice and my deliverance?
In Luke 23:32 and on (go ahead and open up to that page), we read that when Jesus was crucified on either side of him were also two criminals that had also been sentenced to die by crucifixion. From verse 39: “One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him saying, ‘Do you not fear God? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
That criminal’s life was spared until that time to die with our Lord on the Cross! If you have done worse in your life but still find Jesus and that promise of paradise in the kingdom of God, then you will know why God has spared your life. There is still something that God wants you to accomplish for the building of that kingdom in heaven!
Like the Roman soldiers who watched our Lord die and finally came to the conclusion that he was indeed the Son of God, we get the sense that the Roman tribune that was there watching Paul get through his trial and tribulation was also duly impressed by this new faith in God. What a witness to God’s glory and grace for us!
Amen