Paul’s Consolation
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2024 · 11 February 2024
Now in Acts 23, we are aware that Paul is facing the second phase of his trial. He has been captured; he is now a prisoner, and will remain a prisoner until his death. But nevertheless, it doesn’t hinder his ministry; it just gives it a new dimension. The Holy Spirits had told him that “bonds and afflictions awaited him at Jerusalem” and that he would be delivered over to the Gentiles.
That was hard on him because life was exciting. He said, “For to me to live is Christ,” and “to die is gain,” but life was always planning for the future, and he did have some plans to go to Rome. He wanted to confirm the Christians there. He had written them a letter and said “I wanted to be with you and to impart to you some spiritual gift and to be mutually comforted by you.”
He’s just been through a terrible ordeal. Rescued by the Romans he faced being scourged. Rescued from that he now is brought to face the Jewish tribunal: the High Court of Israel; the Sanhedrin. Here is a great illustration of how the Lord ministers to one of His children in need. And in the midst of this we see a God who comforts him, particularly as we will come to verse 11.
I began to think about what kind of God and what kind of Christ we have. And I thought about the pagan systems of religion. We see it all over the world as people live in fear. I suppose in everybody’s life there are times when we wonder where God went. Does He care? But we Christians have a God who is not to be feared of what He will do to us; but we’re comforted in what He will do for us.
Listen to Isaiah 49:14 and following, “the people of Israel said, “The Lord has forsaken us; my Lord has forsaken and forgotten me.” Listen to God’s answer, “Can a woman forget her nursing child? Her child that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? He says, “I have engraved you on the palms of My hands. I see you before Me all the time.” God has not forgotten us.
We saw last week, that the apostle Paul is drawn before the Sanhedrin. They have hastily convened in Fort Antonia, called into session by Claudius Lysias who is the commander-in-chief of the Roman forces, and they have been called in order to try to find out what this man has done. They saw the crowd trying to murder Paul; and, they didn’t really know what the accusation was.
So, as we approach verse 30, the session of the Sanhedrin is called together. As we come to verse 1, we see four major points in this flow of text: the confrontation; the conflict; the conquest; and, the consolation. First the confrontation in verse 1, “Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up until this day.”
They couldn’t understand how one could say, “I have a good conscience,” because they never knew freedom from an evil conscience to have a clear conscience. Because there was never an ultimate sacrifice for their sin. Well, the confrontation then led to conflict. Verse 2, “The high priest Ananias ordered those who were standing next to him to strike him on the mouth.”
The word “strike” is not a slap. It either means a blow with a club or with a fist. Verse 3, “Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! You are sitting there judging me according to the law, and yet in violation of the law are you ordering me to be struck?” The high priest had violated the law. Jewish law safeguarded the rights of a man on trial.
He was calling on the vengeance of God. “God is going to punish you for sitting at the seat of authority in the law and violating the law. You are a hypocrite. You have brought me to be tried by the law, and you are in violation of it yourself. You whitewashed wall!” Paul was indignant, and that was a mistake that he made. This was a sin. This was a violation because he lost his cool.
Paul didn’t know it was the high priest that said it; and in the second place, it wasn’t convened really as a legal court. And verbal abuse is unnecessary. Paul’s words were the fiery words of a man who reacted to all that he’d endured. Verse 4, “Those standing nearby said, “Do you dare revile God’s high priest?” He was God’s high priest because he sat in the seat that God had ordained.
The word “reviled” means to revile in anger. It is used in 1 Peter 2:23 to refer to the mocking and spitting abuse that was put against Jesus at the crucifixion. It means cursing, mocking, insulting, abusing including spitting. It then has another meaning. One of those in 1 Timothy 5:14 tells us that Satan does it. The crowd said, “Paul, you have really blasphemed the high priest.”
It was a big deal. In Deuteronomy 17 it says, “God ordained authority in Israel.” God has leaders. God still said to Israel, “You submit,” because submission is the principle that keeps the thing together. And that judge, or that priest, or that leader, will pay for his own failure. He is accountable to God. You’re accountable to be submissive to him, unless he makes you do something in violation to God.
Now he had to pay for his own consequence, and Paul was right when he said “God was going to smite you,” because he had violated the whole role of the high priest. But look at verse 5, “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest,” replied Paul. “For it is written, You must not speak evil of a ruler of your people. You know what Paul did? He condemned himself in front of that whole court.
Paul admitted he did wrong. That’s a hard thing to do, isn’t it? Here he is in face of all of his enemies, and he confesses to them that he’s in violation of God’s Word. The next best thing to not sinning at all is to confess it immediately when you’ve done it. And that’s what Paul did. You see his spirituality when immediately he publicly confessed his sin, and turned from it. That’s spirituality.
You’re going to sin, and I am going to sin. And we’re going to fail. And we’re going transgress God’s law. But the next best thing to not sinning is to immediately deal with that sin and accept the total responsibility for that sin; repent from that sin, submit to the Word of God, and go from there. Don’t ever think of your sin in relation to how bad other people are, because you can always find worse ones.
My sin is only to be compared with the absolute holiness of God, and my submission to His Word is what He asks. Friends, that’s a great humble man. And since it was an informally-called session, the high priest wouldn’t have his special robes on. So it is likely that he was unrecognizable, and that the voice just came out of the mass of 71 people there. I should’ve found out.”
We come to conquest in Acts 23:6-10. The Spirit of God has given this man wisdom. Verse 6, “When Paul realized that one part of them were Sadducees and the other part were Pharisees, he cried out in the Sanhedrin, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. I am being judged because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead!” The Sadducees threw out the miracles and resurrection.
The Pharisees were the majority. The Sadducees, the minority; but as the minority they had the control, because they were the priestly family. Now, these people got along only when they met together in the Sanhedrin. The rest of the time, they fought like cats and dogs. The only two things they ever agreed on, in the New Testament, was to get rid of Jesus and to get rid of Paul.
Verse 7, “When he had said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.” The Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit; but the Pharisees confessed both resurrection, angels and spirits.” Paul declared in his testimony that he was going down the Damascus Road and Jesus of Nazareth spoke to him.
Well, that meant Jesus of Nazareth was alive, right? So what was that saying? Resurrection. And, that was the part of his message that infuriated the mob. He said, “Jesus came to me and told me to go to the Gentiles.” And he comes in and he goes right to the issue. He says, “The real issue here is I happen to believe in resurrection.” Now he’s won the Pharisees over by being a Pharisee.
All these 30 years in between, they had denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ; and here was the greatest preacher who ever lived on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and they’re on his team now because he happened to feel the same. The Pharisees were Calvinists. They believe in absolute sovereignty. The Sadducees were Armenians. They believed in free will, and so they argued about predestination.
The issue was that Paul preached the resurrection. That’s what people got upset about. He preached that Jesus was alive, that Jesus had talked with him twice. And this is what infuriated everybody. In Acts 24:21, he’s talking to Felix, and he brings up the same thing. He said, “I am announcing that Christ is alive.” And this infuriated the people, and that’s why they wanted to kill Paul.
Paul doesn’t mention the resurrection of Jesus. That might turn them against him. So he just says, “I believe in the hope and resurrection of the dead, and that’s why I’ve been called in question.” The reaction of a Pharisee would be, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with believing that.” But the Sadducees say there is no spirit in the sense that they denied the spiritual part of mankind that God created.
They denied that the soul lived after the body died. They said, “The body dies. The soul dies. There’s no heaven and there’s no hell.” They reacted to the Pharisees’ concept of rewards for service, and that went all the way to the extreme of denying any kind of rewards, and the next thing they had was no afterlife. And then they denied the miracles; then they denied the supernatural, and the works of God.
Verse 9, “The shouting grew loud, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees’ party got up and argued vehemently, “We find nothing evil in this man. What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” They were willing to let Paul off the hook in order to make their theological point against the Sadducees. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” The last phrase doesn’t appear in the manuscripts.
Paul had said that it wasn’t a spirit or an angel that had spoken to him. It was Jesus Christ. You see how they changed the testimony to fit their theology? Verse 10, “When the dispute became violent, the commander feared that Paul might be torn apart by them and ordered the troops to go down, take him away from them, and bring him into the barracks.” They were really violent.
The commandant couldn’t get any kind of answer from them. Every time he tried to get an accusation against Paul, he couldn’t get it. They had to rescue Paul again. The Romans to the rescue; the second time in two chapters. Amazing, God has superintended them. The whole of the nation of Israel is thrown into confusion, and He’s got the whole Roman army on the side of Paul.
And here the scribes say, “We find nothing wrong with the man.” An amazing turn of events. So Claudius Lysias brought him into the barracks.” Paul is put in the barracks for the night and we come to the consolation. Verse 11, “The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, “Have courage! For as you have testified about Me in Jerusalem, so it is necessary for you to testify in Rome.”
Five times in Paul’s life the Lord Jesus came to him Himself. This is one of those five. Always at times of crisis, the Lord stood by him. Maybe he was saying, “Lord, have You forgotten me?” You know, you can have those kind of moods when you’ve been through something like that easily. Jesus came and stood by him and He gave him three little words: consolation, commendation and, confidence.”
Consolation. “The Lord stood by him and said, ‘Cheer up, Paul.” Do you believe the Lord is that close to us? The Bible says the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Jesus said, “I may be going away from earth, but I’ll never leave you or forsake you. Lo, I’m with you always.” God is a God of comfort. One thing you see in Paul is he knew this. That man went from one trial to the next, but he knew the comfort of God.
He wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. 4 He comforts us in all our afflictions, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” God comforts me so that I can teach you about God’s comfort.
The second thing was a commendation. He said, “Paul, for as you have testified of Me in Jerusalem.” The word “testify” means “given full witness.” He said, “Paul, you did the job. You finished your work here. You did what I wanted.” You gave the complete testimony. “Does that mean it’s over?” Then He gives him confidence. “And so must you also bear witness at Rome.”
Do you think God cares for you? God came to Paul and He gave him thanks for the past; comfort for the present, and assurance for the future. He is the God of all comfort. I have seen Him comfort many people. I have seen Him give comfort in my own life and give consolation. I know you have. In the midst of any trial, God cares for you. Cast all your cares on Him. Let us pray.