Sermon 2013-10-13, The Apostle Paul, A Citizen of No Ordinary City 1
It seems that FBI agents were conducting a raid on a psychiatric
hospital that was under investigation for medical insurance fraud.
After hours of reviewing thousands of medical records,
the dozens of agents had worked up quite an appetite.
The agent in charge of the investigation called a nearby pizza shop to order dinner for his colleagues.
The following telephone conversation took place:
Agent: Hello. I would like to order 19 large pizzas & 67 cans of coke.
Pizza Man: And where would you like them delivered?
Agent: We're over at the psychiatric hospital.
Pizza Man: The psychiatric hospital?
Agent: That's right. I'm an FBI agent.
Pizza Man: You're an FBI agent?
Agent: That's correct. Just about everybody here is.
Pizza Man: And you're at the psychiatric hospital?
Agent: That's correct. And make sure you don't go through the front doors. We have them locked. You’ll have to go around to the back to the service entrance to deliver the pizzas.
Pizza Man: And you say you're all FBI agents?
Agent: That's right. How soon can you have them here?
Pizza Man: And everyone there at the hospital is an FBI agent?
Agent: That's right. We've been here all day and we're starving.
Pizza Man: How are you going to pay for all of this?
Agent: I have my checkbook right here.
Pizza Man: And you're all FBI agents?
Agent: That's right. Everyone here is an FBI agent. Can you remember to bring the pizzas and sodas to the service entrance in the rear? We have the front doors locked.
Pizza Man: I don't think so. Click.
We could say this is an example of how context affects meaning.
How we understand something said or written can change depending on where it is and who it is.
If I ordered 20 pizza for church here, someone at Fox’s would be glad to fill the order.
If those agents aren’t at a mental hospital, maybe there’s no problem.
If I’m a little kid on a swing I say I want to get high, that means one thing.
If I’m a young adult at a concert, that means something else.
If I say I want more power I’m in a camper connectd to a generator that’s different than if I’m a Muslim woman in Afghanistan.
Context affects meaning.
Who and where and when and why can affect meaning.
This is why when we read the Bible and teach the Bible,
we sometimes look at the history of the people and places.
We look at the historicalcontextof Bible times to be able to say,
this is who they were and what was going on
and this is how it shapes what we believe they meant.
Then that helps us to be more accurate to God’s intended meaningwhen we say, this is what it means for us today.
Often, especially with reading and learning the Apostle Paul,
we start with the
- Historical questions.
Who was he? What was his background? What was his thinking?
Then we use that to shape our understanding of his
- Theology.
What was its starting point? What was its center?
That informs our
- Interpretation of individual texts.
How do we read and interpret his letters?
That helps us to be more accurate about God’s intended
- Application
What does it mean today?
Because here’s one thing I’d like you to consider and realize; it’s this: The Apostle Paul is not basically just like you and me.
He was a very different kind of person,
living in a very different time,
in a very different kind of world... or worlds.
So for us to understand what he wrote and how to apply it to today, we are best served by understanding who he was.
Title slide
Today, we are going to finish this short series on the Apostle Paul
with a little closer look at who he was.
Each step of the way, we’ll apply his situations to ours.
And then at the end, we’ll apply his situation to ours in a big way.
Let’s look at what Paul tells us about himself.
Acts 21:37-39
As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied....
Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
Paul is in Jerusalem.
He is in the temple courtyards.
Some Jews, who know that he is spreading Christianity,
create a commotion and Paul is taken by the Romans soldiers.
At the barracks, he says to the Roman commander,
“Exestin moi eipein ti pros se?”
(“Is it allowed to me to be saying anything to you?”)
The Roman commander is surprised and says,
“Wait a minute.You know Greek?”
Greek was the common language of the day for much of the world.
Alexander the Great had conquered everything from Egypt to India
a couple centuries earlier and he spread
Greek language, culture, knowledge, and philosophy.
But Jerusalem was full of people who rejected outside cultures.
It was not spoken much by the general population.
Paul explains how he knows Greek.
He says, “I am a Jew, but I was born in Tarsus in Cilicia.”
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Tarsus is a city, in the province of Cilicia.
It was a city near the ocean, on a river, and also in a mountain pass;
so it was a crossroads of goods and cultural exchange.
It had the best university in Paul’s day.
There were 3 in Alexandria, Athens, and Tarsus.
Tarsus was considered the best.
That is how Paul excelled in his studies.
He grew up in an intellectually and culturally advanced city.
It was near the cities of Ephesus, Thessalonica, Philippi, and others where Paul would later travel to spread the gospel.
These cities were Greek-speaking cities.
Paul was familiar with their language, their culture, their customs, even their pagan religions and philosophies.
Paul had moved to Jerusalem sometime in childhood to study Judaism, to become a lawyer, as it were. But he was from here.
So when Christ appeared to him in or around Galilee, it was exactlybecause Paul had a huge ability to connect with a whole other Greek speaking world.
Paul was precisely the man God needed to take the gospel of a Risen Lord, who had previously been only know as a Jewish Messiah,
to the rest of the world.
This is like you and I, and the places we live or have lived,
where people don’t know who Jesus is and what he’s done.
Theplaces we grew up in.
The places we work in.
Or the friends we went to school with or college with.
For some of us, this is our home & our family who don’t know Jesus.
God has revealed himself to us in a different place in our lives,
but he calls us to take Jesus with us back into those other places.
This isalso like the jobs we’ve had and the education and the talents and hobbies we’ve enjoyed.
They might have been far from Christian.
We might never have known that God was directing our paths and plotting our course, but He was!
And now,maybe, you can see how God can use all that in the purpose and plan that He has for your life now.
Paul says,
1 Corinthians 9:20-21
When I was with the Jews, I lived like a Jew to bring the Jews to Christ. When I was with those who follow the Jewish law, I too lived under that law. Even though I am not subject to the law, I did this so I could bring to Christ those who are under the law. When I am with the Gentiles who do not follow the Jewish law, I too live apart from that law so I can bring them to Christ. But I do not ignore the law of God; I obey the law of Christ. (NLT)
Paul had the ability to be in this other world.
This Greek speaking Gentile world.
It’s where he came from.
It shaped who he was and
it was part of where God wanted to use him.
Where would you say is that part of life for you?
In what parts of your life do you speak the language of those far from Christ?
What about the ways God shaped you and prepared you in life
before you got serious following him. How can he use them?
Back in Jerusalem we pick up in the book of Acts:
Acts 21:40-22:4
After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic:
1“Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”
2When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.
Then Paul said: 3“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. 4I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison ...
Acts 23:6
“My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees.”
Now to this crowd, He says the same thing.
“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia”
But now the emphasis is on his Jewish part.
And now he speaks this language.
Aramaic was a common language close to Hebrew used in everyday by Jews. Or this word could even means Hebrew.
And Paul wasn’t just a Jew, he says he was a Pharisee.
Descended from Pharisee here is literally the son of a Pharisee.
This was a stricter sect of Judaism.
They followed stringent rules in order to keep the law perfectly.
Paul is saying “I am the best kind of Jew.”
The city Paul says he was brought up in is Jerusalem.
There, as a young man, Paul was thoroughly trained in the law.
He was taught under Gamaliel.
That’s one of the top two Rabbi’s in Paul’s day.
He went to Harvard.
In addition, Paul tells us he was zealous!
When you hear that Paul was zealous, and especially when we read the verse, “ I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison,” Acts 22:4 (NIV), we often think of zealous as strictly a negative quality in this context.
It is a negative thing when it leads Paul to persecute & kill Christians But there’s more to it.
The word zeal and zealous was particularly used for someone who was passionately fighting for“Israel’s God and for the Torah,”
which is the Jewish word for the Old Testament Bible.
It was zeal to see God honored,that necessitated stamping out,
by whatever means necessary, all forms of disloyalty thatpolluted Israel’s land and prevented her from attaining the freedom that was her covenantal birthright.”
Paul believed that Israel needed to be purified, so then
God would come and save them.
He could hasten that day by forcing others to live according to the Torah.
Paul’s zeal was not so much a radical hatred of Christianity,
as it was a passionate desire to see God and his Word honored and to see salvation come to his people as soon as possible.
Those sound like goals for which we could be zealous. Right?
I wonder how that correlates to the zeal some Christians have
as we interact with the elements in our culture
that we feel are not right according to God’s word?
One other point I’d like us to see here.
Paul persecuted Christians, even killed them in his zeal,
yet God chose to use Him.
For many people, this is where the story ends.
There is failure.
There is rebellion and disgrace.
There is something so unforgivable that you might think,
and some might even say, that God can’t use you.
That is just not true.
In spite of Paul’s great destructive ignorance & arrogance, God used him.
In 1 Corinthians 15:9-10 Paul says,
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.But by the grace of God I am what I am,and his grace to me was not without effect.”
God can make you into something special and useful by his grace.
His grace can change you, enable you to turn around,
and begin serving Him in a whole new way.
One more connection to us I see here ...
Some of us, like Paul, grew up as sons and daughters of Pharisees.
We grew up in the church and we had the good and the bad.
Take note here how God uses everything the Apostle Paul learned in his faith upbringing.
But, God took things in new & powerful direction.
The church is always reforming.
Always purifying and always learning,
always reaching the world in new ways.
What new thing can God do in and through you?
Your religious upbringing may not have been perfect.
But that is no excuse for not doing something radical for Jesus.
Back in Jerusalem.
We pick up after Paul describes his conversion at
Acts 22:22-29
22The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”
23As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, 24the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. 25As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”
26When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”
27The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”“Yes, I am,” he answered.
28Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
29Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Paul was a man of three worlds:
He grew up a Greek city and culture.
He was a Jew in race and religion.
And he was a Roman citizen.
He says I was born a Roman citizen.
So, Paul’s father was a Pharisee living in Tarsus when Paul was born.
He may have been a successful merchant who bought or earned his citizenship too, since he didn’t come from a Roman family.
As a born freeman of a Roman city,
Paul received all the protection and privilege of a Roman citizen.
It was the passport and Visa that enabled Paul to go anywhere and to be protected along the way.
It was the legal shield Paul needed to protect him from abuse and retaliation as he traveled from city to city in the empire spreading new ideas and fomenting public disputes.
Did you hear about the elections in Azerbaijan this week?
The results for the election were released on Tuesday.
President Aliyev had won with 73% of the vote.
His nearest challenger got only 7% of the votes.
Only thing was, the election wasn’t until Wednesday.
Oops.
It is a dictatorship where they try to give the appearance of democracy to the outside world by having elections.
But the elections are a sham.
Paul’s world was closer to that, for everyone without Roman citizenship, than it is to our lives in America.
But Paul was a citizen.
He was one who enjoyed freedom.
We enjoy freedom.
He could go wherever he wanted.
We, not only, can go literally almost everywhere in our country, but with a little work, we enjoy the privileged designation of American that would open almost every gate and border in the world.
Paul could speak freely and say almost anything he chose.
Despite the efforts of some and the known limits, we are free to speak the name of Jesus and to declare the power of his gospel to an extent that few of us will ever use.
We enjoy peace, privilege, protection, prosperity on a greater scale, but similar in respects, to that which Paul enjoyed.
Paul did not take these for granted.
He served God with them.
How do you serve God and his gospel with all the blessings that our countries citizenship affords?
Here’s the last point I want to make on this.
Even though Paul enjoyed those privileges on paper,
he still lived in a world that opposed his Christ every step of the way.
Paul said,
Philippians 3:4-9
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
7But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.