SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/9/2018 9:38 AM
My Worship Time Focus: The Apology
of Paul
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
21:37-22:21
Message of the verses: “37 As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he
said to the commander, "May I say something to you?" And he said,
"Do you know Greek? 38 “Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago
stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the
wilderness?" 39 But Paul said, "I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a
citizen of no insignificant city; and I beg you, allow me to speak to the
people." 40 When he had given him
permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand;
and when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the Hebrew dialect,
saying,
1 “Brethren and fathers, hear my defense
which I now offer to you." 2 And when they heard that he was
addressing them in the Hebrew dialect, they became even more quiet; and he said,
3 "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city,
educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being
zealous for God just as you all are today. 4
"I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and putting both men
and women into prisons, 5 as also the
high priest and all the Council of the elders can testify. From them I also
received letters to the brethren, and started off for Damascus in order to
bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished. 6
“But it happened that as I was on my way, approaching Damascus about noontime,
a very bright light suddenly flashed from heaven all around me, 7 and I fell to
the ground and heard a voice saying to me, ’Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting
Me?’ 8 “And I answered, ’Who are You, Lord?’ And He said to me, ’I am Jesus the
Nazarene, whom you are persecuting.’ 9 “And those who were with me saw the
light, to be sure, but did not understand the voice of the One who was speaking
to me. 10 “And I said, ’What shall I do, Lord?’ And the Lord said to me, ’Get
up and go on into Damascus, and there you will be told of all that has been
appointed for you to do.’ 11 “But since I could not see because of the
brightness of that light, I was led by the hand by those who were with me and
came into Damascus. 12 “A certain Ananias, a man who was devout by the standard
of the Law, and well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, 13 came to me, and standing near said to me,
’Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very time I looked up at him.
14 “And he said, ’The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will and
to see the Righteous One and to hear an utterance from His mouth. 15 ’For you
will be a witness for Him to all men of what you have seen and heard. 16 ’Now
why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on
His name.’ 17 “It happened when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the
temple, that I fell into a trance, 18 and I saw Him saying to me, ’Make haste,
and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony
about Me.’ 19 “And I said, ’Lord, they themselves understand that in one
synagogue after another I used to imprison and beat those who believed in You. 20
’And when the blood of Your witness Stephen was being shed, I also was standing
by approving, and watching out for the coats of those who were slaying him.’ 21
“And He said to me, ’Go! For I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’"”
I can
never remember having had so much Scripture in one Spiritual Diary, and even
though there is much Scripture here there will not be a lot of comments on this
section as it is mostly a narrative of what was happening to Paul while in
Jerusalem, and we will eventually divide up Paul’s speech into three
sections: his conduct before his
conversion, the circumstances of his conversion, and his commission after his
conversion.
I hope
that we are getting to know the Apostle Paul a lot better than when we first
began our study of the last half of the book of Acts, and one thing for sure is
that Paul never misses a chance to witness for the Lord Jesus Christ which is
what he is doing in this section as he gives his testimony on how the Lord
Jesus Christ saved him and then gave instructions to him on what he was to
do. He does that after remaining silent
up to this point of his ordeal.
Paul spoke
to the commander asking if he could say something to the crowd, and the
commander was surprised that he could speak Greek as he had gotten mixed up on
who Paul was supposing him to be an “Egyptian who some time ago stirred up a
revolt and led the four thousand men of the Assassins out into the wilderness.” Greek was the language of the cultured and so
after hearing that he spoke Greek he began to have more respect for Paul. There is a dispute as to how many men this
Egyptian did take with him into the wilderness as Josephus states that it was
30,000 instead of 4,000. John MacArthur
writes “Some commentators have argued that Josephus’s figure reflects the total
number of the Egyptian’s followers, whereas Luke gives only the number of
fighting men. Still others have
suggested a scribal error in the manuscripts of Josephus’s writings to account
for the discrepancy. They note the
similarity of the Greek capital letters (which are used to represent numbers D
(four) and L (thirty). In any case, it
must be remembered that Luke was divinely inspirited; Josephus was not.”
Paul was
neither an Egyptian nor an Assassin so we will move on as we see that Paul
identified that he was a “Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no
insignificant city.” Tarsus in Cilicia
ranks up there with Alexandra, and Athens.
I believe Paul was certainly not bragging but was trying to show the
commander who he really was and that this riot should not have been against him
for he was doing nothing wrong.
Paul
begins to speak to the crowd in the Hebrew dialect Aramaic which was the common
language in Jerusalem at that time. Once
Paul began to speak in the Hebrew language the crowd began to quiet down and
listen to what he had to say. We will
continue this in our next SD looking at Paul’s conduct before his conversion.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Twenty pieces of
silver” (Genesis 37:28).
Today’s Bible question:
“When Philip told the Ethiopian treasure that the must believe on Jesus
to be baptized, how did the man answer?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/9/2018 10:14 AM
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