Christ Church (Moscow, ID)

As the crow flies, Caesarea was around 47 miles from Jerusalem. But because of terrain and available roads, it was around 65 miles to travel. Paul in Roman custody down in Caesarea was out of the reach of the Jews. But he was not far enough away to be out of their thinking. Two years later, he was still very much on their minds.

Lying is not just something that people do when they are little boys getting into the cookie jar. We sometimes naively assume that greater responsibility means that there must be greater levels of integrity. But it is often the case that the higher up you go—whether in civil or ecclesiastical government—the greater the incentives and pressures to give way to deceit. The cookie jar is much bigger, and deception rises to an art form.

We see in this passage how the sovereign God moves all things in accordance with His purpose and will, and He turns the machinations of the wicked back upon them. God had told Paul that he was going to bear witness to Christ in Rome; he need not worry. All plots against him would misfire.

In the current climate, a large swath of secularists would be nervous if they knew we were considering the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua. The remainder would be fascinated as they attempted to understand the Christian way over against their own unbelieving assumptions. Their fascination would not be misplaced, nor their fear. Granted, many of them would speak of a Christian jihad, and we are up to nothing of that sort. But their true fear is the terror of the Lord—the sword of the Spirit—which is more deadly than any earthly blade.What this means for us is that we should not let the secularists understand the times better than we do. If they understand Joshua is an apt book at this moment, how much more should we?

The Lord saw fit to give us three distinct accounts of Saul’s conversion on the way to Damascus. The first (Acts 9:1-19) is a third-person narrative by Luke. The second is our passage here today, a first-person defense to an angry mob (Acts 22:1-21). The third is Paul’s first-person defense to King Agrippa (Acts 26:1-23), which we will consider in detail in due course.

As it happened, all the warnings that Paul had received on the way to Jerusalem came true, almost immediately. If the thing was going to happen, there was apparently no sense in delaying it. We have before us the account of Paul’s attempt at conciliation, and the riot and arrest that happened anyway.

So Paul is resolved to go to Jerusalem, and apparently a sense of destiny rests upon him. He is repeatedly warned what will happen if he does, and Luke records the warnings carefully. This is not to make us think that Paul was disobeying the Spirit. The prophecies did not say, “You must not go,” but rather, “This is what will happen if you go.” This warning happens in “every city” (Acts 20:22-23). It happened in Tyre (Acts 21:4). Agabus also warns him (Acts 21:11). Nevertheless, Paul is resolved to do what he must do. He may even have the long game of appealing to Caesar in mind.