Acts 21:37 - 28:31
Sometimes
the ways of God just don’t make sense. One of the first persons I met when
I became a Christian was Jack. Jack was a man whose life was, I thought, fully
given over to the Lord doing everything he could in order to serve Christ.
One of my first experiences with him was driving his Ford Fairlane into Seattle
where he was going to be taking responsibility as the preacher of a church.
Later,
he lived about fifty miles from me in Oregon when we were both in preaching
ministries. He became that person to whom I went for sanity. He was the one
who always listened and occasionally took the proverbial “two by four” and hit
me with it because I was blaming everybody else for my responsibility.
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I
remember well when I moved to Illinois to come to school. It wasn’t long after
that, that Jack moved to southern California and then we got word that his teenaged
daughter had been kidnapped. Within about two weeks we learned that she had
been tortured, murdered and thrown into the hills outside of San Bernardino.
You
would think that when you are doing the things of God, everything would turn
out right.
You
certainly sense when you read the book of Acts that it becomes one of the dilemmas
the apostle Paul faces. We’ve encountered his conversion in Acts 9. We’ve
seen the gospel spread across the world. He’s gone on these very specific mission
trips on behalf of God. He has taken the gospel in the places that God has
directed him. He has followed God’s leading. He has gathered an offering to
go back to Jerusalem. When he delivers it to the temple he’s arrested. There’s
a riot. He’s about to get beaten when he appeals to the centurion as a Roman
citizen and is taken out of the crowd and away from the beating. Then there’s
this rather interesting comment. In the midst of all this apparent chaos, Paul
hears Jesus say to him in Acts 23:11 “Take courage! As you have testified about
me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
Strange
way to get to Rome. And yet, reflective of the kinds of things that Paul has
been hearing from God in Acts 9, Acts 22. We’ll hear it again in Acts 26.
He reflects on it in 2 Timothy 4 when he talks about his own relationship with
God, that he was destined to be the apostle to kings, to Gentiles; that he would
speak in God’s behalf in places that no one else could speak. And yet, here
he is, under arrest.