AD Norris - The Apostles, Their Acts and Their Words - Class 6

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   In Bible school, this is the 6th and last session with our brother Alfred Norris speaking on the subject Apostles, their Acts and their works. We left the Apostle Paul yesterday just about the extreme end, geographically, of the outward part of the second missionary journey, right down in the bottom end of Greece, what they call Hellas in those days in Athens. He then went on to Corinth, and the early part of Acts chapter 18 is devoted to his experiences in Corinth, and after quite a considerable stay there, which is summarized very briefly, he left from Sankria the port of Corinth, on his way back to the Promised Land.

2. 0:44

   A very peculiar event is reported with only a sentence there in the 18th chapter of the Acts, which was that he set sail for Syria having shone his head in Sankria because he had a vow. And one puzzle that is not yet fully resolved in my own mind about Paul and the law is that he would have taken a vow, apparently a Mosaic Law vow, at that stage in his career and why he would do so. It looks as though it must have been a short term Nazirite vow that he must during that period have abstained from alcoholic drinks and allowed his hair to grow long. And that that period had probably by now come to an end than he had had shown his head to signify its ending. Under Old Testament terms you would have done that at the door of the Tabernacle, and then the hare would have been burnt as an offering.

3. 1:36

   But apparently the custom had grown up with Jewish vows that if you were living in the Dispersion or in faraway parts, you might share off your head wherever you were and then preserve it and take it with you to Jerusalem. So Paul’s journey by sea from Sankari to Syria presumably had at least as part of its object doing that.

4. 1:55

   But of course that by no means explains why he had a bow in the 1st place, what it was intended to demonstrate, whether it was for the public to see, whether it was a private matter between himself and his God. I think it must have been the latter of these. And what particular matter was involved in taking it something? There were great perils.

5. 2:16

   In which he was involved in Corinth, because of the extreme enmity of the Jews. And it’s true as a fact that there were such enmities, because God had God said to him that the Lord Jesus said to him. Fear not, Paul, for I am with thee. I have much people in this city, and no man shall set on me to harm thee.

6. 2:32

   No that comes just after the period in Athens as well. And it could be the two are linked. But I don’t know the answer. Say that I have a suspicion that I was not concerned with what had already happened. It was concerned with what was going to happen. The immediate result, anyway, was that Paul set sail for Syria. He arrived in the north and went immediately up and saluted the church and then went down to Antioch. Now if you can picture this, if somebody arrives at Caesarea and then goes up in One Direction, he goes down in the other direction.

7. 3:04

   Now all our maps are the right way up, of course, and so you go up when you go further north. Everybody in the Southern Hemisphere got this the wrong way round, but that’s what it is to us. However, in in the United Kingdom, we don’t look at things like that. You go up to London and everywhere away from them is going down South. Nearly all our railway stations, for example, our depots, have got two platforms.

8. 3:27

   One is the up platform that takes you into London, the other is the down platform that takes you away. And I think that in Pauline time they have the same kind of thing. You went up to Jerusalem, you came down away from it. Although therefore the record doesn’t say that he went up to Jerusalem and saluted the church, it does say he went up and saluted the church and then he went down to Antioch. So I presume that since anywhere from Caesarea would be northwards to Antioch, his up was going southwards. So Jerusalem seems to be the likely place. So his visit to Jerusalem is so briefly reported, he just went there and came back again.

9. 4:00

   That’s all the record says. And I suspect that there’s a deep mystery as yet unresolved in that that Paul had some particular task he wanted to do in Jerusalem and didn’t get it done, and it had to be deferred until another day. Well, in so unceremonious a way is the end of the second missionary journey signalled and the third missionary journey begun. He lands at Caesarea, goes up to Jerusalem, goes back to Antioch, and stays there for some time.

10. 4:26

    Then he sets off on the next journey. Well, the next journey, to a very large extent, takes him over familiar ground. It takes him through to the West as far as Athens and Corinth again, at least as far as Greece, where those cities were. And then, But as early as chapter 19, something rather peculiar seems to be happening and I want you just to look at that verse and then see what it might signify to you. Acts chapter 19, verse 21, Paul is in Ephesus by this time. Now after these things were ended, Paul purposed in the Spirit when he had passed through Macedonia and Acaya to go to Jerusalem, saying after I have been there I must also see Rome.

11. 5:09

    So he sent into Macedonia two of them that ministered unto him Timotheus and Erastus. But he himself stayed in Asia for a while. Now the situation as you will see geographically is this. Paul has left Antioch gone round the corner through Asia Minor. He has arrived in the western part of Asia Minor near the western coast at Ephesus.

12. 5:27

    And then he makes a long term plan. He says I must go to Macedonia and Acaya, that is to North East and then to South Greece as we now know it. I must go to those places, and after that I must go to Jerusalem. And then I must also see Rome. And it would seem that uttermost in his mind was Jerusalem.

13. 5:45

    He purposed in the Spirit when he had been through Macedonia and the Kaya to go to Jerusalem after. That’s it. Here I must also see Rome. So that hurried journey to Jerusalem at the end of the second missionary journey was to be followed by what looked like a long term planned visit to Jerusalem again sometime during the third missionary journey, something which was particularly important to Paul. He had a very keen desire to get to Jerusalem, for what reason we haven’t yet discovered, but he very badly wanted to get there. Very good.

14. 6:16

    Then he continued in his journey. Having sent Timotheus and Erastus to prepare the way, he went down through Macedonia again, once more found himself in the neighbourhood of Greece, of Corinth and Athens, and was about to go back, apparently direct to Jerusalem, or at least direct to Israel by sea once more, when he discovered a plot which had been laid by the Jews against him.

15. 6:37

    In consequence, he had to revise his travel plans and divert his way. And he went back the way he’d come, going northwards through Macedonia and Dakaya, and then overland at least part of the way until he came to the West Coast of Asia Minor. From there he sailed from Troas over to Israel again. Well, one can say very little about this plot of the Jews. There were so many of them.

16. 6:58

    They were always doing it. Paul’s life, as I think I said at an earlier stage of this talk, was just not worth anything as far as the Jews were concerned. As soon as he became a renegade to their faith and accepted the Christian faith everywhere he went, Jews who knew about him were lying in wait for him, or followed him and hounded him out, or turned the populace against him, and there was nothing that Paul could do to get himself safety.

17. 7:20

    And those words of the Lord Jesus in the second journey which I have quoted Fear not, Paul, for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to harm. Thee revealed how perilously Paul was walking the tightrope of life, with the cousins of death extending beneath him on either side. Paul was a man in danger with a price on his head, but I really mean with the price on his head because I’m quite sure that they would have paid good money to get both Paul killed.

18. 7:45

    So he goes back on his way to Jerusalem. Now there is so much that is worthwhile discussing on that route that one is tempted to stop and do it, particularly that marvellous speech to the elders of Ephesus when he summoned them to Belitas to hear him speak. But the moment, for the moment, I want to concentrate upon the fact that he did summon the elders of Ephesus at all.

19. 8:05

    He’s going down the coast of Asia Minor from Troas. When he gets to Mellitus. He could very easily have diverted his steps to Ephesus, and that was what they wanted him to do. But he couldn’t do it. He was in too big a hurry. He was wanting to get back to Jerusalem. He wanted to be there by the time of the feast, and he’d already wasted valuable time by going overland instead of going by sea.

20. 8:25

    So instead of going to Ephesus, he sent for the elders of the church, and they came, and they met him at Melitas. And he preached them this splendid sermon, telling them indeed that his own devotion to God was taking him nearer to the point where grievous things might happen to him, and then bidding farewell of them in the terms I know that you shall see my face no more. So when he said goodbye to them, they fell on the ground, and they wept most of all.

21. 8:48

    For this saying you shall see my fails no more. Paul had a sense of an impending fate about him when he left the neighbourhood of Asia Minor and went back to Palestine. He was aware that the crisis was coming out of which he might not, not to say, would not, but might not emerge.

22. 9:06

    What that was we can hardly say yet, but let’s look at the evidence that there was such a thing. Acts chapter 20, verse three verse to to connection. But when in Macedonia he had gone through those parts and had given them much exaggeration, he came into Greece and there about 3 months, and when the Jews laid wait for him as he was about to sail into Syria, he purposed to return into Macedonia, and that accompanied him into Asia. Sir Parta of Berea and the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus and Gaius of Derby and Timotheus and of Asia, Tachykos and Trophimus.

23. 9:45

    These going before Tarit for us at Troas. See the picture. Paul is leaving the southern part of Greece by the direct route. These men go straight across at Trias. Paul goes round the corner to avoid this plot by the Jews and meets up with them when he gets to Trias. From there he goes South and he comes to Mellitus and in the course of what he says to the elders of Ephesus.

24. 10:06

    There we read these words Acts, chapter 20, the introductory words and then part of the speech verse 16. For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia. For he hasted, if it were possible for him to be at Jerusalem, the feast of Pentecost, the day of Pentecost. And from Melissa he sent to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church.

25. 10:30

    And when they were come to him, he said to them, Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, serving the Lord, with all humility of mind, and with many tears and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews, the same old theme again, the lying in wait of the Jews.

26. 10:48

    It was there all the time. He was constantly menaced by it, and I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.

27. 11:07

    Just pause for a moment there when Paul detailed the afflictions we he had suffered in the second letter to the Corinthians, which would have been written somewhere round about this time just a little bit earlier. He included amongst those cares and tribulations, that beside this which cometh upon me daily, the care of all the churches daily notice well, daily. You might think he was caring for the church where he happened to be living at the time, but he puts it more stronger than that and says the care of all the churches comes upon me daily. Paul was a man who had a roving Commission and a list of people depending upon his help, so long that one would think he could have spent all of every day simply reading out their names. And yet Paul was so very much a friend to each individual in the communities he went to, however large they were, however far away they were, however short a time he’d spent there. That, he said.

28. 12:03

    I thank God for you all making mention of you in my prayers, sometimes making mention by name. I’m a little bit ashamed, actually, when I read that kind of word from the lips of the Apostle Paul. I think, for example, of Brother AD Norris of whole England coming to the Texas Christadelphian Bible School, and he talks to an audience like that, assembled now, and he learns to know some of you by name, but with the kind of forgetter he’s got. He forgets even some of those when he goes away, another when he meets them again.

29. 12:40

    They’re just paces and he’s catches and heads. So I wish they’d told me their name before I have to get wrong. And the intimate connection there ought to be, even with a relatively small company like this, is by no means easy to secure. You make it easy, you’re splendid, and it’s a lovely thing to have.

30. 12:56

    But I’m aware of my own faults now. The Apostle Paul went thousands of miles over many years, met thousands and more of brothers and sisters, and he seems to have been able to store in his sanctified memory the recollection of all of them in need. And when he went on his knees before God in prayer, he didn’t offer some generalities such as you and I might offer in ours.

31. 13:17

    He brought before God the particular problems of all the people he was concerned with, sometimes name by name, and knew all about them, and pleaded for God’s special mercy for their particular needs. Sometimes when we see this great preacher going around and think of him as getting on with the mechanical job of witnessing to the Word, we don’t see how human was his preaching, how close and intimate, and how loving his relationships. But they were and the number of names he gives at the end of nearly all his letters greet this and that. Remember that person.

32. 13:47

    Oh, there’s a slight problem in that household. Give particular attention to those people, because they worked very hard for the Lord. All of that reveals that Paul’s was by no means a mechanical work when he did what he did in the churches that he met. So that was part of his care of all the churches. A loving thing to know, no doubt. Perhaps he wouldn’t well have been without it. But care there must have been in abundance. And now now I have kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you, and taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me. There, Bound in the Spirit, he goes to Jerusalem. Bound in what Spirit?

33. 14:40

    Bound by the decision of the Holy Spirit or bound by some compulsion of his own Spirit. Well, the word can certainly be used in the latter way. It sometimes is. Paul was moved in spirits that happens and couldn’t keep quiet, so he preached diary of pagas to the Athenians there. On other occasions too, Paul’s spirit waxes strong within him and something compels him to go on and do something.

34. 15:02

    And I have no doubt that that must be what it means in this verse, because the next verse talks about the Holy Spirit quite differently and says, say that the Holy Spirit witness of in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions are by me. Now we learned in chapter 19, verse 15 that Paul had decided that having gone through Macedonia and Achaia he would go to Jerusalem. And after that he wrote.

35. 15:29

    We learned that he was in a hurry to get away from the neighbourhood of Ephesus because he wanted to be at Jerusalem at a certain time. It is addressed to the elders. When they come to see him he tells them he can’t spend long because he must get on his way to Jerusalem.

36. 15:41

    He goes bound in the Spirit. There he can’t resist the impulse to go. And yet when he gets there he is told by the Holy Spirit bonds and afflictions abide him, the Holy Spirit witnesseth in every city. Can you picture that picture? Paul makes his decision, Ephesus, and by word of prophet, or by vision of the night, the message comes to him. If you do that, bonds and afflictions abide you. He goes round the corners of Philippi, and by word of the spirit or by dream by night something says to him, If you go on with your plans, bonds and afflictions abide you, and he goes to Thessalonica, and Berea, and Athens, and Corinth, and at each city bonds and afflictions abide you if you go to Jerusalem.

37. 16:25

    He was thoroughly warned in every city. I think that makes it probable that it was by the word of prophets, because the other kind of message could have come wherever he went in his bed at night in the course of travelling. But now he was in every city. Perhaps wherever he met a church, there he met a prophet.

38. 16:41

    And that prophet made the point of coming to him and saying, Paul, if you go on with this plan of yours, bonds and afflictions abide you. And still he went on. Still he hurried, and still the messages came, and he was so full of foreboding about what would happen if he went to Jerusalem, where he was determined to go, that he told the men of Ephesus when he met them at militias.

39. 17:05

    I know you will see my face no more. So on he went when he had taken his leave of them, cured from his death. The man who fell down during Paul’s long speech and left the church is full of love for him, as he was full of love for them, and went on his way and landed at Tyre, store the record shares.

40. 17:25

    And after saluting the brethren there, they went further southwards until they came to Caesarea again. And then the episode in Caesarea next deserves our attention. Chapter 21, verse 7. And when we had finished our voyage from Tyre, we came to Ptolemais, and saluted the brethren and the board with them one day. And the next day we that were of Paul’s company Luke, you can see, is there now We that were of Paul’s company departed and came unto Caesarea, and we entered into the House of Philip the Evangelist, which was one of the seven, and abode with him.

41. 18:03

    Now the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophecy. And as we tell you, there are many days there came down from Judea a certain prophet named Agabus. And when he was come to us, he took Paul’s girdle and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus set the Holy Spirit. So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the men that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles. Same story continues.

42. 18:29

    He goes from Troas to Tyre to Tolemais to Caesarea, and the tail is taken up by Agabus. If you go to Jerusalem, the Jews will bind you as thoroughly as I have bound feet with your girdle. That will be the fate that you must accept and endure if you go to Jerusalem, and strangely not strange that they should beseech him that he wouldn’t go, you’d expect that which they did immediately afterwards.

43. 18:56

    And when we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go to Jerusalem, But strangely, that in spite of Paul’s determination that he was going anyhow. Verse 13 What mean you to weep and to break my heart? For I’m ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.

44. 19:15

    And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased saying the will of the Lord be done. The strange thing is that the record tells us that, verse 10, he tarried there many days. He’d been in a big hurry to get away from Greece. He was going to race against time. So the record seemed to read that he might get to Jerusalem in time for the day of Pentecost.

45. 19:37

    He got a long way around, which made the hurry all the more urgent. Nobody gets to see the rear. He tarries there many days. I wonder why that would be.

46. 19:48

    I feel that it is likely to be that he was subject to a great deal of pressure at Caesarea. If you’ll find yourself surrounded by four daughters, virgins which do prophecy, and they’re giving the same message you’ve been getting in every city up to now, you don’t have to easy a time of it.

47. 20:04

    And if each of those prophetic women came to him at regular intervals and said, Paul don’t go to Jerusalem. If you do bonds and Afflictions abide you, and sought to reason him out of his going, it might have been very, very hard to get away. And when it looked as though he was not going to be persuaded, and by the gesture of the Holy Spirit, even bigger guns were bought, brought to bear upon his determination. And Agabus came along.

48. 20:25

    And he said, this is what will happen if you go to Jerusalem and by implication stop. Well, there’s time. And when all the disciples had their tearful entreaties, don’t go what mean? Is a weep and break my heart. It seems as though Paul had had to fight his way through the opposition to keep on with his journeys to Jerusalem.

49. 20:45

    I mean not told that he missed the day of Pentecost, but it seemed very likely that he did, having stayed in Caesarea for many days, but he got to Jerusalem at some time anyhow.

50. 20:55

    Now when he got there, you know roughly the course of what happened. First of all, he meets delegates from the Church there, which tell him that there are quite a lot of people suspicious that Paul is not being faithful to the law as they require it, and is telling people to break the law and not to circumcise their children, which he did say, the Gentiles, of course. Secondly, there’s that suggested plan of theirs, that what he ought to do in order to clear himself of this charge is to take two men who were reaching the end of their vows and pay their terminal fees, as it were, which is a common act of vow sponsors in those days.

51. 21:30

    And then everybody would know he was being a good Jew as far as his own personal life was concerned. And Paul accepted that advice and went with them into the Temple. And there the trouble arose. The Jews assembled round him. They made a false accusation that he had brought into the forbidden places, trop him as a gentile, which he hadn’t. And on that charge they took him out, and were in the post process of setting a lynching operation in motion, when news came to the ears of Claudius Lycius, the Roman governor. And he was delivered from them, allowed to make a speech upon the steps, and then confined in prison till they could decide what to do with him.

52. 22:05

    They were about to scourge him, and Paul used his Roman citizenship as the reason why they shouldn’t. So they didn’t. He had appeared before the Jews, and they weren’t at all pleased with what they heard, Cried out that this man should be taken away from the earth, but it was not fit that he should live. Then they made a plot against him, and certain men bound themselves with an oath, but they would not eat or drink till they had killed Paul.

53. 22:25

    And I often wonder what happened to them, because some relation to Paul came and made the captain aware of the fact that this plot was there, and he was sent away under a very heavy armed guard until he came to Caesarea, and there he was put in prison there. There you will know, he stood trial before Festus, who had wanted him to go to Jerusalem, and then before Felix had followed Festus, and then as a kind of public, informal holiday hearing before King Agrippa, and during the course of all those things he said, Because it seems I can’t rely upon justice here. As a Roman citizen, I use my last line of defence, and I appeal unto Caesar.

54. 23:00

    There’s always what strikes me as being a rather strange form of speech used in connection with appeal to Caesar. He appeals to Caesar. And the Roman governor says, hast thou appealed unto Caesar? Unto Caesar thou shalt go with all due pomp and solemnity. And then when King Agrifa comes along, the Roman governor says, I’d like you to hear this man because he’s appealed to Caesar and it seemed to be unreasonable to send a man unto Caesar and not with all to signify the charges laid against him. I should have thought it was too, wouldn’t you? He didn’t appear to know what he ought to say, and he’d got to find out this not unreasonable thing of signifying the charges that were against him.

55. 23:36

    Anyway, that’s jumping the story. We will just finish the acts record, though. He does, as you know, go through various trials and tribulations at shipwreck until he lands at Malta and then finally finds himself in Rome, where he is allowed to meet with friends, where he has soldiers that keep him, where his own hired house is his home and he’s well treated.

56. 23:54

    And there he stays for two years. And that’s doesn’t say what happened after that. But the common belief, and I think the right one, is that since Roman law required that charges must be pressed and the trial be held within two years of the accusation, since nobody came and offered that accusation, he was released to do the rest of the work. We’ve spoken about and write his last letters to Timothy and Titus and once again find himself imprisoned in near those days and suffer execution.

57. 24:21

    But we go back to the point where he’s shown an intense determination to go to Jerusalem and he’s got there and it’s not done him any good. When he gets to Jerusalem, he makes one speech in which in a sense it almost reveals that he ought to have known that it wouldn’t have done any good.

58. 24:38

    So if we turn to the speech of Paul in Acts Chapter 22, Paul is there describing his conversion, which had taken place these many years before, and in verse 14 records the speech of Ananias to him before he was baptized. And Ananias said, The God of our Fathers have chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that just one and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth. For thou shall be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.

59. 25:13

    And now why, Tarius, thou arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. And it came to pass, because when I was come again to Jerusalem, and while I prayed in the temple, I fell into a trance, and saw him saying unto me, Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, because they will not precede thy testimony concerning me, which accounts for the haste with which Paul was sent away from Jerusalem at the end of Acts Chapter 9, which we read earlier.

60. 25:40

    And I said, Lord, they know that I imprisoned and beat in every synagogue them that believed on thee. And when the blood of Steve and thy holy martyr was shed, I also was standing by and consenting unto his death, and kept the raiment of them that slew him. And he said, Depart, For I will send thee 5 heads unto the Gentiles.

61. 26:02

    But if we can reconstruct that reasoning that took place between Paul and his Lord at that time, it would seem that Jesus is saying, Paul, you’re out of place in Jerusalem. You won’t do any good here. You’ve got to get away and go somewhere where you will do some good. So depart out of Jerusalem. Here they will not receive thy testimony concerning me, Paul says.

62. 26:21

    But Lord, if only they’ll listen. I used to be the ringleader of persecution. I was the one who gave my voice against Stephen when he was martyred. Surely they will see that I wouldn’t have changed from that for a very good reason. And I’m not the very best person to reason with them.

63. 26:35

    Say I used to be one of you and now I’ve been converted. This is why you must see the reasonable reasonableness of it. Why don’t you come and join me now? I suppose in what Paul was pleading before the Lord Jesus Christ, And Jesus, as was his authoritative right, brought the discussion to an end and said that’s enough of that.

64. 26:52

    Get out, Depart. I will send thee far hence even unto the Gentiles. Well, Paul got out, and he went to the Gentiles and he returned to Jerusalem, but only into the disciples company at the end of the first missionary journey, Chapter 15. And briefly, so briefly, that we have no record of what was done at the end of the second missionary journey. Acts chapter 18.

65. 27:16

    And now he is there again. And the Lord Jesus proved so right. For Paul has not had the testimony received. He has tried it, and he’s been seized almost before he can open his mouth. And his speeches he makes are from the dark, from the from the witness stand. He is there as a criminal on trial, and when he does report the words which the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to him when he said depart the first time from Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me. It is as though he said, leave Jerusalem, because there’s no good disdain there, no good in coming back to preach, no efforts.

66. 27:52

    You try to reach my name here will do any good. And when he says it to the Jews in Acts chapter 22, it is as though he said. And now I see how right he was. And when he goes on to the point where he says, and the Lord said, go from Jerusalem and preach to the Gentiles, then in screaming their hate at him, they make plain why most of all they dislike him. They heard him with some degree of quietness till that point. And then they said, oh, why with such a fellow from the earth it is not fit that he should live?

67. 28:21

    And they cried out and cast off their clothes and threw dust into the air. And the chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle, and beard that he should be examined by scourging. Now piece together these things. Paul knew from the very beginning that to attempt to preach in Jerusalem would be fruitless.

68. 28:41

    Jesus had said so. Yet Paul, possibly during the second missionary journey when he was at Corinth and Sankari, had made some kind of a vow which led him immediately to go back to Jerusalem. And there seems to be some unspecified link between the two, but whatever it was did not come to completion. Then, having gone on his third missionary journey, he’s on the way outwards still when he purposed in the Spirit to make what looks like a whistle stop tour of Macedonia and Acaya, and then go to Jerusalem, from which he says I must also see Rome. When he goes on to Jerusalem.

69. 29:22

    Wherever he goes, he says, I am bound in the Spirit and I’m going, but admits in every city the Holy Spirit says, if you do, bonds and afflictions abide you. When he gets to see Zaria, in addition to the possible efforts of Philip’s four daughters, who were prophetesses, there’s the undoubted effort of Agabus, who with the binding of the feet with the girdle, says that’s what will happen if you will go to Jerusalem and he gets there.

70. 29:46

    And all the prophets proved right. He’s not allowed to witness at liberty at all. They intend, if they can, to use every possible means, fair, fairly fair, or very foul, to get rid of him. And from that place he goes to Rome to stand on trial before Caesar if the witnesses arrive on time.

71. 30:05

    Now how do we reconcile together 2 interesting things? One is that Paul determined to go to Jerusalem and nothing would stop him. And the other is that the Holy Spirit, by whatever means, was repeatedly used to tell him that it would be useless and in fact that he shouldn’t go. Well, how do you reconcile them? Paul was a very faithful apostle, very devoted to his Lord, who would have done nothing to contravene the commandments of the Lord unless it were for some absolutely overwhelming reason.

72. 30:41

    Yet Paul determined to go to Jerusalem in spite of everything and in spite of constant witnesses that to go there would be useless. How do we reconcile those two that the Lord said don’t go and Paul said I’m going?

73. 30:57

    Well, I think there is a way, and I think we find that way in his letters of the Romans, which would have been written during that third missionary journey at the point where this crisis was strung upon him, whether he will go to Jerusalem or not. Romans Chapter 9 I say the truth in Christ.

74. 31:25

    I lie not my conscience, also, bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were a cursed from Christ. For my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenant, and the giving of the law and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all God blessed forever.

75. 32:05

    Amen. Listen to the confession of that man. I say the truth in Christ. Whoever would have thought that Paul wouldn’t say the truth? Usually that doesn’t need saying, not for a man you know to be honourable. If I say well as a matter of fact, you begin to wonder whether I am speaking the truth, because my my very confirmations or truthfully and so forth tend to suggest that if I’m speaking the truth, no I wasn’t last time. Our sealing of things with affirmations tends to cast in doubt whether our normal how it is to speak the truth, which is no doubt one of the very good reasons why the Lord told us not to swear by Jerusalem, or by God’s throne, or by our hair, or whatever it might be.

76. 32:54

    Because we couldn’t change any of that but to let our gay be gay and our nay be nay warning us that whatsoever came of that exceeded that came of evil. That’s why one takes so little notice when men take the book in their hand and swear by almighty God that they will speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, when we know very well that at least a criminal on the witness stand is not going to speak the truth if he was guilty. So when the Apostle Paul says I say the truth in Christ, there must be some very special reason for it. He wouldn’t normally have needed to emphasize that, but now he wants there to be no misunderstanding. I am telling you the truth, he says. But he says in Christ, and although in the ordinary way the counselor Scripture both from Jesus and from James, is that we don’t take oaths yet to say the truth in Christ is surely to say, I say the truth with the Lord Jesus Christ as witness. He knows I’m telling the truth.

77. 33:51

    I stake my reputation on what Jesus hears me say. I say the truth in Christ and then double if you emphasize it. I lie not. So what I’m telling you now, says Paul, is solemn, literal, hard fact. There’s not a word of exaggeration or invention about it. My conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit. Knowing that God’s spirit is everywhere and that by that he hears and every word that I speak and knows every intent of my heart, I say my conscience is clear in this matter. What I say is 100% right.

78. 34:25

    This is the truth. And what is the truth? That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart? Having read the verses to follow, we know that it is concerning the condition of his own people that Paul has great heaviness and continual sorrow in his heart. He went about from hour to hour, from day-to-day, from week to week. Night by night he went to bed with an ache in his heart, something that couldn’t be healed. Always I hungover him, that heaviness, but something that grieved him and could not be cured. I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. Not a moment’s beast did this man have from something that afflicted him so grievously.

79. 35:24

    And it was all about his fellow Jews, all about that misguided body of people whose privileges were so great and who were throwing them away, whose were the fathers and the promises and the covenants, from whom concerning the best Christ came, who is over all. And God be blessed to sending him with one of the characteristic doxologist that Paul does indulge in. I’m grieved that my people don’t pursuit of the pool. There the starting point advantages in being the heirs of all that and instead throw it away. Being ignorant of God’s righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. I’ve no peace in my mind as long as that persists. Well then, if Paul has no peace in his mind, as long as that persists, and if nothing could cure the ache of being grieved over the rejection of Christ by his people, what could he do? He said There’s nothing I wouldn’t do. I do everything possible, everything permissible, and he almost seems to say even more if only I had the opportunity of getting that message through to them, I could wish myself a cursed from Christ for my brethren who throw aside such privileges.

80. 37:04

    Now that when Paul tells you he is speaking the truth in Christ, lying not his conscience is clear in the Holy Spirit must mean that he could wish himself a curse from Christ. That’s what he’s saying. And he’s not lying for his brethren, who are rejecting such a precious heritage. And that if we take it as literally, as Paul puts it, agreeing with him, is he offering no exaggeration that this is just what he means, means that Paul says.

81. 37:35

    If I had to suffer my own rejection from my Lord in order to do what must be done, to make known his ways to my people, I would do it. In which case, can we not see that reconciliation between the two impossibles? One, don’t go, Paul reinforced by the witness of the Holy Spirit. And two, I’m going.

82. 38:02

    Whatever you say, I will not be dissuaded. I am willing not only to suffer at Jerusalem, but to die. So the Lord says it’s no use. Paul, I don’t want you to go. And Paul says it’s no use, Lord, I can’t help it.

83. 38:20

    And he goes, and the Lord is right, of course, absolutely right. But Paul has at least cleared his function. So he says at least 1/2 of the conscience that was concerns his own people. And he’s failed as he was bound to fail in the face of so implacable an enemy. But he tried, and his own conviction bound in the Spirit. That was all he could do.

84. 38:45

    When one goes against the instructions of the Lord for unworthy reasons from selfishness or sloth or cowardice, then one is a disobedient servant. When one finds oneself unable to accept the Lord’s instruction and advice for reasons like Paul’s, what do you call it then? I don’t know a name for it. It was certainly not wilful disobedience.

85. 39:10

    It was a self sacrifice that he couldn’t draw back from. It was done through not if so good you couldn’t think of a better one. And all we can do in that context is take the Lord Jesus comment when Paul had done it. There’s now languishing in prison. The Lord said to him, Fear not, Paul, for as I have been with thee in Jerusalem, so will I be with thee in Rome.

86. 39:43

    It might not be just all is forgotten and forgiven. It might be. Well, Paul, I know you did your best. I told you it’d be no use. But you’re just as dear to me as ever you were. Now you’ll go to Rome and bear witness there, though perhaps not quite as you intended to. But you’ll go all right.

87. 40:04

    And so we have the graciousness of the Lord responding to the urge of this man whose conscience was so keen to help his people. And Paul goes. Contentedly with knowing that his Lord is with him to the next stage of his work. It has some parallels, perhaps with another man of God who saw the same people of God in an earlier generation turning away from their God, and who saw the danger that they might even at that time be extinguished from God’s presence and blotted out of his book.

88. 40:39

    Who said, oh Lord, forgive? And if not, I beseech they blocked me out of that book. If you’ll be satisfied with getting me out of the way and keeping them, I’d willingly give up my life for them. So said Moses.

89. 40:54

    Paul seems to have been following Moses example, though God could accept it from neither of them. As far as enjoying a curse that others might be saved, it has some parallel to perhaps with that message of Acts chapter six we should be noticed. Isaiah chapter 6, which you may know quite well. Where in the year that King Isaiah died, Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in a temple of his vision with his train filling the temple and heard those around crying. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. All the earth is filled with his glory. And as he stood there and watched, or slept there, and saw in his dream the vision of God in his temple a voice was heard saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us? I almost picture this in my own mind as though the prophets dream, leads him into the hall of the empty temple of the Echo goes around the hall.

90. 41:53

    And he has repeated without an answer coming, Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? Whom shall I send And who will go for us? Whom shall I send? And who will go for us? And at last the Prophet wakes up, as it were, and says it must be calling me. There’s nobody else around.

91. 42:10

    So in his dream he says, Here am I send me. Yet he’s not fit to be sent, or he wouldn’t have been but for the events just before. When seeing that great vision of the glory of God, he did not, as we might have thought he would have done, burst into an ecstasy of admiration, but called down war upon his head for what he’d seen.

92. 42:31

    Woe is me, he says. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For man eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

93. 42:40

    I’m less fortunate than they are, he says. They can go on with all their daily lives without seeing a searing vision like this. I’ve had to see it. It’s terrible. I can’t stand it. Woe is me, for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.

94. 42:56

    And then one of the Seraphim comes with a cold from the altar and touches his lips and cleanses them and empowers him to speak. And then he says, Here am I send me, does it with the fullness of faith. We just need to say where do you want me to go, Lord? But says here am I. Send me before he knows where to go, like Abraham leaving his own home, not knowing whether he went. And then the Lord tells him where to go. Go now and tell this people, these Israelites around you, these men have unclean lips.

95. 43:26

    Go and tell them. And then he says, how long Lord? And the Lord says, until the city has been wasted without an inhabitant, as long as there’s anybody there to tell, just keep on preaching rather than anybody to talk to. So the Lord says to the prophet, and once you’ve seen all that in one piece, the two hearts hang together, don’t they?

96. 43:47

    Eliza has been granted a vision, which they haven’t. That’s painful, as I has been granted A purification, which they haven’t. That’s a very high privilege. So where is he sent to share the privilege with them? Of course. Go and tell these people it didn’t do any good, not nationally at all events. Paul is very like that. A man of unclean lips speaking unclean things against God, cleansed now to and purified to say right things are peaked right words.

97. 44:17

    And he has certainly said here am I send me and now he’s sent and then he chooses to go beyond where he has been sent to that same category of people I know and they don’t. I must tell them, and tell them He does and it fails.

98. 44:39

    But what a servant of the Lord. I suppose there is many a person in this room. I suppose there is not a person in this room who hasn’t been in this position, who for reasons quite unworthy, has refrained from obeying the masters general commands as to what we ought to do in bearing witness to his name. And the reasons we should have led us to pain in our duty have never been good reasons.

99. 45:06

    They might have been sloth or preoccupation with the things of this life, or timidity. I know them all. But I imagine there is no one in this room who has ever done as Paul seems to have done, and said, Lord, I will go and do all that you asked me to do. But there’s one thing I must do, even though you don’t tell me it will be any good, and you do tell me it won’t. Who steps just a little over the letter of what the Lord tells him, for the reason that he’d rather lose his life in trying to achieve that impossible end, than live on with a conscience which said you didn’t try it when you could have done. And the Lord accepted it so graciously, that when the end of Paul’s life was very near to him, when he had borne witness in Rome as a prisoner, and then was released to bear witness again, a freeman through the world, and when back in prison once more, there was to be no release. This time he could utter the words which are so famous in our midst that probably everybody could repeat them. He said in Militus on his way to Jerusalem. If by any means I might finish my course with joy, he says in his second letter to Timothy, imprisoned in Rome. I am now already being offered, and the time of my departure is come.

100. 46:33

     I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but also to all them that love his appearing.

101. 47:03

     Paul died as since the days of his conversion he had lived, giving himself, offering his prayers and pinning his hopes on the salvation of his friends. A crown of ricings for him, of course, but for him it would have been a barren, empty triumph also for all them that love his appearing.

102. 47:28

     It was the greatness and the unselfishness of our Lord first and foremost. And that Paul also that they thought of the future in terms of the blessing they could give to others, and the glory they could give to their God. So Paul could write to the Thessalonians and say, What is my joy and my glory and my crown of Rejoicing?

103. 47:47

     Are not even he in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, as his coming? His happiness would be when he saw many sons come to glory, as would be the supreme happiness of his greater the Lord. And it looks, doesn’t it, as though the Lord who appeared to Saul on the Damascus road, and the Lord who appeared to Paul in Corinth, and said, No man shall set a finger on thee to harm thee.

104. 48:17

     The Lord, who appeared to Paul in prison in Jerusalem, and said, Fear not, I am with thee. As thou hast borne witness in Jerusalem, so shalt thou also bear witness in Rome. And at some point in words, we have not come down to a said to Paul facing the headman’s block. Fear not, Paul.

105. 48:39

     Henceforth there is laid up for you a crown of righteousness, much as he had said at an earlier state, to a man who had similarly confessed his sins. Lord, Remember Me when thou comest into thy Kingdom. The man had said, and the Lord had answered very last. Say unto Today, thou shalt be with me in paradise.