A Christian man owned a barber shop. One night, at a revival meeting, the barber felt greatly burdened to do more with his testimony for Christ. The next evening, the barber began attending a "soul winners class" at his church. He attended faithfully every night for two weeks. He rehearsed all the material, took extensive notes, and memorized the assigned Bible verses. At the end of the two weeks he received a plaque acknowledging his completion of the course.
The next morning, in the barber shop, he hung the plaque and bowed his head. "Dear Lord," he prayed, "help me to witness to the first man to come through that door this morning." At that moment in walked the biggest, meanest, foulest man the barber had ever seen. It seems this man had recently lost a bet with some "biker" buddies and now he had to get his head shaved. Needless to say, the barber did not feel very comfortable quoting the "Roman Road" to a man with a tattoo on his neck.
The rest of the day did not go any better for the barber. At 5:00 p.m., the barber was sobbing with shame. He had not witnessed to a single person. He bowed his head again. This time he prayed, "Lord, if you will allow one more opportunity, I promise I will do my part." At that, the door opened and in walked a pleasant looking gentleman. The man smiled at the barber, apologized for coming in so late and took a seat in the chair.
As the barber draped the man in his protective sheet, he began to try to remember what he was supposed to say. He began to get very confused. As the barber put shaving cream on the man’s face, he tried to remember the answers he had learned to the possible objections. As the barber began to strop his razor, he realized that he simply could not remember a thing he had learned. This made the barber very nervous and soon sweat began to break out on his forehead.
Finally, in desperation, he shook the razor at the man and screamed, "ARE YOU PREPARED TO DIE??!!!"
Acts 22:1-21“Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.” When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet. Then Paul said: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished. “About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’ “Who are you, Lord?' I asked. “I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting, ‘he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me. “What shall I do, Lord?” I asked.” ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me. “A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him. “Then he said: ‘The God of our fathers has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’ “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking. 'Quick!' he said to me. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’ “'Lord,' I replied, ‘these men know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’ “Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’
We laugh but one day we all must answer the question, “are you prepared to die” because one day we all will. On that day the greatest issue will be but we have put our faith in. Have we placed it in God or in something else? This summer we are going to return to our series through the book of Acts and we’re going to finish it. I’m calling this series to end the book “Grace under pressure, because in these pages we see Paul, the apostle of grace, he not only preached it he was the example of it, under some of the worst pressure possible. He is going to be falsely accused and arrested. His journey to Rome will be harrowing and His reception there will be warm in all the wrong ways. But in all of these things we are going to see Paul stand firm in his faith and in this message of the gospel of grace. From these pages we are going to see how a Christian living in any time can stand firm on the truth of God despite the worst circumstances.
As we begin this series though I want to go back a bit really quickly and just remind us of where Paul is in the journey of his life. As we read Paul’s testimony we’ve seen that he was a man who started off on the same path as the religious leaders who are now persecuting him. He was going the wrong way and thought it was the right way. We get something set in our mind that it was right and there’s not much that can change our mind. For Paul it literally took a blinding light to change his mind, hopefully we’re a little less stubborn than that and when God speaks to us He can be a little less dramatic and we’ll still pay attention.
But after that experience, Paul not only becomes a teacher of the Christian faith, he become one of the first two missionaries that the church ever sent out. He spends the next several years traveling throughout the Roman world telling people about Jesus, planting churches and then going back to check up on the churches that He has started. But then a change happens, Paul feels called to go back to Jerusalem. As he is journeying back, God sends warnings to him that he will be arrested and persecuted on this journey. But Paul goes any way. You see God was telling him what to expect, but God never said not to go.
So Paul returns to Jerusalem and what we are a series of snap judgments. It begins with the Religious leaders, the religious leaders made several misjudgments about Paul. Look at Acts 21:29, this is about the religious leaders it says, “They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple area.” All of the upset and anger that we are going to read about in Acts 21 and 22 starts with this assumption. You see there were parts of the Jewish temple that gentiles were allowed in and there were parts of the temple that they weren’t allowed in unless they had gone through several Jewish rites and purification rituals. The religious leaders assumed that Paul had brought someone into the temple in violation of this rule because Paul was preaching a gospel of grace through Jesus, not the law of Moses. They assumed that he had come to Jerusalem to cause trouble.
Nothing could have been further from reality, Paul had come to proclaim the truth of Jesus Christ. In fact I want you to notice that Paul had done everything he could to avoid trouble. When Paul arrived the church greeted him warmly and then they warned him that people were saying that he was preaching against the Jewish custom of circumcision. So Paul asks what he should do. We’ll pick Luke’s narrative up there in Acts 21:23, they told him, “There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everybody will know there is know truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law.” It was a good plan so we read that he did it. Verse 26, “The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them.”
Paul did everything he could possibly do to avoid the confrontation that was to come, but it didn’t matter because the religious leaders had already made up their minds about Paul. His actions didn’t matter because they were only looking for proof of what he did wrong rather than what he actually did. So we read that when they saw, Trophimus, they assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple. It’s interesting because that wasn’t the only misjudgment they made about Paul. The first two verses of Acts 22 are amazing to me because you’re remember that Paul had started out as a Pharisee, he was a Jewish as it got. I know that time had passed, but still listen to this. Paul says, “Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.” When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became quiet.-Why did they become quiet. Because they didn’t expect him to speak to them in that language. They should have because Aramaic was the dialect that the Hebrews around Jerusalem spoke. In other words he spoke to them in their own language and they became quiet because it was shocking to them. It shouldn’t have been, they should have known that his background was similar to theirs, but somehow in all of the gossip, and rumors that had been spread about him, somehow in all of the assumptions they made about him, they had made him into something that he wasn’t.
But they weren’t the only ones, the roman commanders also made misjudgments about Paul. Back to chapter 21 when the riot first starts the Romans hear about it, they go rushing in, they stop the crowd from beating Paul and then they arrest him, it was a different system of justice back then, so they arrest him, they put him in chains, they can’t figure out what is going on so they are getting ready to take him away and then we get this exchange beginning in Acts 21:37, “As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commanders, ‘May I say something to you?’ ‘Do you speak Greek?’ he replied. ‘aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the desert some time ago?’” Do you see it, the Roman commander has made an assumption, seeing the anger at Paul and the riot that is happen, he thinks this guy can’t be from around here, he must be that Egyptian guy here to cause trouble.
But that wasn’t the only misjudgment. Because after Paul speaks, the crowd goes back into a riot, by the way they listen to everything that he says, until he says that God had sent him to the gentiles. As the youth would say, haters hate, it’s what they do. They got upset because Paul was saying that God was for everybody, not just for them. The good news for us is that He is, God loves us and will accept us when we call him, regardless, of race or sex, regardless of our past mistakes and failures, the apostle of grace correctly preached the gospel of grace. We can all be saved by God’s grace if we will just accept it.
But this truth wasn’t what the crowd wanted to hear so they begin calling out, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!” So the Roman commanders orders Paul to be taken back to the barracks and flogged so they can find out why the people are so mad. That’s when we read this exchange beginning in verse 25, “As 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? When 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.’ The commander went to Paul and asked, ‘Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?’ ‘Yes, I am,’ he answered. Then the commanders said, ‘I had to pay a big price for my citizenship.’ But I was born a citizen,’ Paul replied. Those who were about to question him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.” You see Roman citizens had many rights and the consequences of violating those rights were severe. They Romans had just assumed that Paul wasn’t the type of man who would be a citizen. But he was.
There’s one other thing to see about Paul here though, from his testimony we see that Paul admits that he made wrong judgments about Christ and the early Christians. Look at verse 4, “I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as also the high priest and all the Council can testify. I even obtained letters from them to their brothers in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.” He’s saying I was just like you, I’ve made the same type of assumptions about people as you’re making about me.
So what are some lessons for us to take from this passage so far? The first is that we can all misjudge other people. The religious leaders misjudged Paul, the Romans misjudged Paul, and Paul had misjudged the early Christians. We can all misjudge people. Two, sometimes people’s assumptions are so fixed that there’s nothing we can do to change their minds, when that happens we need to keep doing the right thing, just because their minds are made up doesn’t mean they are right. Our job is to keep doing what we know is right and keep serving God, because God is the one who can reveal the truth, whether it’s a blinding light or some other method, if people seek Him they will eventually find the truth about Him and us. Until they do, it would do both them and us well to remember one simple truth, none of us is supposed to judge anyone else, the one judge, the true Judge is God. He is the one who will one day sit in judgment on all of us. That is a fact that should have all of our attention. One day we will stand before Him faced with the judgment of our lives.
One of the factors in that judgment will be how we judged others. See Jesus didn’t just tell us not to judge, He warned us against judging others. Look at His words in Matthew 7:2, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Ouch, that’s a really scary verse. I mean when I stand before Jesus, I want Him to have a really lenient scale, you know maybe let some stuff I’ve done slide, and what He said was, if you want that you have to treat others the same way. Think about that the next time you’re thinking or saying those horrible things about someone who is trying their best in some area of life, but you just don’t think that they measure up. Because the higher you set that scale for that person that Jesus told you not to judge, the higher He said He would set the scale for you.
I believe the reason that He was so harsh on people judging one another is because it often becomes a mean spirited act, it become a hurtful act. When you judge someone and you decide their failing, what you’re really saying is that you are better then that person is and that attitude is going to come out in your actions in ways that don’t reflect the love that God wants us to show for one another. I believe that Jesus statement against being judgmental is related to His command to love one another. Remember Jesus was asked in Matthew 22, what the greatest commandment was and He replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the prophets hand on these two commandments.”
We know that these are the greatest commandments, but here’s the thing we often wonder what the greatest sin in. Some of you as I said that are thinking that the Bible just condemns sin it doesn’t rank it. Others of you are thinking that even though the Bible doesn’t rank sin that there are some that are worse then others. But I think that in this verse the law of corollaries applies. A corollary is that when something is true then it’s opposite is also true. In other words if the greatest command is to love God, then the greatest sin is to not love God, to reject God. Isn’t it interesting that because of grace if we accept God, if we love God then we are forgiven. By the same token then, if the second commandment is to love everyone else then that second greatest sin is to be mean, to act without love. Jesus taught us to love God and one another. He commanded us not to judge one another and then he put some teeth to it, He said if you’re judgmental to others, then I will be back to you. That has some teeth.
We see them in the life of Paul. The consequences of Paul’s misjudgment impacted the course of His life. Here we see Paul, being misjudged, falsely accused, beaten, and arrested, all for things that he didn’t do, because the same attitude that he once had, others now had towards him. Worse you understand that Paul had a tremendous burden for the people of Jerusalem, but because of what he had done, he couldn’t spend most of his ministry there. Look at Verse 18, he, “saw the Lord speaking. ‘Quick!’ he said to me. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because they will not accept your testimony about me.’” Because of what he had done before knowing Christ Paul had to leave Jerusalem and go to the Gentiles, now after he has preached everywhere, now as the church is growing, when he comes back they still won’t accept his testimony.
But his testimony is the one thing he has, it is one of the most powerful things that He has and it’s one of the most powerful things that we have. Paul is faced with people who have misjudged and abused him, he is faced with people who do not understand the message of grace that God has given to all of us. So Paul a man who made it his practice to debate in the synagogues to prove who Jesus was. A man of great learning, in this passage he is communicating with the Romans in a language that they understand and with the crowd in a language that they understand, and he’s doing both with ease. Paul doesn’t begin to debate them, Paul doesn’t try and dazzle them with a deep theological argument from the scriptures. Paul realizes that he has one shot, and so he shares his testimony, his story of what God has done in his life.
Notice a couple of things about it really quickly. First, Paul tries to use his testimony to establish common ground with his audience. He speaks to them in their language and then look at verse 3, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.” He’s saying, “Hey I’m just like you, I was born in Tarsus, you know where that is, but I was raised here. I had Gamaliel’s class, some of you know him. And I wasn’t a fan of the Way either.” That’s what we do with our testimony, we break down barriers. People think about Christianity, it’s a label. People talk about the church, or Christians, those are labels. Then they assign preconceived notions to what those things mean. But when you share your testimony all of those things go away, because they are no longer dealing with a stereo-type but a living breathing person.
Next Paul begins to tell them about what he did wrong. Paul list’s the persecution he did, he confesses to being an accomplice to the murder of Stephen. This is the next step of common ground, God saves all of us from something, none of our lives are perfect until we get to Heaven, because even if we’re were to be perfect this world isn’t, but here’s the thing, Paul is not bragging about his past. I was watching the movie Ratatouille the other night and they were giving the backgrounds of the cooks, one they didn’t know exactly what he had done before, but he was always talking about it and in a way romanticizing it, one story was that he killed a man, with this thumb. Later on he holds up his thumb as a threat, it was a point of honor. Better to be like the other chef who was in the resistance, which one? We don’t know they didn’t win. Paul is not bragging about his past he is sharing the facts of where he was when Jesus found him.
That is the key of his testimony and yours, the focus of His testimony and ours is what Jesus has done in our lives. Paul says, ‘Jesus struck me blind, He asked me why I was persecuting Him, but when I asked Him what I should do He sent me to Damascus to a man named Ananias, He restored my sight and then He gave me a new mission and purpose to tell others about him and I’ve been doing it ever since.
We want you to be able to share your testimony, it’s one of the most effective tools you have to witnessing. Not just telling people what Jesus did 2000 years ago, but what He has done in your life. In Revelation when it talks about the saints from the end times it says this, Revelation 12:11, ‘They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” Your testimony is important so here’s this three step form to help you write your testimony, first tell who you were before, this is your change to establish common ground, I like you I went to work every day, I was married, I was in school, whatever, find your common ground with people your sharing with. Two talk about the change. This may have been a crisis in your life, maybe your life before was a crisis, this is what brought you to the point that you asked God for help. Here’s an important note, this doesn’t have to be about salvation, but any time you called out to God. Then finally, what life has been like since. What difference has God made in your life, we all sing about how we love Jesus, we talk about how we love Jesus, this is your chance to tell people why. If God is in your life, He has made a change, tell them about the change and point them to Jesus.
I want you to fill out this form, it’s for you, but if you’d like to maybe share it one day or perhaps you’d just like help with it there are two things you can do. You can make a copy and give it to me, or you can go to our website, www.madisonphx.org this form is on there, if you will go there and fill it out when you hit submit it will go straight to my e-mail account here at the church, if you turn that in I will get back to you.
My Testimony
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” Revelation 12:11a
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The Change: ________________________________________
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What Life Has Been Like Since: _________________________
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Remember to find common ground and stay on target. Make sure that you are not bragging about the past but that you are pointing people to Jesus.
