You're listening to audio from Faith Church, located on the north side of Indianapolis. If you'd like to check out more information about our church and ministry, you can find us at faithchurchindy.com. Now here's the teaching. Hey. Morning, everyone.

I could tell we're making progress, through the book because I you know, up here preaching, I have to keep, like, breaking the spine on this thing to get it to lay flat so it doesn't, like, close on me while I'm while I'm preaching. But, anyway, that's just a personal problem. I'm not sure why I'm sharing. Where were we? Well, when we last left off with Paul, he'd been attacked by crowds in the temple precinct.

Remember, he'd been accused of defiling the temple. The crowd was in the process of performing a citizen's execution, death by by beating, to restore the honor and the purity of the temple. You remember the Roman the Roman military commander guy, he's called the tribune. He he heard the commotion. He rushed down with a compliment of soldiers, forced his way into the crowd, hauled the the victim to his feet, chained him up, then started asking questions.

Couldn't get a clear answer from the crowd, like, what is going on? Everybody's shouting over the top of one another, and most of it's probably in Hebrew, Aramaic, not this guy's first language. It's like, I don't know what's going on. Let's get this guy out. They they haul him out, you know, keep him away from the crowd that's bent on on killing Paul.

But they get him out and Paul's like, hey. Can I can I just talk with them? And there's a conversation. He says, okay. And initially, this this crowd listens as Paul is speaking until he, maybe unwisely, but once he mentions that he's been sent to the Gentiles, he loses the crowd.

Right? They are they already thought he was a compromiser. They already thought he'd given up on Torah. He'd he'd made friends with their enemies. Now they know it's all true, and it's like, this guy has to be taken out.

It's like he's polluted himself. He's polluted the temple. He wants to pollute the rest of us. So the crowd surges forward again, their eyes filled with anger, and that's where we pick it up today, in Acts chapter 22. Now when I'm working on writing, like, writing a sermon or something like that, I usually have my headphones in, you know, my office or a coffee shop or something like that, listening to music.

Right? Does anybody else do that? It's I can't listen to music with words, or the words sometimes find their way into the manuscripts on accident. And if I don't do a good job editing or proofreading, it's like, today's bottom line is I still haven't found what I'm looking for or something like that. So all instrumental.

While I was working on this sermon, I was listening to the soundtrack from the Return of the King. Right? Anybody? The Lord of the Rings was can you believe that movie is 21 years old already? Yeah.

That was a long time ago. I love the movie. I still love the movies, but like any legitimate Lord of the Rings fan who has read the books, before seeing the movies, I have some quibbles. I would like to air those now. So my biggest issue, I wouldn't call it a quibble, it's a full on complaint, and it's that Peter Jackson didn't understand the point of the books.

He left out the real ending. Alright? Now bear with me. When you read The Return of the King, and spoiler alerts, but the movie's 20 years old and the books are 70 years old years old. If you haven't read them yet, you had time.

But when you you get to the end, right, and Sauron is defeated and Aragorn has been crowned king and the hobbits are on their way back home, it feels like the ending, but in that's where the movie ends, but in the books, when they get home, they find that their beloved Shire has been overrun by a band of ruffians led by a villain named Sharky, who turns out to be none other than Saruman himself, exiled from Orthanc and Isengard, now set on despoiling the last pure refuge in Middle Earth, the Shire. But is anybody with me still? Is any okay. Alright. I felt I knew Adam.

I knew you'd be with me. I just I'm just gonna preach to this direction. But the the the best part of the book is that Mary and Pippin and Sam and Frodo have been prepared by everything they've gone through for this moment. On their way home, Gandalf says, hey. I'm peeling off and going this direction.

You don't need me anymore. They're finally prepared for this moment. And from Tolkien's notes and his letters about the story, we know he planned this chapter before he'd even planned out the whole rest of the War of the Ring. Because this was the point of the book, that all the adventures and all of the everything they went through was preparation for this moment, for their real calling when they were back home. I mean, this is the point.

They were they were prepared. They were being prepared throughout the whole adventure for a much smaller and much more important, much more closer to home calling than destroying the ring. See, there's an interesting parallel, I think, in in that idea and what we read in acts 22, because at this moment, at this point in the story, Paul was prepared. He was being prepared throughout his life for just this moment. From all the difficult things that had happened to him to his own identity as a a Roman citizen, all stuff he had no control over, all of that was preparation for him to be ready to fulfill his calling when the moment came.

I mean, his adventures are over. There's no more church planting journeys or anything like that, But everything they taught him was preparation for this moment, and I think the same is true of us, whether we know it or not. We, each of us, we are prepared. We have been prepared. We're being prepared for the calling that God has for us, the calling that God's placed on us.

If you are living into the calling that God has placed on your life, the the calling to be like a everyday missionary, to be someone walking the way of Jesus for the sake of those wandering without him, then God is preparing you. He has been preparing you for that calling. And I'm convinced we're more prepared than we think we are. So let's jump into acts 22. I wanna walk through this story and then show you what I mean, and we'll talk through some kinda, like, questions we can ask ourselves for figuring out how this works out into our own lives.

So Acts 22, it's on page 134 of the scripture journal. If you're using one of these, we pick up in verse 22. Up to this word, that's a a course of reference to what Paul has just been sharing with the crowd when he says, you know, the risen Jesus tells him, go, I'm gonna send you far away to the Gentiles. Up to this word, they, the crowd, had listened to him, but then they raised their voices and said, away with such a fellow from the earth for he should not be allowed to live. And as they were shouting, throwing off their cloaks, flinging dust into the air, the tribune ordered that Paul be brought into the barracks.

See, right up until the point when Paul said that the risen Jesus sent him to the Gentiles, the crowd was was with him, and I don't know. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned that part or or glossed over it or brought it up later or left it out entirely. But regardless, the damage is done. The crowd surges after him, shouting, kill him. Right?

Don't let him live. This kind of person doesn't deserve to breathe. Luke, he paints a vivid scene for us. The crowd is throwing dust in the air, throwing off their cloaks. They're kinda ripping off their outer garments.

These are the the kind of I mean, for their culture, the the uncontrolled reactions that show just how blasphemous or abhorrent they found Paul's words to be. It's like if if you ever, like, accidentally touch something gross, and then you do the whole, like, like, get it off. Right? And if germ theory is true, this does nothing, and yet we do it anyway. Right?

You can't control, like, just get the ick off. That's what they're doing with Paul's words. They're like, I don't know how to get it out. So it's just the shaking of cloaks and the throwing of dust in the air and all of that because this is the ick is the feeling. Temple's been defiled, and the man defiling it needs to be scrubbed out, removed from the earth if possible.

Now the tribune, he's the highest ranking military commander in Jerusalem. I think he's probably been in the dark while Paul is speaking. Luke makes the point to tell us Paul was speaking in Hebrew or Aramaic. Right? The language of the crowd.

This is not this guy's first language. Maybe he's picking up a word or 2 along the way, but he knows what an angry crowd looks like, no matter what language they're shouting in. And so when the crowd surges forward again, like, you know, shouting rip him to pieces, He pulls Paul out of the melee, retreats with him back to the barracks. It's like, I gotta get to the bottom of this. Remember, this is festival season.

Jerusalem is just slammed full of thousands of extra people, and this could go bad so many ways, so quickly. He's gotta get to the bottom of it quick. He's tried asking the crowd, that didn't get anywhere. He tried letting Paul defend himself. The crowd's just mad again.

He's got no further clarity, so time to resort to extraordinary measures. We pick it up in verse 24. The tribune ordered Paul to be brought into the barracks saying that he should be examined by flogging. Not the kind of test I like sitting for, but he should be examined by flogging to find out, okay, why are they shouting at him like this? The tribune assumes Paul is the problem here.

So he delivers his orders to the centurions with him. Alright. Bring Paul back inside. Stretch him out. Beat him until he tells you what's going on, and then report back when you have answers.

Now in in Roman law, flogging or or torture to get information was a normal, regular, totally legal method of getting the info you need, but it could only be used on slaves and noncitizens, slaves and foreigners, essentially. Roman law enforcement operated under the basic assumption that no one is going to tell you the truth or at least not the whole truth unless you beat it out of them. So use force if you have to. Like, use the non coercive means first, but if it's really important, like, start the whipping. Okay?

Because you need info and you need it fast. Now, in this moment, it's kinda curious to think. I I we don't know if Paul knew what was happening. He speaks Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek. Yeah.

But Latin is the language of the military. Did he understand the dialogue going back and forth between the tribune and the centurions? I don't know. But when when they, like, ripped his shirt off and pulled his arms out and kinda stretched him against a pole or over a barrel or something like that. And the centurion picked up the whip, which is like a wooden handle with half a dozen, leather straps coming out of it, and they would tie lead pellets or old knuckle bones to the ends of these things.

And when the guy picks it up and starts hefting it, you can imagine Paul's eyes got a little bigger. Like, I know what's about to happen here. And this is a threat of a beating as bad as, if not worse than, any of the other beatings that have been inflicted on him in his, you know, years of run ins with zealous crowds and Roman authorities here, there, and everywhere. But he also knows that what they're about to do is plainly illegal. It's it is legal to beat a Roman citizen, but only after they've been tried and convicted and the beating is a form of punishment.

A beating, torture for information is absolutely illegal. And if Paul were beaten and then made a formal complaint, the centurion who acted it out and the tribune who ordered it could both find themselves on the end of a beating. It was that not allowed. So Paul chooses this moment to ask a question. So I was wondering, before we begin and I know you have a lot on your plate, so I'll make this quick.

But I'm curious. Is it technically legal to flog, you know, a Roman citizen who hasn't been tried or condemned yet or anything? I'm just asking for a friend. Like, just wanna clear this up. Right?

He probably sounded a little more desperate than that, but he timed his question well, because not only was it illegal to torture a Roman citizen for information, it was actually also illegal to bind a Roman citizen for the purpose of torture to get information. Strategically, accidentally, providentially, I don't know, but Paul waits until they have broken the law before speaking up. Now he has a legal claim against them and can kind of begin to exert some control over the situation. Now, of course, the centurion immediately grasps that this is not a rhetorical question. I was just curious.

Could you clarify this point for me, and then then the beatings can commence? No. There's barbs in this question. If Paul is a Roman citizen, then an immediate course correction is needed, and the centurion needs new orders. It's why in verse 26, when the centurion heard this, when he hears the question, he went to the tribune and said to him, what are you about to do?

This man is a Roman citizen. Like, he gets the point why Paul asked this question. He goes to his boss for new orders and says to him, you know, in other words, like, do you understand what we just about did? Like, if the prisoner hadn't spoken up, you and I could have both gotten beaten for this or hung for it. So the tribune comes running back down the stairs, comes to Paul, says, tell me.

It's just a command. Are you a Roman citizen? And Paul said, yes. And presumably, along with the yes. Right?

Because the next phrase would have been prove it. Along with the yes, Paul's holding out his proof of citizenship. There's a couple ways that he may have proved that he was a citizen. He might have been he might have been carrying papyrus or animal skin, a document that basically said, you know, this man, the carrier of this document is a citizen, a Roman citizen of the city of Tarsus. You know, Right to Tarsus for further clarification.

Or he may have actually had the the the official kind of passport. It was called a diploma, which was wooden and had engraved on it the the details of the citizen who carried it. Obviously, any of those documents could be forged, but the a false claim to citizenship was punishable by, you guessed it, death, like everything else in the Roman Empire apparently. And so, you know, claiming that you're a citizen when you're not and when it can be verified is is pretty risky. Either way, they're like, we have to stop.

This has to be verified. So the the centurion, the tribune are like, we have to change course here. Now you'd think that Paul saying, yeah. I'm a citizen and showing the documents would be the end of the the story, but the conversation isn't over. Tribune still has to do damage control.

He's thinking, sure. Okay. Paul, maybe. He's a Roman citizen, but also he's a Jew, so, like, realistically, he might be a citizen, but, like, how what class is he in? Like, how high status could he actually be?

His his next comment the tribune's next comment is designed to sort of suss out the the the social status relative to to one another. Here's the thing. If Paul is a lower status than the tribune if Paul chooses to press charges, he'll be more lightly punished. If Paul's higher status, that that could be a really big problem. It's kinda like, you know, if he's lower status, it's like, okay.

Yes. Technically, you broke the law, but, I mean, it was against somebody who's worthless. So you can get off, you know, with a slap of the hand. But again, if Paul's higher status, that's a problem. So verse 28, the tribune answers Paul's claim to citizenship saying, well, but I bought this citizenship.

I bought my citizenship. Like, it cost a lot, which we could read in a couple of different ways, and scholars are a little divided on it. I mean, he may be saying something like, how could you possibly be a Roman citizen? Like, I had to pay a ton of money for mine. Or if there's some sarcasm in it, as some people kind of read it, it's like, I paid so much for my citizenship.

If you're a citizen too, they must be just, like, giving it out, like, candy. Something along those lines. Either way, it's like, yeah. Okay. How did you come buy it?

Because I had to pay a lot for mine. Now, technically, just side note, it was technically illegal to buy your citizenship. It wasn't for sale. There's no legal way to purchase citizenship in Rome, but, of course, you can get a lot done by bribing the right people. And this guy, to be a tribune, to even be at this rank, he has to be a Roman citizen.

At some point in his past, before he joined the army, maybe once he was in and had kind of set his sights up here at the at the top, he had to become a citizen, and scraping the money together, finding somebody to bribe I mean, sponsor him for the right amount of money is how you get things done. And right now, in Jerusalem, he's the highest ranking Roman citizen, but that doesn't mean he's the highest class or the highest status citizen. He bought his way in. He's not part of a high status family that can trace its, you know, ancestry back generation after generation after generation. He's working class.

He bought his way into it. He's still looked down on by those who can, like, point to the books and say, yeah. My family goes back 17 generations. So he answers, I bought my citizenship for, like, a lot of money, implying, how did you get yours? And Paul says, but I was born a citizen.

That's a lot higher class. It's automatically a lot higher status. Now how Paul's family came by their citizenship, I don't know. 1 we don't know. One of the ways that you could become a citizen is by performing meritorious acts on behalf of the empire.

So best guess is a tent making family made tents for the army. There's evidence of that kind of thing happening. However it happened, this is great news for Paul, and really bad news for the tribune. It was his responsibility to ascertain his prisoner's legal status before ordering torture, and he didn't do it. And now he can be accused of abusing a Roman citizen of a higher class than he himself is in.

You can kinda catch the weight, socially of what's going on here in the way that Luke tells the story. The gravity of it really hits in verse 29. So those who were about to examine Paul withdrew from him immediately. They're, like, don't even touch, like, get back. And the tribune also was afraid because he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had already bound him.

He'd already broken the law. He had already violated the citizens' rights. Now if if Paul hadn't been a Roman citizen, he would have been interrogated under torture, handed over to the Jewish authorities, convicted of blasphemy and defiling the temple, and executed. But since he is, he'll spend the night in the fortress until the next morning when the tribune can call the Jewish authorities, the Sanhedrin together and say, okay. What in the world is going on here?

I need some more information. And that's where we have to leave off the story this week, but it's quite the story. It kinda reads like a scene from an action movie, right, where our our hero is unjustly imprisoned by the evil forces. But don't worry, there's only 40 minutes left in the film, so we know he's about to break out somehow. He's gonna call in reinforcements, or maybe he's gonna use his ingenuity to sneak his way out, or he's gonna fight his way out, or he's gonna MacGyver his way out, or right.

Something. Or angels are gonna show up and bust him out. Except not not this time. It it's not what he's prepared for. It's not what he's been prepared for.

Remember, this whole part of the story, chapter 22, is this turning point in Paul's life, a second turning point. You remember the first one on the road to Damascus when Jesus shows up and says, I'm calling you to preach the gospel to Jews, Gentiles, and kings. This is the turning point to kings. So his whole life leading up to this, even including events before he was born, you know, all the things that led to him being a Roman citizen, that was all God preparing him for this, for his calling, for this moment, to preach the gospel to Jews and to gentiles and to kings. He's on the road to Rome now.

And I think that you and I are prepared. We have been prepared for the calling that we're in right now. So let me suggest a couple of questions that you could ponder, you could think over or talk over yourself or with a with a friend or family or in a community group or with a mentor. A couple of questions for us to consider. And the first one, first question, can I clearly say can I clearly articulate or write down or share with someone?

Can I clearly say what God is calling me to right now? It's a good question to kind of wrestle over. Can I could I write down what God is calling me to right now? Then let me ease the burden a little bit, because I don't think that God's calling is usually something super specific. Right?

Like, right now, I'm called by God to serve in mid level management in an upwardly mobile tech firm serving the the b to b industry with AI power technology solutions or something like that. Right? It's usually something more like, okay. Right now, while I am a mid level manager at an upwardly mobile tech firm serving the b to b market with AI technology driven solutions, I am called to be a everyday missionary, walking the way of Jesus for the sake of people wandering without him. While I am an office worker or blue collar worker or a serial entrepreneur or a stay at home mom or a working mom or a multi career or a student or a retiree or an Uber volunteer, while I am what I am, I'm called to walk the way of Jesus for the sake of people who are wandering without him.

I'm called to walk with people who are wandering, searching for Jesus. So do you know, could you write down your calling? While I am me, I am called to, could you write it down? That's the first question. And the second question is, well, then am I prepared for that?

Am I prepared for that? How has God been preparing me for this calling today? How has he already prepared me? Maybe even ways I can't even control, or in ways I can control, how is God going to continue to prepare me for that calling? I really believe that we are each.

We are more prepared than we think we are. We we have been prepared and we are being prepared for the calling that God has placed on us because king Jesus has ruled over our lives from the very beginning long before we ever acknowledged him as such. Long before any of us bowed the knee to Jesus as our king, he has been preparing us for the calling we have. How many of you have memorized, maybe like in Awana, if you were with the kids, or in a Bible memory program, or something like how how many of you ever memorized Ephesians 2, 8, and 9? Do you know this verse?

Okay. What about verse 10? You know, how many of you okay. Couple of you, the super spiritual ones know verse 10. Alright.

Well, let me get a run up at at verse 10. I'll I'll start in verse 8. If you know it, you know it says, for by grace, you have been saved through faith. This is Paul writing to the church in Ephesus, and he this letter is written after the events that we're reading right here in chapter 22. This is how I know that Paul knew that everything that had happened to him was preparation for this calling in this moment, because he writes to the Ephesians in verse 8, chapter 2 verse 8.

For by grace, you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It's a gift of God. It's not it's not a result of work, right, of things that you have done. He says if it were, then then we'd be able to boast about it. Right?

Like, I did more work than you did. Like, look at me. I got there faster. It's like, no. No.

This is all a gift of God. This is not a result of you doing anything because verse 10, we, each of us, meaning Paul, the Ephesians he's writing to, and each of us, we are God's workmanship. We're God's work. So the your salvation is not has has nothing to do with your work. It is entirely God's work, and now you are his work.

You have been created in Christ Jesus, in the messiah Jesus, for the purpose of good work. Good work which god prepared beforehand, that each of us should walk in that work. You see what Paul's saying here in these verses. He's like, from before you had any idea of who God is, he was already calling you, preparing you, and equipping you for work, good work, for a calling. Everything you've gone through in life has been for the calling that God has placed on you.

It's not a mistake. You know, those those times when you're tempted to think, was God paying any attention when my life went off the rails? That was not a mistake. That was preparation. Because there's a calling that he has on your life.

He's been preparing you for it since the very beginning. It's just like in the story here. Paul was prepared by God far in advance of this moment. All sorts of things he couldn't control. His own citizenship, nothing he could have controlled.

His training as a rabbi was not chosen by him. It was chosen for him by his parents. Everything he went through at the hands of hostile Greeks and Jews and Romans across the world. Paul was being prepared all along the way for for this moment. He was prepared.

He was being prepared. He had been prepared by god for this moment in this this calling, and that's true of us too. We're more prepared than we think we are, because all along, god has been preparing us for this calling in this moment. So how has god prepared you? Can you articulate the calling and how has he prepared you for it?

What? If there's something true about you that gives you a unique audience for God's calling on your life? If you call if the calling on our lives really is living as everyday missionaries, as walking the way of Jesus for the sake of people wandering without him, walking with people who are wandering without Jesus, then there's something about you that's unique to that calling. It may be your your nationality, your ethnicity, the culture you grew up in. It could be your training or your personality or wiring or just the way you're bent or or really bent.

It might be the difficult things that you've experienced in life, the pain, the suffering, the trials, Or it may be the celebrations. The blessings and the good things that God has given you have given you an audience, an avenue, a window. But God has prepared you for his calling on your life. Everything you've gone through, even things that were true of you before you were born are part of his preparation for your calling today, and he's continuing to prepare you through what you experience and who you experience it with. We're more prepared than we think we are, because God has been preparing us for the calling he's placed on us.

This means you can live into it even when that thought is terrifying, which it almost always is. You're more prepared than you think you are. Let's pray together. Father, you have called us to walk with you in such a way that those who are wandering without you can see and know that you are God. At the very least, that you are the God of our lives, that Jesus is the one who has rescued and redeemed us, and that the spirit empowers us to live as you have called us to live.

Father, we we take there are so many things that have happened to us in our lives, some that we would have chosen, much that we would have exempted ourselves from had we had the opportunity. All of that, father, we hold in our hands and hold out to you, trusting that you have used it to prepare us for where we are today, trusting that this is not an accident, but that your providence has put us here to glorify you and to reach those who do not know you. So use us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.