Acts Revisited - Acts, 17 with Paul at the Areopagus
Acts 17 · Vern Peterman · Jul 31, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 30
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826233013994

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right. A few things to cover here. One, I want to cover this, which was a question that was brought up by Bob and Joanne a couple weeks ago. This was on the question in Acts 20, 22 and 23. Spirit is lowercase in the King James and the New American Standard. And then, What you find, however, is a switch in the American Standard updated. In fact, I have it. Let me see here. I'm looking at the new King James version. It's interesting, I've seen that revised in the more recent New King James to be uppercase. So interesting. The bottom line is this, that it seems as far as I can tell around 1980, A lot of the translations and scholars shifted to the uppercase, that is, it is the Spirit who is the one binding Paul, if you will.

Looking at it myself and looking at it from a number of different standpoints, I think the uppercase is the true rendering of it. We don't have the advantage in the Greek where they did it, you know, capitalized or not. So you have to look at what's the context and how does that fit into the larger picture. The New American Standard initially went with lowercase and then the more recent, the 1995 version, they switched to the uppercase. Here's the picture.

The question is, is Paul bound in his own spirit, and that is what's driving him towards Jerusalem, or is the Holy Spirit the one who is constraining him in that direction. So that's the bottom line. What's interesting is most people who look at the passage end up with, regardless, the same conclusion, and that's this, that Paul was walking in the Spirit, trusting the Lord, and it was the Lord who was leading him towards Jerusalem. In which case, whether you use an uppercase or lowercase s, in the end doesn't matter, because you're still saying that the Lord is leading the spirit of Paul. That having been said, I think the upper case is more likely.

Every time Paul speaks of his own spirit, he uses my spirit in his own writings. And here, in chapter 20, he is speaking. So Luke is quoting him. So consistent with that, if he were referring to his own spirit, consistent with the other ways that he has written there four different times, he would have typically said, my spirit, if he referred to his own. That's one point. The other thing is also, he seems to be using a word picture since it's a word for bound. is the one used in the subsequent chapters for the chains that are binding him and it is almost as if he is saying the Holy Spirit is carrying me along and I am bound just as if I were in chains by the Lord in order to take me along this path. The Lord himself is taking me and I know very clearly that is what he wants me to do.

So, interesting, in 2 Corinthians 5.14, he talks about the love of Christ constrained. Same word. The love of Christ constrains us. And so, what is it? It is Christ who is the one doing the constraining.

It would be parallel to his saying, the Spirit is the one constraining me, in Acts 20. Or in Colossians 4 3 Speak of them a fourth of the mystery of Christ for which I've also been imprisoned same word Okay, so I am bound and so here. Here is a similar idea Then you know look at Acts 8 15 Would be a case there where people would say well wait a minute. I'm pressed in spirit isn't that lowercase, but what it turns out is that King James was using an older text, and all the other texts are looking at that as spirit. They're similar to the Acts 20 passage.

Let's see, do we have any other points to make? Okay, anyway. The bottom line is that there are very few people who look at that Acts passage, especially when subsequently Jesus, remember, appears to Paul and commends him. There's no correction for, hey, you shouldn't have come here. But he speaks supportingly of Paul. And it's difficult from that to conclude that he somehow was going on his own.

So most people interpreting the book of Acts will look at those as whether you have lower case spirit, Paul's own spirit, or the Holy Spirit. And I think that's the correct case. But either way, they look at it as his spirit is led by the Holy Spirit. And Paul in Romans makes reference in the same passage to a person's spirit and to the Holy Spirit.

So anyway, enough said I think on that. Let's go to the handout we were looking at last week, Actuary Visited Part 1. And we have some questions that we left you with on that. Have we gone over these questions? I just want to double check with you. No. Maybe we stopped because we didn't have time. Like that's what happened. Because we did go over this, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, because we talked about the Agora and all that. We just didn't go over the questions. Let me address those now anyway.

To what extent are Christians free to delve into the philosophies of unbelievers or to quote unbelievers as a means of appealing to those who do not believe? Do we have examples, principles, or any other biblical guidance in this area? Do we quote unbelievers as Paul seems to have done because what they say has the same authority as Scripture? Reason for asking this question in Paul in addressing the philosophers at Athens. They're in Acts 17. Twice he quoted unbelievers, unbelieving philosophers, from the standpoint of having a point of contact with them.

Was that a good thing to do? Was it a good thing not to do? What do we have to learn from that? Thoughts on that one? Acts Revisited Part 1. We went through it last week, but I think we ran out of time and I didn't go over the questions. We are going to encounter people who are in all kinds of places and backgrounds, aren't we?

I can remember in years past, I'd sit down and talk with an atheist. I would sit down, and I can think of another instance. I remember, I guess this was over 30 years ago, I was sitting down for hours talking to a guy whose name was Bhanu Dave. Dr. Bhanu Dave used to teach as a professor over in India about Hinduism.

And so here he's coming from a Hindu perspective. You talk to somebody else and, you know, Maybe all they know is Chevys. But everybody's got their own starting point, and what you're trying to do is to bring them from where they're at to a place of understanding the issue that they had before them regarding Jesus Christ.

And so we're going to have to bring them from that point, aren't we? So Paul quotes pagan philosophers or poets or whatever twice here as he addresses the philosophers at Athens. What does that tell us? We're going to have to make contact with people from where they're at. Should we go around memorizing a whole bunch of pagan philosophers or something of that sort?

What's the point here? What's the issue? Are you shaking your head, James? He said, no, don't do that. Too many of them. Okay, all right. Yeah, I think that's something to think about We could spend all our time digging into those things is there is there something wrong with You know listening to the to the pagans on different things Yeah, that's right, and I think that's that's the key the key point the point she makes is that they have no authority Paul's point in quoting them frequently is not to base authority on what they say, but as a point of contact with the culture, or making a specific observation.

One of the guys that he quotes there in Acts 17, he also quotes from the same passage in another part when he writes to Titus. So here it's not an appeal for evangelism. When he writes to Titus, because this fellow says that the Cretans are always liars and lazy gluttons. And rather than he himself saying it, he quotes one of their own.

And so it is possible to make observations, to make points of contact. Ultimately, though, these do not have the authority of Scripture. They are valuable from the standpoint of making a cultural contact. They are valuable from the standpoint, in this case, like Paul writing to Titus, making an observation about the culture so he didn't have to call them that. But it's not a matter of trying to make some authoritative spiritual statement. So an important point of distinction. Let's look at the second question there.

Why do you think that Paul would make so much appeal to creation at the earliest part of what he presents to his listeners? By the way, he appeals to creation in his first missionary journey. I think that's chapter 14, 13 or 14. His first missionary journey appeals to creation. Now in the second missionary journey, in Acts chapter 17, he appeals to creation again. Why the importance of appealing to creation? Why is that such a big deal in evangelism? Yeah, yeah. If you think about it, he's going to present the Creator. Why is that important? Why is that important?

Yeah, this is not a God who just kind of came into a world that he really had no part in. God isn't just butting in. God isn't saying, here's something here, I think I'll get involved. He was involved at the outset. So we're talking about a God who has a place of concern, who has a place of of contact and has a reason to be concerned for this creation from the outset.

You think about this. Some of the questions that, I mean, science can't answer these questions. These are questions, however, that have, how do I say it, haunted people for centuries, and that is, where did I come from? Where am I going? Is this all there is? Those kinds of questions, science has no answer for. Yeah, Art?

Well, actually there's a couple of answers to that. The Greeks, the Greek philosophers, I mean this is prior to New Testament times, actually had some evolutionary ideas. They were pretty foggy from the standpoint of coming to any real details. But there actually were evolutionary ideas even before the New Testament era. Very vague and not very scientific.

However, then you find in the 1800s that evolutionary ideas started gaining some prominence again, and then of course Darwin is credited with biological evolution in concept, even though it doesn't test out very well in reality. But it more recently came up in the 1800s, the Civil War era is when the origin of species hit the bookstores.

But think about it, it's interesting that Paul comes to creation as a starting point in both his first and second missionary journeys, and in Acts 17 he keeps harping on it. He talks about this is the God who created all things, heaven and earth. This is the God who gave life and breath. This is the God who created all the peoples of all the nations and determined their boundaries and locations.

So he keeps coming back to that and harping on it and it's not a point to be left. One of the things that my son Randy has pointed out, he says, if you want to tell somebody about the need for salvation, start in Genesis. And he's really observing what Paul has said here.

The starting point is people need to get a reference point, because if things kind of accidentally came about, and they just evolved, and we're here by chance, Jesus dying on the cross just seems like a real tragic event, rather than something that we desperately need because there's no other way to be saved. So a critical standpoint that people need to get is this is not a God who came in after the fact, who just sort of let things happen in the universe, but it's the very God who made everything and gave life and breath to all. And people need to understand that at the outset or the gospel will not make sense. Yeah, the gospel won't make sense to them.

Let's take a look, we've got the last question there, question three. Should Paul have soft-pedaled the resurrection, seeing that it was the point that many of his audience left him mentally, if not physically? In other words, as soon as he introduced the resurrection, what happened?

We're out of here. And they gave him this little code, which is, hey, we'll hear you about this again, which means, you know, we're not seeing or hearing anything about this anymore, okay? And they're gone. Some of them, however, responded. And a couple of them are given there by name, and others too. So what we see is, and I think we have to expect that this is the case, that there will be response, but the response is not your responsibility. There's a response, but the response isn't your responsibility.

Paul's responsible for laying out the truth. Now, should Paul have kind of soft-pedaled that since that seems to have been the little thing that blasted him out of there? That, by the way, was the thing that caused the problem. It was with the Sadducees and the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin too, right? He says, I'm here because of the resurrection and the whole place explodes. So, should Paul have soft-pedaled it?

Kind of toned it down? You know, kind of slid into it a little bit? No, I see head shaking. No. Okay? No. It's certainly something that people need to hear. How they respond to it is between them and the Lord. Okay? But they desperately need to hear it. They need to know it. Even if their response between them and the Lord is no. Yeah? Okay.

Let's take a look at something before we look at the next handout, because now we're shifting back into the series we've been going through in Acts. This was sort of a step back in time. This is Fortress Antonia, in the model anyway, and if you go there today, the floor of it is still in existence. You can see the floor, you can even see where the Roman soldiers scratched games in the floor. You can see the place where Pilate sentenced Jesus and where Paul was ready to get racked up to be beaten. And so here's the fortress and there's the the court of the Gentiles in the foreground there and the edge of the inner temple in the lower left hand part of the picture.

Here's Caesarea where they took him and we've seen this picture kind of looking up the coastline here. Here's another shot from the air looking down on the Caesarea port. See what this, this used to be Strabo's tower Herod, this is Herod the Great that's not so great, okay? Herod was the guy that said, hey, let's rebuild this thing and make a nice Roman port. And so what he did is he made a Roman port city and a Roman military town, basically. And this is it.

And what's really interesting is, I mean, the water's real clear. You see that? I mean, you can see even with all the undergrowth and everything else, you can see things down at the bottom. So that kind of amazed me. You can see where there's some excavation taking place in that one area. Some things have broken down as well over, you know, 19 centuries.

This is the kind of map so we stay oriented. Here's Caesarea off in this corner here and Jerusalem. So what did they do? They took Paul, as we'll see here in the account in a little more detail, they took Paul from Jerusalem and took him up to Antipatrus and then to Caesarea at the coast there This is a diagram and I'm going to use it several different times so you can kind of keep oriented This is the way it would have been in New Testament times when it was brand new basically it was during the time of Herod the great So so when when Paul stayed there when the accounts that we see here in Acts taking place It was a few decades old which in biblical times is really new.

Okay Here is the theater off to the one end there. That theater has been excavated by some, I believe it's Italian archaeologists, and that was where they found in the theater this inscription that has Pontius Pilate's name in there. And by the way, this inscription wasn't put prominently in there, in the theater. They just pulled it off of something and chipped it up, and that's why part of the name is missing, and put it where you couldn't even see the inscription. It was only when they were excavating that they found the inscription. So they didn't give a hoot about Pontius Pilate.

Okay, here at the other end, this is the aqueduct, and so you see for something that's been around for a couple millennia, that's not in bad shape. So this is a Roman aqueduct and you can still walk around and see the arches. Most of them have held up some 20 centuries that it's been there.

Think about it. Here you are. You're at Caesarea. You've got a port city and there's lots of water, but what's the problem? Salty. Yes, yes. Lots of salty water. So you got to get fresh water to it. And that's why this fairly extensive aqueduct to bring water into this port city. from a distance This kind of in the middle of things is a stairway into what was the temple of Augustus?

Okay, so that's still present there and very visible and This is the palace Where the Roman procurators would live and they also had in the palace Basically an area of it where they held Paul and So it says he was in Herod's Praetorium was the name that they called it in there. So that's right out here. So you basically have a seaside, you know, resort. So Paul was imprisoned in the sense that he was, you know, connected up with a chain to a Roman guard, but it was also a fairly nice setup that he had there, unlike some of the other prisons he spent time in.

And this is another shot here looking at some of the structure that's there. Some of the things are, you know, even though a lot of the walls and what are knocked down, foundations are in pretty good shape. There is quite a bit of structure there. Here's another shot of the amphitheater there.

Okay. Now with that, let's take a look. This is Acts 23, 1 through 35. So let's take a look at that there. Here's how it happens. You got the first part there. Paul addressed the Sanhedrin, leading the elders of Israel. And remember this commander, Claudius Lysias, up top here, make sure you get this. Claudius Lysias was the commander there. And then Paul did a social faux pas.

He, because of this gathering, appears to be informal. The high priest is not decorated as he ordinarily is. I've got a picture inset on the handout on the front page there. The high priest is ordinarily done up in this garb that tells you clearly this is the high priest.

He would have, you see a breastplate there? They would have a breastplate that was described in the law and it had a gemstone for each of the tribes. And so he had that, it was gold all around it, and it describes in the law how this is to be made. And they've even got recreations of it now so that when they build the temple, it's ready to go.

So at any rate, had this fellow had his high priestly garb on, Paul would have had no question that's who it is. But remember, although Paul at one point in time had close connections to the Sanhedrin, how much time had gone by since that was the case? Pardon? Yeah, better than 20 years had gone by since he had had contact with the Sanhedrin here. And so, even though he previously had had lots of contact and was probably in line, because he was a student of, a disciple of Gamaliel, or Gamaliel, he was probably in line to be on the Sanhedrin himself.

But, he'd come to a knowledge of the Lord which is far more valuable, and he himself said that was more important. So he would have recognized here, except for the informality of this meeting, the high priest. And so in his speaking to people, he actually insults the high priest and apologizes.

Makes a mistake. So that's important for us to note. Paul apologized. Now, one other reason why we know this is an informal meeting, not just that Paul didn't recognize this guy, but also that it appears that the Roman commander and some other Roman soldiers are right there. Let's see. I don't have a picture to show you.

The Sanhedrin ordinarily met at a room built into the south wall of the inner temple. Would the Roman soldiers be allowed in there? No. So, another thing that tells you this is an informal meeting, okay? So we got those two clues at a minimum telling us that this is an informal meeting of the Sanhedrin and they're pulled together here because the commander, the Roman commander, has a question, you know, what's really going on with this Paul?

He's had a couple attempts to try to figure out what it is. One, when they first grabbed Paul and were asking what's going on, Couldn't get a intelligible answer. Secondly, Paul went out to speak to the Jews from the stairs. Didn't get a good answer from that. Then they were going to try to get the answer by beating it out of Paul. And then Paul says, by the way, you're about to beat a Roman citizen. And then they all backed off way back.

And now here the fourth attempt to try to get some sort of a clear story. Now, so here's the Here's the deal. Paul, you know, starts off being very familiar with these fellows. He starts off talking to them. And now the high priest at this point in time is Ananias. Real common name because you're going to find that crops up, you know, like that name is three different people in the book of Acts. So a real common name.

This guy had been set in his position in 47 AD. was arrested in 52 A.D. because the Romans said, you know, you're not keeping things under control and you're getting too chummy and not helping us. So he was arrested and then put back in place. And then he held that position until 59 A.D. So we know that this event took place prior to Ananias being taken out of his office of high priest. Here's what's interesting.

He was popular with the Jews, but he was also known for being very corrupt. There's one account outside of scripture of him having some of his servants go and beat the tithes out of somebody. Beat them up until they gave them the tithe. Not the right way to do things. So he was corrupt. And he was monetarily selfish, numerous indications that he was always chasing down money as a top priority.

Now, here's the other thing that's interesting. What Paul says to him in this passage, and I don't know that Paul necessarily even knew it at the moment, appears to be a prophecy. What does Paul say? He says, basically, I'm paraphrasing, the Lord's going to strike you down, you whitewashed wall. Here's how it happened.

He was taken out of office, 59 AD. Later on, the Jews had a revolt, and one of the places that the Romans went after was this guy. They found he and his brother, remember the aqueduct we saw with the kind of the arches? He and his brother were found inside an aqueduct. And so he and his brother were both killed in that revolution. Just a few years after this event here that we read here, about seven years to be fairly close. About seven years after this event, he and his brother both killed by the Romans.

So at any rate, Paul speaks to him. Now, then Paul continues on, and how well does Paul know the issues between the Sadducees and the Pharisees? What was Paul? First of all, what was Paul was a Pharisee. Okay, so Paul's on the Pharisee side. To think of it, I mean, we tend to think of the Pharisees, oh, they're bad, right? The Pharisees, to most Jews, were kind of the popular heroes. Yay Pharisees, okay? That was the popular Jewish mindset. These Pharisees, they're our culture heroes. Everybody's yay Pharisees. The Sadducees were a minority group that within A little over 10 years from this time that we see here recorded in Acts would be wiped out of existence.

Their total focus was around the temple that we've been looking at models of and pictures and diagrams of. And so what happened about 11, 10, 11 years later? Temple's wiped out, right? The Romans, as Jesus said would take place, took every single stone and dumped it off the edge. And that's what archaeologists found. They found just piles of temple rubble off the edge of the temple platform.

And some of that has even been left in place today, even though they've gone through a lot of the other stones and things. So here's this sect of the Pharisees, a minority, but the ones who typically held the high priest position. And many of the people, the priests who carried out the things in the temple, were also of that Sadducees group. So here's the Pharisees who are more numerous, and also they're the ones who would go out and start synagogues and other places, because they're kind of missionary about their Judaism, whereas the Sadducees were all focused around the temple. But anyway, they're very passionate.

Sadducees don't believe in a resurrection. They don't believe in angels. They don't believe in miracles. They think that when this life is over, you're done, that's it, you're done. And the Pharisees, however, believe in a resurrection, they believe in angels, they believe in miracles, and they believe in an afterlife.

And it was a great dividing line between the two groups. The Sadducees would only hold the first five books of the Bible, and the rest of it they didn't look at as scripture. The Pharisees, on the other hand, looked at the other books, Joshua all the way to Malachi. and looked at those other books of scripture. So there was constant conflict, and this point of resurrection was one. So Paul comes before them, and he says to them, I'm here before you today because I believe in the resurrection.

And as soon as he says that, it's like, whoa! A match to gasoline. The whole place is exploding. And of course, you can imagine, put yourself in the shoes of this Roman officer. He's going bonkers. He's already been through several different attempts at trying to get an answer. And now he says, OK, I've got a small group of Jews, not the whole crowd here. I have a small group of Jews. These are mature, sane people. And they go nuts.

And it even describes they're pulling Paul away from these guys because they're afraid they're going to tear them in pieces. So here are these guys that are supposedly the leaders of Israel and mature and able to hold their heads together. They're getting more frenzied and out of whack than any of them All right, so you imagine the commander.

He's about you know at the end of his wits here, so he he has Paul pulled away from the Sanhedrin here, that's kind of the last straw then Now That is when the Lord at this point the Lord appears to him and Tells him take courage for as you have solemnly witnessed to my cause at Jerusalem. So you must witness at Rome also Does that sound like he's being scolded for having come to Jerusalem?

No, no, it does not Now Then what happens is We find out some key info. We find out that Paul had a nephew and this nephew comes in and first tells Paul in prison that, Paul, you need to know there's a conspiracy out. Forty plus guys have committed, they're not going to eat until they have killed you. And so Paul, you know, calls in the Roman officer and says, you know, take this young man to the commander, Lysias, okay, and tell him what's about to happen here. So, he does so, and then the Lycius hears the story, tells him, don't tell anybody because word of mouth is going to get this thing around and we won't be able to surprise them. So what does he do? He sends a couple of soldiers with Paul, right? Am I right? No, I'm wrong, right? And why am I wrong? How many soldiers does he send? What's that? 470 for one guy? Yeah, isn't that wild?

What's interesting, because if you think about this, various people have looked at this and said, man, isn't that kind of overreaction? There are several things to think about. When they went to arrest Jesus, just a couple of people went out, right? No, a great big band of people went out, and it included both Jews and Romans. And so here's the deal.

Keeping things under control to the Romans was a high priority. They had basically one thousand soldier block of soldiers, combination of cavalry and spearmen and infantrymen assigned to Jerusalem typically. During feasts and festival times, they had extra troops come in from Caesarea. to supplement the troops that were stationed there continually and that stayed at Fortress Antonia. So he would typically have had some extra troops there to begin with as a just-in-case. So this is one of those just-in-cases, right?

You don't want things to get out of control. That would be one reason for putting a lot of troops on. What's another reason you can think of that he might put a lot of troops on this Paul guy? How did Paul Stop the process of him being beaten He says I'm a Roman citizen, okay for starting in the process For starting in that direction lyceus could have gotten in trouble Okay, and so having something happen to Paul is not at all what he wants to see take place. I Plus Paul was a born Roman citizen and commander Lycius bought That is you know a blank black market bought his Roman citizenship, and he doesn't really want that to come out in court either Okay, so Lycius the commander Wants this whole thing to keep under control under Roman control and not get out of hand So he puts plenty of soldiers there. He has some of them take off and then head back to Jerusalem. Basically the foot soldiers headed back to Jerusalem.

So they head to Antipatris, 35 miles. Now ordinarily that's a long walk. How many of you walk 35 miles in one shot? That's a long haul. That's a long haul. I'm trying to think if I ever did that. It's a pretty vigorous march. One of the things to remember though is that a good number of these, including Paul, are on horseback. So that's also going to allow a group to kind of go ahead.

They went to Antipatris. Antipatris was renamed, I may even mention it in here, renamed Antipatris by Herod because that was his dad's name, his father's name. So renamed Antipatris, they stayed there and then the cavalry, basically the horse mounted troops, made the trip the rest of the way to Caesarea to get Paul there. As they get there, Felix reviews the case because here's this letter from the commander of Lycius.

So Felix reviews it and we'll talk next week about the character of this Felix guy. He's a real interesting character, a very unique fellow. Interesting is probably a good way to leave it for now. But anyway, a really unique fellow and he takes a look at this letter from the commander. One of the things that the commander doesn't admit to in his letter is some of the oopses. So the letter is a little bit putting his best foot forward, to put things politely. But nonetheless, he gets this letter and it basically is kind of a letter of transmittal that goes along with Paul.

And now the Jews are out of range, their ambush plans are gone, they're shot. And at least Commander Lysias has got this thing out of the place where he'll get in trouble. So he's gotten it away from that risk. Okay. Now, we have, let's see, a few things there that we have on page four of your handout. You've got a picture of a coin that was issued under Felix rule. You've got a picture, this is another shot of what is the remains of Herod's Praetorium where Paul was kept.

Then one of the other things that you see there is there is an Acts 23.25 that says after this manner or after this form or as follows. The Greek uses the word tupos in the content of describing it. So here's what it looks like. Dr. Luke, who remember we keep seeing his name put kind of in disguise. He says, we and us. So he's basically saying he's there. Paul spent two years in Caesarea and what that did is it gave opportunity. Luke may have spent quite a bit of time with Paul during that time and may have during that time I had an opportunity to look a lot of things up.

Because this word Tupos indicates that Dr. Luke either saw the original letter and was writing the contents down from that letter or a copy of it. Tupos is the word that would be used like a stamp where you'd stamp numbers or letters or something and you'd have a stamp and you'd hit it with a hammer and make the mark in something else. typically a piece of metal.

So you have exact reproduction. So what that's telling us is Dr. Luke, when he wrote down the contents of the letter here in chapter 23 from Lycius, it was either the letter that he wrote this down from or a copy of it. So Luke is the one who's very exacting about the way he records his history. And I think that gives us confidence in what he's writing. Okay. Now, questions. This is on page 5.

The questions for you to think about over this next week here was Paul's divide by resurrection approach an ethically valid move on his part. He knew it was divisive. Was it true? When all was done, what did the Lord think of it? So you give that some thought. I've got an ethical question here. Because after all, Paul came in knowing that this would explode the Sanhedrin, and he said it anyway. So think about that. The next one.

If Paul had been killed on the way to Caesarea, would that have been a biblical problem? Why or why not? What would we have or not in the New Testament? Would it make any doctrinal difference? What if what if instead of in spite of 470 soldiers the Jews just as they were pulling out of Jerusalem The Jews came along and overwhelmed the Roman forces and took Paul out or maybe they had somebody came in like a Like an assassin just came in and whacked him with an arrow in spite of all the troops around him What if Paul had been killed? What difference would that make is that is it a biblical problem? What books would we not have? Would you have any doctrinal difference in what we understand in the New Testament?

Think about it. It's a big question, actually. Okay, last one. The Lord did not tell Paul the specifics, but gave him a quick outline of what was to follow in the time to come, the next couple years or so. Why was this valuable? Why was this a pivotal time? I mean, Paul, he's a tough guy. Why couldn't he just kind of tough it out? Why did the Lord need to show up? Why was this a valuable thing for Paul to hear from the Lord. How could it help him should we expect the same treatment from the Lord as typical in our lives when we reach a point where things are high stress and uncertain? Why or why not?

So anyway, there will be at least six or seven pages of answers on those questions, right? I'm choking, of course. Now, I gave you a few questions. You have some questions. Comments. Remarks. Undos. Anything else? Yeah. Yeah. A Felix coin. Okay. Yeah.

What's interesting is if you look at things out of a place like Caesarea, Think of what would be some of the reasons why you would still have a lot of these coins available now after 20 centuries. Why would you have so many coins available? Yeah, sometimes the coins would be tossed out because they would be of little value, although For that to be the case, the metal itself would have to be valueless. But sometimes that did happen.

Okay, good. Other reasons? Some of these, yeah? Yeah, the coins go everywhere, right? The coins go everywhere. Have you ever, you know, you walk around the parking lot or something, you see coins, they're falling out all over the place, you know, people, they reach in, they pull out, you know, keys or something else, and the coins drop and they don't even know it. Coins get distributed everywhere that people walk.

Yeah, Josiah? I think another reason why so many today, archaeology didn't really start until 1800. That's right. So the idea of digging into them as here's something that we're going to discover has been fairly recent. So they haven't necessarily been digging for them for centuries. Good point. Okay. Any others? What kind of metal do they make these out of?

Frequently gold and silver and metals that are more prone to last would be another reason. Another thing that would happen is because, you know, Having the safety of your money be an issue in those days, people would often times hide them in places where they wouldn't be easily found and where they would be protected. We found sometimes whole large jars full of these coins and in one case they found them underneath some foundation stones. or somebody had gone and put a large cache of these coins underneath some foundation stone. So sometimes they were hidden deliberately in places where they wouldn't be easily found and wouldn't be broken into or lost. So that would be another reason. Anyway, there are quite a number of those coins, so you ought to be interested in taking a look at that. Okay, anything else?

We've run out of time. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, certainly we see Paul going through some real hassles. He didn't know, as he said before, what was exactly to happen, but he also knew that he was headed for trouble, and yet he went there. And Lord, we would just pray that in our own hearts and minds and lives, we would be learning from this as well. You may indeed have us headed for things that could be trouble and yet be very clearly what you have in mind. We just pray that we would learn from this. Thank you for your faithfulness shown here and the faithfulness we can count on because of who you are. In Jesus' name, Amen.