EPISODE 67 ACTS CHAPTER 22" Be a witness"

In Acts chapter 22, we'll see Paul boldly giving his testimony to a crowd of persecutors, who he used to be, and how coming face to face with Jesus changed his life. Let's get started. Acts chapter 22. Be a witness. Last time I left you with a cliffhanger when the apostle Paul had been seized by a mob near the temple in Jerusalem. If the soldiers from the Roman garrison nearby hadn't intervened, that mob could have torn him to pieces.

Remember what he had told those who had warned him about returning to the city. It's okay. Don't be upset. I'm ready for whatever could happen there. I think Paul underestimated the extent of the residual hatred that existed for him in Jerusalem. He was still enemy number one to the Jewish hierarchy who saw him as a traitor, as well as many others who saw the Christian church's growth as a threat to their whole way of life and traditions.

But he himself, I think Paul badly wanted to believe his Jewish kinsmen would ultimately get the big picture about Jesus as Messiah if they understood it all better. He had a hard time giving up on them. So at the top of the stairs, before the Roman soldiers disappeared him into their headquarters, Paul got the attention of the officer in charge and asked for a chance to address this mob that had just attacked him. And he was given permission. So after the officer realized that he was not dangerous, he said, Go ahead. Picture Paul on the landing of the fortress of Antonia.

That's the Roman headquarters in Jerusalem. He's surrounded by heavily armed soldiers. He's waving his arms to quiet the crowd, very agitated crowd of opponents. Paul called out to them, Brothers and fathers, please, please, let me make my defense. Or as we might say, Please hear me out. When the mob heard Paul addressing them in their native language, they did quiet down.

And he started his off-the-cuff defense. What do you think he'd say? What would you say in this situation? Realizing what deep trouble he's in now, you might expect that Paul would try and explain how this was all a big misunderstanding, how he was just at the temple to worship as all of them were. But that's not where his speech went. Here's what Luke actually heard him say.

Friends, friends, I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but I was brought up in this city and educated at the feet of Gamaliel according to the strictest manner of the law of our fathers. I was as zealous for God as any of you are. I persecuted this way to the death, referring to the early Christians, binding and delivering them to prison, both men and women, as the high priest and whole council of elders can attest. From them, I even received letters to the brothers in Damascus, and I set off for there to arrest any who were there, to bring them back to Jerusalem to be punished. It was in that very process, actually, as I was on my way, drawing near to Damascus, about noon, a great light from heaven shone around me, and I fell on the ground, and I heard a voice saying out of the light, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And I answered, Who are you, Lord?

And he said to me, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Those who were with me saw the light, Paul told them, but didn't understand the voice that had spoken to me. And I said, What should I do, Lord? And the Lord Jesus said to me, Rise and go into Damascus, and there you will be told all that is appointed for you to do. Since I couldn't see because the brightness of the light had blinded me, I was led by those who were with me into the city of Damascus, and there a man named Ananias, a devout man according to our law, well spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, he met me and he said. Brother Saul, receive your sight.

And immediately my sight returned. And he said, The God of our fathers has appointed you to know His will, to see the Righteous One, and to hear His voice from His own mouth. And you will be His witness to everyone of what you have seen and heard. And now, why do you wait? Rise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name. They were still listening, so Paul went on.

Afterward, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and I saw Jesus again, and He said to me, Hurry and get out of Jerusalem because they will not accept your testimony about Me here. And I said, Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in You, and when the blood of Stephen, Your witness, was shed, I stood by approvingly and watched over the coats of those who killed him. But He said to me, Go, for I am going to send you far away to the Gentiles. The crowd listened to Paul's story right up to he said that, and by that I mean when he claimed that God Himself had sent him to share the good news about Jesus with the Gentiles.

At that, the crowd jeered and started throwing handfuls of dirt up in the air, tearing on their robes, generally making it clear in the way people in that culture made it clear that they would not listen to any more of this. I think Paul hoped that these people, most of whom had never heard his conversion story, once they realized why he was now doing the things he was doing, would find it persuasive. After all, what he was telling them was all true. He had been more zealous for the Jewish beliefs than any of them, more opposed to the early Christians than any of them. He had led persecutions against them, for heaven's sakes. But it seemed like, for most of his listeners, their deep prejudices against Gentiles and the unthinkable notion to them that God would somehow accept Gentiles on equal footing as His chosen people, nah, they simply would not accept that.

You know, it's unlikely the Roman soldiers there understood a word that Paul said to that crowd. Luke makes a point of telling us he was speaking in their native language, that is, he was speaking either Aramaic or possibly Hebrew. So the Roman officer in charge was just going off reactions. He decided to take Paul inside their garrison and do what was necessary to get to the bottom of things here. Luke says he intended to examine Paul by flogging at verse 24. The Roman occupying government's justice system was simple, brutal, but very, very effective.

Examine by flogging means it was his intention to beat the truth out of Paul. So they tied his arms up over his head and then to a post, and they stripped him to his waist and were ready to go at it when, just at that point, Paul called to the centurion in the room, the ranking officer there, Excuse me, Mr. Centurion, but is it lawful to flog a Roman citizen who has not even been tried? I think Paul had a wicked good sense of humor. He let the situation play out till the very last second, till Bruno, who was ready to commence flogging him, or whatever the big burly guy's name who enjoyed beating the daylights out of people, and then he says, Wait, officer in charge person, is it really okay to do what this guy is about to do to me, seeing I'm as a Roman citizen? Hearing that, the centurion asked the arresting officer, Were you aware this man's a Roman citizen?

The arresting officer then approached Paul and said, Is that true? You're a Roman citizen? Paul said, Yes, in fact I am, and I was born a citizen. The officer suddenly felt sick. Oh boy, Bruno, untie this man. Luke no doubt got these details from Paul later, and he was probably chuckling a little bit as he relayed them because Luke adds that the officer was scared once he realized that he had come within a gnat's eyelash of flogging a Roman citizen not found guilty of any crime.

But how would you have guessed? Less than 10 percent of the people in lands controlled by Rome were actually citizens, probably far less in a place like Judea. But Roman citizens, they had special rights, and one of them was the right to a trial. They could not be summarily arrested and beaten, as was fixing to happen on this occasion. So Paul didn't get flogged, thank God. But unlike other times, he was not released with an apology either, and there was no miraculous escape coming either.

The centurion in charge ordered him held over and then sent word to the Jewish Sanhedrin's leaders to appear at an inquest of sorts concerning him the next day. He felt sure if he could put this man and the high priest in the same room, he could find out what was really going on here. That confrontation ought to be very interesting, don't you think? We'll see next time what happens when Paul comes face to face with some of the same men who had hired him years before to lead the first persecutions against Christians. But in our time left today, let's focus on one idea that pops up in this chapter. A couple times in chapter 22, Luke uses the word witness, as when Paul was telling the crowd about what happened after his Damascus Road conversion.

The prophet who first met him in Damascus had told him, Now you will be a witness for Christ to everyone. What exactly did that mean? What is a witness? Usually we use the word today in a courtroom setting where witnesses are called to tell what they have seen or what they have heard, what they have experienced that is relevant to a case. What a witness shares is then called their testimony. Jesus challenged his followers this way: You shall be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, then in Judea and Samaria, and then to the rest of the world.

Paul certainly took up that challenge, as we've seen. It seems like he never missed a chance to be Christ's witness, to share his testimony, even in hairy situations, as we've seen in chapter after chapter, and even here on the steps of the Roman Praetorium. I don't know anyone who has quite as dramatic a testimony as the Apostle Paul. But if you're a follower of Jesus, he's also called us to be his witnesses. It's as simple as telling others, Here's who I used to be. Here's how I used to think, until I came face to face with the gospel of Christ.

Once I believed that Jesus was who he claimed to be and accepted him as my Savior and my leader, things began to change, and here's who I am now. That's our testimony, and it's one of the most effective ways we too can be Christ's witnesses anytime we get into conversations with others and have the opportunity to share our faith. I've invited a friend who, like Saul of Tarsus, did not become a follower of Jesus until he was well into midlife. Let's listen to his testimony. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to meet with you folks. I'm looking forward to this, and I know you've asked me for my personal testimony, and I can share that with you.

Basically, there came a time in my life 13 years ago, actually, when I took stock of things and came up empty. Something was missing, and I wanted to fill that space with meaning and truth. You know, in my youth, as a kid of 10 or 12, I would listen to Billy Graham's Sunday evening radio show. It was called Hour of Decision. I was supposed to be asleep, but I was curious about knowing God, if he could be known. I listened on my transistor radio.

I don't know if you know what a transistor radio is, but it's before these amazing smartphones we've got, keeping the volume down so my mother wouldn't hear it and take the radio from me. I even remember several times sliding off my bed and on my knees praying the sinner's prayer. Weirdly, those prayers were followed immediately by a rash of ugly, even filthy thoughts. Thoughts that scared me. I knew nothing then of spiritual warfare. I just knew the thoughts scared me, and I wanted nothing to do with them.

Unfortunately, I didn't know any adult I trusted enough to talk about these things. They seemed too personal, too sensitive, and they were nothing different from what any other 10, 11, or 12-year-old boy, or probably girl even thinks about. Both sets of my grandparents prayed for me. I know, though, my parents didn't teach me anything about the importance of connecting with God. Maybe He was real in their lives, but it wasn't anything they conveyed to me. I remember reading the Bible while in junior high, you call it middle school now, and attending a church youth group on Sunday evenings in high school.

But by college, I'd turned away from these things. The decades passed, kind of turbulently, until I reached a point in my late 50s. Listen to that, my late 50s, when I took stock of my life and found it pretty empty. I looked at the things my life was built on at that point and found serious cracks in the foundation. For example, I had taken good health for granted as a young adult, but now needed prescription pills for one thing and another, and wasn't taking care of myself anymore as I should have been. I have suffered through two divorces.

My adult children, my daughters so dear to me, lived a distance from me now. I was renting an apartment instead of owning a home. Despite being in my mid-50s with a graduate degree on top of college, in fact, I'd spent most of my 40s either unemployed or underemployed. Those are the years when you make your biggest career leap. I definitely was not happy with where I was. To cope with personal dissatisfaction, I developed an intense fondness for extra-dry, high-quality gin martinis, and learned how to mix them quickly and pour them into chilled tulip-shaped glasses with a giant-sized green olive nestled nicely at the base of the flute.

I usually mixed one up as soon as I got home. Even before doffing my jacket and scarf. Believe it or not, I was very proud of that skill and even bragged about it to my father. What I had become was a total disconnect from the life I felt I should have been living. You know, I'd been given a lot of advantages being born and raised in North America. My family, my parents did not go through a divorce as I had.

I enjoyed physical health, a good education. I was a white male, heterosexual, capable white-collar kind of a guy, for heaven's sakes, but I felt I was nowhere. I did have that early familiarity with the Christian religion. I was brought up in mainline Protestant churches, but I had no interest in revisiting the past at that point. I tried the very liberal, quote, broad-minded, unquote, Unitarian Universalist church for a while, but I came to see it as morally bankrupt and intellectually dishonest. I mean, they called themselves broad-minded, but they were narrow-minded, as narrow-minded as the church across the street.

They were just on a different part of the spectrum. I felt near total despair much of the time, extremely unhappy about where I was in life. Let me just pause a minute, folks. I don't know. Can you understand? Can you relate to what I'm telling you?

I was in my mid-50s, early 60s at this time, like your parents, maybe even older than your parents, and I was going through much of the same turmoil many of you are going through now or will in your teens. Besides alcohol, I was also fixated on dating women, generally finding women whose own rocky road of life mirrored my own. Losers find losers. While those relationships did not solve any of my life problems, my time with one woman after another helped me deal with depression. When my drinking drove one woman away, I easily found another one. There was always another woman right around the corner.

Then on November 1st, 2006, oh, I remember that date well, I met a woman through an internet dating website who seemed different. We met on a Saturday afternoon for lunch. There was something hard to explain but compelling that drew me to her. Maybe it was her personality, maybe it was something else, I wasn't sure. Just something different. And then during lunch, she asked me this question, Ward, do you have a church home?

I didn't see that question coming. No, I honestly told her. She then shared with me an emotional and convicting testimony about the importance of her Christian faith and the value she found by being part of a shared community. I have no idea what words she used, but I can still see the intensity in her eyes and hear the enthusiasm in her voice, as if by sheer will she could persuade me to believe what she believed. Since it seemed so important to her and I was attracted to her, I asked if I could go to church with her. She said, Sure, but I'm the music director.

I'm the music director, so I can't sit with you. We can meet for coffee between services, though. In time, I realized she could see right through me. I just wanted her, but she was trying to lead me to Jesus Christ. We went out a few times before she told me she felt uncomfortable dating me and didn't want our relationship to become serious. She wanted to find a Christian man, someone who shared her faith and values.

I was crushed. She offered to remain friends. Whoopee, big deal. I never entertained that desire with anyone but with her. I felt a desire somehow to accept that offer. For the next three or four months, she became a guide dog for me, introducing me to a church near my home and answering my spiritual questions.

I depended on her emotional strength and level-headedness, and although I began attending church on my own, I tried hard not to think about Jesus Christ and his claims too seriously. But like a mark on the wall you keep trying to paint over, every time I painted over him, his image kept bleeding back through, and there he was again. The more I learned, I could not think of another person who ever lived who had so much influence over our lives. His teaching had spread through cultures so much that his commandments were indistinguishable from our human ideals, the best things in our society. I accepted most of what Jesus taught because it was just good common sense. I mean, I don't want somebody to kill me, right?

The part I had trouble with was giving him credit as the ultimate source of truth, and of course a willingness to humble myself and own up to my sin and failures. At some point, I became what's called a seeker. I was drawn enough to Jesus Christ that I started reading the Bible regularly, praying daily, doing devotional reading in Christian literature, and even joined a Bible study for adult singles. I spent more time at church and volunteered for things, and was asked by the church leaders to start a singles activities group for the 40 to 60 year age group. I also took a divorce recovery workshop and then ended up leading the entire program. In 2009, a woman in that group asked me to attend another church with her.

Out of curiosity, I went. From the first notes of the praise and worship team, I felt something move powerfully through the sanctuary. I learned later this was the Holy Spirit breathing life into the hearts and minds of those believers gathered to worship. Whatever it was, I just knew I wanted more of it. At this woman's invitation, I started attending a small group. We met at the home of a retired U.S.

Army colonel, who is a former Ranger and analyst with the Department of Defense. His wife was a wonderful hostess. Their home was warm and welcoming. The group was comprised mainly of military families. This was rarefied company for me. I was now being influenced by strong men with tender hearts, Christian men who loved the Lord and who loved their wives and families with unashamed passion.

After about three years of searching for answers, I was almost ready at this point to give my life to Jesus as my Savior and leader. I knew I needed the real personal relationship with God these people had. I said almost. Something held me back. I was afraid how my adult daughters would react to me if I went fully down this Christian road. They had seen a lot over the years in my life.

Sadly, they were born to parents who were too weak to keep their home together, and that divorce deeply affected them. Sixteen years following their parents' divorce, they watched me again get into another short-term failed marriage. They had seen a lot more as my life was unraveling too, numerous encounters with law enforcement, including two arrests that led to mugshots, fingerprinting, and some jail time. I could not hold a job for long, hired and fired four or five times. And through it all, I held on with both hands to those blessed martinis. I had reached a personal breaking point.

I just didn't know what my daughters would think if this guy suddenly became some kind of born-again Christian. I spent about a year in this state of indecision, but then one Sunday while I was at church, listening to God's Word being shared, I felt a strong stirring in my heart. While I was debating whether to respond, the Lord reminded me of a Bible verse that spoke directly to my hang-up. It was Matthew 10:37 where the Lord Jesus said, and He was speaking to me, Anyone who loves their father or more than Me is not worthy of Me. This was the line that got me. Anyone who loves their son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

I knew God was speaking to me in compelling fashion. I had fought Jesus Christ pulling my life for way too long, like a fish on the hook, struggling not to be pulled ashore, struggling to break free. My mind raised objections. I was drinking more, yet I could not stop coming back for more of Him. The internal tension between my desire for a new life following Jesus offered and how others knew me had built up and built up into something I had to give. What gave was my stubborn reluctance.

I invited Jesus into my heart and life, and He set up shop, sweeping out the cobwebs, turning over the tables, and redoing all of me. He convicted me of a hard heart and wrong thinking. He immediately told me to stop drinking, which I had fought for three years before agreeing to submit to Him. God gave me a burning desire to read His Word. He nurtured me along with my passions, aptitudes, learning, and experiences. I now had a real relationship with my Creator, who promised to stay with me forever.

Within two years of finding what a real relationship with Christ meant, I also found Debbie, that elusive Christian woman who would complete my life now. After two failed marriages and many years of unfulfilling dating, I finally settled into a Christian marriage with a devoted wife who was on the same spiritual journey I was. She was the one who motivated me to obey the Lord and deal with my alcohol abuse. How did she do it? She told me she would not marry me until I had given up drinking for at least a year. I committed to doing that for her, and it was the longest year of my life.

But she faithfully nursed me through that detox period. Since then, sobriety has been such a blessing, along with lots of spiritual growth in many other areas of my life, and I haven't had a drink in more than 10 years. Don't get me wrong. Every day I am convicted of sinful thoughts, words, and deeds, but I am no longer indulging in it, a slave to it. I'm a different person by the grace of God. When the enemy tries to drag me back, and he does, he tries, accusing me and reminding me of who I used to be, it's like someone trying to rob a house I don't live in anymore.

I am committed now to learning more about what God has for me, living out the gospel with integrity in my personal life, and sharing the good news of the power of Christ to change anyone who will believe it. My name is Ward Pimley, and this is my testimony. Thanks, Paul, and thank you, Ward, for such a powerful testimony. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we go through a transformation that brings us closer and closer to Christ. Have you accepted Jesus, and do you have a testimony of your own? Share your testimony with others, because when we share the Word, we are doing exactly what Jesus commanded us to do.

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