Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: acts, ananias, gamaliel, god, jesus, paul, stephen
1. Dude, this is so weird. OK, so Paul requests to talk to the commander. For some reason, he thought that Paul was an Egyptian terrorist leader! Because Paul was a citizen, though, the commander let him address the crowd! This ought to be good…
2. He tries to build a connection with the Jews. He calls them “brothers and fathers.” I mean, that’s what these people are to him; so they shouldn’t hate him like they do. I think they were surprised that he was speaking to them in their native tongue.
3. We find out that Paul as trained under Gamaliel. He was as Jewish as it gets. We also know that he tried to crush the Christians. We already know about the conversion. We know about Ananias helping Paul receive his sight and baptism.
4. I can’t remember if we already read about Paul falling into this trance at the temple. But we now know that God told him to go away because the people of Jerusalem weren’t ready for what he was bringing. But the Gentiles were ready. We already knew all this. But he was just letting the mob know what was going on…
5. They wanted him to die because he cared about saving the Gentiles. Some times, I think that modern church is that way. I was just getting into a discussion the other day about how some people consider “seeker-friendly” churches to be a fraud because they are trying to reach non-Christians. Why would we be jealous about God’s love? Can’t we share?
6. Things were getting out of hand, so they hid Paul inside again. Apparently, they were going to torture him to try to make sense of why the people were acting so nuts. Man, good thing the police doesn’t still do that. “We’re going to whip you until we find out why so-and-so thinks that you are blasphemous…”
7. Paul busts out his Miranda rights, though. He’s a citizen. They can’t whip him like this. Ruh roh…
8. Then they kind of were stopped in their tracks. What do you do now, Roman soldiers? Paul was a citizen! Panic set in, as the commander realized that he was about to whip a Roman citizen as if he were some worthless “local.” Hmm…I guess it was Paul’s lucky day…
