BibleProject - Paul in Prison - Acts E6

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

In part one (0:00-13:30), Tim and Jon discuss the motives Paul had for putting himself in harm's way. Tim says that Paul's priority was to show a unified world between Jew and Gentile through belief in Jesus. Tim then outlines Paul's time in Jerusalem and his arrest. Tim points out that there are six cycles that begin with Paul being arrested, then Paul is given a platform to speak, then the authority figure saying that Paul doesn't deserve death, but he is never released. Tim says Luke is portraying Paul as a model for how Christians should relate to the powers and cultural structures of the world. Christianity is not a movement that is political, or social, or anything else, but it does encompass those things. It is an entirely different movement of an entirely different nature. In part two (13:30-30:00), Tim continues to outline Paul's trials. Tim quotes from Kavin Rowe: "The Christians are not out to establish Christendom. A new culture, yes, a new political movement, no." Tim points out that Paul submitted to the Roman authorities despite the flaws. It's a stance of loyalty and subversion. Tim points out that Luke is laying Paul's story on top of Jesus' story of also being on trial by the Jewish and Roman authorities. Luke wants the reader to think intelligently about how Christians should relate to the government. God's Kingdom is not a human kingdom; it is a vision of a new and better humanity. There is no such thing as being a Christian in private in the ancient world, nor should there be that option today. In part three (30:00-35:00), Jon points out that Christianity is a movement that doesn't need the same type of power that the Romans had. It's a groundswell, not a top-down approach. Tim says that Luke is trying to communicate that the Jesus movement is its own thing that doesn't fit any other type of movement in human history. In part four (35:00-end), Tim points out that Paul always seemed to interact with corrupt Roman politicians. But when he did, Paul encouraged that official to follow the road of high integrity that they aspire to. Show Resources: World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco Roman Age by Kavin Rowe https://www.amazon.com/World-Upside-Down-Reading-Graeco-Roman/dp/0199767610/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=kavin+rowe&qid=1551724935&s=gateway&sr=8-2 Show Produced by: Dan Gummel, Jon Collins

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. Today, on the podcast, we continue a conversation looking at the story in the book of Acts. In the last chapters of Acts, Paul, the Apostle, the Jewish follower of Jesus, who takes it on himself to plant churches all over the Roman world, is now reaching the end of his church planting career. And he's taken it upon himself. To put together an offering, a love offering of sorts, he's gone to churches all over the Roman world and ask them to contribute, pull together money, so that he can take that cash and bring it to the believers in Jerusalem. You see, in Jerusalem, there's been a famine and a drought, and the Christians there are

suffering. And for Paul, this offering is to help people who are suffering, but it's also much more. For Paul, this offering is a symbol portraying the unity of the church. For Paul, when you have a group of diverse, ethnically, socio-economically diverse people in one room worshiping Jesus, sharing a meal together, and sharing their lives together.

You are tasting heaven, heaven on earth. In this episode Paul gets to Jerusalem, and things reach a boiling point. He goes to Jerusalem, he shows up, and a number of the Jewish Christian leaders say, hey, welcome to town. Listen, there's a lot of people who want you dead around here. For Paul being in trouble with local authorities, there's nothing new. He's had death threats, he's been beat up, he's been thrown in jail. But here in Jerusalem, things have come to a tipping point. And the writer of Axe, Luke, he spends a lot of time looking at Paul's final days

being in prison and going from prison to prison. And he does this intentionally. Luke's trying to create a profile of the Jesus movement, that it's its own category of human movement. Paul becomes a model, I think, to Luke's readers for how to navigate this tension in the ongoing generations of the movement. He's teaching followers of Jesus how to relate to power structures. Paul's story is a vehicle for him to talk about the Christian's relationship to their government and culture and power structures. All of that and more today on the podcast. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Thanks for joining us. Here we go.

So we're going through the Book of Acts and we're in the last chapters of Acts. It's Paul going to Jerusalem. So we spent the last hour discussing the themes that were moving him towards Jerusalem. Yeah, what would motivate any person to go to a city where they know that there are hundreds of people who want to kill them? Yeah. Because in Jerusalem, are going to be the people who are most protective of the thing that he's really interested. A big reals, customs and traditions. Yep.

And so he's going to go in there. But to him, it's so important because he wants to bring this gift to the church in Jerusalem. He wants to bring this gift to the church in Jerusalem. He wants to bring him cash. He's been collecting it all over the world, and he's going to bring it there. And for him, it's not just giving them money. He's wanted to. He was even told to remember the poor in Jerusalem.

But to him, this was a representative gift to show that what he's doing out there in the world is connected, that this is one movement. And by coming back and saying, look, we want to contribute. Yeah, your brothers and sisters in the Messiah who aren't Jewish, love you and are thinking of you and share solidarity with your hardship. But he knows in order to go and bring this gift to Jerusalem, he's gonna run into people who really wanna see him die.

Yeah, they think they now feel about him the way that he felt about the followers of Jesus before he met Jesus. They're a dangerous threat. So he feels convicted, I gotta go to Jerusalem. The Spirit's leading me there, but I know it's gonna be gnarly. There's actually one scene where he is on his way to Jerusalem and he stops at a local in the town and there's followers of Jesus, they're hanging out.

And a prophet there has a dream or a word from the Lord and ties, gets a belt and ties his hands and says, the one going to Jerusalem will be bound like this. And Paul's just like, I'm going anyway. Yeah. He doesn't care. Yeah. He doesn't care.

Well, what he cares about. That's actually true. He doesn't care about his own life. He doesn't care his own life. He cares compared to. Yeah, like. He doesn't care about his own life. He doesn't care about his own life. He cares compared to... Yeah, like this theme that you were showing of him constantly talking about the unity of the followers of Jesus across these cultural lines and this flattening of everyone's status. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah, for Paul, when you have a group of diverse, ethnically, socio-economically diverse people in one room worshiping Jesus, sharing a meal together, and sharing their lives together, you are tasting heaven, heaven on earth, the kingdom of God. And so for Paul, that was of greatest value So he goes to Jerusalem He shows up and a number of the Jewish Christian leaders say hey, welcome to town Listen, there's a lot of people who want you dead around here

so so they're like hey listen how about this go to the temple and You know perform some Jewish customs to show people that you're Jewish and they still like observe the customs and Paul says, totally, deal. It's fine. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, I'm Jewish, it's great, I'll do that. I mean, so he goes to the temple and there are a whole bunch of people who know about him

and his reputation, they see him, they start a commotion. How do they know what he looks like? Oh, that's a good point. I mean, he's been in in Adryslam. He lived in there for many years. That's true. So yeah, he was from there. Yeah, he's from there. He's been gone. He's been gone 10 years or whatever.

Yeah. So here's what's interesting. The temple pre-synx, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like the White House lawn, something like that, this's an American centered image. But thinking of a space that is political, religious, and a public monument, we're talking about the temple precincts here. Can the public go on the lawn? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think you have to have an invite. Yeah. Whatever. That kind of space. have an invite. Whatever, that kind of space. And if you're under foreign occupation, that kind of space is for sure under close watch. So the moment the commotion starts, Roman soldiers wade in and Paul gets nabbed because they can see that all these people angry

at him. So this is a great part of the story. The Roman soldiers starts dragging him away. And this is an Acts 21. People rushed together taking hold of Paul. They dragged him out of the temple, and they were gonna kill him. But a report came up to the commander of the Roman battalion that there's a commotion happening. There you go.

So the commander took along some soldiers and centurions, and he ran down to them, and when they saw everything, the people stopped beating Paul, the commander took hold of him, bound him with chains, began asking about it, and the crowds like shouting, you know, he's fry killing him,

the Germans and that. And so they're taking him up the stairs, like out of the precincts and then Paul starts talking to him in Greek. Right? So he was just talking to people in Aramaic. And now he's talking in Greek and then the commander's like, what, wait, what, you know Greek?

Yeah. That would be common for them to. Well, I think he just realizes, oh, this isn't. Yeah, it's some Josh Mill. This isn't, yeah, totally. This is Cosmopolitan guy, it's bilingual. And then this is what the soldier says.

He says, wait, you're not the Egyptian terrorist who just stirred up a revolt and led 4,000 people of the rebels who want to overthrow Rome out in the wilderness. I thought you're that guy. Impulse says, oh, dude. He says, I'm a Jew of Tarsus in Celicia, a citizen of no insignificant city.

Yeah. Please let me speak to the people. And the guy's like, oh, the floor is yours, my friend. Yeah. And so they came arresting him thinking he was some other rebel rower. Totally. And so here begins, from here, Acts 21 to the end,

Luke is designed to sing so tight. It's really cool. The literary design of the section of Acts follows a very clear pattern through six cycles. It always begins with Paul getting arrested or put on trial. In every scene, there's a clear representative of the Roman or Jerusalem system there. So there's something where he's put on the stage and in each of the six times he gives a speech.

And he always begins, you know, man of Israel or men of Rome, his skill is orator really comes out and the speech is great. He knows how to work a room. Totally, that's not a workroom. It's awesome. And then the speech always ends with this, right, this official going like, dang it. We can't stick anything on this guy. Yeah. Like, he's not worthy of death. Right. It's not breaking any laws. Yeah. But every step of the way, he stays imprisoned or he's unjustly detained, step after step after step. Six different times, this happens. Okay.

So you have to just stop and ask yourself, what kind of book am I reading that began with Jesus commissioning the disciples and Paul's not present there in the opening scene of Acts? That's interesting. Paul's not even present and he commissions them Holy Spirit, Pentecost, You know Jerusalem's you day of Samaritan the end of the earth and so Paul doesn't even appear until like the end of chapter 8

And then he's kind of in tandem with Peter and chapters 9 through 12 Chapter 13 is just Paul's journeys. So the second half of the book. It's now all about Paul's Paul focus The last quarter of the book is six trials of Paul. Everyone following this pattern is put before a representative. He gets a speech. What do we do with this guy? And he continues to be unjustly imprisoned all the way through until he lands in Rome. What does Luke doing here? He has some focus, some reason for why he's designed the book this way. Maybe because this is how it happened. focus some reason for why he's designed the book this way. Maybe because this is how it happened.

Oh, sure. OK. But yes, remember, this is all the way back to our conversation about biblical narrative. Yeah. This is not what happened. Yeah. Like lots of other things happen.

Right. But he's designed the events in this clear repetitive sequence. And at the center of each sequence, six times is Paul giving a defense speech, and then people being puzzled not knowing what to do with him. So Luke's after something here, for Luke Paul becomes a representative of the whole movement and its relationship case the powers have to do something, but they recognize that they're not really dealing with something that a normal kind of social movement.

It's not violent, but at the same time, they're creating enough disturbance and upheaval that we have to do something. Yeah, it makes it last time. It's not a military threat, but it is a social threat. It is a social disturbance. Sturppence. Yeah, it makes it last time. It's not a military threat, but it is a social threat. It is a social disturbance. Disturbance. Yeah, totally. So that's the design here. And then if you just read through the six cycles, you'll see the same types of things keep happening. So these are just what I call repeated themes in

the trial scenes. In terms of the video, I think a whole first third can be about the gift, In terms of the video, I think a whole first third can be about the gift, the symbolic importance of it, and why he would go to Jerusalem. And then once he's in Jerusalem, I think we can do, like we've been doing maybe these montages, Paul on trial again, and again, and again, and again. You're saying Luke has repeated this cycle six times to what like overly communicate that they don't know what to do with them. That's it. Well, but it's also Paul becomes a model, I think, to Luke's readers for how to navigate this tension in the ongoing generations of the movement. He's teaching followers of Jesus how to relate to power structures through the story of Paul. Paul's story is a vehicle for him to talk about the Christian's relationship to their government and culture and power structures.

It seems to me why would Luke make a full quarter of the book about this? So what does he want me to take away from the way that Paul handles himself here? Okay, so yeah, let's move forward. So whenever people present accusations against Paul, they bring up how he's violating Jewish law, but it's always a slant to present him as a social agitator, which is therefore conservative. Yeah, because the Roman people aren't going to care if they're like, whatever. That's your deal then. That's your deal.

If it's a religious dispute, it's not a legal issue. So they always slant it. So, for example, it's not a legal issue. So they always slant it. So for example, to make it a political issue. Correct. So in chapter 21, when Paul first gets arrested, the crowd says to the Roman commander, they say, this is the man who announces to all people everywhere against our people and against the law and against this place, the temple. And besides that, he brought Greeks into the temple,

which was punishable by death. In Jewish law. There's the Jewish historian Josephus, who describes there's this fence and the precincts. If you're not Jewish, you can't go past it. If you're not Jewish, you can't go past it. And so... Who did he bring in?

Well, here's the thing. Their accusation is, he brought a Greek into the temple and defiled the holy place. And then Luke adds, they had seen the previous day, Trophimus, the Ephesian, in the city with Paul, and they just assumed that Paul brought him into the temple. However, they're just trying to make connections. They're trying to.

That's right. So the frame Paul as a violator of religious law or of the temple, but to the degree that it's creating now of social disturbance, which the Romans should care about. The Roman soldier is first thinks Paul is like an assassin. He says, aren't you that Egyptian who led a rebel movement? This is great.

That's funny that there was an Egyptian out there leaving a rebel movement. Oh, 4,000. 4,000 men. Yeah, I forget totally. Between the years like 30 and 70 AD, I forget what get what the count is. There's approaching like a dozen movements, and these are just the ones that are left traces in historical record of rebel movements like this. Leaders getting hundred, a couple thousand people together. That's right back. Yep.

It's killed the Romans. In chapter 24, when Paul's on trial, the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem hire a lawyer named Tertolas. He has this great speech in chapter 24, but he says, we have found this man a real pest. This is how most English translations, it means play a disease. This man is a disease. And he's stirring up insurrection, revolt, among the Jews throughout the world. And he's a ringleader of the sect of the Nazareans. He even tried to death-grade the temple. And that's when we arrested him. They get to see the slant here.

Yeah. That they're doing. I quoted from this, Kevin Rale, his book on acts called World Upside Down. So here's how he puts it. On the one hand, Luke narrates the movement of the Christian mission into the Gentile world by focusing on Paul's collision with Greco-Roman culture. Christianity and paganism are competing religious and social realities. Paul's call to give allegiance and worship to King Jesus necessarily involve a different way of life in which Rome's basic patterns of life are dissolved. However, Luke also narrates the threat of the Christian mission in such a way as eliminate the possibility of it being in competition with the Roman state. Of all forms of sedition and treason, you can see it in the trial narratives.

He's constantly being accused of treason or revolt. Of all of these accusations, Christianity is innocent. The Christians are not out to establish Christendom. A new culture, yes, a political coup, now. That's the tension. That's the paradox that Paul represents in these trials. A new culture within the same political environment. Yeah.

He wasn't around going, we need to start some new political regime so everything can be better. So we need a new king and we need new laws. He's like, when keep the kings, keep the laws. But... Remembering that this is not, he doesn't live in a democratic. Well, yeah, the way to get rid of him is to go kill him.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you can go to him out. Just remember that. That's very important. Yeah. Before we transport him into, you can go to Mount. Just remember that. That's very important. Yeah. Before we transport him into the 21st century. Sure. The majority of the populace has no way to influence the power structures.

Yeah. Well, you get a 4,000 assassins bringing out the desert. That's the way to get some of the lives. Yeah, you can maybe do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. So we've been talking about this theme of the exile and this idea of that early Christians believed which is what the Jewish people believed when they went into exile

which is and even when they came home from exile living in Jerusalem again, but without their temple still under the authority of other temple, still under the authority of other empires, that they were waiting for a time to truly be free and to truly be at home. And in the meantime, they could live within the power structure that they're living in and not try to replace it, not try to fight against it. They could even serve it and seek its well-being and be a part of it. But they're not loyal to it. They're loyal to something greater. And then when you live that way, that's such a different way to be a citizen of anywhere. That what's the like handbook for how to

operate that way? Because it's very nuanced. There's not like one right way. You know, there isn't it's not so easy to determine if you're in political office. What does it mean for you? If you work for the city, what does that mean for you? If you're in a military, what does that mean for you? Yes. All these things, it becomes... Yeah. And those were certainly questions, even in this generation of the church, Luke highlights numerous Roman officials or Roman kind of influencers, power brokers who come to faith in Jesus, kind of sprinkles them, mention of them throughout the story. So this was an issue right from the very beginning. Some Christians have a way to influence or play a role in governing or power structures in their culture. Most don't. And most

of the other Christians, for sure, didn't. And so yeah, it's a unique way to exist. and you'll be seen as that's it. We've used the phrase loyalty and subversion It'll be a confusing kind of loyalty So that's the tension that Paul represents in the eyes of his accusers They want to portray him as a dangerous threat and then what Luke also repeats is every single of these Roman officials that he stands in front of They pretty much just keep saying the same things also repeats is every single of these Roman officials that he stands in front of, they pretty much just keep saying the same things. So I've got, I've just kind of lined up their statements about Paul here. So Claudius Lucius, who's the Roman commander, who said, aren't you the Egyptian terrorist?

He, after you arrest him, he writes a letter to Felix the governor, saying, here I'm passing this guy on to you. And he says, I found him to be accused over questions about Jewish law, but under no accusation deserving death or imprisonment, I don't know what I'm gonna do with this guy. You take care of him. Yeah, it's your problem. So he stands, yeah, totally. Yeah. So Felix hangs on to Paul, doesn't know what to do with them for years. Felix moves on to another job, and so another governor comes, Festus. And when he is talking about what to do with Paul, he says,

people are bringing charges against him. Not of such crimes as I was expecting, I know what to do with a terrorist. Right. But they had points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about this dead man Jesus who Paul asserted to be alive. I'm at a total loss about how to investigate this kind of thing. Yeah Right. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah, he just doesn't know what to do He says that again in chapter 25 I found he committed nothing worthy of death and and then he's appealed to the Emperor,

Paul's so tired of getting hung up in mistrials, because he can tell it's all just a ruse. He's just like you guys are keeping me here without any good reason. So he says, I appeal to Caesar, which he can do with Roman citizen. And so he says, well, he's appealed to the Emperor, so I'm quite happy to send him off.

But I don't have anything definite about him to write to my Lord. It seems absurd to me to send a prisoner and to have no charges against him, but here he is. Yeah, here's where we're at. So you can see Luke's playing up this theme of like, this is ridiculous, that Paul, that a Christian, would be accused and held in prison

when they don't represent the kind of threat that the Romans normally imprison people for. But here is imprisoned. Because the Romans don't seem to care, but the Jewish leaders really, really care. That's right. Exactly. And but they're not in charge. That's right. They can't kill them themselves. Correct. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, as an occupied people group. They would want this guy. He's been causing so much trouble. For the same reason, and actually Luke's, again, he's laying Paul's story on top of

Jesus' story. The Jewish leaders, right, could arrest Jesus, but they had to get pilots to sign off on the proof of his crucifixion. The Roman governor. So it's the same, he's portraying Paul and Jesus' parallel right here. The last time that Paul is in front of Festus, Paul actually gives a speech and he tries to persuade Festus and another official there to like listen to the good news on Jesus.

And so, Paul Festus interrupts him, this is in chapter 26, and Festus says, while Paul was saying this in his defense, Festus interrupted in a loud voice. Paul, you're crazy. Your great learning is driving you crazy. A dead man alive. Yeah. King of the world, just stop it. It's talking about. Sitting next to him is the regional king that the Romans appointed over the region, Herod Agrippa. He's the descendant of all the Herids.

And so King Agrippa stood up, along with the governor and Bernice. Everybody's sitting there. And they go aside and they start talking to one another saying, this guy's not worthy of death. We're in Prismet. But Agrippa said to Festus, you know, I would just let him go free, but he appealed the Caesar to Caesar you go. I love this set of scenes, because again, think for Luke's readers, and all the generations they're going to face hostility from their neighbors, from the government, from from Jewish family members, all of these scenarios

that Paul finds himself in, bring you comfort. They begin to help you, people are gonna think I'm crazy. I'm mad. People are gonna think I'm a social threat. Some people are gonna think I'm just a religious quack. And people are gonna know what category to put me in. They're gonna know what category I could end up being in prison. I could end up being released the next day. Luke's using Paul's story as a vehicle of doing what do you call

it? Political theology. He's trying to form Christians to be ready to know how to relate to their culture. I think that's what Luke's doing here. Oh really? Yes. Yeah. Why else would he do the six times? Like two or three would have gotten... Something about the number is the number important.

I mean, to clothers really love numbers. Yes, true. Yeah, I think it's one of these repetition, but each repetition of Paul's trials and more representatives, none of them are identical. And so you end up with this really robust portrait of... So you're saying is readers are going to be in very similar settings where they're going to be doing countercultural type social movement stuff that isn't on its nose wrong or not breaking any roller lugs or laws, but

they're going to have enemies and people are going to know what to do with them. They can go back to these narratives of Paul and kind of be reassured. This is our history. This is how we get treated and this is how we handle ourselves, this is what can be expected when you live in such a unique way. That's right. Yeah, and I get thinking of Luke Acts as a two-part work. This is what happened to Jesus.

Jesus faced the same fate in Jerusalem, misunderstanding, false accusations. He got caught up in unjust power structure that condemned an innocent man. And now here's Paul, going through his own version of the same circumstances. And so together Luke acts, is uniquely emphasizing, more than Matthew, Luke or John, he's emphasizing and filling out these stories of Jesus and now Paul's relationship to the surrounding culture and power structures. It seems a really big deal to him. And it was a pressing issue in the first century, and it still is.

For followers of Jesus to think intelligently about what loyalty and subversion looks like. I just remember that I have another quote here from Kevin Row, I love this guy. I never met him. I would like to meet him. His book, The World Upside Down, it's like Reading Acts and the Greco Roman Age. It's kind of a nerdy title, but dude, the book's amazing. So he's reflecting on this sequence of trials and acts.

He says, the narrative in Acts negotiates a complex tension between heaven and earth when it represents the reality of the Jesus movement. For Luke, God's kingdom is obviously not a human kingdom in the straightforward sense. And so in this way, the Christian mission doesn't threaten Rome in the way that the Parthian kingdom did. Right. Yet, against every spiritualizing impulse, the vision in acts is of a kingdom

that's every bit as much a human and social presence as it is a divine work of the spirit. I like that way of putting it. So he doesn't just spiritualize it as not of this world, a spiritual kingdom of religious people who are thinking about pie in the sky. The story in Acts is a very human social vision of new communities that have social consequences back to the Kevin Row. He says, the kingdom of which Jesus is king is spiritual in that it's driven by God's spirit, but it's material, it's social, it its political, which is to say it takes up space in public. The public disturbances, the riots, Paul on parade before the Roman officials, these all show that in the book of Acts there's no such thing as being a Christian in private. It's good.

To capture that I think, for Luke in Paul's vision of what the church is and what Luke is doing here, like a health barometer of a local church community, is, are we serving and engaging and worshiping Jesus in ways that are public enough to make the neighborhood puzzled about our presence there? And if no one would even notice if our church community didn't exist, we probably weren't following Jesus with as much passion or commitment, as you would want us to. I think that would be the implication. Yeah. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one.

I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one.

I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go to the next one. I'm going to go a little bit of the same. I'm going to do a little bit of the same. I'm going to do a little bit of the same. I'm going to do a little bit of the same. So, it's interesting how he's saying it's not a political movement in that how we understand political movements. So if you wanted a completely new culture, you would bring in the power structure of the new culture, kick out the old power structure,

and now that culture reigns. So to create a new socio-economic cultural movement, the most obvious thing to do is just change the power structure politically. Yeah, I mean that's what occurs to us. Yeah, that's what it occurs to us. And so like he said, like Christians were not a threat to Rome the way the Parthian kingdom was. But then he is saying, but that doesn't mean this isn't going to then change the way the culture. Yes. It should actually be something that affects culture

and makes people go, wait a second, what is this going on? And it's kind of interesting to think about how it's a movement that doesn't need the power structure that typical movement to generate influence. To generate the same kind of change and influence. It's that upside down nature of it, I suppose, in that it's actually being called to not try to assert that kind of authority in that way. But to have the same amount of influence, real practical influence that you would if you had exerted that authority. Yeah, that's right. So you end up in this strange place where the people who are in power can still be in power,

so they're not really threatened, but things have been changing as if their power had been asserted in a way. Yeah, totally. And so it's kind of like, well, what do we do now? Yeah, and then on the ground level, it's that there are groups of people all around our city where the women in these communities are treated with more dignity and are given a level of opportunity and mobility that they don't have in their own homes, but they're allowed to lead and pray and direct things in these in these home communities. like we've said, slaves and masters

have to treat each other like they're equals. Yeah. And that's disturbing. That doesn't make any sense. Keep the women in the slaves in line, right? But then, dang it, they're always feeding the poor people. And they're keeping them off my street. They're all going down there to whatever,

to that guy's house, because that's where they all gather every Sunday. They're all going down there to whatever, to that guy's house, because that's where they all gather every Sunday. They're making our cities more taller. To celebrate that dead guy who they think is alive. You know, it's that. And so you start multiplying those communities. And then there's just where not reading aloud, Luke hasn't included as many here, but he's littered the whole book with stories of just people who meet Jesus in these communities. And they just have these powerful life-transforming experiences. What do you do with it? It's just its own thing. Luke's trying to create a profile of the Jesus movement, that it's its own category of human movement. It doesn't fit.

It's a different way to exert influence and power. Correct. Yeah. Which is. Yeah. And it fits exactly. Now you can go back and reread how Luke has framed and presented Jesus teachings about the kingdom and the gospel of Luke. Yeah. And all of his teachings about money, status, loving your enemies, caring for one another. Yeah, the week will be strong. All of that, you can see like, oh yeah, he was getting us ready for the Book of Acts. Those teachings are the setting the template for the communities that he's gonna depict

in the Book of Acts. Hmm. Yeah. I'm going to do a little bit of the same thing. One other thing that's cool, and this is related, we can kind of land the plane with this. I don't know if this is relevant for the video or not. I just thought this was cool. In all of these trial scenes, almost every one of the representatives of Rome or Jerusalem that Paul stands in front of

is corrupt and underhanded. And Paul is the one who has to remind people how to perform Roman justice. So for example, when the Roman Centurion is gonna Flog him. He's the one who reminds the Roman Centurion. Is it lawful for you to beat somebody who's a Roman citizen like me? And then the guy's like what you're oh my goodness wait. I didn't know you could get fired for this You know Governor Felix Paul's under arrest in Cesaria

for two years, unnecessarily. I mean, just he's of traveling missionary. Two years in prison. Think of what he could have done in those two years. And then Luke tells us, why did he keep him there? He was hoping that Paul would try and bribe him, pay do it. So imagine Paul can Paul raise money? Yeah, right. You know what I'm saying. Paul could pull some strings here if he did too. He can pay money, but he refuses. So he'll unjustly be imprisoned

to uphold the principle of justice to not pay a bribe. That's remarkable. It's really remarkable. Felix, after that leaves Paul imprisoned. It looked at us as a favor. This guy's. He's playing the political game. As a favor to the Jewish leaders. Festus, who replaces Fee-Lix, he wants to send Paul back to Jerusalem. He's like, get this guy if I'm a wrongdoer and I've committed anything worthy of death, kill me.

I don't refuse to die, but listen, you've been holding me here for years. I've done none of the things that I'm being confused of. By Roman law, you can't hand me over. He has to remind the governor of what the Roman law is and then Festus agrees. So this is all this time where he's being transferred from person to person on his way to Rome.

Correct. This is so ironic. So Paul is being depicted as the one who actually cares the most about the Roman legal system. And it's so broken. It's in his favor right now. It is, but that is fascinating because the system so broken, it can imprison unjustly, an un-condamped man for years. And so he could let the system do that, but all the while he's going to remind every leader that they're not actually following the law.

This is just an interesting principle that Paul actually wants the Roman system to be the best that it can be. It's almost... are you with me? It's like he believes in justice even more than the Romans does. Right. Not only is he not a threat to the political order, he actually believes in the Roman ideals of justice more than the Roman leaders do, which highlights the farce that is he's in prison.

But I think it's interesting principle that like Paul's portrayed as identifying values. It's like an Uber Roman. Yeah, totally. Yeah, not only is he not a threat politically. Yeah. He actually, the Kingdom of God will bring... Make some of the best Roman citizens. Well, make the best, yes, it will bring...

Because what's the best of the Roman citizens? It's beautiful ideals of justice and peace. How they went about accomplishing those was often really screwed up. But to me, that's just so interesting. That Luke's portraying the Jesus movement as actually bringing out the best in the human cultures it goes into exposing how short they fall short

of even their own ideals. Yeah, that is cool. I like that because there is a lot of tension when you start to talk about how Christians are, you know, there's this third way and exiles and there's a home that's coming. This isn't our home. That kind of maybe start to feel overly separatist. Yes, overly separatist. It's draw mentality.

Yeah. To where it's like, yeah, you think of yourself as, I'm sorry, I'm gonna use America, cause it's all I know. I live here in America. But, you know, you think of yourself as American, but man, no, you're thinking too small. Like, it's all, it's about God's kingdom of stuff.

Which is true. But what's cool about this is this you could take an opposite tact and be like, what would it look like to be a really good American? Yeah, what are the most beautiful American ideals? Yeah, and how can we go about representing those and championing those, so that when you're accused or when people take a look at your life and examine it closely, they'll realize that the things that you cared about, they care about too. Yeah. And that's going to be an overlap. That's right.

Yeah, because of, yeah, the idea is that my neighbors could see my house church or my church community as weird religious quacks, the weird hang-ups about sexual ethics. But these church communities are embodying my city leader's commitment to the homeless. Way more than my city leaders actually are. Right. Something. I'm Portland, right? This is homeless crisis. Yeah. And I actually, I don't know the numbers,

but at least half of our city's effort to provide housing and recovery programs for the homeless in Portland are run by non-Christian nonprofits or local churches. Yeah. It's that kind of thing. Yeah. People have a category for that.

But what are other ideals that are said to be values of my city or my people group that actually we embody very poorly. And what would it mean for a church community to hold a mirror up to our culture by actually embodying those even more consistently? Such a cool idea. And that Luke highlighted that here. I think that's cool. That is cool. You're familiar with embrace organ here in Portland.

Tell me about it. It's about the church getting involved in foster care system. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. But it's attitude is let's let's serve the foster care system. The system is not to blow up the system.

Let's not try to hate on it or subvert it. And create an alternate one. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to be it. I think it's called DHS. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. That's a hard job. Yes, it is. And the children that are in these situations, that's a hard life. Yeah. And the families that bring these children into their homes, that's a high calling and that's a hard thing to do. And what if we could just make the whole thing a little bit easier by serving all those

different people? And they've been doing a really incredible job and I went to this fundraising meal for it and most of the room was people who they were trying to convince to get money to it. But a big portion of the room where people just worked for DHS and those people were just so you know, so happy to be there with a bunch of Christians who cared about these ideals. Just as much as they cared about these things. Yeah. It's good.

Yeah. That's a good example. Certainly in Luke and in Acts, caring for the vulnerable, a huge theme. That's a huge theme. Another facet of it is one that Paul highlights, which is about like law and justice, dealing with corruption, right? And under handed power politics, or money politics, I mean, that's what Paul's up against here, is how the system's being rigged. Yeah, you put the jail as a favor to someone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and Paul's just like, did. That's not what the Roman ideals of justice are about.

That's a whole other facet, you know, of how power structures work that provides a calling and a vocation, I think, for followers of Jesus, to embody justice. And, dude, the moment you wade into political arenas, attempting to bring reform, getting ready to face my position.

But yes, so that's the full orbed portrait here of Paul. Paul becomes Luke's showpiece for how Christians can discover a vocation and a calling to be change agents, but not through the normal means that we think of changing or influencing. And it's all orchestrated by God's Spirit. Paul didn't orchestrate all the years of imprisonment, but that imprisonment becomes a way for Paul to influence all kinds of people that he never would have come in contact with, had he been out planting churches. Yeah, it's cool. Another way to think about that last thing I was still reminiding on is when you're telling someone to adopt the way of Jesus, you're not telling them to

stop being whatever the thing is that they identify with. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's right. Like whether it's their nationality or their hobby or their whatever it is, it's to want that thing to be, like the best version of what it could be of itself. Yeah, yes. Because switching your legions can feel so dramatic and drastic to be like, okay, well, this isn't my home anymore.

And so I can't care about all these things anymore. Versus like, no, I want you to care more than you cared. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. You really care about being a citizen of America. You really care about being American. I want you to care even more about what does that mean? Yes.

One of the things that you think makes America special. And how does that align with the justice and peace that God wants and how can we seek after that more? I'm supposed that we could come into scenarios where that doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah, a couple of things come to mind. One is, I think Paul and his letter to the Philippians.

There's that little, it's easy to take out of context as a little inspiring one liner, but where he says, finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good reputation, if anything is excellent and worthy of praise,

focus on that. It's so good. And he's not talking about just religious things. He wants the Philippians to look out in Philippi and be like, there's a lot of things screwed up around here. But there's so many values in my city that actually are really honorable

and that are beautiful and pure. And imagine how much more beautiful they could be once they're guided by Jesus in the Spirit and so focus on that. It also makes me think of the final scene of the New Jerusalem in Revelation chapter 22 where there's that line about the New Jerusalem, it's the city on the hill and all the nations are streaming into it and it says all the nations are bringing their Their honorable things their glory. Mm-hmm. And it's as if the redeemed Productivity of the nations is all contributing to the new garden city. Mm-hmm. So imagine Silicon Valley. Mm-hmm. Yeah, what's the best of that? What's the best?

Everything has a dirty underbelly. Everything's got an underbelly, but usually that underbelly is also matched by some ideals. Yeah. That started the thing in the first place. Yeah, things typically have a good ideal that begins with, and then human nature creeps in and stirs it up, and there's a dirty underbelly.

But you can think about any, I mean, I'm sure there's an exception to this. There's probably just some city that was founded on like, we're just gonna make our lives miserable and everyone else. But I think most, most of the time when people get together, like, okay, we're gonna do it right. We're gonna care about each other, we're gonna make, we're gonna advance. It's best we know how. Totally. And they all have different flavors. Silicon Valley has its own flavor. Hong Kong is gonna have its own flavor.

Yeah, exactly. And its own problems. But what's the best version of that place? Correct. The redeemed healed version of that. And it won't stop being at that point. Won't stop being Hong Kong. That's right.

Yeah. And won't stop being Portland that point. It won't stop being Hong Kong. It won't stop things. It won't stop being Portland. Yes, that's right. It's the new creation version of just like in Paul's vision of the resurrection. The resurrected Jesus was Jesus. Yeah, it didn't stop being Jesus. It was a redeemed human 2.0 version of Jesus in the same way, the new creation version of Hong Kong or Portland

or Paris or Johannesburg or whatever Sydney right imagine yeah what Jakarta yeah, what all these beautiful human cultures can are capable of Full of people whose hearts and minds have been healed by Jesus and just imagine. And that's Revelation 22. And there's really cool. Coming in. Yeah. And in the meantime, you got Paul hanging out in prisons, right? Around the Roman system saying, listen, you guys live up to your ideals, please.

Yeah. They're really good ideals. Yeah. Let's live up to them. I think that's probably what Jesus meant when he called his followers the salt of the earth. That they are preserving the earth. Yeah, well, it's a rich image. I think Jesus chose it because it actually has many possible meanings. Preservative, but also seasonal. It makes it better.

It makes it tasty. It makes it taste good. It brings out the flavor. A little more. Yeah. It brings out what is good and preserves it all at the same time. Yeah. That's what Paul seems to be doing in prison. Hahaha.

Hahaha. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Bible Project Podcast. If you're new to the show, you might not know that every podcast episode has an accompanying set of show notes. These are kind of a rundown of everything we've talked about, including any book references that Tim mentions. If you're listening to this on an app and your smartphone, likely the show notes are available to you if you just swipe up.

Give that a shot. And if you're listening online, like on our website, the show notes are available to you if you just swipe up. Give that a shot. And if you're listening online, like on our website, the show notes are also there. This episode is the second to last episode in our Axe podcast series. Next week will be the last one. This has been an ongoing series that we started a while ago, took a break and are now finishing.

And all of these conversations led up to the production of a series of videos, four videos, looking at the story of the acts of Jesus through his apostles. You can watch those videos there free on our website, thebibletproject.com. Today's episode was edited and produced by Dan Gummel, the theme music by the band Tense.

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