The Kingdom Not Anti-Semitic

The Spirit compelled Paul to go to Jerusalem. There, the local elders met him and told him that he needed to prove himself to the local church by sponsoring four men in a vow. That process was nearly complete when Paul was spotted in the Temple by Jews from Asia, perhaps from the Ephesus area, who instantly instigated a riot over it. Paul is rescued from the riot by the Roman garrison stationed adjacent to the Temple grounds in the Antonia fortress, only to have to defend himself five times in a row in speeches to various audiences. That process occupies the next five chapters. I want you to realize that Paul the prisoner defending the gospel and himself as proclaimer of it is important to Luke. In fact, it's just as important as Paul the missionary preaching the gospel and planting churches. For the rest of Acts, Paul doesn't plant any more churches or go on any more missionary journeys. He is a prisoner, and he gives speeches that clarify why he should not be a prisoner and why his ministry was no threat to the Empire.

We encounter the first of those speeches in our text this evening. Paul stands up to defend himself against a charge that we, anachronistically, could label "anti-Semitism." He defends himself against this charge with two major points: First, that he is incredibly Jewish, of the most strict and conservative kind; second, that he did not choose to become a witness to the Gentiles, but was called to it by God. Thus, he is not anti-Semitic, both because he is Jewish (even, as he says in the next chapter, a Pharisee) and because he really wanted to minister to his own people in Jerusalem.