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God's Angry Man

Dr. Gene Scott's Nitro Pill Series
Christ's Call to Courage
VF - 1119
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Dr. Gene Scott Ph.D
Stanford University

 

 

Then last: Acts 23.  Paul has been told by God to go deliver the Word at Rome.  Paul’s not difficult to figure out when you study him.  He considers himself the most honored of mankind that one as unworthy as he is is chosen by God to tell the Gentile nations—all ethnic groups other than Jew—that God didn’t just choose the Jew to be His family.  He also chose out of every ethnic group, and the world is totally ruled as he knows it by Rome, and he’s not ashamed of this good news that he’s proclaiming because it’s the dynamite, “power of God unto salvation”—and so where’s the most powerful center of the world ruled by Satan?  He, Paul, is gonna take this dynamite message to the most powerful center of the then-known world, and that’s his mission and reason for being.  And in getting there, he’s going by Jerusalem to deliver some gifts he’d garnered along the way for them and to deliver another testimony there to his brethren in the flesh, and then he’s gonna go—his brethren the Jew that he lamented for and would be an apostate himself if he could, by that, save them; he loved them.  But his message is other ethnic groups and Rome is the center of it all. 

         He goes.  He gets torn apart by a mob, beaten, rescued by a Roman guard and then he’s in prison and conspirators, the word comes to him, have planned a way to kill him.  He’s gonna die in this cell and in the coldness of that night with his calling and purpose apparently thwarted and his ministry ended, the Lord appeared to him and said “As thou has testified of me in Jerusalem, you’re gonna testify of me in Rome.”  I would add the word, though it’s not in the original, “As you’ve testified of me in Jerusalem”—because it’s implied—“no matter what it looks like to you tonight Paul, I called you, I sent you, you’re still gonna bear witness in Rome.  I’m in charge, not this mob; not even these Roman guards.  In fact, I….”  If I wanted to ad lib what

 


we know because we know the rest of the story, God’s gonna use that very Roman imprisonment to carry him to Rome.  But the Lord appears and says “Paul, be of good cheer.”  Whistle in the dark, grin like Pat Robertson, have a hallelujah fit, laugh for Jesus, blow bubbles for Jesus.  I hope those who preach a caricatured, watered-down, disgrace-for-a-man kind of Jesus end up in hell married to one, man or a woman.  

‘Traditions have made void the Word of God’ and not the least of the application of that phrase is making void the Living Word of God who stepped on the stage of history.  They called Him a ‘winebibber and glutton.’  Not true, but they based it on the fact that He enjoyed Himself with sinners.  In this same chapter’s the call of Matthew.  Matthew was the lowest reprobate sinner in the view of religious leaders of the day to be found in that country.  He was a sell-out to the Romans, who collected taxes for the Romans, and made his living by a surplus he could garner off the top.  Nothing was hated in the Jewish community of Jerusalem more than the tax collector for Rome—a sell-out.  Not a Roman doing it—a Jew selling out to the Romans making profit off of the taxes.  And Luke has it—Matthew doesn’t tell that himself—Luke has it, and they call, if you have trouble sorting it out in some places he’s called Levi; in other places Matthew—same man, as Simon and Peter—he threw a party. 

Jesus passed by; he’s sitting at the custom table and Jesus said “Follow me.”  He didn’t say “Well, I gotta arrange my books.  I’ve got certain things I have to do.  I have to take this money and put it in my hiding place,” wherever it is.  “Straightway he forsook his table and followed Jesus.”  A pariah of society, here comes Jesus who wants him to follow Him, and He didn’t say “Go home Matthew and disguise yourself till nobody will know who you were, and hide

 
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