Speeches in Acts - Study 05 - Paul at Antioch

[Resource Manager]

SPEECHES IN THE ACTS

 

STUDY 5

 

PAUL AT ANTIOCH

 

ACTS CHAPTER 13

 

Introduction to Study 5 from tape: This is the voice of Wilbraham. This is the fifth in a series of six talks delivered at the Bible School in Wilbraham in August, 1952, by Brother John Carter. In this talk, Brother Carter summarizes the speeches of the apostles in their historical aspect, outlines the beginnings of Christianity after Pentecost, traces the organisation of the first Christian churches and recites the choosing of Paul as an apostle by the risen Lord. Here is Brother Carter.

 

Address by Brother John Carter: Dear Brethren and Sisters. We shall have only one more class together on this subject, and it may therefore be opportune that we try and gather up a little something of the thread of Acts in order that we may see these speeches in their historical framework and so that perhaps understand why Luke has included them. He tells us of the beginnings of Christianity on the Day of Pentecost after the Lord had commissioned them to go into all the world, that they must begin at Jerusalem and pass outward to Samaria and to Galilee and so to all parts of the earth. We have seen the message that was preached through Peter on the day of Pentecost. We have seen also in a second address, an enlargement of that message, and in the conclusion of that chapter, we find them before the Jewish authorities, and find that the opposition of the Jewish authorities was met by the assertion, that this was a development of the Divine plan, and that in Christianity they had the flowering as it were, of that which was part of their Jewish faith. Great fear came upon the church in its extension, and as many as heard these things believed.

 

And so Luke passes on in his narrative to tell us of Jewish toleration being established as a result of the apostles’ testimony before the authorities and the counsel of Gamaliel. He tells us of the organisation of the church, and of their internal difficulties in the matter of Ananias and Sapphira, but shows that the Spirit was at work in those days, guiding and directing the infant church in all that was done.

 

When we come to Stephen, we find the beginning of divergence with Judaism, a divergence because of the innate traditionalism of the Jewish people particularly as headed up in their rulers and the insistence by the believers in Christ, that God required worship in spirit and in truth and the formalism, the ritual connected with the Law, were part of a typical system, a school master system, a tutor slave that would lead them on to the fulness of the Divine revelation, and that had been manifested in one who was the Son of God, and God was really wanting not a building made of materials, but that the Divine purpose was to dwell in men and women, and that was the goal of the Divine purpose in calling out men and women in order that he might dwell with them, and to dwell in them.

 

Stephen’s activity led to the spreading abroad of the disciples and the carrying of the message. And in this section we are told how Stephen’s testimony bore fruit for the man who became the persecutor of the Christians in the bitterness and in the zeal of his heart, found it difficult to kick against goads. And part of the zeal of Paul in putting the Christians to death, probably originated in the fact that he wasn’t able to confute the argument that had been advanced by Stephen in his address. And so the man in the bitterness of his thoughts, and the argumentation of his own mind, was being shaped and prepared for the revelation of Jesus Christ on the way to Damascus, and Paul was apprehended in order that he might become the Lord’s ambassador to the Gentiles. And so it was indicated by Luke in this way that it was the risen Lord who chose his ambassador, and he was directing and guiding the progress of affairs and the man has now been chosen after the preaching to Judaism, to the Jews and the establishment of the church. The time has now come for the man to be chosen for the extension of the work. We have an illustration of Divine ways, which we all might take account of in the fact that although Saul was now chosen, he had to go through a long period of quiet training before the hour struck for him to begin his real work. If he was converted, say about the year 33, or so, it was a dozen or so years before at last Barnabas went to seek Saul.

[Resource Manager]

We can quite understand such a zealous man not without some impetuosity that marked Paul, that at once he thought it was his job to begin and preach Christ, he even thought that because he’d been a persecutor and then had changed, there was in that very fact something that might appeal in his testimony to the Jews and that they might receive him. But the Lord told him his work lay among the Gentiles. But he was quite a number of years away in Syria, and in Cilicia, and he was there preaching. All that they heard in Judea, was that he who was a persecutor, now preached the faith that he had destroyed. But it was all like the trying of his wings. He went away into Arabia first of all to whatever part, we do not know, but we can understand that the man must have done some rethinking of his faith. It pleased God to reveal His Son in, in him, and that revelation of His Son in Paul could not have been done without some entire re orientation of the thought of the apostle. The old habits of his thought had to be broken down and new habits of thought established. It is true there was revelation but that revelation through Paul and the visions that he saw, which he tells us about in his letter to the Corinthians, had all to be re thought into the very fabric of his own mind, so that the message given through Paul became Paul’s own faith, and Paul’s own guiding light.

 

And so it was that that large hearted man, Barnabas, who is seen in these very generous attitudes in the Acts of the Apostles, recognized that Saul was the man for the developing situation, when as the result of the Gospel having been spread abroad, through the martyrdom of Stephen, there had been established in Antioch in Syria, Antioch on the Orontes, a thriving Christian church, made up for the most part of Gentile believers, before that indeed as Luke tells us, there had been an official reception of a Gentile, through the ministry of Cornelius.

 

I think, as we compare the Galatian letter with Acts, we must conclude that Paul had been preaching to Gentiles before, but it wasn’t until there had been an official recognition of the acceptance of the Gentiles, through the work of Peter with Cornelius, that the time was ripe for Paul to enter upon the official ministry as the Lord’s ambassador to the Gentiles.

 

Events were in a formative state, gradually developing, guided along the development by the risen Lord. It was God’s work proceeding among men, so Luke, again and again indicates. But Luke has shown what Peter taught in his preaching, and he tells us in a rather more summary way, in the tenth and eleventh chapters of Acts, the things that he preached unto Cornelius. It is one of the addresses of which we have had not time to look, but you can if you will apply yourself to a similar examination of the address of Peter to Cornelius, when he went to see him as we’ve endeavoured to follow in looking at these other speeches that are recorded.

 

But now that the time has come for the work to be extended to the Gentiles, when Paul and Barnabas are on their first missionary journey, sent out by the mother gentile church, at Antioch on the Orontes, it is therefore fitting that Luke should give us an illustration of the message that Paul gave. He’s given us the illustration of Peter’s preaching, he must now give us an illustration of Paul’s preaching, and in this chapter, he gives us the address at Pisidian Antioch, where there was a Jewish synagogue, but where there were so many Gentiles interested, that the synagogue, was crowded by men who were either worshippers at the Gate, or interested Gentiles, who themselves, were so moved by the address that they asked Paul to continue his work. And it is evident that Luke regards this episode in Pisidian Antioch, as something in the way of a watershed, it was something like a turning point. The reception by the Gentiles of the message and the opposition of the Jews, led Paul to say that God had granted unto the Gentiles this grace and this pardon unto life and that they would turn unto the Gentiles. But it was a message given to a mixed community.

 

Now, we have other addresses of Paul, of which we shall not have time to look, but Luke finds it necessary as part of his story to give as an illustration of Paul’s address to a company of elders. This is part of his teaching, the intimate teaching of a leader of the Christian community to his fellow disciples. And then we are told of Paul’s contact with philosophic thought of his day in the city of Athens, and what happened there. We’ll try next week¹ to gather up the threads of these points, to show how they culminate in the events connected with the trial of Paul, and the addresses that he gave, incidental thereto.

 

But look at this book of Acts, just note the major divisions as indicated in the analysis that you were given at the beginning, and take each section, make a note of the events narrated in each section and you’ll see the masterly grasp with which Luke finds his way through the events of those developing days of Christian life, in order that he might show, how Christianity came into being, what it was, it’s relation to Judaism, and it will bring us to what is the climax of the book, the presentation of the Christian case before the bar of the highest authority in order that it might be determined then, the standing of Christian people, in the eyes of Roman law.

 

So, the events move forward to the trial of Paul, and in this book as we will try and show next week², we shall see that there is an emphasis upon events here, there and again, all pointing to the circumstances in the life of Paul and of those who preceded him, in relation to the temporal authorities. In other words, the larger purpose of the Acts in the Divine purpose, being just for a moment put aside and doing it from the more immediate purpose, it has to do with the standing of Christianity before the temporal authorities, but of that, more next week.

_______

 

¹ Refer comment/correction in Question Session

² Refer comment/correction in Question Session

[Resource Manager]

Now there is one interesting thing in connection with this address at Pisidian Antioch. We showed you in the first address, that the Galatian cities that Paul visited, were those of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Derbe, and Lystra. That is, this address in the thirteenth chapter of Acts, was given to the same company of people to whom Paul wrote his letter. Those who received the letter to the Galatians, were the people to whom Paul had preached on this occasion. There had been defection, a very rapid defection, a defection which moved Paul to the very quick, a defection which so stirred him, that he wrote the letter, which we call to the letter to the Galatians, which perhaps shows Paul at his most intense in his feeling, it burns and it vibrates, and we don’t understand it unless we catch the very feeling that Paul puts into it, because of the defection of these people, endeared to his heart, as the first fruits of his first mission among the Gentiles. But, if Paul is going to reclaim them to the things that he preached, we must expect then that there would be a correspondence in many respects between the things that he emphasizes in the letter, and the things that he preached to them, and it is in a contemplation and a comparison of the letter to the Galatians and what is spoken in this speech, that we find one of those, among very, very many that there are, internal evidences to the truth of the scriptures. For there is an obvious independence between the record in the Acts and the epistles to the Galatians. Luke doesn’t mention many of these things although he knew them so well, he is content to write his narrative with the particular purpose that he has in view, and therefore any correspondence that is seen to exist between the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles is all the more important as showing on the one hand the truthfulness of Acts and the truth of the epistles.

 

Now, although with several points marked of correspondence between this address and the Galatian letter, we shan’t have time to go into all of them, but we shall just touch on one and go into another with a little more fulness. It has been suggested that the readings for the day according to a table of readings that the Jews followed in the synagogue, gave Paul the starting point of his address. The lessons for the 44th Sabbath in the year, were Deuteronomy 2, and Isaiah 1, and references in Deuteronomy 2 and Isaiah 1 do appear to give Paul the starting point of his address.

 

Now there is no evidence as far as we know that these Jewish lessons did exist and were followed in Paul’s day, but so many of the Jewish practices have their roots in a very remote antiquity that it is not impossible that they had this system of readings just as it was probable that the reading in Isaiah, was the reading for the day when the Lord by a Divinely guided coincidence stood up for to read in the synagogue of Nazareth, and there was given him the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and he unrolled it to the place where it was written and in words and in cadences such as they must never had heard from any other lips read with a meaningfulness, the word of Isaiah, up to the point at which he closed the roll and sat down, in order that he might expound it. And so we’ll away to Pisidian Antioch, for a few minutes, and try and catch the words of Paul as starting from these two chapters, he traverses the history of his people.

 

Now, you will observe that Stephen traversed the history of his people, he made the selections of these events which had particular bearing upon the case that he was presenting. But in all these addresses, we find that they turned back to the Old Testament Scriptures. May we remind you again that the Lord gave them the pattern upon which they must work, when after his resurrection, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself, and they caught the example of the Lord, and followed it, and their testimony was a reasoning out of the scriptures, concerning what God had revealed he would accomplish, and a matching with the prophecies the facts of the history of Jesus thus establishing that God had sent Jesus, that the work that Jesus had accomplished, had been foretold, and then in the light of the accomplished fact, they had to show the results, the objects, the Divine aims, that were involved in the work that Jesus had done, which had in fact culminated in his death, and his resurrection. And so the central point of their testimony, was the work of Jesus Christ with the light shed upon it from Old Testament Scriptures, a light that was intensified as they brought to bear upon it the light of the facts connected with Jesus Christ in the accomplished history.

[Resource Manager]

Now we’re not going to go through this in detail, it may be that these detailed studies, are a little heavy to follow, but having followed those three, that we have looked at before, you see what can be done, and how they can be opened up, and how indeed they must be opened up if we would adequately understand the message that was given. And so, we’ll touch a little more lightly on some of the higher points in this address.

 

Let us sketch its theme, God hath chosen these people and exalted them or nourished them. The words “chosen” and “nourished”, come from the book of Deuteronomy, and of Isaiah, and Paul says there was a Divine work in our history, and God brought them up, and nourished them. There was a progress in our history, as God unfolded His purpose in connection with the history of our people and so they were brought out of Egypt, and delivered, as God had promised, he nourished them for forty years in the wilderness, he destroyed seven nations and brought them into the land where they were for four hundred years. Now although God had thus nourished and brought up this people passing from the childhood of their race, onward through youth, and on to manhood, an argument that he develops with regard to the Divine purpose in history in the Galatian letter. He points out that God gave them Saul, the son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin, a little personal touch, for Saul, himself was a Benjaminite and he’s touching back on their race and perhaps there was added a little more pathos in that allusion since he was of that tribe because he mentions it to point out that although God had chosen the race to be His people, the problem of Israel’s calamities were to be explained by the fact that it wasn’t upon a flesh basis that men even of Israel’s race were approved, for here was a man ideal from every human point of view, massive in structure, not without a certain physical courage, attractive, and goodly to look upon, such as men desire to see in a leader, but he lacked moral courage, and he was sadly lacking in faith. And while they desired a king and God gave unto them Saul, He removed him, when he had removed Him. In other words, God in His guidance of the nation, has regard to their responses to Him, and as God had removed Saul, so He could for the time being annul the privileges of the nation, and bring them into bondage to the Gentiles, but if that were so, what were the principles that were governing God in the selection of men who would, and through whom His purpose could be worked out.

 

And so he reminds them that David succeeded Saul, and he emphasizes as you will have noticed, that he was a man after God’s own heart, and the purpose of God is being worked out, says Paul through men of the qualities that God desires, men in whom God can be well pleased, men who have those characteristics in which God delights, ‘A man after mine own heart’ with what a personal touch, does God reveal Himself. There’s something human about this, and it comes again and again in the revelation concerning God, and we are quite sure Paul wasn’t unmindful of these little human feelings, just think of his reference concerning Abram in the letter to the Hebrews ‘wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God’. Who would think of attributing to God something being after His own heart, or that God wasn’t ashamed. It’s the figure meiosis, a figure which it is said, characterizes the English people, where they understate a thing, and when God says he is not ashamed to be called their God, or when Paul says it of God it really means that God was happy and glad to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because they were men of such faith, and so it is we have this feeling of God’s response to men in whom He delights, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart”. And so Paul is dwelling upon the qualities that are required in men who will have a place in the abiding purpose of God for he traces from David the fact that the Messiah was of his line and if it should be that God could reject Saul, and choose David, so God could reject all their earthly rulers in order that he might choose another man in whom in the superlative sense it could be said he was ‘one after God’s own heart.’

[Resource Manager]

That’s the theme there, that Paul is bringing out, and so of this man’s seed hath God, according to His promise raised unto Israel a Saviour. He might have said a Messiah, but he doesn’t, a Saviour, because Messiahship has to do with rule, but Saviourhood is a larger concept altogether. The Saviour must in the outworking be their King and be their Messiah, but a man could be their king who couldn’t fulfil the function of their Saviour, and so Saviour is a larger term. And in order that he might be the Saviour, it was necessary that there should be the life of the Saviour upon earth, fulfilled in the conditions and circumstances of the life of Jesus. But while he was born a man, Paul would have them remember that while of this man’s seed, the Saviour was the Son of God. And so, there was a forerunner before him, as John fulfilled his course, preaching the baptism of repentance to all the people, he testified that one should come after him, who was so much greater than himself, that he wasn’t even worthy to do the servants part, of unloosing the latchets of his sandals.

 

And so Paul says while he was of the seed of David, he was the manifestation of God, our God, the Holy One of Israel, in the midst of His people. Consider His royal majesty, kings had runners before them, and God was careful to observe that honour was given to those who represented Him, when Ahab had been proved so faulty, so faithless, so dishonourable, and so disgraced in the contest with Elijah at Carmel, yet God empowered the prophet who had been the means of his disgrace to run before him as the runner before the king, in order that the majesty of the position of the Lord’s anointed might not itself be dishonoured and it must have been one of the most unusual sights, that ever happened in Israel’s history, to see the prophet who had challenged the baal prophets and disgraced the king, speeding away across Esdraelon on foot, powered by the Spirit of God, before the infamous king, who yet was the Lord’s anointed. How much more then, when the Son of God is in the midst of Israel it was fitting that there should be a forerunner, and John is pictured in the prophetic word, as the one who ran before the king, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’. For God was going to be revealed in a Theophany such as they had never known in all their history, in that a child, virgin born, was to be revealed in their midst, who would bear the name Immanuel, God with us.

 

And so John came before the royal Majesty to be revealed in their midst, who was raised up to be their Saviour. And so he says, ‘This word of salvation is sent unto you’, but he has to show them how this word was historically exhibited, how this salvation had been wrought out in history. And so he passes in review what had happened in connection with Jesus.

 

[v.27]

“For they that dwell at Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.”

 

And so he would review them, the testimony of the prophets concerning the rejection of the Messiah and show that many things had to be fulfilled concerning him.

 

[v.28]

“And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.”

 

[v.29]

“And when they had fulfilled …”

– and so emphatic is he about this that we find it twice in three verses that -

“they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.”

 

And now we want to turn aside in a moment to what he has to say in the Galatian letter. But look at this which Paul brings into prominence, “they took him down from the tree”. Peter referred to the tree, and we read the tree and think nothing at all about it. But suppose we substitute the gallows, or the executioner’s block, or anything that indicates the utter shame and indignity of a death that men impose. But here was one that was a public exhibition. There could be nothing more public than a man nailed to a stake. Not a decorated cross such as “christian” art has represented for us. They had no time to trouble with that. A tree trunk was sufficient, a stake, and nailed to that with the shame of nakedness was hung one whom Paul recognised now to be the Lord of glory, the Son of God. And this bit hard into Paul’s thought, just as the shame of the proclamation that he was the Messiah bit into Israel’s thought. And they spoke of Jesus as the hanged one, as an expression of their utter execration of the man. For a man who came to the gallows was surely shown to be an impostor. How could Israel’s king come to such an end? How could it be that one who was approved of God came to such a shameful end? It seemed to them utterly impossible.

 

And Pilate knew how he hurt them when he wrote over the cross, “this is Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews”. It was part of Pilate’s meanness, for he knew he was getting a little of his own back because they had forced his hands. But in his meanness he perceived how much it would sting. And so much did it hurt them, that they went to Pilate and said, ‘Don’t say that, but say he said’ – if you want to write it, let at any rate the shame of it rebound on him. He said that he was the king of the Jews, but look at him now. But Pilate would not have that, ‘What I have written, I have written and there it stands’. But if we can enter into the feelings of the Jews concerning what crucifixion meant, and how they felt that the fact that Jesus had been crucified was an utter disproof of his claim, we can see then how this crucifixion of Jesus must needs play a part in the thought of those who believed in Jesus. And they rejoined by saying, ‘this very death, which for you is such a stumbling-block is itself the Divine way for man’s salvation’. ‘We determined’, said Paul, ‘to know nothing among you, than Messiah Jesus and him a crucified one.’ And the Christians took the very sting out of it by showing that it was the very instrument for the final rendering of honour and glory to God.

[Resource Manager]

For this was a public exhibition. ‘God hath set forth Jesus’, Paul could say writing to the Romans, ‘to declare his righteousness.’ And Jesus had said before, at his baptism, when John had been proclaiming that “all flesh is grass, and the glory of man is as the flower of grass”, when men had gone down into the water, confessing their sins. And in turn Jesus stepped down with no sins to confess, can we wonder John said “I have need to be baptised of thee”. But sinless though he was, as a man mortal as John had been proclaiming, a mortal under a dispensation which had its source in the Divine decree that man must die because of sin, the race must die, its all bound up in the bundle of life together. There’s a solidarity of the race which the Bible recognises. Therefore Jesus must show God’s righteousness, and fulfil all righteousness, in the symbolic death. But symbolism isn’t enough, it had to be wrought out in deed and in blood, which brought him to the cross, it had not to be done in a comer, it had to be done in a way that it was placarded before the eyes of all.

 

And now, if we want to see how Paul presented the cross, and what it meant to him, we must turn to the Galatian letter and so, let us there for a minute or two, remembering he’s arguing to reclaim these Galatians, and in the first verse of chapter three, he says, “Oh foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes, Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth.” There’s a vigour, about Paul’s language, “before whom Christ was placarded,” he says, just as the placards on the wall are there with all their vigour of announcement, pressing themselves as it were upon the attention of men, “before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been placarded, crucified among you,” as though in bringing the knowledge of the crucifixion of Jesus, he had done it in such intensity and with such vigour, that they had actually seen him, as it were, crucified among them. It is not without its object lesson, Brethren and Sisters, that Christ crucified must be seen in some vividness, not with a morbid dwelling upon the details of his suffering, but to see his suffering and to see them in the light of the Divine reason for them. To see the Divine purpose and the Divine principles that were seen in the death of Jesus and he says that because he has been giving them a reminiscence in chapter two of his preaching among them. In chapter two, he tells us that even Peter defected. When Peter was in Antioch, he’d dissembled when some of the Judaisers had complained about him eating with Gentiles, and Paul saw that unless Peter was brought to line, the whole position of his work was at stake. And so he begins to reason with Peter, verse 11, “and when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed” and the whole reason for Paul recounting this is, because what he said to Peter which won Peter back, was the very message that he himself had proclaimed, when he was among the Galatian cities.

 

It is because of the parallel between what he said to Peter, and what he had taught them, that this account of the meeting with Peter has its relevance, and therefore it is, that as he proceeds in his argument in his recounting of what he said to Peter, Paul forgets he’s recounting Peter, and he is back again in Pisidian Antioch talking to them. Read what commentary you will, you’ll find that all writers with feeling, discern that somewhere in this address to Peter, in this second chapter, Paul leaves Peter, and he is back in Pisidian Antioch. But it is the same message, they differ at which verse the break comes, in fact it is gradual and merges into it, but in it, he says, verse 16, “knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we,” you Peter, and you Galatians, “even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law, shall no flesh be justified.” And if it means that we finding justification in Christ, must of necessity recognize ourself to be sinners, so be it, and if Paul builds again the things which he destroyed he would make himself a transgressor. “For I”, says Paul, “through the law”, through his experience of the law, with its inevitable bringing to light the sinfulness of man, “when the law, came ...” he says, when my father said, Paul, this is God’s law and we must not do that, you must not do this and you must not do that,” and Paul became aware of the impulses in him, that were contrary to it, and he says “sin sprang to life” and he felt that the penalty of the law broken must be his, “and I died.” Have you ever watched a child told by its parents, “you must not do that?” And you see the very impulses of human nature welling up, and the battle going on,” I won’t, but I’d better,” well, it’s in us just the same, we camouflage it and hide it sometimes but if we’ll analyse ourselves, there is nothing more searching than the seventh chapter of the letter to the Romans, and Paul says, “I through the law,” am dead to the law, but it was only that he might then come into another relationship whereby “I might live unto God.”

[Resource Manager]

And now, verse 20, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” “I am crucified with Christ”, and your thought goes, as Paul must have vividly portrayed it, to what happened, just outside the gates of Jerusalem when Jesus was led out to be crucified with two others with him, and they were crucified with Christ. And that is what being crucified with Christ means, and Paul though not present probably at the scene of the crucifixion, yet had as probably a member of the Sanhedrin, or at any rate, closely connected with it, approved the action of his nation, and although he knew they jeered at the man on the cross, he’d approved their jeering. Although they’d mocked him, he’d approved their mocking, and yet now he had come to realize, that there was the dynamic energy of God for man’s salvation in these facts of the crucifixion, and that instead of being in the ring gathered round the cross, he had got to leave the ring, and cross over and to see that what was being done in that man, there crucified, was such, that he must identify himself with it, and you have here the most vivid picture of the idea of representation for what was Jesus doing there? He’d gone there voluntarily, although they had arrested him, he sought not to escape, he knew that it was the end, that the Father had appointed him, “we go up to Jerusalem” he said, “and the Son of Man will be rejected and be crucified”. He hadn’t any illusions about what the end would be, and so clearly did he see it, that it would appear he minted the figure out of the foreseeing of his own death that if any man would follow him, he must take up his cross and follow me.

 

It was out of the consciousness that the cross was required of him, that he could coin this figure of ‘cross bearing’, and what is ‘the bearing of the cross?’ It’s carrying on your back the stake to the place of crucifixion, that there, there, you might die. There you might repudiate self, and there your old self might be surrendered, and to do it voluntarily, to take up the cross, is to deny self, and say ‘self, human nature, human nature with all its propensities towards evil, must be reprobated’, it must die, and God was right in saying that this nature was unfitted for perpetuation, and must die, and God’s honour and God’s majesty, God’s supremacy could only be upheld by a man voluntarily going to the position where there was a public exhibition of a man voluntarily laying down his life to declare the righteousness of God. And Paul saw that God’s honour was upheld, and he saw that God had set forth Jesus to do this which we couldn’t do ourselves, to be acceptable to God, in order that this man, having thus upheld God’s honour, and then God having raised him from the dead, because having been obedient, he’d broken the power that death had through sin, and therefore could be raised to everlasting life. And God says, “you can’t do it,” but it has been done, by My working in him, for God was in Christ in this work of reconciliation and “if you’ll recognize the principles that have been upheld in him, if you’ll identify yourself with him, by joining him in crucifixion, in bearing the cross, and recognizing what it signifies,” then, God says, “I’ll accept your identification with him, and for his sake forgive you.”

 

And thus it is with that circle of thought, that Paul can say “I was among those around the cross, in thought, I thought right was done, and that he was an impostor, I jeered, and I mocked, but I saw that I was wrong, that Christ was right, that I was opposing God whereas Christ was obeying God, and I saw that my only way of coming into a living relationship to God, was by walking across the patch that separated me to him,” Though those around, might say, “what’s he doing, what’s happening to him that he’s leaving us who are jeering, to go himself and join him, in his shame, and disgrace,” “but I am crucified with Christ”, says Paul because it is only in Christ crucified that there has been brought life for men, and therefore although crucified with Christ, “I live” and what sort of a life is it. it’s a life motivated and energized, and directed by the spirit of him who died, “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God,” and Paul whose whole experience of the law perhaps as no other man in Israel’s history had ever experienced it before, in his conscious effort after ‘righteousness by the works of the law’, carne to see that it is no power for righteousness in his life, and it was only by the constraining power of the love that Christ had revealed in bearing these sufferings, and coming to the cross to fulfil the will of God and it was because Paul knew the intensity of the shame of it that it came home to him with such fullness, it was only by that, by that men could be moved to righteousness.

[Resource Manager]

And that’s what he told the Galatians, hence the correspondence between the two. God raised him from the dead, and the promise which God had made to the fathers, had been fulfilled.

 

You’ll observe in verse 33, the word ‘again’, “God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children in that he hath raised up Jesus again”, the Revised Version, omits the ‘again’, and it’s a reference to his birth, which was fulfilled in the Psalm, ‘Thou art my son’, and the 34th verse says, “as concerning that He raised him up from the dead,” there you get the contrast, you see, as the One ‘raising up from birth’, verse 33, ‘the raising up from the dead’ in verse 34, in fulfilling the promises made unto David, and you’ll observe the strict parallel between Paul, and Peter, that they both argue that David is dead, and the promise couldn’t refer therefore to David, and must refer to David’s Messiah. And now in the 38th and 39th verses, we have the characteristic doctrine of Paul concerning justification by faith, “be it known unto you therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you, the forgiveness of sins, for by him, all that believe, are justified from all things from which he could not be justified by the Laws of Moses”. And the word ‘justified’ and the word ‘believe’, are based upon that statement of Habbakuk, which Paul uses so much in his letter to the Romans and his letter to the Galatians, “The just shall live by faith,” and in the very context of that statement in Habbakuk, which forms so basic a case for Paul, there occurs the words, “Behold ye despisers and wonder”, of the 41st verse, which shows that the Apostle took up that 2nd chapter of Habbakuk, and expounded it in all bearings. And so, the word of Salvation came to the Gentiles.

 

My time is entirely up. I think I had better just give a minute for questions.

 

Question: If Paul did not witness the crucifixion, could he have visualized it.

 

Answer: In part, but he would have seen crucifixion. Crucifixion was a common experience. The Romans introduced crucifixion and I don’t think there was an Israelite contemporary with Jesus that hadn’t more than once in his lifetime seen somebody nailed on a stake.

 

Question: I meant though, if he hadn’t seen the crucifixion of Christ, could he have visualized the crucifixion of Christ.

 

Answer: Possibly yes, as an expression of the same spirit, but Paul sees so vividly the crucifixion in this Galatian letter, doesn’t he. I don’t know anything myself so vivid and so moving as those last verses of the 2nd chapter of Galatians.

 

Well tomorrow, we will try to gather up the threads a little more clearly and move onto the defense speeches and show the bearing of them upon Acts. Meanwhile next week, I mean tomorrow – I’m sorry, but its typical class-talk because it’s week after week when we’re taking a class. Tomorrow there will be distributed, by the good office of the committee who have had them done, a summary of the address of Paul to the Ephesian elders and some notes on the address at Athens because there isn’t room and time to include them, but some of those notes were so interesting that I will just touch upon them in my opening remarks tomorrow. I thought they were so interesting that I thought you might like them to complete your notes, or a little more completely get notes on The Acts of The Apostles. So those will be distributed tomorrow and we will just have a word about them. So tomorrow we will just have the defense speeches of Paul and show their bearing upon the theme of Luke in The Acts.

[Resource Manager]

Additional Information:

 

A transcript of the talk “Speeches in The Acts” was published in Australia in 1986 by the 1987 Youth Conference Committee. The above transcript of Study 5 has been scanned from these notes, checked with a tape of the talk. One section of the talk that should have been page 44 of the notes was missing, being displaced by another part of an earlier study. This has now been added. There have been a few other corrections and the question session at the end of Study 5 added.

 

Contents from Study Notes:

 

STUDY ONE: The Veracity of Luke’s Historical Account

STUDY TWO: Peter’s Discourse to the Jews at Pentecost. (Acts Chapter 2)

STUDY THREE: Peter’s Speech to Rulers after the Healing of the Lame Man. (Acts Chapters 3 & 4)

STUDY FOUR: Stephen’s Speech Before the Sanhedrin. (Acts Chapter 7)

STUDY FIVE: Paul’s Discourse in the Synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia. (Acts Chapter 13)

STUDY SIX: Paul’s Defence Speeches.

 

Preface from Study Notes:

 

Since their delivery in 1952 the talks on the Speeches in the Acts of the Apostles, by Brother John Carter, have inspired many to look more carefully at the words recorded in the scriptures. Brother Carter in his first talk demonstrates clearly the veracity of Luke’s account from many different viewpoints. He then goes on to show the key to Luke’s writing style and explains that Luke, excellent historian that he was, brilliantly summarises lengthy discourses. The result is a record filled with powerful expressions and essential Old Testament citations.

 

Apart from the obvious benefit to a study of the Acts of the Apostles, we believe that a careful reading of this work will help all brethren, sisters and young people to understand better how the Bible explains and expounds itself. This then will enhance a student’s own Bible study.

 

The 1987 Youth Conference Committee.

 

From The Christadelphian Volume 89, page 247 - August 1952

 

EDITOR’S NOTES

 

All being well the Editor leaves by air on August 6 for a visit to the United States and Canada for about seven weeks. An extensive tour has been arranged for meeting brethren and sisters and giving addresses. The first week will be spent at Wilbraham Bible School; we then cross the continent to California, and next visit Canadian ecclesias from British Columbia to Ontario. The last period will be spent among the New England ecclesias with a call at one or two other places. At the time these notes are written the precise details of the arrangements are not to hand. The Truth knows no boundaries—political, geographical, racial or social; it is hoped to meet many known only by correspondence up to the present, and in the mutual faith of each, find encouragement and help.

 

From The Christadelphian Volume 89, page 256 - August 1952

 

The Eastern Christadelphian Bible School plans to hold its 1952 session the week of Aug. 9 to 17 at Wilbraham Academy, Wilbraham, Massachusetts.

 

Brother Carter’s comment on his visit to Wilbraham - from The Christadelphian Volume 89, page 343 - November 1952

 

On Saturday we went by road to Wilbraham, where our first week was to be spent at the Bible School. This form of School is an American feature and serves a useful purpose in the American Continent where brethren and sisters are separated by distances which in England can hardly be realized. The U.S.A. Government publishes an occasional census of religious bodies. We do not know how this is compiled, but taking the figures last published it would appear that there are as many brethren and sisters in the Midlands of England as there are throughout the U.S.A. When the vast area of the United States is taken into account, we can see that gatherings such as are held week by week in England are impossible in America. The Bible School provides an opportunity for scattered brethren and sisters, and those of small ecclesias, with their children, to meet for a gathering that extends over a week. The time each morning was given up to Bible classes. Beginning at 9.0, three classes ran concurrently until 9.45: at 10.0 three other teachers took over until 10.45: and from 11.0 to 11.45 there were two classes. Those present make choice of the classes they wish to attend and rooms are allocated according to numbers. Each afternoon the Editor gave an hour’s address on “The Speeches in Acts in relation to the progress of Christianity”, when all present at the School could attend. In addition we gave a lecture on the first Sunday afternoon, also on one of the evenings, and gave one of the exhortations on the second Sunday. Many useful and helpful personal contacts were made. About 250 attend the School: some there had travelled as far as the English visitors. The School breaks up after lunch on the second Sunday. There were many goodbyes, some partings lightened by the prospect of another meeting before the trip was over.

 

Brother Carter’s comment on his visit to the ecclesia at Victoria, B.C. - from The Christadelphian Volume 89, page 344 - November 1952

 

On Wednesday there was a social evening combined with the more serious side of an address on the Atonement, and a short talk by one of the senior brethren of the meeting. “You have saved the best till the last” was one comment on the address on “God’s Work in Christ”. The address was aimed to be constructive and not controversial. The most entrancing theme of the Scriptures has been overlaid by the blighting effects of controversy. Put the subject in its true Biblical setting and it is interesting and cheering, ennobling and at the same time humbling to human pride; God is exalted and His ways better understood.

 

Speeches in Acts Study 5 John Carter Transcript1.pdf