"Bringer of Confusion" Sermon: Acts 21:27-36

“Bringer of Confusion”
[Acts 21:27-36]
February 6, 2011 (January 30, 2011) Second Reformed Church

Paul returned to Jerusalem, and after he rejoiced with them about God’s work among the Gentiles, the apostles and elders told him that the Jews in Jerusalem were saying that he had called the Gentiles to abandon the teaching of Moses and the traditions of Israel. We saw that what Paul actually taught was that the Ceremonial Law – things like what foods to eat and what clothes to wear – have no bearing on salvation. Salvation is through Jesus Alone.

Even so, the apostles and elders recommended that Paul put aside his liberty and purify himself according to the Law before he entered the temple, to pay for the shaving of four men who had taken a Nazarite vow, and to pay for the sacrifices that they needed to offer. In that way, he showed that he was not saying the Law should be done away with – just that it was not necessary for salvation.

Paul agreed with them, because if the Jews were upset with his not keeping the Ceremonial Law, they would not listen to him about the Gospel. So, for the sake of being able to proclaim the Gospel to them, he kept the Ceremonial Law. He began with the seven-day purification that was required of him.

Have you ever been in a situation where people disagreed and start offering their opinions, talking over each other, so that no one knew what anyone is saying? Have you ever been in an argument with someone and carried it on long enough that you didn’t remember why you were having the argument? Have you ever found yourself utterly confused, unable to discern what is true and real?

Paul was purifying himself according to the Ceremonial Law so the Jews would not have a bias against him, and so they would hear him explain why Jesus is the long-awaited Savior. But while he was going through the purification process – when it was almost finished – some of the Jews from Asia – that is what we call Turkey – very possibly Jews from Ephesus, where the riots had been – these Jews followed Paul all the way to Jerusalem, and when they found him, they started crying out, “Help Men of Israel, help ”

The Jews from Asia got a crowd together and started to rile them up: “This is Paul who has gone throughout the world, teaching against the people of Israel, against the Law of God, and against the Temple And not only that, he snuck Greeks – Gentiles – into the Temple, where only Jews are allowed ”

Was Paul against the people of Israel? No. “Brothers, my hearts desire and prayer to God for [the people of Israel] is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1, ESV).

Was Paul against the Law of God? No. “What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means ” (Romans 7:7a, ESV).

Was Paul against the Temple? No. “[Paul] was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost” (Romans 20:16b, ESV).

Did Paul bring Gentiles into the area of the Temple that was only for the Jews? No. They assumed he did, “for they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple.”

As a side note – but an important thing to notice – let us notice that, even though the Christians confessed that they were One Body, the Jewish Christians still tended to worship in the Temple, and the Gentile Christians were not allowed to – so the Christian Church was divided at this time.

But that was not to be: we remember that when Jesus died, He cried out, and “the curtain of the temple [which separated the holy of holies from the rest of the temple] was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51a, ESV). This is what Christians confessed from the beginning, “Here there is not Greek or Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11, ESV). All people who believe savingly in Jesus are one in Him, and any differences that had previously separated us in worship and community are done away with.

The Church came one step closer to that truth and vision when, in 70 A.D., God sent the Roman army to destroy the Temple. Since then, temple worship and sacrifice has been done away with, and that physical separation has been done away with.

Still, the sad truth is that we do discriminate against one another, even in the Church. James writes, “My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, ‘you sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man, ‘you stand over there,’ or ‘sit down at my feet,’ have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:1-4, ESV).

This is a work of the devil: the devil wants us to split into groups, even within a single church, when God has called us to be a body – a people. In the House of God, we come to worship God, and we are not to separate people or give preference to people because of wealth or age or youth or poverty or race or language or background. The devil is the bringer of confusion, who works to separate us and get us to work against each other.

So, back to the scene at the Temple: the Jews from Asia brought these false charges against Paul – serious charges if they were true – charges that people would have been confused about if they had not hear Paul speak. So, in their confusion and zeal without wisdom, they grabbed Paul and dragged him out of the Temple and shut the gates, symbolically separating him from God and the worship of God.

And the crowd began to beat him – seeking to kill him. The crowd was incensed – they didn’t know what Paul had done, but they knew he had done it, and God was angry at him, so they were called to carry out God’s vengeance upon him.

It is a very dangerous thing to say God is on our side, unless the Bible is absolutely clear on a point. For example, the Bible says that there is One and Only One God. Therefore, in an argument about whether there is One God or many gods, God is on our side, because He has told us that He is the Only God. But such clarity is not often the case. We don’t know the fulness of the Mind of God, so, at best, we are assuming that something of what we are doing is according to God’s Will. It also makes God out to be very petty – like the gods of the Greeks and Romans – who, in legend, took sides and fought with humans and pitted them against each other. Our God is the All-knowing, the All-powerful, the Sovereign God, and vengeance is His.

Nevertheless, the Jews dragged Paul out of the Temple to kill him for his heresy and blasphemy – so the Jews claimed. But while they were trying to kill him, word got to Claudius Lysias (see 23:26), the tribune of the cohort – the captain of one thousand men, and he brought his soldiers to take charge of this riot – this violent confusion – that was occurring outside of the Temple.

And when the crowd saw the tribune of the cohort, they stopped beating Paul. And the tribune had Paul bound with two chains – just as Agabus had prophesied. And Claudius Lysias asked what Paul had done. And everyone started shouting at once – and not only that – they all started shouting different things – making different accusations. It was pure confusion – it was pandemonium – it was the devil at work.

We may remember a similar situation when Jesus had been scourged by Pilate, and Pilate brought Him before the crowd, telling them that he found no reason to hold Jesus – that He was guilty of nothing – the crowd started screaming and yelling and calling out all sorts of things, until, finally, the word got through to Pilate that they would rather have the terrorist, Barrabbas, released back into the community, and have Jesus taken away to be crucified.

The devil likes confusion. He uses it to distract us, to get us to jump to conclusions, to get us to do things that we shouldn’t be doing – to ourselves and others. The devil uses confusion to open us up to all possibility of danger and destruction.

The Jews continued to shout over the tribune, getting louder and more violent, continuing to issue forth confusion and anger, so the tribune took Paul away quickly – to bring him to the barracks where he could be locked away safely from the maddening crowd, until the truth of the matter was determined. But even as they made their way up the steps to the barracks, the crowd rushed at them like rabid dogs, looking to tear Paul apart, so the centurions lifted Paul up off of the ground to get him past the crowd and into the barracks, as the crowd yelled, “Away with him ”

Jesus called the devil “the father of lies” (John 8:44), and as the father of lies, he is also the bringer of confusion. Understand, that does not mean that every time we encounter something that is difficult to understand, it is the devil at work. We may have difficulty with certain types math problems or with reading certain types of literature, simply because we are not used to dealing with it, or because we are not gifted in that area.

The type of confusion that the devil tries to bring is the confusion of not knowing what is true and what is false. The devil tries to make us unsure about reality, unsure about God and His Promises. He tells a little lie; he suggests a little doubt. The first recorded words we have of the devil are these: “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1b, ESV). The devil tried to confuse the issue of not eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – which God had forbidden – by asking Eve if God had not forbidden them to eat from every tree in the Garden. He made the subtle suggestion to her that God was being unfair – that He was holding back blessings from them that they deserved.

In our text, the devil was behind the accusations: “Paul is saying that the people of Israel have been rejected.” No, Paul is saying that he loves the people of Israel – his brothers and sisters in the flesh – but they need to understand that Jesus is the Savior that they have been waiting for. “Paul is saying that we should reject God’s Law.” No, Paul is saying that the Ceremonial Law is not necessary for salvation. “Paul is saying that we should abandon the Temple.” No, Paul is saying that Jesus has fulfilled the sacrificial system and all who believe savingly in Jesus are welcome into the Presence of God, no matter what their background.

Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church and rebuked them for the confusion in their worship service. People were jumping up during the service, speaking over one another, offering different interpretations of the text, speaking in tongues, and so forth, so no one could understand what anyone was saying. Paul had to write them and tell them that this was not of God – this confusion is of the devil – he was getting them to engage in mass confusion, rather than worship – and the devil loves to get us to take our eyes of Jesus and put them on ourselves.

So Paul told them to stop – only one person was allowed to speak at a time. No one was to speak in a language that no one could understand or interpret. In engaging in worship in this way, everyone may learn and be encouraged. “For God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (I Corinthians 14:33, ESV).

The devil will do everything he can to make the Gospel sound like something else.

The devil likes to tweak the Truth and throw out distractions. Have you ever heard something like this: “Christians are opposed to science.” “Christians are trying to take over the government and force their religion on us.” “Christians are all narrow-minded and ignorant.” “Christians are owned by the Republican Party.” “You can’t be a Christian and a Democrat.” “Jesus would have been a Democrat.” None of those statements are the Gospel, and none of them are true.

What ought we to do?

We ought to be careful to present the Gospel as clearly and accurately as possible.

What is the Gospel? God the Son came to earth in the Person of Jesus, lived and died for our sins, rose from the dead, and ascended back to His Throne – just as the Scriptures said He would. That’s the Gospel. That’s it. Keep it clear and simple.

We ought not make assumptions about others and what they believe and understand about the Gospel, but work to understand what is actually being said.

The best way to get people to hear us about Jesus is to be friends with them. Make friends – not like some spy trying to capture an enemy – but, love your neighbor, like Jesus said. Let’s become friends with people around us, get to know them, and let them get to know us. In that way, we can talk with each other, and listen to each other, and as God is willing, we will come to believe the Truth together.

We ought to worship, as Paul writes, “decently and in order” (I Corinthians 14:40b, ESV), so there is no question to anyone who worships here that we worship Jesus as God the Only Savior.

When I was in high school, I went to a Thanksgiving evening service where the pastor asked people to come forward and tell what they were thankful for. That went on for awhile, and then a man came up and began talking about the dangers of the New Age movement. The pastor stopped him and asked him to leave – not because there aren’t dangers in the New Age movement, but because he was bringing confusion to the worship – he was taken us away from the worship and giving thanks to God and trying to get us to fear and get riled up about the New Age movement. In doing that – wittingly or unwittingly – he was doing the work of the devil.

And when we have done all that – to avoid confusion and be clear about Jesus and His Gospel – we ought still be ready to be misunderstood and to suffer for the sake of Jesus, as He promised. Because the devil is the bringer of confusion.

Let us pray:
Almighty God, we thank You that You are the God of Truth and Order. We thank You that You have shown us that the confusion about Truth that exists among us is from the devil. Help us to be prepared. Help us to be clear about what You have said and, especially, about what the Gospel is. Help us to love our neighbors – to truly love them and befriend them, and let them see You through us, that they might receive Your Salvation and the Joy that is found in Jesus Christ. For it is in His Name we pray, Amen.