This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

How do you speak to someone who strongly disagrees with you? Hi, this is Pastor
Tom and we're looking at the book of Acts. This is week five, day four, chapter
22.

And in this chapter, Paul speaks to an entire city of people who have come to
disagree with him. Remember from last week, they had gotten together because
they had misunderstood some of the things Paul was doing and they were accusing
him of doing things he'd never done. And based on that, they were saying he's
trying to destroy the law of Moses.

He's trying to destroy our customs. And the entire city is in an uproar. And
Paul, in the midst of this, being arrested, being carted off to prison, he asks
for the permission to speak to the entire crowd.

And for some reason, he's given that permission. Maybe they thought he could
calm down the crowd. They saw a certain look in the eyes of the apostle Paul.

I don't know. But they give him the permission to speak to the crowd in that
moment. And as you listen to what Paul says, you and I can learn some things
about what to say when we're in strong disagreement with somebody, especially
when it's over an issue of faith, over an issue of trust in God.

What do you do when you strongly disagree over an issue of faith, maybe with
somebody that's in your own family, maybe with somebody at your place of work,
maybe with maybe with a government official? What do you do? Paul teaches us
here.

What you do is you tell your story of faith. You don't start to argue the facts.
You don't start to argue the law or the codes, the municipal codes.

You don't start to argue the past. You tell your story of faith. You talk about
you, your history, your experiences, what God has done in your life.

It's exactly what Paul does here. Beginning in verse 1, listen to what happens.
He speaks to this crowd, chapter 22 verse 1.

"Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense. When they heard him speak to
them in Aramaic, they became very quiet. And then Paul said, 'I am a Jew, born
in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city.

Under Gamaliel, I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just
as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of the
Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison,
as also the high priest and all the council can testify. I even obtained letters
from them to their brothers in Damascus and went there to bring these people as
prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.

About noon, as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed
around me. I fell to the ground, and I heard a voice say to me, 'Saul, Saul, why
do you persecute me? Who are you, Lord?

' I asked him. 'I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. "
This is Paul's story.

He told it hundreds of times, and now here in this crowd where they strongly
disagree, he simply again tells the story of faith. He doesn't try to argue like
a lawyer. He just chooses to tell the story like a witness.

The scripture says he speaks in Aramaic. Most people in that day spoke in Greek
because of the Roman occupation of Israel. But Paul speaks in the native
language that they also all spoke.

The native language of the Jews at that time was Aramaic. And when they realized
he's speaking in our language, they become very quiet. And then Paul tells the
story.

He tells the story up to this point, and then on from verse 8, he tells the
story, the long story of meeting with Ananias and beginning to serve Jesus, and
the crowd is listening quietly intently. They listen quietly until he says this
in verses 21 and 22. Then Paul says, "The Lord said to me, 'Go, I will send you
far away to the Gentiles.

' The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices
and shouted, 'Rid the earth of him. He is not fit to live.

' Paul told his story, just the simple facts. And that got people to listen. And
I believe even in that crowd that day that was so angry, he planted some seeds.

And there were some that came to faith later in Christ because of those seeds
that he planted. But in this day, those seeds are not evidently sprouting.
Instead, they become so angry when he says, "I was sent to the Gentiles.

" Because remember, Jews and Gentiles, they were mortal enemies in that day. The
Jews thought of the Gentiles as an unclean people, not following God. And the
Gentiles, because of that hatred, rejected the Jewish people.

There was this deep divide between the two. Now, God wanted to speak the good
news to both. And Paul had preached to both Jew and Gentile, but here he is, "I
will send you far away to the Gentiles.

" And this anger comes out. How do you speak to someone who disagrees with you?
You tell your story, your story of faith.

But as you tell it, the honest truth is, not everyone is going to like your
story. There are some who are going to reject that story. When you tell your
story, there comes a dividing line.

And there are some who will accept the faith that you are talking about,
recognizing, "I want to live with that kind of faith. " There are others who
reject that faith. It could be a very simple story.

It could be a story about how you were an alcoholic and you came to realize your
life had to be changed. You found yourself at a celebratory recovery meeting,
and in that meeting, someone shared with you the good news of who Jesus is. And
you realized it's more than a higher power, it's Jesus Christ.

That higher power has a name. And you began to follow Him. And Jesus changed
your life.

He changed your family. He gave you hope again. That's a wonderful story.

As you tell that story, there are many people who will smile, who will have joy
that God has done something, but there are some who will reject that story.
Someone who is an alcoholic and not admitting it, they don't want to hear that
story. They don't want to hear it.

And so that dividing line, they will walk away from you rather than towards you.
You tell your story, but you realize even in that, not everyone is going to like
your story. We're learning in these chapters from Paul what to do when the going
gets tough in ministry.

We've learned not my will, but your will. We've learned there are some issues
that you're going to have to deal with the rest of your life. We learned
yesterday that appeasement doesn't work.

And today we've learned you tell your story. You tell your story when things get
tough, your story of faith. There's one more lesson to learn from Paul in this
chapter.

It's a lesson that's contained in an entire sentence. You recognize even when
times get tough, you recognize that God has put things into your life in advance
to prepare you for that moment. That's one of the lessons of tough times in
ministry.

You recognize that God has put things into your life in advance to prepare you
for that moment. He knew what was coming. He knew what would happen.

And he has been preparing you all along. In Paul's case, as he faces this riot,
this crowd, these people who want to kill him on this day, God had some more
work for him to do. God had some more life for him to live.

So God uses even the place of Paul's birth in this moment to rescue him. Listen
to what happened in verses 24 down to verse 28. The commander ordered Paul to be
taken to the barracks.

He directed that he be flogged and questioned in order to find out why the
people were shouting at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him,
Paul said to the centurion standing there, "Is it legal for you to flog a Roman
citizen who hasn't even been found guilty? " When the centurion heard this, he
went to the commander and reported it.

"What are you going to do? " he asked. "This man is a Roman citizen.

" The commander went to Paul and asked, "Tell me, are you a Roman citizen? "
"Yes, I am," he answered. Then the commander said, "I had to pay a big price for
my citizenship.

" "But I was born a citizen," Paul replied. In that day, if you were born in
certain cities, it meant you were a Roman citizen, even if you were a Jew. And
Paul had been born in Tarsus, a city where he would become automatically a Roman
citizen.

This rescues him from flogging, and if you remember flogging, it's this terrible
punishment that often resulted in death, possible death in this moment. It
rescues him because to flog a Roman citizen without a trial held the death
sentence for the one doing the flogging. So when the centurion hears about it,
he immediately says, "We've got to stop this right now.

" Paul's birthplace is used in this moment to rescue him. God has prepared you
with what you need, for what you will face, for what He will do, for where you
were called. All the events in your past, those events even before you came to
know Jesus, those events are not meaningless.

God causes all things, all things, to work together for good. And in this case,
we see the fact that Paul was born in Tarsus. I don't know what it is in your
life, the experience that you had as a child, the place that you were born, the
person that you knew in college.

I don't know what it is in your life, but God brings it all together and He uses
it for good. God knows the tough things you're going to face in life, the tough
times you're going to face as a family, the tough times you're going to face in
ministry. So the question is, if you're facing a tough time right now, what has
He already put into your life?

What relationship? What truth? What encouragement?

What has He already put into your life that has prepared you for this tough
time? Lean on it. Don't forget it in this moment.

Lean on it. Find strength in it that can only come from Him. Let's take a minute
to pray together.

Jesus, you know it all. You knew that we were going to face what we are facing
right now even before we faced it. And you put the people into our lives.

You put the truth into our lives. You put the circumstances into our lives, the
opportunities into our lives in advance so that we'd have the strength and the
faith and the hope that we need. So when we face tough times, this tough time
that we're facing right now, Jesus, help us to see what you want to cause to
work together for good in this moment.

Help us to see it. We pray in your name. Amen.