Acts 22:6 – 23:11
6 ”About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me.7 I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
8 ”‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.
“‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied.9 My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
10 ”‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’11 My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.
12 ”A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there.13 He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.
14 ”Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth.15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard.16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’
17 ”When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’
19 ”‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you.20 And when the blood of your martyrt Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
21 ”Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’”
Paul the Roman Citizen
22 The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”
23 As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air,24 the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this.25 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?”
26 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.”
27 The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
28 Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
29 Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
Paul Before the Sanhedrin
30 The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.
Acts 23
1 Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.”2 At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth.3 Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
4 Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!”
5 Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’t”
6 Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”7 When he said this, a dispute broke out between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided.8 (The Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, and that there are neither angels nor spirits, but the Pharisees believe all these things.)
9 There was a great uproar, and some of the teachers of the law who were Pharisees stood up and argued vigorously. “We find nothing wrong with this man,” they said. “What if a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?”10 The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.
11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
Rogers thoughts about today’s scripture:
Once again, we hear Paul share his conversion story. In the book of Acts we hear this story twice and then Paul refers to it again of several occasions in his books. By reading this account, you can tell what an incredible impact that encounter with God had on Paul.
One interesting note is that the Jewish people listening to Paul don’t have any problems with his story until he tells them that he has been sent to the Gentiles. This fact that God had decided to reach out to the Gentiles as well was the most offensive thing to the Jewish people who believed that God came only to them. For us today, there are still people who have a hard time believing that God loves all people including the people we hate!.
Another quick insight – As he is talking to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council, you can tell Paul knows his way around this group by the way he stirs them up by using the old argument about whether there is resurrection or not.
