This week we are talking about the apostle Paul
and you need to know about him and here's why.
Besides Jesus, he's the most significant
character, or most significant person in the whole New Testament.
He writes half of the New Testament books.
And up until this point, we have the twelve disciples of Jesus,
fairly simple guys, for the most part.
We know they're fishermen, they're the followers of Jesus.
They go wherever he goes.
And then they, kind of, all the way to martyrdom confess their faith.
But then onto the scene
comes this intellectual giant, named Saul,
who later is Paul.
But Saul steps onto the scene.
And he is a thinker.
He is Jewish.
He's also a Roman citizen.
Maybe because someone in his family down the line was,
worked in the army or something like that.
But somehow he has Roman citizenship.
So he understands most likely Latin.
He understands Greek.
He understands the language of the Hebrews.
And so he can have these conversations around the whole globe.
And he is the tool and the instrument that God uses
to reach the whole globe, essentially.
So where does it start for him?
And why is he so significant?
So Paul, which we know in the Bible, is from Tarsus.
And Tarsus, you're probably saying, "That does not sound like Jerusalem."
It's not.
So Jerusalem would have been like the main center of the Jewish faith.
And they had the Diasporas, they call it.
So people went out all to these different nations.
And they would set up their own churches and their own synagogues
in these small towns.
So when you hear about it in the New Testament,
Paul went and he preached at the synagogue.
This would have been, kind of, the small Jewish community that was there.
Now if you're not inside the temple of Jerusalem,
here's the situation.
You are no longer around the scriptures in that way.
You had to work somewhere else.
And so they did that in these synagogues
and they would study the first five books of the Bible, the Torah.
And they became experts.
And we know this about Paul.
Not only is he just a Jewish person.
Not only is he a Roman citizen.
But he also comes from a family that believes in Pharisaism.
Which is he was a Pharisee.
And what does that mean?
This is not an official group.
Like the Sanhedrin or the Sanhedrin.
This is kind of like a watchdog society.
A society that says, "Okay, as Jewish people,
are we living the rules and the laws of the Torah?
Are we doing a good job of that?"
So much so that he later went to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel.
They wanted him to be like the ultimate Pharisee.
So when he describes himself,
he says, "I was circumcised on the eighth day."
He says that he followed all the laws.
He was perfect on these laws.
Flawless on these laws.
And he was a Pharisee and he was a zealot.
We've got to talk about that because that's really a foundation
that identifies who Paul is in the New Testament.
So we've got to go back a little bit in history to understand,
kind of, the underpinnings of why this makes sense.
So imagine it was a time where we have Moses.
And Moses is speaking and he's teaching,
but the people are tempted
to follow the ways of the unbelieving nations.
And so one of these instances, they are tempted by the women of Moab,
and the Moabites.
And they are tempted by the woman of Midian.
And there's an instance where they have this
plague that's affecting them because they have so gone off
kind of away from what God wanted.
And here comes this guy
with this foreign woman that was totally forbidden.
And he goes into his tent and you can guess what was happening in this tent.
Well a guy named Phineas takes his spear,
goes to the tent,
and puts it through both of them.
And you're like, "Okay, that's pretty zealous."
Well, he's a hero.
The plague stops and everyone recognizes
that with zealousness, often comes this idea of violence.
Speed ahead about 1,300 years
and it's the year 167 B.C.
There's guy named, and he's the emperor, Anticus Epiphanes.
And he has this idea
that no longer are we going to allow Jewish freedom
of religion in any way.
Instead, you only can sacrifice to Zeus.
So they go in, they totally sack Jerusalem.
And they, kind of, take the temple.
And they sacrifice, literally, a pig.
An unclean animal, on the altar.
This so incenses,
this so incenses the people of Jerusalem,
that the good solid Pharisees and the people that said,
"We have to stay true to God's Word,"
that
we have a revolt.
And the Maccabean revolt.
And the main player in that is a guy named Judas Maccabeus,
inspired by his father, who
killed a priest who was about to do an unclean sacrifice on the altar.
Inspired by his father, Judas Maccabeus, the hammer,
leads them to freedom and eventually cleanses the temple.
Why does this all matter?
Because if you know anyone who's Jewish,
they still celebrate a holiday called Hanukkah.
This is this celebration, the cleansing of the temple, 160 years.
So, imagine these kind of zealot factions of the Jewish faith that say,
"We have to remain true to what God's Word says."
Paul comes from that family.
So much so that it influences the way that he looks at things.
So we're going to talk about that tomorrow.
But before we get to that, I think there's a couple takeaways
Even though Paul was zealous to the point of violence,
I think it's always convicting,
when you look at your own life and say,
"Have I been zealous for the faith that I now have?
Have I let Christ dwell in me
and have I understood and spent time in his Word?"
So much so that I say,
"People have to know about it because God's Word matters."
Or have I become indifferent like the Hellenistic Jews
at the time of the Maccabees?
Or the Israelites, at the time of Phineas?
Or a lot of the Jews at the time of Paul?
Second question, I think, is this.
Have I looked inside to say,
"God, I need time in this Word to change,
not just a nation, but to change me."
And it starts with simple steps.
God what do you say about my life?
What do you say about my life is true?
Help me find my value in Christ.
And help me move forward with a passion that says,
"The world needs to know about you because they don't know you yet."
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
we look at Paul and we're overwhelmed, really.
His life, itself, is convicting because we see the passion that he has.
The desire that he has to be the best Christian that he can be.
But he finds, it seems, early on, his value in what he's done.
Help us not find value in what we've done but find value
in what you have accomplished.
We ask this in your name. Amen.