The Defense of the Gospel – Acts 22:1-2

I have been asking the Lord for direction for our Adult Sunday School class.

Where should we go now? What should we study?

We have looked at every chapter and verse of the Bible, except for those chapters which are carbon copies of each others in either Kings, Chronicles or Psalms.

We’ve had a topical study of Sanctification, or Christian living, and now a look at Landmarkism.

Where do we go from here?

It’s interesting that the subject about which I have been thinking, dovetails into Acts 22:1.

I’ve been considering some of the ways to approach the unsaved with the Gospel.

There are more ways than one to present the salvation of Christ to people.

There are Biblical ways and there are unbiblical ways.

There are the “Roman’s Road” and the “Lifestyle Evangelism” approaches.

There are the skewer them with the scriptures and the quietly “live the Christian life” approaches.

But between the “Evangelistic Offensive” approach and the “Passive Evangelism” approach . . .

Or perhaps I should say, between the offensive evangelistic approach and the do nothing at all approach . . .

There is something that we might call the “Defensive Approach.”

When properly understood and carried out, this “Defensive Approach” could very well be the most Biblical.

But it all depends on how we define the word “defense.”

My dictionary has seven definitions for the word “defense,” and most are related to protection from attack:

The act of defending, the method of defending, the lawyers or the military industry who are defending.

The third definition, however, is different from the rest, and this is the one that applies to our scripture:

“An argument in support or justification of something.”

This is just as much a “defense” as the others, but it is almost opposite to what we think of with an army or with a lawyer.

Generally speaking, we think of a lawyer defending a guilty man.

On one side of the court we have the prosecutor, or the prosecuting attorney.

On the other side we see the defendant and his lawyer.

Right or wrong, we picture the lawyer as the man trying to defend and free the guilty man.

But the third definition for “defense” is “an argument in SUPPORT or justification of something.”

This comes across as something positive rather than negative.

This is an offensive defense rather than a defensive defense.

In football this is a blitzing, attacking linebacker rather than one running backwards trying to keep up with the opponent’s tight end.

When the mob grew sufficiently quiet Paul said,

“Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.

(And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence:

and he saith) . . . ”

In this very brief lesson this evening I would like to point just a couple of incidental, and relatively unimportant things.

Let’s start with Paul’s defense.

See if you agree with me that this next thought is kind of complicated but humorous.

When Paul said, “Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you,”

we are reading an English translation of something spoken in Hebrew, but which was first recorded in Koine Greek.

I’ve already pointed out that the English word “defense” can be a little misleading.

Paul was not running backwards to get out of the range of the big Jewish guns.

He was on the offensive, explaining why he was the person that he had become.

As far as which the Hebrew word Paul used to say “defense” – we no longer have that information.

But the Greek word is interesting.

Luke used the word “apologia” (ap-ol-og-ee’-ah) from which comes the English word “apology.”

I know that things are getting more confusing by the moment, but I hope to clear it all up.

The English word “apology” has two basic meanings:

The first is “an acknowledgment expressing REGRET or asking for PARDON.”

But Paul was not regretful about anything and he was certainly not asking for pardon.

The second definition is “a formal justification or defense.”

James Strong in his Concordance says that the Greek word “apologia” means “a reasoned statement or argument.”

Do you think that there was anything in his life for which Paul had regrets?

Don’t all people, no matter who they are, have regrets?

Do you think that since he became a child of God, he ever went back to the families of Stephen and the other victims of his persecution and apologized to them?

Other than the fact that he knew that Stephen and the others were better off in Glory with Christ, he probably woke up nights unable to sleep thinking about what he had done.

Were there regrets in Paul’s life? Absolutely!

Do you suppose that he ever returned to the High Priest, under whom he had persecuted the saints and tried to apologize for misleading him?

Do you suppose that he wished that humanly speaking he had come to Christ twenty years earlier?

This “apologia” on the steps of the Castle of Antonia was nothing like any of these.

It neither carried, nor expressed, any regrets for having become a Christian.

That Christ knocked him to ground and blinded him with His glory was a blessing, not a curse.

That the Lord saved his wicked soul had filled Paul’s heart with joy and gratitude every day of his life since.

Was there reason for Paul to apologize to anyone for being in the Temple that day? Absolutely not.

Was there anything in what he was about to say which contained a hint of regret or excuse? Nothing!

As we was saw when we began our study last Sunday, Paul’s “apologia” was merely an EXPLANATION.

He tried to explain what he was doing when the Lord intercepted him just outside of Damascus.

He tried to tell the mob what had changed him from a persecutor of Christians into a persecuted Christian.

He wanted to tell them that JESUS was the Christ, the Son of God, and that they should receive him and love him as he had learned to do.

He wanted to apologize for earlier being so stupid, sinful and unbelieving,

but now he wanted to express his “apologia” as to why he was an out-and-out servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Unless the Lord gives me something else in the mean time, in our Adult Sunday School class, we are going to begin a short course on APOLOGETICS.

Hopefully, we’ll learn some things which can answer the questions that the lost have against Christianity.

In the process, I hope that you’ll learn some of the things that really set Bible Christianity apart from all of Satan’s world religions.

We’ll look at a few things which demand answers.

We’ll consider Biblical things which demand acceptance and personal faith.

Paul made an “apologia” to the mob, but it wasn’t an “apology.”

The second thing that I’d like to point out is simple and almost silly:

Let’s think about the languages which Paul used in his apologia.

Notice Acts 21:37 – “And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain, May I speak unto thee? Who said, Canst thou speak GREEK?

Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?

But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.

And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the HEBREW tongue, saying,

Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.

(And when they heard that he spake in the HEBREW tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith) . . .”

I have a few questions and some conclusions when I read this passage.

For example, why was Claudis Lysias surprised to learn that his supposed Egyptian could speak Greek?

Koine Greek had been the trade language of most of the Eastern Mediterranean for a couple hundred years.

The Government of Egypt had been Greek from the days of Alexander the Great to Cleopatra.

Although the Roman language was spreading,

when an Ephesian wanted to talk to an Galilean, he would speak Greek, not Latin,

and when an Alexandrian wanted to talk to a Roman soldier he would speak Greek.

I suppose that only the uneducated were limited to a local dialect.

Generally speaking the Jews of Egypt were either conversant, or fluent, in both Hebrew and Greek.

Remember that the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, was written in Alexandria, Egypt.

If it was true that the Egyptian, false messiah who was running around Judea at the time couldn’t speak Greek, then he must have been from one of the lower classes of Egyptian Jews.

Secondly, when Paul asked the Chief Captain for permission to the speak, he did not ask him using Latin.

Even though Paul might have assumed that Lysias was a Roman, he didn’t address him in the Roman language.

As we will eventually learn, Claudius Lysias was probably a Greek, even though he was a Roman soldier.

He was not born a Roman citizen, as Paul had been; He had to purchase his Roman Citizenship.

Did Paul recognize him to be of a Greek birth and not a Roman,

and that was why he spoke in Greek and not Latin,

or was it that Paul had not learned Latin himself?

My guess would be that whether he recognized Claudius’ birth or not, Paul had not learned Latin.

There really wasn’t any need for him to do so up to this point in this life.

Lastly, Paul then began to speak to the Jews in Hebrew.

He could have used Greek, but he choose the ancient and proper language of his nation.

So why did everyone get even more quiet when Paul began to address them in Hebrew?

Was it out of respect for Paul or the language?

Was it because they were surprised that he could speak Hebrew?

Had they thought that he was so heretical that he had forgotten or never learned their language?

Or was it because many of the Jews themselves were not as practiced in conversational Hebrew as they should have been?

Did they become more quiet because they had to really concentrate on what he was saying in order to understand?

I don’t suppose that we’ll ever know the answer to these questions.

Paul had a choice of what language to use, either one of which would not have been understood by some of the people who were there.

I would guess that there were some Jews there that day,

who grew up in fundamentalist homes, and who refused to learn the language of their conquerors.

If Paul had spoken in Greek they would not have understood.

They might have even started chanting: “Great is the Hebrew of the Jews.”

When Paul used the Hebrew he earned, at least for a moment, the ears of the fundamentalists.

But at the same time, some people there might not have understood Him because he did speak in Hebrew.

Some of the Jews from Ephesus or Antioch may not have had the opportunity to learn Hebrew.

If you stop and think about it, being able to communicate with a large crowd might have gotten a little confused.

But on that particular day, in that particular situation, Paul made his “apologia” in the Hebrew language.

And I think that was probably the best choice for the situation.

Perhaps these two things this evening are not particularly important, but I think that they are interesting.

And I think that they help us to grasp some of the background of this chapter in the Book of Acts.