“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call His name, Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father, David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there will be no end.” We read those words back at the beginning of Luke’s gospel and the angels’ message to Mary. And to the shepherds it was similar. “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you, you will find the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” And then some days later, “Behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. This man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him and he took the child up in his arms and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your Word. For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all people, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel.” Good news. Glad tidings of great joy which will be for all people. O tidings of comfort and joy.
Luke begins his gospel with the story of Jesus’ birth, and it’s just as incredible, it’s just as difficult for us to comprehend as it was for Mary and for the shepherds and for Simeon over 2,000 years ago. This is the mystery and the miracle and the wonder of God taking on flesh and dwelling among us. And tonight, we come to the conclusion of the book of Acts, Acts chapter 28. You can find that on page 937 in the pew Bibles in the pew in front of you. This is the conclusion of Luke’s two volumes that began back with the events of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, and it ends with Paul in the city of Rome and he is in chains. But the good news is the same. And in these verses, we find a message of the hope of Israel and the kingdom of God and salvation for all people. And it’s all centered on the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. The big themes way back at the beginning of the book of Luke are the big themes right here at the end of the book of Acts.
Now the question for us from these verses is, “How much does it matter? What is the cost of the Gospel? And can you keep it to yourself?” And two things I want us to see from these verses tonight is, one – Paul’s Gospel chains, and then second – Paul’s unchained Gospel. Paul’s Gospel chains and Paul’s unchained Gospel. Before we read God’s Word, let’s pray and ask His blessing on it.
Our Father, as we read Your Word and as we have just considered and sung the good news, the glad tidings of the Gospel and the message about Jesus Christ, we pray that that Gospel would go out into our hearts and into our lives unhindered, just as we see it here in the book of Acts. We pray for Your Spirit’s blessing on our reading and study of Your Word tonight, that You would work in all of our hearts to prepare us to hear from You and to confront us, to convict us, to comfort us, to encourage us, to strengthen us and to equip us to serve You wherever You call us to go. Help us to see Jesus, and we pray all of this in His name, amen.
Acts chapter 28, starting in verse 16:
“And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier who guarded him.
After three days he called together the local leaders of the Jews, and when they had gathered, he said to them, ‘Brothers, though I had done nothing against our people or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered as a prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. When they had examined me, they wished to set me at liberty, because there was no reason for the death penalty in my case. But because the Jews objected, I was compelled to appeal to Caesar—though I had no charge to bring against my nation. For this reason, therefore, I have asked to see you and speak with you, since it is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain.’ And they said to him, ‘We have received no letters from Judea about you, and none of the brothers coming here has reported or spoken any evil about you. But we desire to hear from you what your views are, for with regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.’
When they had appointed a day for him, they came to him at his lodging in greater numbers. From morning till evening he expounded to them, testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus both from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets. And some were convinced by what he said, but others disbelieved. And disagreeing among themselves, they departed after Paul had made one statement: ‘The Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet:
‘Go to this people, and say, ‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.’ For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear, and their eyes they have closed; lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart and turn, and I would heal them.’
Therefore let it be known to you that this salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles; they will listen.’
He lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, Paul’s Gospel chains. Why was Paul in chains? Well, it was because of the Gospel. And for two years, Paul stayed in Rome at his own expense with a soldier who guarded him. Rome at this time, Rome would have had the largest Jewish community in the western part of the Mediterranean. And when Paul called together the local leaders of the Jews, he explained to them, he explained to them why he was a prisoner of the Romans. He explained to them why he had been compelled to appeal to Caesar. And then he said this, he said, “It is because of the hope of Israel that I am wearing this chain,” verse 20. You see, for Paul, the hope of Israel was worth it.
But what exactly is the hope of Israel? Ever since 1948 and the founding of the modern nation of Israel, the unofficial national anthem has been a song called, “Hatikvah – The Hope.” And it’s based on a poem that was written by the Jewish poet, Naphtali Herz Imber, and here’s what the original lyrics say. They say this, “Our hope is not yet lost. The ancient hope to return to the land of our fathers, the city where David encamped. As long as in his heart within soul of a Jew still yearns, and onward towards the ends of the east his eye still looks to Zion.” And you see, the hope of “Hatikvah” is freedom in the land for the Jews. But you see, for Paul, it was bigger than that. It was bigger than the land. It was bigger than the nation. And for Paul, the hope of Israel was actually a stumbling block to the Jews.
Think about it. Think about what Paul is saying even to this gathering of local Jewish leaders here in Acts 28. He is opening up to them their own Scriptures. It says he is opening up the law of Moses and the prophets and he is saying that Jesus is the King promised in the Old Testament scriptures. He is saying that Jesus is the one who had come who would heal them. And yet they refused. They refused him. They closed their eyes, they shut their ears, and therefore because they refused the hope of Israel was actually a rebuke to Israel. It was a rebuke to the Jews and it was an offer of salvation to the Gentiles. And that was more than this group of people could handle. And we’re told here that some of them believed. That yes, the message of salvation was for the Jews. Some of them believed; others did not. But when Paul mentions salvation for the Gentiles, it says they disagreed among themselves and they departed because it was all too much.
And I wonder, I wonder if we have really understood the Gospel if it doesn’t bother us to some degree. Because here is Paul, he is talking about God and the kingdom and hope and healing, but for the Gentiles? The Gentiles were the ones who had occupied the land. They were the one who had taxed the people and who had worshiped idols and who blasphemed God. I was reading this week about during the Greco-Roman period that there were really three boundary markers that set the Jews apart from the rest of the nations. It was circumcision and food laws and the Sabbath. And the Gentiles knew that, the Gentiles knew how important the Sabbath was for the Jews, and so they actually timed their attacks against the Jews on the Sabbath Day when they knew that they would be most vulnerable. In fact, isn’t that what happened a little over a year ago? October 7, 2023 was on a Saturday morning, the Jewish Sabbath. Someone has even suggested that it would be called “The Sabbath Massacres.” That’s the sort of context that we’re talking about here as Paul unveils the Scriptures and the Gospel to them. The Gentiles are against Israel. They have no part of Israel, and yet what we are reading here is that God sent Paul to them. God sent Paul to them too. That’s what got Paul in trouble.
But you see, he had not fully preached the Gospel until it had first challenged him and his own misconceptions and confronted the prejudices of his own people. Now how to convey something like that; how to convey the scandal and the audacity of what Paul is saying here. Well even in this past week there have been headlines of forgiveness and pardon. President Biden, a week ago, he invoked his power as president to pardon his son for any federal offenses that he might have committed over the last eleven years. Just cleared him. Cleared him of all charges, just like that. And from what I can tell, the reactions have been critical across the board – an abuse of power, a miscarriage of justice, acting above the law, hypocrisy, this is not right. And without getting into all of the details about it, what we can say is that he was guilty and now he’s not. And that makes people mad. And that’s something of the outrage, something of the offense of hearing that the hope of Israel, the kingdom of God, includes Gentiles, and that God would show forgiveness and pardon, God would show His mercy and His blessing on the oppressors of God’s people.
There’s something about free grace, there’s something about free grace when it’s taken to its logical conclusion that we have to recognize that if God’s grace is big enough for me, then God’s grace has to be big enough for the worst of sinners. In fact, God’s grace has to be big enough even for those who have sinned against me. And that’s not always easy to accept, is it? But that’s what God does. He freely forgives. He fully and completely pardons for sin. In fact, here’s where the story of the Gospel again intersects with the story of this past week. And what makes it all the most astonishing is that when it came to His Son, when it came to the Son of God, Jesus, who knew no sin, who had done nothing which needed pardon, He had done no wrong, and yet what did God do? The Father held Him responsible for our sin and He condemned sin and carried out justice to its fullest extent on the cross so that sinners like us could go free, so that all those who trust in Jesus would be ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, including the Gentiles. And you can add in there anyone else that you think might be off limits for some reason. And that’s why Paul was a marked man. That’s why Paul was in chains because the Gospel does that, or at least it should. The Gospel is controversial. It’s disruptive to all those who trust in their tradition or ritual or their heritage or their good works. And we should probably ask ourselves more often, “Is the reason that we don’t face more opposition, is it because the Gospel is not more disruptive to us? And if we were more true to the Gospel ourselves, would it upset even those in our own religious circles?” And see, Paul was in trouble. He was in trouble and he was in chains because of the Gospel. That’s number one.
But what we see secondly is that that Gospel was not chained. And we see Paul’s unchained Gospel. The writer Malcolm Gladwell, he says that he is obsessed with endings. He is obsessed with how a story ends. He says that he will very often read a thriller and he will stop five pages before the end because he is concerned the writer is not going to be able to pull it off! He says, “If I’m watching a movie and three-quarters of the way through there’s too many balls in the air, I’m out! I’m not going to be party to that kind of destruction of the narrative form!”
I wonder what he would think about the ending of the book of Acts, because everybody wants to know what happens in Acts 29. What happened when Paul made it to Rome? What was the outcome of his trial? What did Paul say when he appeared before Caesar? We don’t know. We don’t know because there is no Acts 29. We don’t know if Paul was eventually released. We don’t know if he was able to make it all the way to Spain as he hoped that he would. We don’t know if he was arrested again and then imprisoned in Rome again and then executed as a martyr for the Gospel. Tradition and the testimony of the early church suggests that some of those things were true, but the book of Acts, it all ends abruptly, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t tell us the rest of the story. It leaves so much up in the air. But do you know what it does not leave up in the air? It does not leave up in the air what Paul was doing while he was in chains in Rome. And Paul did not let his chains keep him from preaching the Gospel. Verse 30 it says, “He lived there two whole years at his own expense and welcomed all who came to him, proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”
The very last word of the book of Acts is the word “unhindered” – “akolutos.” It’s the only time that word is found in the New Testament. I don’t know enough Greek to say if it is an intentional literary device on the part of Paul, but the words that we read here in these verses, the word for “chain” and the word for “unhindered” have somewhat similar sounds. His chain in verse 20 is the word “halusis.” His “without hindrance” in verse 31 is the word “akolutos.” “Halusis” and “akolutos.” And what we see in these verses is that when Paul was “halusis,” “in chains,” his message was “akolutos,” it was “unhindered.” He was chained but the Gospel was not. And I like the way The Message translation captures these last verses of the book of Acts in its more contemporary style. It says this, it says, “Paul lived for two years in his rented house. He welcomed everyone who came for a visit. He urgently presented all matters of the kingdom of God. He explained everything about Jesus Christ. His door was always open.” His door was always open.
And that meant receiving people to talk with them and to interact with them about the Gospel. People like Onesimus. Onesimus was a runaway slave from Colossae. He heard about true freedom, and forgiveness in Christ from the apostle Paul. He believed and was saved. And Paul wrote to Philemon, the former master of Onesimus. He said, “I appeal to you, therefore, for my child Onesimus, whose father I became in my imprisonment.” Or like he wrote to the church in Philippi about those who were guarding him in prison. He said, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me really served to advance the Gospel so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.” You see, Paul was stuck but the Gospel kept going out.
And just as that meant receiving people to himself, it also meant him sending the message out through others. Five books of the New Testament, five of Paul’s letters – Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon and 2 Timothy – they were all written while Paul was in prison in one place or the other. “Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus,” Philemon 1. “Pray for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the Gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains,” Ephesians 6:19-20. “Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you,” Colossians 4:10. And we don’t know the exact details, we don’t know the exact imprisonment from which Paul wrote those letters, but we do know that when Paul was limited in his movement, his ministry carried on. In fact, we know – you know we read here about Paul talking about the kingdom of God and reasoning about the Lord Jesus Christ – we know what Paul said about the kingdom of God and about the Lord Jesus Christ in his rented quarters in Rome because we have letters that were written during that time period. And you know what? It still hasn’t stopped. It has not stopped yet. The Gospel is still unchained. It is still unhindered. And if the Lord tarries, there are places and generations and lives still unborn that will hear about Jesus and His kingdom because of the preaching and the proclamation of the apostle Paul while he is in chains in the city of Rome.
So why was Paul in chains? It was because of his message. It was because of his message of grace and forgiveness and salvation and hope for the whole world, for Jews and for Gentiles. You see, Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel “because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also for the Gentile.” Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel. He was not ashamed of his chains. And why was Paul’s Gospel unchained? It’s because the power of the Holy Spirit cannot be chained. And it’s because the ministry of Jesus cannot be stopped, not even by death. Because it’s resurrection ministry. It is the work and the reign of a resurrected King and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it, just like God had promised.
Okay, so I ask you, “How much does it matter to you? What’s it worth to you?” Because for Paul, it was the cause of his confinement, and yet nothing would stop him from being faithful to the Lord. And that meant that his faith in Jesus, that meant that his calling in Christ set him at odds with those who were his own people. In fact, it would have challenged Paul’s own previously held and strongly held beliefs. Is that true for you as well? Is the message of the kingdom, is it unpopular? It is controversial even to the message of your workplace or your academic institution or your political party? It should be. And does the teaching about Jesus call us to love people that we don’t want to love, call us to love people who are difficult to love? It should. And does the hope of the Gospel, does it call us to a different way of life, a different lifestyle, of different choices from our peers? Does it call us to a kind of devotion to God and an engagement with the world that might just make some of our friends uncomfortable? Maybe, it just might. But don’t hide it. Don’t cover it up. Do not keep silent, but live it out. Speak it. Speak it boldly and humbly. Let others know where your hope lies. You see, Paul proclaimed the kingdom and he taught about Jesus with all boldness and without hindrance. And you know what? We get to be a part of that too. We get to be involved in that same ministry. How great is that?
Not too long ago, Sandy Wilson was here and he was preaching, he told a story about leading a group on a tour of some of the major cities and sites that the apostle Paul visited in his ministry in the book of Acts. And he said that at the end of his trip he went out on the balcony of his hotel looking out on the city of Rome and he wrote a personal tribute to the apostle Paul. And I asked him to send it to me this week. And it’s a little long, but I thought that it would be a fitting conclusion to our study in the book of Acts. Here’s what Sandy wrote. He said:
“The person that we consider here is one of the most remarkable figures in world history, certainly the most influential Christian who ever lived. He not only wrote 13 books of the New Testament, but he was a champion of the Gospel, declaring clearly and defending boldly every cardinal issue of our salvation. He did this at the continual risk of his comfort, his convenience, and his life. He was not only a scholar of the Old Testament, but a brilliant apologist. He systematically explained to his Jewish brethren how Jesus fulfilled every promise of the Old Testament and how He unquestionably fulfilled the Messianic hopes of God’s people. At the same time, he boldly demonstrated how the crucified, resurrected and ascended Jesus fulfilled the deepest longings of the pagan people. By the power of the Spirit and the message of the Gospel, he destroyed the wisdom of the wise and the power of the mighty.
Peter also proclaimed the Gospel to the Gentiles, but no one ever in 1,900 years accomplished what the apostle Paul did. He not only studied and taught the message of the Gospel with scholarly precision, but he planned and executed the mission of the Gospel in a way no one had ever seen nor ever has seen since. He traveled from one hostile site to another for 25 years, passionately evangelizing rich and poor, male and female, educated and unlearned. After his Christian conversion, he never bore arms and never threatened violence, but by simple determination and faithfulness to Jesus he trusted, he stood down kings and governors, proconsuls and chieftains, scholars and priests. The mission of the Gospel came at great cost to himself. Shipwrecks, beatings, stonings, whippings and imprisonments were his common experience. He grieved, he suffered, he agonized. He felt the bitter pain of his beatings and abiding cold of his imprisonments and the intense loneliness of his leadership. But for Paul, every trial became opportunity to believe the Gospel more deeply. Every affliction became the occasion to know, love and praise Jesus Christ more enthusiastically and every painful discouragement became a platform from which he lectured his students about the all sufficiency of God’s love for them in every circumstance.
When Paul began his ministry, very few people believed in the legitimacy of his mission to the Gentiles. There were virtually no churches in Asia or Europe. When he died, he left behind a changed world, a local church in every major city in Asia Minor and much of southern Europe so that the world would hear the Gospel for the next 2,000 years. Today, the church is on every continent and in almost every country. Paul faced the end of his life here in Rome not with stoic resignation but with joyful, triumphant and eager anticipation. He was not a hypocrite. He believed what he preached. One cannot object that we mustn’t elevate a mere man to be our life’s example, for Paul made it clear that if we imitate him, we will be imitating Jesus Christ. We don’t know of a more fiercely loyal disciple Jesus ever had. Paul loved Christ and pled with us to love Him too. Paul said of himself simply, ‘I am what I am by the grace of God.’ We should, therefore, be most amazed at the grace of God who converted a Christian killer to be His apostle to the world.”
And then Sandy added this as a personal postscript that I would be happy to claim as my own. He said, “I owe my life and my eternal salvation to the God who raised up a man from Tarsus, a former pharisee and persecutor of the church, a man who diligently studied, preached, taught, developed disciples, and gave his life that I might have the good news of Jesus Christ.”
Praise God that He did. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we thank You for the good news of Jesus Christ and that You have redeemed all those who call upon Him for salvation from our sin, from the depths of our depravity and rebellion against You, that when we were seeking our own way, You sought us and bought us and made us Your own. We thank You for that good news of the Gospel, the good news which was at the forefront of all things in Luke and in Acts that point us again and again and again to our Savior, Jesus. Help us not to lose sight. Help us not to lose sight of the hope and of the good news of that good news, and that we might live it out faithfully and boldly and unhindered, everywhere in the world around us. We pray all of this in Christ’s name, amen.