If you'd open your Bibles to Acts chapter 22 with me. Acts chapter 22. Sometimes we have scenarios in life where maybe we have an advantage. So for example, I had a professor in college taught a class called Hebrew History which was basically covering Joshua through Nehemiah and Esther. And he was of the World War II generation and I remember in class one of the young men asked him if he served in the war and he said no I didn't. He said that he was in seminary during the Second World War and that because of that he was given a deferment. In other words he wasn't drafted because I guess the policy of the government was if you were in seminary or in med school or something like that, they wanted you to finish your training because you're more valuable trained with that thing than you are. And by the time he finished his seminary training, this war had ended. So he didn't end up being in the war. And I remember one of the young men afterwards saying, I don't think that was right. I don't think he should have gotten an exemption like that. I said, well, you know, the government made the law. And, you know, the government decided that this was fine to do. There may be other times in life that, you know, people have opportunities where they have exemptions. I remember going to a shooting range with my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law, my sister's husband, is a federal agent. He's with the Department of Customs. We went to a shooting range. It was an outdoor, run by, it was a state park. And so he said, hey, let's go shooting. So we went to a shooting range, and we went to the shooting range. He had his gun on. And the person running the range said, we don't let any live guns on the range. You have to take them down there unloaded. He said, I'm not taking my firearm off. And she said, well, I'll have to call the sheriff. He's like, go ahead. But they're going to side with me. I'm a federal officer. Here's my badge. Now, he was using it. For me to do it, they would have arrested me. If I said, I'm carrying my loaded gun down there, they would have called the sheriff. I'd probably gone away in cuffs. But for him to do it, you know what? They never called the sheriff. You know why? Because he's a federal agent. He has the right to carry a gun. and they're not gonna, no sheriff's gonna arrest a federal agent for carrying a gun because he's required to carry it all the time, even if he's at a shooting range. And if we're worried about our police officers carrying guns on a shooting range, we got bigger problems, okay? You follow what I'm saying? In other words, there are times that we have advantages in life. Sometimes they come because of a status. Sometimes they come because of a job that we have. Sometimes they come, you know, because of maybe age. Some of you avail yourselves Senior discount when you go places, right? If they give you 10% off for your coffee, you'll take it, right? Now my question is, is it right to do that? In other words, was that young man right to say, I don't think he should have gotten that exemption from the war? And to question that. In fact, he said, when I'm a pastor, I'm not going to take any of those kinds of special treatments. OK, if you don't want to do that, I'm not saying you have to, but I I think we're going to see somewhat of an answer to that question in this passage here. Acts chapter 22 verse 30. On the morrow, because he would have known the certainty wherever he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bands and commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear and brought Paul down and set him before him. So there's a lot of he's and him's here. We got to put those in context. The next day, because he, that is, the Roman commander who's in charge, who had taken Paul into custody because of the disturbance that was in Temple, because he wanted to know the certainty whereof he, that was Paul was accused, why the Jews were accusing him, he loosed him. That doesn't mean he made him not arrested. He took off his bonds so that he could go and appear before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders. commanded the chief priests and all their council that is the Sanhedrin to appear and he brings Paul down before them and he sets Paul in the midst of them okay but what we see here as well is that is that as we look in around verse 24 the chief captain previous to this commanded him that is Paul to be brought into the castle, that's the fortress, and bade that he should be examined by scourging. In other words, we want to find out what's going on here, and the best way to get information out of somebody is to give them a good beating. That's how the Romans viewed it. They tend to talk after you give them a scourging. The only problem is it's against the law to do that to a Roman citizen. You could do that to a non-Roman citizen. Couldn't do that to a Roman citizen. That he might know whereof they cried if so against him. In other words, I'll get this guy to talk and tell us what's going on. And as they bound him with thongs, so they start tying him up to give him a beating, Paul said unto the centurion that stood by, is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman and uncondemned? So Paul says to him, let me ask you this. According to Roman law, can you beat a Roman citizen who hasn't been convicted of a crime, condemned of a crime? Centurion hears this and he goes, hmm, something's going on here. When centurion heard that, he went and told the chief captain saying, Take heed what thou doest, for this man is a Roman. He figures out what the question means. This guy's a Roman citizen, that's why he's asking this question. He goes to the commander, you better be careful, he's a Roman citizen. Then the chief captain came and said unto him, tell me, art thou a Roman? And he said, yes. And the chief captain answered with a great psalm, obtained I this freedom? And Paul said, I was free born. The man says, I bought my Roman citizenship with a large amount of money. Paul says, I was born a Roman citizen, a free born Roman citizen of a free city. Then straightway they departed from him, which should have examined him. Examined, that's a polite way to put about what they were about to do there. And the chief captain also was afraid after he knew that Paul was a Roman, because he had found him. So here's a question. In other words, is this setting this forth as an example of something that's right to do? Paul uses his Roman advantage here. That is, he's about to get a beating, and a bad one, okay? A Roman scourge was not a good thing. You could die from them. The Romans didn't have, you know, a lot of laws that limited the way they punished people. It's not like there was no, you know, no protection from cruel and unusual punishment. So they could do what they wanted. If you weren't a Roman or if you were condemned, they could do what they wanted to you. So he uses his Roman citizenship to get out of this beating. Now I have a feeling that even if you have really high scruples about this, you would be tempted to do this at least. Even if you're somebody who says, I don't want to take advantage, I'll just be a humble person and be treated just like everybody else. When they're about to give you a beating that might beat you within an inch of your life, you might be like, hmm, all I have to do is say I'm a Roman citizen and they won't beat you? That seems pretty tempting to do, doesn't it? So what does Paul do here? He uses an advantage that he had. Is it an unbiblical advantage? Is it an immoral advantage? No. And I would contend that we have this kind of opportunity all the time. All right? There are advantages that we have in life. And I'm not saying just to enrich ourselves, but this is for the cause of preaching the gospel, right? He's being accused of causing a problem in the temple by deviling the temple, which isn't true. He's falsely accused. And so he's using an advantage to avoid one. unfair and unjust accusations, and two, to avoid what would be a nearly, you know, a calamitous, almost nearly fatal event in his life. He's not just doing this lightly. He didn't walk around every day with a badge on saying, I'm a Roman citizen, so everybody would, you know, be nice to him. But he uses this here. And in the same way, the Lord opens doors for us in many ways. Okay, there are opportunities that we have are open to us because of the providential work of God in our life. It wasn't accidental that Paul was born a Roman citizen, was it? That God didn't accidentally have that be the case. He used that because it gives Paul advantage in many, many situations in his ministry. All right, so many of you know our missionary G.S. Nair in India, okay? G.S. doesn't tell you this when he's here, but G.S., in India, the caste system is against the law. They've officially banned it, But there's still a social understanding of it. And GS comes from the highest caste in India. And so I was with him, and we traveled once to teach some seminary classes. And so we checked into the hotel, and they wanted to see my passport. I handed my passport. They see the blue American passport, and they got more polite at the hotel desk. I wasn't doing anything. I just handed them the passport. But I guess they figured I was going to spend money because Americans are rich, is the way they look at it. So they're like, oh, blue passport. And they treat me really nice. Then he hands them his passport. It's Indian, but it has his name on it. And as soon as they see his family name, they go, hi, caste. And literally, they took my passport. Oh, sir, welcome, and all this. They took his passport. They said, oh, welcome. And the guy did this with his hands and bowed his head and showed him respect. Now, you know what? That opens all kinds of doors all over India. If you're from a different caste, there's groups of people who won't listen to you. But if you're from the highest caste, everybody will listen to your preaching, because they will out of respect for one reason or another. Now, is it wrong to use that advantage to get a hearing for the gospel? He's not milking it, he's not getting people to give him money for it. He just knows when he walks into a room, people will listen to him as soon as they hear his family name. Is it wrong to use that advantage? In other words, was it wrong for Tim Tebow when he was playing college football to testify that he was a Christian and try to be a testimony for Christ? Not everybody has that same stage. Is that a wrong advantage? Okay, you see my point? There's a lot of So all the Gator fans are on my side now, but There's a there's a an issue here where the Lord providentially gives us these advantages. I'm not talking about You know milking things to try to enrich ourselves or any of that But for the cause of Christ and to try to avoid like an unjust beating. This is a very legitimate thing All right. It's a very legitimate thing And there are these kinds of opportunities. Years ago, I worked for an engraving shop, and we did engraving. And there was something that the church needed done, needed some things engraved, some plates engraved. The church that I was going to at the time. And I went to my boss and I said, can I use my employee discount to buy these plates for the church? She said, sure. Well, am I ripping off the company? Or am I helping the church not spend as much money? You see my point? So if they're gonna do that, it's not like I did it secretly and ripped off the company, I did it with permission. You can use those kind of advantages at times. Or, for example, as a church, because we're a non-profit, we have the permission to purchase things tax-free in the state of Florida as a church. Not things personally, okay, but if the church needs to buy, we just did, some new flooring, we can give them this letter from the state of Florida that says we're tax-exempt, We can, you know, if we buy several thousand dollars worth of flooring, we don't pay the hundreds of dollars on taxes on it. Guess what? Your money that you gave to the church goes further that way. Is that wrong? Now I've had people tell me, I was at a shop one time and they said, I don't think this is right that churches get this advantage. Okay, you don't have to think it's right, but the letter's right here, so take the tax off, you know. But that they were kind of hostile to religion kind of person. So, you know, is it wrong for the church to use that advantage? No. We can use that to the glory of God. The point is to glorify God with these things. In other words, if the money goes further, we can spend it on other things. It's nice to get new flooring, but I'd rather spend it on missions or evangelism or other things. And so what happens is after this, this man still wants to know what's going on with Paul. So he decides to send Paul down to the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is the ruling body of the Jews. And he sends Paul down to the Sanhedrin for the Sanhedrin to examine him. And Paul, earnestly beholding the council, said, men and brethren, I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day." Now, this is a very good thing for Paul to say. What he's saying is, this was a very Jewish statement. What he's saying is, before God, I have obeyed God. In other words, I'm not an outcast who's just flaunted and lived my life anyway. I'm not an antinomian who hates rules and just wants to live my own way. I've been a good follower of God. I've been a God-fearer, and I have a clear conscience before God. All right, this is the way, this was the kind of person that they held up. Now, they might have had a different expectation of how that kind of person would behave. In other words, they might say, well, we don't think you'd be preaching Jesus if that was the case, but the fact is they couldn't point to anything in his life and say, you're a thief, you're a murderer, you're cheating people. They couldn't point to anything like that because he had conscientiously obeyed God. Verse two, and the high priest Ananias, commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth. Now Ananias is the son of Caiaphas. Caiaphas we meet in Jesus' trial, right? Jesus' trial is decades before this. Paul, you have to understand by this point, has traveled and been in ministry since his conversion, almost 20 years. So the time that he was familiar with the Sanhedrin, they sent him letters out to go and persecute Christians was decades before this. Okay, so he doesn't know, think about it, if you come back to, I don't know if you've ever even done this, go to a church, maybe you attended a church somewhere for a while, go back 20 years later and see how many people you still know. There's gonna be some, but there's gonna be a lot of new people. That's the same thing with anything, you go to, you know, go back to work at a job you worked at 20 years ago, see how many people you still know. A lot of the people there, even in a small company will be, it will have been turnover. And so here, in this, and in a day when the median age of death is about 55 for men, and men couldn't serve on the Sanhedrin until they were 30, that's only, you know, a short time to serve. In that 20 years, you have almost complete turnover of the group. So what happens is this new high priest, Ananias, commands that Paul be hit. Hit him on the mouth. He's a liar! Okay? Now think about this. The Romans don't have the right to beat him, but here the high priest commands that he be struck. But remember this, Paul was a rabbi. He was trained under Gamaliel, the greatest teacher of the law of that day. And he knew what the Old Testament said. So here's what he says, basically, You had no right to hit me because the law says I can't be struck until I've been found guilty, and I'm just on trial. You're gonna judge me. You say you're defending Moses' law, and you're breaking it in the process of defending it. Now, didn't they do the same thing to Jesus? If you study the trial of Jesus, everything they do in the trial of Jesus is against the law, the Old Testament law. Now, there are two groups in this, and you have to understand this as we go through this passage. Two major groups. The Sadducees, the high priests, were the major representatives of. The Sadducees only accepted the first five books of Moses as scripture. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Pharisees were the second group. The Pharisees accepted the whole Old Testament as scripture. And the Pharisees believed in the supernatural. The Sadducees did not. In other words, the Pharisees believed in angels. They believed in resurrection. They believed in miracles. The Sadducees were more skeptical than that. They didn't believe in the existence of angels. They didn't believe in a resurrection from the dead. And so here Paul is saying, you're commanding wrongly. But Paul says it in a very harsh way. But what we do know is this man Ananias, years later, was driven out of his home and killed. So God actually fulfills this. This is like a prophecy by Paul. In other words, Ananias doesn't go to a quiet death. He was a crooked man. Okay, everything we know about him in history, he lived as the high priest to enrich himself. and to keep his own power, and he eventually paid the price for it. And so this is fulfilled, this prophecy as it is that Paul says here. God shall smite thee, thou whited wall. The idea of a whited wall, it's like Jesus calling him a whited sepulcher. In other words, you're covering up all the dirt by putting white paint on it, but it doesn't take the dirt away. In other words, inside you're rotten, on the outside you look really good. Then said Paul unto him, God shall smite thee, verse four. And they that stood by said, Revilest thou God's high priest? Then said Paul, I wist not, brethren, that he was the high priest. For it is written, thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people. Now you can take this a couple of ways. All right, there's a lot of different interpretations of this verse. There's two ways you can take this. Take Paul at face value. He didn't know he was the high priest. Which, as I said, it's been 20 years since he saw this body. He might not recognize the man. Okay, that's a possibility. That's kind of my opinion on it. Second is that he didn't know it was the high priest because Paul seems to talk about having eye problems in some of his writings, about writing in a large hand, in large script. So maybe he didn't see so well and he didn't recognize the man. That's a possibility as well. Another interpretation of it is that this is sarcasm. In other words, you weren't behaving like the high priest so I didn't recognize that. Okay, if you'd behave like the high priest then I'd treat you like the high priest. There are some who take it sarcastically. I tend to take it more at face value that he's not being sarcastic here. But he genuinely didn't know. Because remember, this is an impromptu meeting of this group. They've been called to meet because the Roman commander asked it. He's probably not in his high priestly robes. He's probably not, you know, they're not in a formal session here. So Paul doesn't recognize completely what's going on. He just knows he's meeting before the Sanhedrin here. And he recognizes the Old Testament commanded that you not Bring a curse down on the ruler of your people like this. But again, this is prophecy because this actually happens. God will smite you and God did smite this man. But when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, men and brethren, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. Now he uses another advantage here. And that is he knows this group, and he knows that they're not unified. They might be unified against Christians, but he knows something they're not unified about. And the thing they're not unified about is this, that one half of the group believes in a resurrection, a future. When the Messiah comes back, the Pharisees were looking forward to their bodies being raised and having resurrection bodies. And the Sadducees didn't believe that. And so Paul says, you know why I'm here? Because I believe in resurrection. And he knows he can split the group by doing that. Okay, so it's a good move. I mean, it's a good move. He wants to get some of these people on his side, and he knows he's gonna go after the thing that will get, you know, the most sympathy from part of the group. And he already knows that, you know, Ananias and the Sadducees are already not predisposed. He just told them God was gonna smite him. That guy, you're not gonna win him over. Okay, obviously the Lord could change his heart. But from a human standpoint of argumentation here, this guy's not real happy with you. You just called him out in public, you didn't do that to these kind of people, and you just said God was gonna smite him, which that, you know, that doesn't, none of us really appreciates that. You know, if somebody came up to you and said, may God judge you, you probably would be like, really? I had, out here we've got a flagpole. And there used to be a set of steps that went up to the two flagpoles that were out there. A few years ago, those steps got undermined some and there were big cracks in them and they weren't straight anymore. And so what we had to do is we broke up those steps and we had to take the flagpoles out to do that. And in that process, we took the flagpoles out and we reset one of them and put the American flag back up out there. But in that process, in the week or two that those flags were down, I got so many angry phone calls, not mostly from church members. But I got a phone call once, I wanna talk to the pastor, okay. I went to Calvary Christian School. Where did you put those flagpoles? The steps they were on were cracking and we're gonna put a new one in the ground. Oh good, because I was praying that God would judge you. Great, thank you. Maybe you should get the truth before you start praying imprecatory prayers on me. But this is the kind of thing, and you know, that's fine. I can understand the zeal to want to put the flag back up. That's not what I'm criticizing. What I'm criticizing is praying curses on people when hopefully they don't deserve it. So he calls out, I'm a Pharisee, and he's going to use his advantage here. And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the multitude was divided. They start arguing with each other. For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit. But the Pharisees confessed both, and there arose a great cry. And the scribes that were of the Pharisees' part arose and strove, saying, we find no evil in this man. But if a spirit or an angel had spoken to him, let us not fight against God. See, they believe in angels. And they're saying, maybe God or an angel had revealed this stuff to him, and maybe we should listen to him. The Sadducees are like, we don't believe in angels, and we don't believe in resurrections. And the whole council gets divided. All right, Paul is being, he's not just being clever here. He's looking for an advantage. Let's go back to what he's saying. He's not just arguing a theological point. What is the basis of our future resurrection? Jesus' resurrection. When he says he believes in resurrection, he argues in 1 Corinthians 15 that the basis of our future resurrection is that Jesus rose. And if Christ be not raised, we are of all men most miserable. We have no hope. In other words, he's arguing for a very important element of the gospel. I don't know if you realize this, but the resurrection is part of the gospel. You don't believe the gospel of Jesus Christ if you don't believe Jesus rose. I was on a trip to Israel and there was a person in our group, we had gone to one of the sites there, and a lot of the sites have shrines on them now. They're religious shrines, they're not preserved historically. And one of the people leaving there said, Jesus would roll over in his grave if he saw some of this now. I said, no, he wouldn't. Jesus isn't in a grave. He rose again. Jesus doesn't do any rolling over in the grave. He's alive. That's part of the gospel. The fact is that if you go through the book of Acts, I did this many years ago, and I studied each one of the sermons, whether it's Paul's sermon, you know, before later on, before Agrippa, or whether it's previous, you know, at Pisidian Antioch, or at Athens, or Peter's Sermon at Pentecost. Every time, they change how they approach things. At Athens, Paul preaches to a Gentile audience and preaches a Gentile sermon. But he doesn't change the gospel. But when he's preaching to Jews at Pisidian Antioch, he preaches a very Jewish-oriented sermon. But he doesn't change the gospel. But if you go through every one of those, whether it's Peter, Or Paul preaching the gospel, if you go through their sermons in the book of Acts, and there are a lot of them, you'll find that every time they mention the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they never leave it out. After I studied that, it became my conviction that I would, every time I'd give the gospel, I'm not sure, I've always successfully done this, but it became my conviction that every time I gave the gospel, the resurrection of Jesus needed to be part of it. Because even though today we may assume that people know that part of the story, they don't always. People out there know Jesus was crucified, because they've seen crosses and stuff. But to know the story that he died and rose again, because what does the resurrection say? That God accepted his death as a sacrifice for sin. And so it goes back to the gospel. What do we mean by the gospel? Every one of us, the Bible teaches, has rebelled against God. We're all under God's condemnation. God has given us good and right commandments. It's good that people not steal. It's good that people not murder, right? It's good that people not deceive each other to try to get advantage over each other and bear false witness and these kinds of things. Those things are all good. Those are good commandments from God, but we've thought, you know, for me, there's exceptions. You know, those are good things for other people. I don't like when people steal from me, but once in a while, if I need to steal, I should be allowed. Now, I'm not really saying that seriously, but that is how we think in our reasons. And because of that, because we've rebelled against God, because we've run our own life, because we've sinned, as the Bible describes it, God's condemnation righteously has been turned on us. Just like if I break the law, it's right for the judge to give me whatever punishment is available for the law. Any just punishment is right. So if I'm driving down the road, and I'm exceeding the speed limit, and those blue lights come on behind me, and I get pulled over, and I get a ticket, it's right for the judge to fine me. Okay? The hundred and some dollars or whatever it costs, that's fair. I was breaking the law. It's just. Okay? That's a very mundane illustration, but I think we see the same thing. Somebody murders somebody, they get arrested by the police, they're convicted in a court of law of murder, and they go to jail. That's not unjust. That's just. They're being punished for a crime they committed. Every one of us have committed Rebellion against God, crimes against God, and so therefore God's wrath has been turned against us, but yet God loves us. And he loves us so much that he sent his son, the second person in the triune Godhead, the book of 1 John says the father sent the son to be the savior of the world. That he sent his son who took on our humanity. This time of year we remember the incarnation of our savior, Jesus Christ. The God-man, Jesus, took on our humanity. He became human just like us. He was fully God and fully man. and he perfectly, unlike us, obeyed God. He never sinned, but yet he died on a cross. The Bible says the wages or the cost of sin is death. How could a person who never sinned therefore die? Because he wasn't dying for your sins, he was dying for ours. Excuse me, he wasn't dying for his sins, he was dying for ours. It wasn't his own sins that he was dying for. He bore our sins in his body on that tree, the scriptures say. You see, each one of us, our sins were laid on him. and by his stripes we are healed. Jesus died for our sins on the cross and he died, but it was not possible for death to keep him and he came out of that grave and he rose again and he ever lives to make intercession for us and the scriptures tell us that if we'll come in faith to Jesus Christ Or as Paul says in Acts chapter 20, just a few pages over, that he was preaching, as he's talking to the Ephesian elders, he tells them he was preaching repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, by repentance, I don't mean doing good works. I'm not talking about some kind of work salvation. I don't mean penance. Don't misunderstand me. It means that I've been loyal to sin and self. In other words, nobody gets saved and says, I love my sin and I hate you, God, but save me. That's not how it works. They say, I'm a sinner. Sin has brought me condemnation. And I mourn over my sin. Lord, save me. Okay, so repentance is a turning of loyalty. I'm turning from sin, turning to Jesus. And that turning of loyalty eventually does look like a change in our life, right? Just like when I come to faith in Christ, God, by his spirit, begins to change me and make me obedient to the gospel. But it's not my good works that earn anything before God. It's what Christ did on the cross and Christ alone. And the Bible says that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that message is what Paul is defending here when he's defending the resurrection. Not just that there's a future resurrection for believers, but that's based on the resurrection of Jesus. And there rose a great dissension. The chief captain, fearing as Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from among them and to bring him into the castle. Verse 11, and the night following, the Lord stood by him and said, behold, or excuse me, be of good cheer, Paul. For thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome. So he says, the Lord encourages him. They pull him out of that mask, that argument, they put him back in the custody of the Roman authorities, and the Lord appears to him at night and says to him, take courage, take joy, you've testified here in Jerusalem, but you're gonna testify also in Rome. Now this was one of Paul's goals. to eventually go to Rome and preach the gospel. He hadn't done this yet. God's gonna get him to Rome, he's just not gonna get him there the way Paul wanted to get there. Okay? Paul wanted to get there, you know, on a missionary journey. He's gonna get an all-expense-paid trip by the Roman government. Get shipwrecked on the way and a few other things, but the fact is, the Lord's gonna get him to Rome, and he's gonna testify to the Romans. Now. Again, this is a huge opportunity. We know that the book of Philippians says that while Paul is imprisoned in Rome, when we get to the end of the book of Acts, that there are members of the Caesar's household who had heard the gospel and come to faith to Christ. The praetorian guard who were the official bodyguards for Caesar were also the ones who were often in charge of the prisoners that were to appear before Caesar. And so every day Paul had this guard watching over him. making sure that Paul wouldn't escape before he had trial before Caesar, and Paul was undoubtedly a testimony to those people, giving them the gospel. You get a new audience every day, a new guard shows up, and some of them believed, and came to faith in Christ so that even in the household of Caesar, at that time Nero, okay, not the best Caesar around, a nutty guy, crazy man, egomaniac, I mean, he was so crazy. If you were to go to Rome today, the Colosseum, where the Colosseum stands, previous to that, there was this giant golden statue of Nero. Huge. He made a huge, like 100-foot golden statue of himself. He's kind of stuck on himself. But then after he was deposed, they took that down and eventually built the Colosseum there. But there was this huge, and he had built a house called the Golden House because it was just lavish. Okay, he was crazy. He was not a good guy, but yet in his household there were believers because Paul went and testified there. And the Lord says, I'm going to take you to Rome. Now, it's not wrong to have goals like that. It's not wrong to use advantages for the glory of God, and it's not wrong to have goals. One of his goals was to go preach in Rome. Nothing wrong with that goal. He probably even prayed that he'd have that opportunity. But let us remember this, that when you have those kinds of goals, God is going to accomplish them the way he wants them accomplished. Not according to our goals. Okay? That doesn't mean he's playing a trick on us. In other words, if Paul had gone there on his own, he probably never would have been able to testify to anybody in Caesar's household. But by going there under arrest, he gets to testify to Caesar's household. He gets more opportunities. Not in the same way he wanted them, but he gets more opportunities. And so what we find is that not for our own personal advantage, but for the sake of the gospel, it's okay to use rights that we have. It's okay to take opportunities to preach the gospel. By proclaiming the resurrection among the Sanhedrin, he gets a gospel opportunity, one that he wouldn't have had if he just tried to defend his innocence. And then here, the Lord says, take courage because you will testify before me in Jerusalem. So there may be times that you have opportunities. And you have advantages, and you have opportunities to testify to people of the gospel. And you might have a chance to testify to people that you would never thought you've had the chance. I remember I had a opportunity to, I was invited at a church to preach, and the church was having a service, and in that service they had invited a lot of the elected officials from the area. All these elected officials were there. The mayor of the city was there. She was a nice lady. She was from a Roman Catholic background. There was another member of the city council there, was a professing Christian. But sitting in the audience that he stayed for the whole service was John Conyers, United States House of Representatives. And I preached, and I preached a clear gospel. That was my goal that day. So I'm not bragging about this. I'm just saying, guess what? You want to know if some of these members of Congress have ever heard the gospel? I know at least one has. And beyond that, I know that, you know, Congressman Webster, who used to represent this district but now has the one that's in Lake County, I know he's given the gospel to people on Capitol Hill. So sometimes the Lord opens these doors. I didn't know when I was invited to come speak, you know, on a Sunday morning at this church that they were having that event. I knew I was going to preach the gospel, but I decided I'm going to focus this in even more because I know there are people in this audience who don't believe it and who need to hear it. And the Lord sometimes opens these opportunities, not always in the way we want, not in ways that, you know, are according to our will, but to God's glory. In other words, use the advantages that God has providentially given us for his glory. Use the opportunities he gives us for his glory, and recognize it's okay to have goals, especially godly goals, like preaching the gospel in Rome, or whatever goal you might have. So if you, let's say in here there's a young man who's considering going into the ministry. If a man desires the office of bishop, he desires a good work. It's a good thing to desire. However, you can have wrong motives in that. If your goal is, I'm going to have the biggest church in America and be the most famous preacher, that's not a goal God wants you to have. What God wants you to have is a goal to see people reach for the gospel, and he'll do that however he wants to do it. It's not about how well-known you become. It's not about how many books you sell. It's not about how big your offerings are. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about doing this to the glory of God. Okay, it's okay to have ambitious goals. Preaching in Rome's a pretty ambitious goal, but we have them to the glory of God. Not for our own ambitions, but for the glory of Christ. And that's what we find in this passage. Now I wanna say this, if there's somebody with us here today who's never come to saving faith in Christ, I want to invite you to trust Christ today. After the service is over, you can find me, you can find one of our church members, you can find Chris Fort, who led our singing this morning. We can direct you to somebody who can open the Word of God with you and show you from the Word of God how you can know Christ, how you can be certain that your sins are forgiven, that you've received Christ as your Savior, and you can have the sure hope of eternal life, of a resurrection someday with the Lord. Maybe there's others in here today who have some other spiritual need. We'd be glad to help you today if we can. Oh, and I do want to mention deacons. We have one today, I think, that would like to give her testimony to join the church. So if there's a few deacons that would be available afterward, that would be a help. All right, but after this service is over, please find me. Don't leave today without taking care of some of these spiritual needs that you have. Also, let me say this. Maybe there's someone here today and the Lord has used this in your soul. Maybe to say, hey, you know, I've thought that the idea of, you know, doing something for the glory of God was something I should be more humble than to have goals or something like that. I've talked to people that have thought this way before. No, it's okay to have goals. Just do them to the glory of God. that using advantages isn't wrong. So this would be a great opportunity to thank the Lord for the advantages He's given you in life, for the opportunities He's given you in life, and for those opportunities to glorify Him and use them to the glory of God. So we're going to bow our heads and have a few moments to think