So, it has been quite a journey through 28 chapters of the Book of Acts, has it not? It's been an interesting book. Now remember back to the beginning, what I said. And I, unfortunately, I haven't brought it up for a while because it just hasn't come to mind. But as we think about where the Book of Acts has gone, let's remember what Jesus said at the beginning.

You will be my witnesses to Jerusalem and Judea. And to the ends of the earth, right?

So, as we land here towards the end of the book of Acts, we continue to have a whole lot of story without much dialogue, don't we? We know that Paul is out and about teaching, but we're not hearing much. about what he is teaching or Much other than he is headed to Rome So we are seeing that Paul is trusting that God is in control and that God is leading him down this path Even though they have recently been shipwrecked that is where we pick up for today so they end up going through this now remember Paul said that an angel of the Lord had told him that they would all survive and so they all end up on this island.

Well, there are some words in there that are difficult to say. I think I would rather read a genealogy of Old Testament names than read through some of those place names. But what is going on in this story is that Paul is headed to stand before Caesar and there are all kinds of circumstances going against this ship, right?

And so, here we have, again, in the Book of Acts, The story of Paul's conversion. And so, this is Paul telling Festus and Agrippa how he came to this point. And I want to focus on verses, or verse 26. We've discussed Paul's conversion twice before. We know the story of that. But I want us to take a look at what Paul says about the things of the Christian faith.

 So, this is pretty straightforward what is happening. Paul is continuing to make his case before the authorities. I didn't want to Comment too much on chapter 25 because it would have been kind of the same thing that you know Paul is being faithful to witness the gospel. That's an important thing What I wanted to draw out here by going through verse 11 of chapter 26 Is what does Paul say the issue is notice in verses 6 through 8?

Well, this is really a rather interesting story because here we have all these people coming and making charges. Paul is sort of on trial here, right? He has the high priest come, they have Tertullus, they have the Jews testifying against him, and Paul is saying, hey, look, everything was fine. And you'll remember this from a few days back.

Well, we have high drama here in the life of Paul, don't we? He has been put back in the barracks after his having troubles with the people in Jerusalem and now we find out that they are plotting to kill him and this is This is very clearly a pretty serious thing because they've made an oath not to eat or drink until he is killed now we know the story of Paul well enough to know that we're quite a few chapters away from him being taken away and we don't even know when all this happened in relation to the death of Paul, really.

 And so, the interesting journey of the Apostle Paul continues in what we have read today. Now, we know that he was arrested. We know that Paul came to Jerusalem despite warnings from other people. And we saw that the warnings were not that God had told these people That he shouldn't go, but they had, they had, it had been revealed to them How he was going to be treated and they didn't want him to go, but Paul's saying no, I'm supposed to go I'm just willing to suffer for the sake of Christ And so here we have an interesting story and we don't understand a lot of it And we don't have the time to dig too deep into it But there was this Tribune who was going to be seen overseeing this trial of Paul They were they were going to give him lashes Uh, he was going to be beaten, but Paul is saying, wait a minute.

So, here we see the continuation of the story of Paul going to Jerusalem. We were introduced to this idea of Paul going to Jerusalem through the prophetic words that people received about Paul going to be persecuted there. And you'll remember that they encouraged Paul not to go, but Paul says, Hey, I'm willing to suffer.

You haven't told me that God has told me not to go. You've just told me that I'm going to have. I'm going to be arrested and bound and all this kind of stuff. But I've been, I've been feeling this need to go to Jerusalem. And so, what did we see last time? We saw on Wednesday that Paul was arrested and now we're seeing his testimony in front of the people here in Jerusalem.

 So, we come to this part of the Book of Acts, remembering where we were before. Remember we had that story that seemed like it was conflicting, like the Holy Spirit was telling one group of people one thing and telling Paul another. But then we saw that Paul was, was not afraid of what was coming before him.

The people told him not to go. Because he was going to be arrested. But Paul knew that he was called to go to Jerusalem anyway, and he was not afraid of the persecution that he knew was coming. And so, we see this persecution happening in this story, right? We see that Paul arrives in Jerusalem and, and they were received gladly.

 I think as we were reading through that, you probably came across what I was driving at as to why this is a little bit of a difficult passage. We seem to be getting conflicting messages, don't we? Well, that's not really the case when we stop and take a look at what is happening. But what it seems like on the surface is that Paul is getting a message to go to Jerusalem from the Holy Spirit, but then other people are getting a message that he shouldn't go.

 This is both a beautiful story and a sad story at the same time. And also has Paul giving some hard words to the church in Ephesus notice that he brings the people together and He talks about the ministry that he has and he talks about where he is going and he says I’m not sure what's going to happen But I know this everywhere I go.

I am opposed for the sake of the gospel everywhere that he goes We've seen that in acts right everywhere Paul goes there is trouble. The truth of the gospel is being opposed But God continues to have the gospel going forth, right? There is always this progressive movement in the book of Acts. No matter what happens, the gospel is going forward, and people are coming to faith because the Holy Spirit is at work.

And so, we have here another interesting story that's surrounded by a whole bunch of travel, right? We're seeing all these controversies in the early church, not necessarily controversies within the church, while there were plenty of those when you read Paul's epistles, you see those issues, but the controversies are the persecution that is coming.

 Well, here's another story that is kind of a passing story. It helps us get. Our heroes from the story, from one place to another, right? Paul is in Ephesus for a considerable amount of time. We read that in the last couple passages, is that he was there a long time and was doing significant work. Well, now we are finding out that they're going to be moving on and there's this riot in Ephesus.

 So, we come across another interesting sequence of stories. But all pointing to the same basic idea that we've been seeing now for many chapters. So, Paul happens to end up in Ephesus, a primarily Gentile city, like many of the city names that we have seen here. But he does what he normally does. He goes to the Jewish synagogues.

 So, we read a lot of text there today, reason being there's a lot of movement, but not much in the way of, of stuff to comment on. It's just keeping the story moving. The things that I really want us to draw out, if you're watching on video, I have highlighted and we see that in verse six. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads.

 This passage is really interesting because we see Paul interacting more with a Greek audience, don't we? Now he goes, he is in Athens and he finds the synagogue where the Jews gather and he, he talks with them. But we see that he also goes into the marketplace every day and talks with those who happen to be there.

Now this was a place where people would go and they would share their thoughts, they would philosophize, etc. And we see in verse 18 that some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, two different schools of philosophy, they talked with him. And you gotta love what it says here. What does this babbler wish to say?

This is an interesting passage to look at, if for no other reason, trying to say Amphipolis, for me, is rather difficult. Uh, maybe I should put together a blooper reel of my inability to say that, but I think I had to try five times to get it right. But I did. And so, here we sit in this story of Paul and Silas moving around.

They've come to Thessalonica. Now, there was a synagogue there and Paul had this habit of going there. That was his target audience, you know, while he was trying to reach the Gentiles. His target audience was to go to the synagogues and to talk about Jesus and how he was the Messiah. And that's what we see here.

 This is a pretty interesting story and has a lot of stuff going on, doesn't it? We think about them being arrested, and I mentioned that they were beaten without a trial, and they were Roman citizens, and this wasn't a good thing, and we're going to see that resolution at the end of this passage. But the real meat of the passage comes in the middle of this story, right?