Don’t Skip This Stunning Scene
The entourage was breathtaking to the average onlooker. As far as the eye could see, Romans soldiers lined the streets. There were two hundred marching in order, another seventy horsemen, and then 200 spearmen decked for battle, all moving in sequence toward Caesarea. In the midst of this large platoon was a man mounted on a horse, surrounded by the armed warriors in a statement of his importance. Who could it be?, one would have wondered. Who deserves this kind of motorcade?
What if I told you that the person mounted on that horse, surrounded by that army, had also said,
I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. (Acts 20:24)
That’s right. It was the apostle Paul … in Acts 24.
As part of his journey to Rome (see Acts 23:11), Paul was arrested in Jerusalem and transferred to Caesarea in Roman custody. The tribune, having been tipped about a Jewish plot to assassinate Paul (an amazing story in itself), ordered a platoon of soldiers to guard Paul on the road (see Acts 23:24).
It’s easy to rush past these details in the narrative of Acts, but it would have been a stunning scene … and an ironic scene in light of what Paul said about his life just a few chapters before.
When Paul was leaving for Jerusalem in Acts 20, he told the Ephesians elders that he didn’t know the details of what might happen to him. He knew that imprisonment and affliction awaited him, at the very least, but it could also be worse, and Paul was okay with that. Why?
Because what mattered more to him than his life was fulfilling his calling to preach the gospel. And preach the gospel he would, even in Rome.
In just a few years, Paul would testify in Rome of a King whose authority transcends the Roman Empire, and get this: one clear means through which Paul got to Rome and made that testimony was the Roman army itself.
Let’s wrap our heads around this. The man who said his life was cheap, because his sole purpose was preaching the gospel, that man’s life was treated with head-turning preciousness by the army of a rival kingdom.
No doubt, the sovereignty of God is on display here. Luke must have been grinning as he recounted these events. Even the details of how Paul’s nephew overheard the plot to assassinate him (see Acts 23:16) — it’s riveting. And extremely unlikely, unless there is a God like Yahweh, Creator of heaven and earth, of whom it is confessed:
The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God, so far manifest themselves in His providence, that His determinate counsel extends itself even to the first fall, and all other sinful actions both of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, which also He most wisely and powerfully binds, and otherwise orders and governs, in a manifold dispensation to His most holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness of their acts proceeds only from the creatures, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin. (1689 London Baptist Confession, 5:4)
This is seen in redemptive history throughout pages of Scripture, and clearly in the story of Paul in Acts, and also in your life.
Brother, sister, God sovereignly cares for you, and he certainly works all things together for the fulfillment of your everything good in Christ (Romans 8:28).
