Fri.’s Devo - Paul Before His Accusers

Read: Acts 21:37-23:35
The church at Corinth had complained that Paul was not a very dynamic speaker, but he sounded pretty confident and dynamic to me as he addressed his accusers. He awed them by speaking in Aramaic and had them eating out of his hand until he dropped the Gentile bomb. Then they exploded. The Roman commander stepped in and ordered him to be whipped until he confessed his crime. When he found out Paul was born a Roman citizen, fear fell on him and he kept Paul over night unchained and unharmed.
The next day Paul was brought before the Jewish religious council to be tried. These were the same people who had ordered Jesus to be crucified. I bet they are wondering when this is going to stop and die down. Paul noticed there were Pharisees and Sadducees in the council so he played them against one another. Another uproar arose and Paul had to be rescued from the crowd again.
Some of the zealous leaders were so upset they wanted to secretly kill Paul and shut him up but God protected him and allowed him to arrive safely in Rome.
God has a real enemy called Satan and Satan recruits people into his army just as God does. These men that hated Paul had hated Jesus and hated God even though they were the “religious” leaders. They had strayed so far from the true God and the Mosaic law that they believed a total lie and worshipped a different god than the true God. This is still happening today. God is building an army of believers, but Satan is also building his army. His army hates everything that is of God and their goal is to stop the spreading of the Gospel, but like Paul, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and we will not die until our message has been spread! Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. We have dealt a huge blow in the enemy’s camp by electing a conservative Christian president, but we can’t lay our weapons down. We need to fight to see him transition into his place and we need to stand alert because the enemy will try anything to get his foothold back or worse yet, lull us to sleep again in our comfortable state. We cannot go to sleep! We have to hold the ground and keep advancing until Jesus returns.
Lord, help us to stay awake and aware of what is going on around us in the natural and especially the spirit. May we always wear our armor and have our sword sharpened and ready to use.