Some Sometimes God uses spectacular miracles to save his people, like when he parted the Red Sea so Moses and the Israelites could escape from Egypt.

Today, on Truth for Life, we'll learn how God more often uses common everyday means and regular people to accomplish his purposes.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Acts chapter 23.

We're looking today at verses 12 through 22.

It's interesting, isn't it? Finally, it's very striking, the animosity and the hatred that is directed against Paul.

First of all, remember, this was a trumped-up charge.

Paul was not doing any of the things they said.

He had not taken Gentiles into the court of the Jews. He was explaining that

Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament law. He was working his very hardest to let it be known

that when it came to his Jewish roots, when it came to his heritage, he was proud of his heritage.

He was thankful for his heritage. And he identified himself as fully as he possibly could with his own people. He was later to write of how his heart was breaking that his own people might come to understand the truth of the Messiah Jesus. So all of their animosity was on the basis of their duplicity was on the basis of trumped-up nonsense.

So why do they hate him so much?

Why did they have to kill him?

Now, again, our view of history is directly affected by the answer that we give to that question.

It's not time for us to tease it out, but I'll just draw your attention to a phrase that you'll find in 2nd

Thessalonians chapter 2 and verse 7, if you care to look it up for homework.

And there, Paul talks about the secret power of lawlessness being already at work. I thought about that

in the last few days when I was in the company of a number of clergymen. And as I drove with my

wife in the car, I said, why would a clergyman ever be a clergyman if he doesn't believe

what it is that's written in the Bible? I said, why does anybody do that? I mean, why be a golf

instructor if you don't love golf and you don't want to teach the elementary principles of golf.

If you think it's the silliest game you ever encountered,

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