Think for Yourself:How to Avoid Losing Your Mind in the Mob
- Think for yourself: Don't buy into Lies and Exaggerations. (Acts 21:27-29)
- Think for yourself: Don't buy into Religious Rules. (Acts 21:30)
- Think for yourself: Don't buy into Emotion. (Acts 21:31-36)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:26-00:32
So anybody else besides me walking here this morning and completely missed the fact that the baptistry is set up right there?
00:33-00:34
Anybody else?
00:34-00:36
A couple of you, thank you.
00:37-00:37
Thank you.
00:38-01:03
I was in here doing a mic check this morning and Sherry Kashuba, our admin said, "Boy, the baptistry looks really nice." I'm like, "It's set up?" She's like, "Yeah." And I'm like, "Wow, good thing it wasn't a herd of bears." But we just got this, and this is actually a gift from our brothers and sisters across the street at the Northway Christian Community.
01:04-01:08
So we're certainly so thankful for them and their partnership in ministry.
01:09-01:10
And we have it set up in anticipation.
01:11-01:15
We are working on getting a baptism service planned.
01:15-01:33
And if you're new around here and wonder, "What do we teach about baptism?" baptism? Well, we teach that the Bible says that baptism is a visible, God-chosen, God-commanded response to our faith. It's visible, meaning obviously you can see it.
01:34-01:53
It's God-chosen, meaning this is something that God came up with. This isn't something that, you know, some famous preacher or theologian came up with. This is God's idea, and it's God-commanded. You know, upon belief in "Upon belief in Jesus Christ," that's the last part of that phrase, it's a response to our faith.
01:53-02:02
"Upon belief in Jesus Christ," the Bible says we publicly demonstrate and profess that with Christian baptism.
02:03-02:03
Why baptism?
02:05-02:10
Well, you're making a very graphic and visible demonstration.
02:10-02:24
When you go in the water, what you're saying to yourself What you're saying before God and before everybody who's watching, what you're saying is, "I'm dead. This water is like a liquid tomb.
02:24-02:34
I am dying to myself." And then when you're brought up out of the water, you're identifying with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
02:34-02:44
And you're saying, "The life that I now live is Christ in me." So we're identifying with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
02:44-02:46
That's a step that you have not taken.
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You need to see me.
02:48-02:49
Give me a call.
02:50-02:51
Shoot me an email.
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Catch me at guest reception.
02:53-03:03
But we're planning this in a very short future, and we'd love you to be a part of our very first baptism service in this building. Amen?
03:04-03:05
Amen.
03:05-03:08
Open up your Bibles with me, please, to Acts 21.
03:11-03:12
While you're turning there, just a quick review.
03:13-03:16
We see the Apostle Paul on his missionary journeys.
03:16-03:19
Now he is under great conviction.
03:20-03:26
We saw that he made it back to Jerusalem with an offering for the poor church in Jerusalem.
03:28-05:06
Falsely accused of encouraging Jews to denounce their culture, Paul went to the temple to purify himself to endorse four men who were under a Nazarite vow in order to prove his accusers wrong. Again, you had all these people saying, "Yeah, Paul goes around and he tells Jewish people not to be doing Jewish things." And people were trying to cause problems. And if you recall last week, remember James and some the others in the Jerusalem churches look Paul just you'd be you'd be bringing a lot of peace if you just purified yourself sponsored these guys under a Nazarite vow then everybody's going to see you haven't denounced Judaism back when I was in college one of the many jobs that I had I was a magazine vendor and I was in charge it was a glorious job I was in charge of four stores, Walmarts and K-marts, two of each, and I would have to travel to each of these stores and rotate the magazines and clean up the racks. And I would typically do that overnight so I wasn't interfering with customers and a lot of the foot traffic. But one night in particular, it was actually the Walmart where I used to work in Ohio. That was actually one of my stores. But I I was there doing the magazines and some of my old coworkers had said, hey, Jeff, we're going over to the Matchbox to play some pool.
05:06-05:07
Do you want to go with us?
05:07-05:10
Now, the Matchbox was a bar across the street.
05:11-05:12
And I thought, you know what?
05:12-05:15
I got a couple more stores I got to do, but why not?
05:16-05:16
Catch up.
05:16-05:18
Haven't seen some of these folks in a while.
05:18-05:21
So I went over to the Matchbox.
05:22-05:27
And I had a can of 7-Up still in the can.
05:28-05:32
Played pool for an hour, and I said, "You know what, guys, I gotta get going.
05:32-05:36
"I gotta do some traveling, do a couple more stores." And then I was off to work.
05:37-05:49
Well, the next time I went back to that particular Walmart, the one door greeter who was a strong believer, she pulled me aside, her name was Jane, and she said, she goes, "Jeff, I gotta talk to you, man." Like, what's going on?
05:49-05:52
She just, she looked, she was like sweating bullets.
05:52-05:59
She said, "I don't know, I don't know what happened, but everybody knows now, everybody knows.
05:59-06:01
I'm like, everybody knows what, Jane?
06:01-06:08
She said, everybody knows how you staggered out of the matchbox at 2 a.m. drunk last week.
06:09-06:11
I thought she was, I'm like, what?
06:11-06:14
She's like, what are you gonna do about this?
06:15-06:20
Everybody's talking, everybody's talking how you staggered out drunk at 2 a.m.
06:23-06:26
It's so funny how these stories get exaggerated.
06:27-06:30
Yes, I was drinking at a bar.
06:32-06:36
It was seven up, still in the can.
06:37-06:40
I never got drunk, I never staggered out.
06:42-06:45
How does this kind of stuff happen?
06:47-06:49
And I remember Jane saying, "What are you gonna do?
06:51-06:51
"What can you do?
06:52-07:00
"Go grab every single person that I know." And be like, "Have you heard the rumor about me getting drunk off of a 7-Up?" Like, what do you do?
07:03-07:04
How does it happen?
07:04-07:07
Well, we love to exaggerate, don't we?
07:10-07:17
We love to blow up events, and we love to make people into caricatures so that we can tell a better story.
07:19-07:21
Because let's be honest, which is a better story?
07:23-07:27
We played pool with Pastor Jeff for an hour while he had a 7-up.
07:27-07:32
Or, Pastor Jeff staggered out of the bar drunk at 2 in the morning.
07:32-07:36
Which story gets you a little more emotionally invested?
07:38-07:40
Which one has more of an impact on you?
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Well, this story we're looking at today is the story of a man serving Jesus Christ.
07:48-07:51
And falsely accused with lies and exaggeration.
07:51-07:56
And you have to take note of this passage, because this passage we're looking at today is a key.
07:56-08:07
As we head down the home stretch here in the book of Acts, these events set up everything that we're going to see in the book of Acts, because from this point on, the apostle Paul was a prisoner.
08:07-08:22
Okay, we've seen him on his missionary journeys, and we saw him in prison briefly, but from this point on in the book of Acts, Paul is a prisoner, no longer a free man.
08:22-08:25
Look at verse 27 with me, where we left off last week.
08:26-08:45
It says, "When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him," Paul, "in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him." Now, these Jews from Asia, this would be Asia Minor, they were probably from Ephesus.
08:46-08:47
Now how do we know that?
08:47-08:53
Because we're going to see in just a couple of minutes here that they recognized a man named Trophimus.
08:53-09:02
And Trophimus was from Ephesus, so they apparently recognized him and saw Paul with him, and that's why we think that these Jews were from Ephesus.
09:03-09:13
Well, these Jews and many others, they were in town for Pentecost, and Pentecost was a Jewish feast that was originally to celebrate the firstfruits.
09:14-09:20
And on Paul's day, it was more of a celebration of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments.
09:20-09:29
So here, these Jews from Ephesus saw Paul in the temple, and they already had this sort of preconceived notion, this caricature built.
09:30-09:34
And when they saw Paul in the temple, it would be like...
09:34-09:35
A lot of you are going to get this reference.
09:36-09:41
It would be like if you were at Joel Osteen's church, and you saw John MacArthur standing there.
09:42-10:03
You would think, "He's not here to worship. He's probably up to no good." And that's what these Jews would have thought when they saw Paul in the temple, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, this is Mr. Anti-Jew, Anti-Temple." And the crowd here tried to murder Paul.
10:06-10:07
I just want to stop here for a second.
10:09-10:10
Permission to speak freely and honestly.
10:13-10:20
I was looking through this passage this week and studying, and what in the world are we going to do with this passage?
10:21-10:24
Do we have principles from Paul here?
10:24-10:29
Do we have anything that he taught or said or...
10:30-10:32
Spoiler alert, because you know what happens in this passage?
10:32-10:34
Paul gets beat up and arrested.
10:35-10:36
That's it. He doesn't say anything.
10:38-10:57
And I thought, "Well, we could do another message on 'The world's going to hate you,' 'Expect persecution,' 'In this world you will have trouble, but take comfort, I've overcome the world,'" And I feel like over the last two years going through Acts, that we've sort of covered that ground.
10:59-11:11
But then I thought again, you know, it's easy for us to look at a text like this, like any text in the Bible, and we automatically want to put ourselves in the place of the good guy.
11:12-11:32
Like we're reading through this, we're like, "Yeah, I'm like Paul, and let me learn some things about Paul." And as I studied and read and prayed over this passage this week, I realized more often than not, we find ourselves in the crowd than we do in the place of Paul.
11:35-11:37
And today I want to talk with you a little bit.
11:37-11:39
that you're going to see these things very clearly from the text.
11:40-11:43
But today I want to talk with you for a little bit about mob mentality.
11:45-11:49
I did some study on mob mentality. I read up on the definition and description.
11:49-11:51
I want you to listen to this. I'm going to read this.
11:53-12:00
And I think you're going to very quickly connect the dots as to why we're discussing this, why we see it in the passage.
12:01-12:13
It says, "When people are part of a group, They often experience de-individuation or a loss of self-awareness.
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Okay, so when people are in a crowd, suddenly you lose this sense of self-awareness, all right?
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It says when people de-individuate, they are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity.
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Groups can generate a sense of emotional excitement, which can lead to the provocation of behaviors that a person would not typically engage in if alone.
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Here's the bottom line.
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The group, the mob, the ones we're going to study in this passage than the ones in our day.
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The group or the mob seems to make some behaviors acceptable that would not be acceptable otherwise.
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People will do things in a group of people that they will not do if they are by themselves, true or false.
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You're going to see this in the passage.
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You're going to see the dangers in this passage when you get sucked into that mentality.
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Really two problems when you're in the group.
13:30-13:39
One, people tend to see themselves in the group as a whole and say, "Everyone's doing it." That's why you throw off inhibition.
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Everyone's doing it.
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See what everybody else is doing?
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See what everybody else is doing?
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It's okay.
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It's okay to attack and set fires and steal and scream obscenities and whatever the group is doing.
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It's okay to do that because everyone is doing that.
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Number two, it throws off inhibitions because the person in the mob thinks that behavior cannot be traced back to me.
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I'm not going to be held accountable for this.
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Nobody's going to come after me for this because everyone was doing it.
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And this mob mentality or groupthink or whatever you want to call it, it leads to some crazy acts.
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And we're certainly going to see it in the text.
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And in case you haven't connected the dots in our culture, this is worse than ever.
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I can't think of a time in recent memory, and I watch the news quite a bit, Aaron, and we try to make it a habit of watching the news, seeing what's happening locally and in the world.
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I can't think of a time in recent memory that I didn't turn on the news and see a protest or a riot.
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Can you think of a time?
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Even just this morning before church, we turned it on.
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There was another group protesting with their signs.
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And every single time I turn it on, it seems, it seems there's a protest or a riot about something.
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There's property damage and violence and destruction.
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And you see the video footage of people breaking in, stealing five pairs of shoes.
15:15-15:23
And you're like, yeah, Pastor Jeff, I've seen those things on TV, but stuff's not exactly happening at Adams Ridge, okay?
15:25-15:43
True, maybe not yet, but in our day of social media, we can get caught up in the mobs online. The danger is we can believe what appears to be the popular opinion.
15:46-16:22
The social media allows you to say things you would never say if it was just you by yourself. You know I get these notifications of breaking news from like channel 11 and I'll go on to see what's happening and there's like a stream of comments and everybody weighing in everybody weighing in everybody weighing in and people say some of the most hateful and spiteful and disgusting comments in that mob, that they would never say if it was just them by themselves.
16:24-16:38
So whether it's racially motivated or it's politically fueled or both, when it comes to the mob mentality, people aren't willing to think for themselves.
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So that's what we're gonna do for a few minutes today.
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we're going to examine the danger of mob mentality and how we can avoid losing our minds in the mob by thinking for ourselves.
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That's your outline today.
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Think for yourself.
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How to avoid losing your mind in the mob.
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Number one, think for yourself.
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Don't buy into lies and exaggerations.
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Look at verse 28.
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Okay, see, back in the scene, the Jews from Asia saw Paul in the temple.
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He's up to no good.
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Got the crowd riled up, trying to grab hold of him here.
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Verse 28 says, "They were crying out, 'Men of Israel, help!
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This is the man who is teaching everyone, everywhere, against the people and the law and this place.'" The temple.
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Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.
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Let's stop here for a second.
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Talk about exaggeration.
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Look at the first thing in verse 28.
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They're crying out, "Men of Israel, help!" Like help?
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They see little old Pauls running around the temple and they're like, "Aha!
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Godzilla help like what is that help what is that all about they're acting like you know there was a lion on the loose help what's your tiara drama Queen help well they made these accusations against Paul they were the exact same accusations ironically that they made against Stephen in Acts chapter 6 here's the real ironic part these three accusations they made against Stephen, they make them against Paul, but back in Acts chapter 6, Paul consented when they made them against Stephen, and now they're turned back on Paul. Isn't that ironic? Like what are the accusations? Well, look at them.
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They're right there in the text. First of all, more exaggeration. This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere. Everyone. Is that an exaggeration?
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Everyone, everywhere?
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Yeah, that's an exaggeration.
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Here's the three accusations here.
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First of all, against the people.
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That's against Israel, against the Jews.
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So the first accusation is Paul is anti-Semitic.
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You're like, "Wait, wasn't Paul Jewish?" Yeah, don't let the facts get in the way of a good accusation.
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And against the people and against the law.
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So the second accusation here is not only is he anti-Jewish, he's anti-law.
19:27-19:33
Now think about that. That's a serious charge at Pentecost, because they're all there to celebrate God giving the law.
19:34-19:47
So to say, "Hey, here's somebody that's against the law in the temple," that would be like showing up at a 4th of July parade and burning a flag in front of everyone, to make that kind of an accusation.
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So he's against the Jews, he's against the law, and then thirdly, he says, "in this place," meaning the temple.
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And the Jews certainly revered the temple, didn't they?
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In fact, Jesus Himself and Stephen were both accused of speaking against the temple, and that accusation led to both of their deaths.
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Now we have Paul doing the opposite of what he's accused of.
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which you see from verse 28 already, there's a huge problem with the mob mentality.
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Exaggeration becomes factual assertion.
20:26-20:40
Look at this last one. It says, "Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place." What's the substance of that accusation?
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Well, it's in the next verse. Look at verse 29.
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They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed That Paul had brought him into the temple Isn't that insane The accusation here is Paul brought Trophimus who was a Greek into the temple And it's just like the matchbox incident, right and what's the problem with going to the temple?
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Well, quick background here.
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Gentiles, or Greeks, were allowed in the court of Gentiles.
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It was part of the temple.
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But did you know that if they went beyond the court of Gentiles, they could be executed?
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And here's something, I didn't know this.
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I learned this this week.
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If a Gentile went beyond the court of Gentiles, Israel was allowed to execute them.
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They didn't need to go through Rome for that, and they didn't even need to have a trial.
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It was if you went past the court of Gentiles, Rome gave them permission, execute.
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There's actually a sign posted.
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I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but the tail end of the sign is certainly enough to get the point.
21:58-22:08
It says, "Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his subsequent death." So it was a "No trespassing Gentile" sign in the temple.
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But you need to take note, especially younger people, the media always has an agenda.
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The right and the left are both guilty.
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And if you don't believe me, this whole message, I'm trying to encourage you to think for yourself.
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Think for yourself, because the media, they wanna tell you not what happened, the media wants to tell you what to think about, what might've happened.
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And I want you to think about that next time you watch the news or read an article.
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Instead of just reporting, here's the facts, here's the events, here's what happened, it's always, here is why you should be outraged.
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These are the hateful things that so-and-so said.
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And already they're putting their little, yeah, think like me, think like me, think like me.
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Think for yourself.
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This mob exaggerated the details of what was happening with Paul, And they sort of made Paul into the caricature.
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So do you see how crazy the accusation got?
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They saw Paul in the city with a Greek, and that turned into Paul takes a busload of Greeks right into the Holy of Holies, eight times a day on a tour.
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And folks, we're still guilty of this.
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Making caricatures and exaggerating.
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Listen, we're all guilty of it.
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And we need to learn to think for ourselves.
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The right does it with liberals.
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We've made caricatures out of liberals.
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You know what liberals are?
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They all hate America, and they're all lazy snowflake freeloaders.
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All liberals, that's who they are.
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Is that true?
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No.
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I know some very hardworking liberals.
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I know some liberals that love our country, but you see, it doesn't fit our narrative.
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It doesn't fit the caricature we made.
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The right does it with liberals, and the left does it with conservatives, right?
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What are conservatives?
24:47-24:52
They all have machine guns to murder everyone, and they hate poor people.
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Is that true?
24:56-25:00
Now, I know a lot of conservatives, not all of them have machine guns.
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Certainly don't hate poor people.
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And then our social media, our Facebook, our Twitter, it turns into a feed of memes, creating caricatures of politicians and celebrities and athletes, and people buy it up.
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"Oh, I've got to share this, and I've got to like this, and I've got to build on this." You see in this example in the text, the crowd apparently wholesale bought into the exaggeration that was being pushed.
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And you see a crowd here in general, no one's thinking for themselves.
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So that's why I would ask you again when we come to this passage, are we really like Paul?
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Are we more in danger of becoming like the crowd?
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Think for yourself.
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Number two, think for yourself.
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Don't buy into religious rules.
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Look at verse 30.
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It says, "Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together." Here comes another riot, another mob.
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It says, "They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, And at once, the gates were shut.
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They dragged Paul outside of the temple.
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I had this whole section in the sermon that I cut out.
26:26-26:33
We'll preach this another time, but isn't it so interesting how sometimes we try to detach our life and our sin from church.
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That's what they did.
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Like, "We're going to do something bad.
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Let's make sure we do it out of the temple.
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Shut the door.
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Separate." That's what they did.
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and they intended to beat him to death right there.
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They were pretty serious about their rule.
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Religion is like that.
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This is how Jesus said it in Matthew 23 and verse 24, when he pronounced "Woe" over the scribes and the Pharisees, Jesus said, "You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." Do you know what that expression means?
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You see, under the Jewish dietary rules, the smallest unclean animal was a gnat.
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And the largest would have been a camel.
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And Jesus said, "You're so concerned about straining your food that you don't accidentally eat a gnat, but then you willingly go and eat a giant camel." You see the point.
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We get so meticulous about our little religious rules that we miss the big things.
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In other words, in this passage, Do you see the crowd in their minds?
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Violent murder, violent vigilante murder is okay, as long as there's no Greeks in the temple.
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Now, when it comes to Greeks in the temple, we are serious about that.
27:56-28:04
But when it comes to dragging a guy outside, apart from the authorities, and beating him to death, we're good with that.
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They were so caught up in their rules that they missed the bigger picture.
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They were like, "Wait a second, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second.
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Everybody say, 'Wait a second.'" "What?" You're like, "But there were rules about not taking Greeks into the inner parts of the temple.
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So weren't they in the right?" No.
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Because first of all, there was no evidence.
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And this wasn't done by the authorities.
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This was vigilante justice.
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This was, "I'm going to take this on myself.
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I'm going to do it myself." Nothing about what they did was proper, whatever the rules are.
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And church, there is such a danger for us to get so caught up in our pet doctrines that we miss the bigger things.
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And I've been doing this now for like, what?
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Like 21 years or whatever.
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And I have seen this over and over and over that we get more fired up, we put our stake in the ground over our little pet doctrines, and we miss the huge things that the Bible over emphasizes that Jesus wants us to understand and apply, we completely throw that out the window. Like, what do you mean?
29:24-29:31
Like, I've seen people get more fired up over making sure you have the right eschatological timeline. That's the timeline of end-time events.
29:32-29:47
You know, the millennial reign of Christ and the rapture and the saints and what happened. You've got to make sure that you have your eschatological timeline right, then they're more fired up about that than they are forgiving someone who's offended.
29:49-29:58
I've seen people get fired up and leave the church because we have slightly different views over eschatology, but the forgiveness thing
29:58-29:58
(blows raspberry)
29:59-30:00
That's not really that important.
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People get more fired up over music style than they do for compassion for the lost.
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I've seen huge and heard huge debates over style of music, hymns only, non-instrumental, and contemporary, and blah, blah, blah, and people fighting about that.
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Where's the energy for compassion for the lost?
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You see, we're straining out gnats and we're swallowing camels.
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Same thing with baptism.
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Mode of baptism, style of baptism, when to baptize, etc.
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And people want to fight about that.
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Now these things are all important.
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The eschatology and music, and these things are all important things, So when we make these secondary things the main event, we're getting sucked into the mob mentality.
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See, some people would rather fight about spiritual gifts than fight for loving one another.
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And when we do that, do you know what we become?
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We become the Corinthian church.
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You know, 1 Corinthians 13, you all know that passage, right?
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Love is patient, love is kind.
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Do you know why Paul wrote that?
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Oh, was it like, feel a little Holy Spirit inspiration.
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I'm gonna write me down something that people are gonna read at weddings.
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Oh, until Christ returns, I'm gonna write a little wedding poem right there.
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You know, we usually do read 1 Corinthians 13 at weddings, but you know that that passage has nothing to do with weddings, nothing.
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Do you know why he wrote that passage?
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Because there was a church that was tearing each other apart over arguing about spiritual gifts.
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And Paul's like, "No, no, no, no, love each other.
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You guys are biting each other and fighting over these secondary issues and you're missing the main point.
32:03-32:28
You're supposed to love each other." That's why he says in 1 Corinthians 14, first verse, he goes, "Pursue love, go after those things, then stop making these secondary things the main events." Just imagine with me, if we had people as fired up for these weightier things, as they do for their pet doctrines.
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And that's why we're saying, church, think for yourself.
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Is it more Christ-honoring to show forgiveness, compassion, and love, than to break people down over religious rules, preferences, and secondary issues?
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So think for yourself.
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Don't buy into the religious rules.
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And finally, think for yourself.
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Don't buy into emotion.
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Verse 31, "And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion.
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He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them.
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And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, They stopped beating Paul.
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Stop there for a second.
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Now, during religious ceremonies, especially, Rome was watching very closely.
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They had a tower, I believe it was north and west of the temple, where they could see everything that was going on.
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So word came to the Tribune, we know his name from chapter 23 and verse 26.
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His name is Claudius Lysias.
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Tribune just means "a ruler of a thousand." He actually would have had the highest rank when the governor wasn't present.
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The word came to him, "Hey, it looks like we have a riot brewing down in the temple." Basically, he sent the centurions down and the beating stopped.
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And you can totally picture that in your head, right?
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Violence is happening and then the police show up and everybody's like, "Whoa, police, back off," kind of thing.
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Back off temporarily, right?
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Look at verse 33, it says, "Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains." Okay, between two guards.
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Says, "He inquired who he was and what he had done." That was Rome's way, they would just swoop in.
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This guy looks like he's the focal point of the problem, Paul, so we'll grab him, pull him out, we'll question him, we'll torture him, if necessary, to get some answers, but tell us what in the world is happening here.
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Verse 34, it says, "Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another.
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And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks." You got that scene in your head?
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It's like, what's going on?
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Everybody's just shouting all this different stuff.
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He's like, "Just take him, take him back to headquarters." And when he came to the steps," that's the steps leading up to the tower, says he, "Paul was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, for the mob of the people followed, crying out, 'Away with him!'" I think you see the obvious danger of being led with emotion over reason.
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Number three, think for yourself, don't buy into emotion.
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These people were so enraged.
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You see, they resumed their attack even while Paul was in police custody.
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They had to carry him up the steps because people were still trying to rip him apart.
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Then the last phrase, "When they cried out, 'Away with him!'" Understand, that doesn't mean lock him up.
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That doesn't mean send him to another city.
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That literally means kill him.
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John 19.15, that's what they said about Jesus.
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They're like, "Away with him, crucify him." We're going to see it again in Acts 22.22, "Away with him" means "kill him." They were so fired up over these exaggerated accusations against Paul, they were screaming for his death.
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Now look, emotion is great.
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Emotion is a great thing, I just want to challenge you to have your own.
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Because we live in a day where we are always looking to be offended by something.
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So please hear me.
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You don't need to be outraged just because somebody else is.
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Think for yourself.
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I'm not telling you today what to think.
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I'm telling you today, you need to think for yourself.
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You need to examine the facts.
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You need to look at the facts through the lens of God's Word.
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So let me ask you, church, do we have the tendency to be more like Paul, or more like the mob?
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We're like the mob, don't we?
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You don't have to be in the mob.
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Because you can think for yourself.
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And when you feel tempted to get sucked in, you know, over the next protest, over the next thing that everybody is outraged about, you know, the president may or may not have said this, or the former president may or may not have done that, or whatever.
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When you feel tempted to get sucked in, I want you to think of this passage, I want you to ask yourself three easy questions.
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First question is this, "Are people fired up over exaggerations and lies?" Second question is, "Are people elevating rules above love for people?" And thirdly, "Are people being driven by thoughtless emotion?" And then you can say, "Not me, because I'm going to think for myself." Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, we thank you for the glorious truth of your Word.
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Father, your Word brings great conviction.
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We live in a day that everybody's ready to be outraged about something.
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We live in a day that we can't turn on the TV hardly without seeing some sort of a march or protest or riot or looting or something.
38:54-39:09
And Father, as much as we want to put ourselves in the place of the saints in the text, sometimes I really wonder where we would be if we were there when the crowd was shouting for Paul's death.
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Father, I shudder to think what some of us would have actually said if we were there when Pilate said, "Should I release to you Barabbas, or should I release to you Jesus?" I know what we would like to say.
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We can be tempted to get sucked into the mob mentality, just like the crowds in those days.
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Father, I pray that your Word would be what shapes our thinking, not the news, not the media, not some political activist group, not some group that's trying to make racial division.
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Pray, God, that we're able to think for ourselves.
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Father, glorify Your name.
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As this is only becoming more of an issue, Your people are going to stand out even more.
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The light is going to shine even brighter the darker that it gets.
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Let Your light shine through us, Father.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Questions (Whole Group):
Read Acts 21:27-36
Describe a time you saw "mob mentality" make people act crazy.
Paul was warned this would happen in Jerusalem (Acts 21: 4,11). How do you think that warning may have actually been an encouragement during this scene? How can God's Word regarding the trials we face be an encouragement to us?
Why do many people "go with the crowd" and not think for themselves? What warning can we take away from this passage?
Why do people elevate "religious rules" over weightier matters, like love, forgiveness, etc?
Breakout Questions:
Pray for one another. Ask how each other is doing with personal prayer / Bible study.