This morning, we’re going to talk about envy. This is one of the most subtle and unrecognized sins that we face as Christians. Envy gets into everything, and it’s like a cancer of the soul. Proverbs 14:30 says “Envy makes the bones rot.” And when it takes root, it overpowers us. “Who can stand before envy?”

So Malta is due south of Sicily, and so they have come all the way to the west. They then sailed to Syracuse, which was in Sicily, and then to Rhegium, which right at the toe of Italy’s boot. They made their way up north to Puteoli, a port on the west coast of Italy, about 150 miles south of Rome. They came to Three Taverns, which was about 30 miles south of Rome. Some believers came out to welcome Paul there, encouraging him, and accompanying him back to Rome.

As we have gone through the book of Acts, we have had numerous occasions to notice just how tough the apostle Paul was. The shipwreck recorded in this chapter occurred about four years after the writing of 2 Corinthians. And in that book, Paul mentions three times he had been in shipwrecks, including one night and day adrift on the sea (2 Cor. 11:25). And that means that this shipwreck was his fourth one.

In this chapter, we learn the basic structure of Paul’s evangelistic message. What was the content of the gospel that he preached? And what was the process through which unbelievers were brought to faith?

As the crow flies, Caesarea was around 47 miles from Jerusalem. But because of terrain and available roads, it was around 65 miles to travel. Paul in Roman custody down in Caesarea was out of the reach of the Jews. But he was not far enough away to be out of their thinking. Two years later, he was still very much on their minds.

Lying is not just something that people do when they are little boys getting into the cookie jar. We sometimes naively assume that greater responsibility means that there must be greater levels of integrity. But it is often the case that the higher up you go—whether in civil or ecclesiastical government—the greater the incentives and pressures to give way to deceit. The cookie jar is much bigger, and deception rises to an art form.

We see in this passage how the sovereign God moves all things in accordance with His purpose and will, and He turns the machinations of the wicked back upon them. God had told Paul that he was going to bear witness to Christ in Rome; he need not worry. All plots against him would misfire.

In the current climate, a large swath of secularists would be nervous if they knew we were considering the conquest of Canaan in the book of Joshua. The remainder would be fascinated as they attempted to understand the Christian way over against their own unbelieving assumptions. Their fascination would not be misplaced, nor their fear. Granted, many of them would speak of a Christian jihad, and we are up to nothing of that sort. But their true fear is the terror of the Lord—the sword of the Spirit—which is more deadly than any earthly blade.

What this means for us is that we should not let the secularists understand the times better than we do. If they understand Joshua is an apt book at this moment, how much more should we?

The Lord saw fit to give us three distinct accounts of Saul’s conversion on the way to Damascus. The first (Acts 9:1-19) is a third-person narrative by Luke. The second is our passage here today, a first-person defense to an angry mob (Acts 22:1-21). The third is Paul’s first-person defense to King Agrippa (Acts 26:1-23), which we will consider in detail in due course.