Acts 28:17-22 | Paul Preaches at Rome Under Guard | TCBS

"How many times have I missed God because it wasn't the way that I thought it would unfold or the way that I thought he should do things?" — Pastor Phil Venrick

After one of the longest and most turbulent journeys in the book of Acts, Paul finally arrives in Rome. He has survived a plot on his life in Jerusalem, multiple hearings before Roman governors, a shipwreck in the Mediterranean, and a snake bite on the island of Malta. And yet within three days of arriving in Rome, he does something that might seem surprising. He calls together the local Jewish leaders.

In this episode of the Tree Church Bible Study, Pastor Stacey Crawford, Pastor Chris Reed, and Pastor Phil Venrick pick up in Acts 28:17 and work through one of the most revealing conversations in the entire book. What unfolds is not just a historical account of Paul's arrival in Rome. It is an honest look at what happens when people encounter something that does not match what they were expecting - and what it costs them when their hearts are not open enough to see it.

To understand why Paul's message created such tension everywhere he went, it helps to understand what the Jewish people were actually hoping for in a Messiah. Pastor Chris took time in this episode to walk through that historical context, and it reframes the entire conversation.

The expectation was not simply spiritual. For centuries, the Jewish people had been living under foreign rule. The priestly line had been compromised. A king with no legitimate claim to David's throne had been installed by Rome. Israel had been exiled and never fully restored. And so what they were waiting for was a Davidic figure - a prophet, priest, and king - who would come and set things right. Someone who would restore the land, return Israel to prominence among the nations, and usher in an era of freedom, peace, and justice. The language the Old Testament prophets used to describe the messianic age sounds, in many ways, like what Christians would later associate with heaven.

Jesus fulfilled none of that in the way they were watching for. He was not a political liberator. Rome did not fall. The land was not restored. And rather than ascending to a throne, he was crucified. For many Jews, that was not just a disappointment. It was disqualifying.

Pastor Chris put it plainly. The Christians were interpreting the Old Testament in ways the Jewish people had not interpreted it. They were seeing in Jesus the fulfillment of traditions that, to the Jewish leaders, pointed somewhere else entirely. And so when Paul walked into a room and declared that Jesus was the Messiah, it was not that his audience was ignorant. It was that what he was saying sounded completely backward to everything they had spent their lives expecting.

What makes this episode more than a history lesson is the moment the conversation turns personal. Pastor Stacey noted that it is easy to read this passage and wonder why the Jewish leaders simply could not see it. But Pastor Phil pushed back gently on that instinct.

He pointed out that missing God because he does not move the way we expect is not a first-century problem. It is a human one. There are moments in every believer's life where God leads in a direction that feels wrong, uncomfortable, or simply not what was asked for. The way forward looks nothing like the way forward was supposed to look. And in those moments, the temptation is to resist, to question, or to quietly conclude that God must not be in it.

Pastor Chris added a layer to that by describing how God often addresses anxiety not by removing the anxious situation but by walking a person directly into it and asking them to trust him through it. That is not the answer most people are hoping for. It feels, as he said, like being broken in order to be healed. But the thing being broken is not the person. It is the hardness and the resistance that has been keeping real healing out.

Paul himself was the clearest example of this in the room. Before his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was a Pharisee who knew the scriptures thoroughly, understood the traditions deeply, and was completely convinced that the Christians were wrong. He had formed a strong, informed, religiously grounded opinion - and it was entirely off. The encounter with Jesus did not just change his mind. It reoriented everything.

When Paul addresses the Jewish leaders in Rome in Acts 28:17–20, he explains his situation plainly. He was arrested in Jerusalem, handed over to Rome, found innocent, and appealed to Caesar not out of a desire to press charges against his own people but simply because he had no other option. He is bound in chains, he tells them, because he believes the hope of Israel has already come.

Their response in verse 21 is striking. They tell him they have received no letters about him from Judea and have heard nothing against him personally. The only thing they know about the movement is that it is denounced everywhere. And so they ask to hear more.
Pastor Chris offered a practical explanation for why no letter had arrived ahead of Paul. Given everything Paul had been through just to get to Rome, it is entirely plausible that any correspondence sent from Jerusalem simply had not made it yet. There was no email. Letters traveled with people, and the journey was long and uncertain. Paul had essentially outrun the opposition.

But what the group found most worth noting was the posture of the Jewish leaders in Rome. They did not walk in with a verdict already formed. They were willing to hear. Pastor Stacey compared it to substitute teaching - walking into a classroom having already heard that a certain student is difficult, only to find that on that particular day, he is the best kid in the room. Pre-formed opinions close off what direct experience might reveal. These Jewish leaders, at least initially, were open enough to say they wanted to hear it for themselves.

The episode closes with a conversation that connects directly to the present moment. The culture surrounding opinions has changed dramatically. What was once a thought shared with a small circle of friends or family - and easily forgotten if it turned out to be wrong - can now reach thousands of people instantly. Pastor Phil described it as handing an unvetted, uninformed opinion a megaphone. Pastor Chris noted that the sheer volume of competing voices has made it genuinely harder to think critically, to slow down, and to ask whether an opinion is actually informed before sharing it widely.

The group was careful not to suggest that having opinions is itself the problem. Forming views is a natural part of being human. The issue is the speed and confidence with which opinions are formed and broadcast, and the way that public commitment to a position makes it harder to change course later even when real knowledge would warrant it. As Pastor Stacey observed, once an opinion is out there, people hold onto it. If God changes your mind on something, that work becomes much harder when the original position was declared loudly and publicly.

The corrective the group kept returning to was humility. Pastor Chris described his own approach to scripture as one that always holds room for the possibility of being wrong - not out of uncertainty about God, but out of honest awareness of his own limits as a finite, subjective reader. He has been in enough situations where a piece of context he had missed, or a perspective he had not considered, changed his understanding significantly. That experience has made him slower to declare and quicker to listen.

Pastor Phil grounded it simply. Base your opinions on God's word. Go back to it consistently. And hold everything else with an open hand, because God has a long track record of doing things in ways that turn out to be exactly right - even when they looked completely wrong in the moment.