Paul's Trial Before Felix, Part 2
Acts 24:10-16
This is part two in the tragedy of postponing, and it comes from Acts 24. It's really the story of Felix; it starts out as the trial of Paul before Felix, and it ends up as the trial of Felix before Paul. In Acts 24, we have a very graphic illustration of the tragedy of postponing a decision about Christ. In Acts 24:24, we read these words, "And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul, and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, 'Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.'"
You know, as far as the Bible is concerned, there never was a convenient season. There was a group of people in Acts 17, Athenians. Paul had spoken to them on the Areopagus, Mars Hill. The Bible says, in Acts 17:32, "When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked and others said, 'We will hear thee again concerning this'." As far as we know, there never was an 'again'. The tragedy of hopeless procrastination.
Jesus records for us a most interesting series of comments on discipleship in Luke 9:57. Jesus, in this particular portion, is talking about discipleship. Three would-be disciples appear on the scene, none of whom follow the Lord. All of them wipe out before they ever get started. Verse 57 begins, "It came to pass, as they went on the way, a certain man said to him, 'Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.'" Sounds good. I mean, it couldn't be much better. There aren't even any conditions - I will - from his standpoint. Or circumstances - wherever.
"Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head'." Why did he say that? The implication is because the man came with a materialistic motive. "Lord, I'll go wherever you're going to go. I'll follow you." The man, undoubtedly, realized or at least hoped that Jesus was the king, the Messiah. He had a Judas-problem; he wanted to get in on it from the standpoint of ambition. "I'll stay with you wherever you go," and in the back of his mind he was thinking, "That's the way I'll get to the top." Jesus said, "Let me just tell you something. You won't be as well of as the foxes or birds if you follow me. I have nothing of worldly goods." The man never followed. He bombed out on the basis of materialistic motive.
Look at the next man. Here, the man doesn't volunteer to follow, he is invited by the Lord to follow. He says, "Follow me." It's sort of like the calling of the apostles. But he said, "Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father." You'd say well, "Please, sir, please. For goodness sake, go do that. To have a dead body lying around stinking in the house is ridiculous. Go." Well, the point is, the father wasn't even dead yet. What he was saying was, "Yes, I'll follow you as soon as I get my inheritance." What was the implication? Lack of faith. "I'm not about to start on a vagabond thing, floating around, preaching the kingdom without any money to support myself." Lack of faith.
The first guy had a materialistic motive; the second guy had a materialistic motive of a sort, he didn't believe that God could supply his needs. Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their dead." In other words, let the spiritually dead take care of the physically dead. You go and preach the Kingdom of God, and you know, the promise of the Lord is that if you seek the Kingdom of God, all the things will be added to you. The man had a motive, and it was really materialistic and he had a lack of faith.
Look at the third one. Another said, "Lord, I will follow you." That sounds good. "But let me first," that's it. "Let me first go and bid them farewell who are home at my house. I want to go home and say goodbye to everyone, get everything fixed up and in order." Jesus said, "No man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God." That's procrastination. Materialistic motive, lack of faith, and the third guy bombed out because of postponement.
A man who postpones isn't fit, but there are a lot of people who do that. There are a lot of people who say, "Someday I'm going to give my life to Christ. Someday I'm going to serve the Lord. Someday I'm going to receive Christ as my Savior, but not now." That's very, very dangerous. The only people who do that are very, very careless people. They're gambling with their lives.
This week, I was reading an old, old book, almost a classical book, about a man who was going from Europe to America. In order to transport his fortune, he reduced all of his fortune to a huge diamond which he bought from some African mine. It was worth an immense amount of money. He happened to be demonstrating it to someone on the ship when the ship lurched and it dropped into the ocean. Foolish man! Foolish! But no more foolish than the man who postpones the ultimate destiny of his own soul. Postponement.
Careless people postpone for two reasons. They are careless firstly because their constant rejection may harden their hearts. You see, the more you resist Christ, the harder you become and the easier it becomes to resist the next time. We are creatures of habit. That's why Hebrews 3:7 says what it says. I'm not going to go into all the explanation of all the detail, but just to pull off the basic interpretation of the passage so you'll see. Listen to the words of the Holy Spirit. Here again is a great proof of the Old Testament's inspiration, because he's quoting from the Old Testament writer, and yet says the Holy Spirit said it.
"Wherefore as the Holy Spirit says, 'Today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the provocation in the day of trial in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved of that generation, and said, "They do always err in their heart and they have not known my ways." So I swore in my wrath, "They shall not enter into my rest."'" God says, "Don't be like Israel, who kept hardening and hardening in the wilderness, until they finally were not allowed to enter the Promised Land. That's what happened, wasn't it? They all died in the wilderness. Why? Because they hardened against God and forfeited rest, the rest of the Promised Land.
I believe the Promised Land represents salvation. They forfeited it. The illustration here is warning, "Don't do what they did." He writes, "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. Exhort each other while it is today, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." The more you reject and the more you put it off, the harder you get, and sin deceives you into rationalizing that postponement.
Verse 15. "While it is called today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts." In chapter 6 of Hebrews, he says, "Don't come all the way to faith, tasting the heavenly gift, partaking of the powers of the world to come, all of that, and fall away, or you'll never be able to be renewed again to repentance." Tragic story.
This is what happens when a man rejects and rejects and rejects. Even though he has good intentions of someday, someday, someday. That someday begins to fade. Luke 13:24 is a most interesting passage. It says this. "Strive to enter in at the narrow gate." The narrow gate is the way of salvation, isn't it? "For many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able." You know, there are going to be people who seek and will not be able. Few will be saved, verse 23 says. I don't know how people can equate that with the doctrine of universalism.
Verse 25. "When once the master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, 'Lord, Lord, open to us,' and he will answer and say to you, 'I know you not from where you are.'" There are an awful lot of people who will say, "I wanted in and I planned to get in, and I wanted to come that way," but it's going to be too late. The door will be shut; they will be like the people who lived in Noah's time. It will be raining and they will be knocking on the ark.
Postponement is a foolish thing, because your own heart can become hard. Secondly, as I've just pointed out, God stops calling after a certain point. Read it. In the pre-Noah time, God said, "My Spirit will not always strive with man." Only a fool postpones when his soul is at stake; he is a bigger fool than a man who throws his fortune up in the air in a diamond and drops it into the ocean.
We meet such a man in Acts 24. His name is Felix. Felix is a fool. He was a procurator of Judea from A.D. 52-59. It fell his lot to deal with Paul, the apostle, even as it had fallen the lot of a previous procurator by the name of Pilate to deal with Jesus Christ. Now in this passage, we find Paul and Felix confronting each other in a hearing, a form of a trial. As we said before, there are three ways you can look at this passage. You can look at it from the viewpoint of Paul, the history of the record of what happens to Paul. You can look at it from the viewpoint of God, how God is working in this situation. You can also look at it from the viewpoint of Felix, the tragedy that occurs in his life. We've been looking at it from Paul's viewpoint and as we conclude our study, we'll look at it from the viewpoint of God and Felix. We'll have to have that conclusion next week.
The Jewish leaders had desired to kill Paul. Paul represented, to them, a very serious threat and the same threat that Jesus represented; that is, he was winning a great following. The Jewish leaders had one great fear, and that was that they would lose their authority, their power, their prestige and position in the eyes of the people. So anyone who came along and won a great following of the people was really a threat. Paul had had tremendous success in winning Jews to Christ, and of course, the leaders began to be fearful, so they set about to get rid of him.
We've just seen in the previous verses that in Jerusalem, they had tried to kill him three times in a riotous situation, and once they had tried to kill him with a plotted ambush. After those four attempts, the Romans had finally decided to get Paul out of town to save his life because Paul, after all, was a Roman citizen and they had to protect him. Secondly, he had committed no crime. So the Romans hustled him down to Caesarea and put him right there in the
praitorion, the seat of the Roman government being in Caesarea, so Paul is there in a sort of protective custody.
The accusers of the Jews are sent to Caesarea to bring the case before Felix there, in order to get a more fair trial than ever would be possible in the city of Jerusalem, if in fact they could even keep him alive in the city of Jerusalem. So the whole thing shifts; the plot to kill Paul moves to Caesarea, and these accusers come down, attempting to get Paul executed for crimes of which they will accuse him.
As the scene opens in chapter 24, the trial takes place. It has three parts like any trial: the prosecution, the defense, and the verdict or judgment. We saw last time the prosecution, and I'll just read through the first few verses to set your mind back in that context. Paul has been in Caesarea for five days, waiting for his accusers to arrive. Finally, his accusers get there.
Verse 1. "And after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the elders [that is, representatives of the Sanhedrin], and with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul." This is their hired lawyer, and his job was to inform Felix as to what Paul had done. He was the accuser, the voice.
"And when he was called forth, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying," now he begins his accusation by flattery; he really butters up the situation. He says to Felix, "Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy provision, we accept it always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness." This was a bunch of balderdash; he didn't believe a word of it. He said, "You've brought great peace and done so many worthy deeds," and I told you last week that we try in vain to find one thing in history that he ever did that amounted to anything. When he says, "We accept it always, in all places, with all thankfulness," that's just a gross over-exaggeration; they hated and despised Felix, and Felix knew it.
"Notwithstanding," he says, "I don't want to be further tedious unto you by reciting how wonderful you are, so I'll just ask you to give us a few minutes of your precious time to listen to our words."
Now here's their case. "We have found this man a pestilent fellow, a nuisance, a troublesome character." Here are the three accusations, remember them? One, sedition. "A mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world." In other words, he is a terrible threat to the security of Rome because he leads the Jews in insurrection. "He is treasonous," they are really trying to get the charge against him of being a political criminal. Sedition - he leads the Jews to riot against Rome.
The second thing is sectarianism; they accuse him of being a heretic. "And he is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." He is the leader of a well-known heresy. The Nazarenes really were Christians; the name was given as a slur, a mocking name. The reason they called them that was because that's what they had called Jesus, the Nazarene. When they said 'Jesus of Nazareth' it wasn't just a geographical designation, it was a slur, a slam, sarcasm. When they put on the cross 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews' that was a joke, supposed to be funny, not serious. It was the ultimate mockery. "Would you believe? The king of the Jews came from Nazareth? Ha ha! Nothing ever came from that place."
So when they called Christians 'Nazarenes' that was a slur, as if they were demeaned, ignorant, stupid, uneducated, illiterates. The sect of the Nazarenes was identified with Jesus, so he says, "This man is a ringleader of a heresy, a well-known Messianic heresy." This implied, too, that it had certain political overtones, because many of the Messianic offshoots of Judaism were definite problems to Rome, they were militant, some of them. So they accused him of sectarianism.
Thirdly, they accused him of sacrilege. "Who also has gone about to profane the temple." He went to profane, or desecrate, the temple. There were territories in the temple forbidden to Gentiles, and they had accused Paul of bringing a Gentile into the place. He hadn't done it, of course, it was a lie like the rest of them. Then they said, "Whom we took and would have judged according to our law," but of course, that was a lie. They wanted to kill him in a riot.
"Then the chief captain, Lysias, came and with great violence, took him away out of our hands." He didn't take him away because he wanted to do violence to him, he took him away because they were trying to kill him. "And he commanded his accusers to come to you. He sent us all the way down here with our case. So if you'll just examine Lysias," verse 8 says, "He'll tell you that what we say is true." Then they brought their witnesses in verse 9, put them on the stand, and they all said, "That's right, he did that. We all say he did that." So they had a prosecution from their lawyer and witnesses to agree to it. That's the prosecution.
Incidentally, it's all lies, every bit of it. But that's to be expected, isn't it? I told you last week that if you live a godly life in the face of an ungodly world, you're going to suffer. That's part of it. All that live godly in the present age are going to suffer persecution. You know, the marvelous thing is that Paul suffered this, and he could stand up there and say, "Friends, I am blameless." That's what God wants. Mark this, He wants Christians to be called before the tribunal of the world. Yes He does. He wants us to be on trial for our faith and He wants the verdict to be, "Not guilty, they are are blameless," so that they have to persecute you for righteousness' sake. If you're going to get it, get it because you're holy, not because you deserve it. Acts 24:1-9 is the prosecution.
Now let's look at the defense, and watch how Paul defends himself. He does it calmly, courteously, and categorically. One, two, three; against sedition, against sectarianism, and against sacrilege, he defends himself. Verse 10. "Then Paul, after the governor had beckoned to him to speak, answered." Felix said, "Alright, it's your turn, Paul." I want you to notice that Paul doesn't have a lawyer; he didn't have any smooth-tongued, oily character who knew his way in and out of Roman law and Roman courts. You say, "Too bad." No, not too bad. He had someone better than a lawyer, a human lawyer.
When Jesus was leaving the Earth and He told His disciples, in the Gospel of John, that He was going to go, He said, "I'm going to go away, but I will send to you another Comforter." The word 'comforter' is from parakletos and it means 'one called alongside', someone called alongside to help, called alongside to assist. It could be translated 'a lawyer for the defense'. He didn't have a human lawyer, but he had the parakletos. He had the divine lawyer for the defense carrying out his case.
I want you to notice something exciting, that every word he said to Felix was the word of the Holy Spirit. It's all recorded here in the Bible; it was inspired. So it was Paul talking, but it was the Holy Spirit moving through him. So the defense for Paul that day was Paul's and the Spirit's as well. He doesn't need a human lawyer; he can handle himself in the energy of the Spirit.
He says this, "For as much as I know that thou has been of many years a judge unto this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself." He says, "Felix, I know you've been around long enough to judge fairly in the case, so I'm anxious to answer. Cheerfully do I answer for myself." Is that flattery? No.
Now, people have accused Paul of flattery. They say, "Paul is sort of buttering him up." No, he's not at all. There is no flattery there at all. Paul says this, "Felix, you have been a judge long enough around here to make a fair evaluation, so I am glad to give my case." That's all he said, and it was true. Felix had been governor in that area for five years. Prior to that, he was under Cumanus, who was the governor of Samaria, and he was under him for four years. So for at least nine years, he was acquainted with Jewish affairs.
Now, one very important thing to notice is that in any judgment in regard to Jewish affairs, you would have to know Jewish custom. It is unique, it is so different, that a man would have had to live within the culture to be able to evaluate the actual tensions that were going on. Paul is, in effect, saying, "Felix, I know that you have been around long enough to know that this is a theological problem, and to know the real hassle that is behind this, and I am glad to give my defense, because I know that you know that." There is no flattery here.
Let me hasten to add this. Flattery, for a Christian, is unacceptable at all times. Did you get that? There is no place in a Christian's life for flattery at all, anytime, anyplace. Off the cuff, the simplest definition I could think of is that flattery is when you do or say something to someone that is beyond the truth to elicit something for yourself. It's when you butter them up to get what you want. You don't flatter the people below you, you flatter the people above you - the people who can give you something or spare you some pain.
You know, when you hear Tertullus say, "Oh, most wonderful Felix, oh, most noble, oh," you just say, "Blech!" It's not true; he knew it, everybody knew it, Felix knew it. But flattery is a very common thing; you do that to get what you want. You know something? I'm sad to say that it works. It is absolutely unacceptable to the Christian. Why do I say that? Because Proverbs 26:28 says, "A flattering mouth works ruin," and Psalm 12:3 says, "The Lord shall cut off all flattering lips." Now, if you'd like to hang on to your mouth--
It's that serious. You say, "What's wrong with flattery?" Flattery is not the truth. Flattery is a calculated misrepresentation to gain something for yourself; it is mass self-indulgence and selfishness, it is sin. You know, that's a temptation. People say, "Oh, if you want to get anything in life, you've got to go that route." No.
There are people who would say, "In your church, you find someone who has a lot of money. You need to build that new building? Go to that person who has a lot of money and boy, get close to them, butter them up, and you'll get their money." If you're waiting for me to do that, friends, it isn't going to happen. I don't want your money because I flattered you for it; I want your money not at all, in fact. I'm not interested in it. I'm just interested in being the kind of Christian I ought to be and you being the kind of Christian you ought to be and you doing what God wants you to do with everything else in your life and your money, and me doing what God wants me to do and we'll see what happens. But I don't do certain things to get certain things from you.
I'm sure some of you have said to yourselves, "The way you preach, always belting us around, it's pretty obvious you don't want anything." Well, I just want you to be conformed to the image of Christ. I try not to belt you around, I try to lovingly admonish you. But there is no place for flattery. That goes on all the time, even in Christian circles, believe me. Believe me. I know. It happens even to me, and I don't believe it when it happens. I know me. And if I start to believe it, my wife helps me out.
So he is not flattering Felix. What he's saying is simply, "Felix, you've been around long enough to make a proper judgment, so I will cheerfully go ahead with my defense." Now, I would say that there is a little reverse psychology in that because now, Felix is really on the spot. Paul has said, "You should be able to make a fair judgment, Felix, you've been around long enough." Did you ever notice how Paul can always somehow get his thumb on top of everybody? Now, Felix is not only pressured by the case, he's pressured by the fact that Paul knows he's been around long enough to make a responsible judgment Paul has such boldness.
So Paul replies, first of all, to the charge of sedition. He starts and goes categorically through the three. First of all, he replies to the charge of sedition in verses 11-13. Now, this is the charge that he was a political criminal. Notice what he says. "Because thou mayest understand that there are yet but twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship." He says, "Felix, you know that I've only been around here twelve days." Acts 24:1 says that five of those had been spent in Caesarea. So the maximum possible time he had spent in Jerusalem was seven days. Now Paul, in effect, is saying, "I haven't had time to start a riot. I haven't had time to get a revolution off the ground. There is no way." And that's right.
In fact, if you go back to chapter 21, you can find out what he spent those seven days doing. Acts 21:23, he arrived in Jerusalem. James and the other believers who were there, the other Christians, were very concerned about Paul because they had heard word that he had become anti-Semitic. The heard he had become anti-Jewish, that his Christianity had gone amok and he was against all the customs and traditions of the Jews. Paul said, "That's not so."
So the elders of the church in Jerusalem said, "You'd better prove that. Here are four guys who are going to take a Nazarite vow." A Nazarite vow was simply an outward form expressing consecration in the heart. It happened to be a Jewish form; it wasn't evil, it was just there, just a custom. Paul said, "Fine. I'll go along and do the same thing they're doing in form, and then everyone will see that I'm not against these customs." So that's what happens in verses 23-27. Verse 26 says, "Paul took the men, and the next day, purifying himself with them, entered the temple, to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification." So they went into the temple for this period of purification.
Verse 27. "And when the seven days were almost ended," imagine! Most of those seven days he was there, he was in the temple. So he spent seven days in there, carrying out a vow, five days in Caesarea; they're accusing him of starting a riot. He says, "Felix, you must understand that I went to Jerusalem to worship, and it's only been 12 days, and there has been no time for any kind of rebellion." That's a pretty good argument, wouldn't you say?
He purposely says this at the end of verse 11, "I went up to Jerusalem to worship, not to desecrate. Not to start a riot, not to start a revolution, not to profane the temple, just to worship." He was carrying out the worship act of the Nazarite vow, which signified consecration to the Jew. That's what he was doing the whole time; he hadn't done anything wrong.
Verse 12. "And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man, neither raising up the people," which literally means, in the Greek, 'collecting a crowd' for any purpose - either to preach to them or to riot. "Not in the synagogue, not in the temple, not in any place in the whole city. I haven't done anything! There is nothing with which they can accuse me."
In Acts 25:8, he has to give another defense before Festus, and we'll get to that in a few weeks. He says to Festus, "Neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar have I offended in anything at all. I haven't done anything, nothing!"
In Acts 28:17, he gives another defense of himself. "It came to pass, after three days, Paul called the chief of the Jews together at Rome, and when they were come together, he said to them, 'Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner.'" He continues clear out to the end of the book, saying, "I've never done anything wrong!" You say, "That's easy for him to say. He's just trying to get out of it." No, because he also says repeatedly, "I stand before God