Day 347 (Acts 24-26) - Year 6
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Hey Bible Readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Yesterday, 470 soldiers delivered Paul to Governor Felix in Caesarea. Today, we pick up five days later when some of the authorities from Jerusalem have come to talk to Felix about Paul. They brought a spokesman-slash-lawyer named Tertullus with them. Tertullus starts off by flattering Felix, then launches into accusing Paul of starting riots and defiling the temple, neither of which he's done. Paul defends himself with the truth. He says he goes to great lengths to live with integrity and that he has honored the ways of Yahweh, including everything written in the law and the prophets, which is the shorthand way of saying all the Hebrew scriptures, i.e. the Old Testament.
Felix is pretty familiar with first century Christianity, or the way, as Paul calls it, possibly because he lives in Caesarea among prominent evangelists like Philip. He wants to hear more from Paul. So he tells the people who came down from Jerusalem that he'll make a decision later and sends them back home. In the meantime, he tells the soldiers to keep Paul in prison, but to be nice to him. Remember, in this day, prisons aren't required to care for you. Your friends have to do that. And sometimes prison guards even prevent the friends from doing that. Felix keeps calling Paul up to talk to him about the way, but it's never enough for him. He's also kind of hoping Paul is going to pay him a bribe so he can get out of prison.
But even here, Paul maintains his integrity, sharing the gospel and obeying the rules. After two years, Felix leaves office unexpectedly. History tells us he was kicked out of office because he couldn't keep peace between the Jews and the Gentiles. So in order to make things less awkward with the Jews, he leaves Paul in prison. Festus takes over after Felix, but even after two years, the issue with Paul has not cooled off at all. In fact, this is one of the first things that gets addressed when Festus comes into office. While he's in Jerusalem, the authorities say, Hey, Festus, have your people bring Paul up here so we can deal with this. They want to do it this way because they've hatched another plan to kill Paul along the way. But Festus says... Nah, you guys just come back to Caesarea and we'll deal with it there. I've got a few empty seats in my chariot, so you can just hitch a ride back with me.
They come down a week or so later, make their case against Paul, and he maintains that he hasn't broken any laws, not Jewish law and not Roman law. Festus wants to keep peace with the Jews too, and certainly doesn't want to be evicted from office like Felix was, so he says, How's about we take you back to Jerusalem for trial, which the Jews would love? Paul says, hard pass. Between the two of you, this is going nowhere, so I'm going to make an appeal to Caesar instead. As a Roman citizen, Paul is asking to be elevated to a higher court, one that, in theory, should weigh more in his favor. Festus agrees to his appeal. A few days later, King Herod Agrippa II comes to town. While Governor Festus and King Agrippa are chatting, Festus lays out the whole story for him of what's happened with Paul, and Agrippa says, I want in on this too. Bring him out tomorrow so I can hear his side of the story.
The next day, they bring Paul out in front of Agrippa and some of the prominent leaders in town, and Festus introduces him by basically saying, everyone wants this guy to die, but I don't think he's done anything wrong. What should I do? This all sounds far too familiar, doesn't it? Paul opens by asking the king to be patient with him as he tells his story. Let's hope the king isn't sitting on an open third-story window while he talks. Paul tells the story about his days as a persecutor of the church, followed by his conversion. Near the end, Festus interrupts and tells Paul he's lost his mind. Paul has just given a beautiful explanation of the gospel, but Festus doesn't get it.
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