September 14th

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Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

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Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is the 365 Bible Reading Plan. Today is September the 14th, and our chapter for today is the Book of Acts, chapter 24. Now in order to get the context and the storyline, we have to go back to where we left off in yesterday's podcast in chapter twenty three, and we are going to begin with verse twelve. And when it was day some of the Jews banded together and bound themselves under an oath, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. Now there were more than forty who had formed this conspiracy. They came to the chief priest and elders. Now listen to this, they went to the leaders, the religious, spiritual leaders of Israel, and they revealed this plot about killing a prisoner. We have bound ourselves under a great oath that we will eat nothing until we have killed Paul, murdered him. Now you therefore, together with a council, suggest to the commander that he be brought down to you tomorrow, and as though you were going to make further inquiries concerning him. In other words, you deceive and be a deceiver with us, but we are ready to kill him before he comes near. So when Paul's sister's son heard of their ambush, now isn't this amazing? Here was a nephew in the midst of all this. What does this mean? This means that Paul's family was so well ingrained into the religious structure of that day that here was Paul's sister probably had married into someone in the Sanhedrin, someone who was a Pharisee because her father was a Pharisee, Paul's father. Paul was a Pharisee, Saul of Tarsus, and here was this nephew that was in there probably as a servant, but he was a mole within the entire Sanhedrin, the council. And so he heard about this and he entered the barracks and told Paul. Then Paul called one of the centurions to him and said, Take this young man to the commander, for he has something to tell him. So he took him and brought him to the commander and said, Paul the prisoner called me to him and asked me to bring this young man to you he has something to say to you. Then the commander took him by the hand, went aside, and asked privately, What is it you have to tell me? And he said, The Jews have agreed to ask that you bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire more fully about him. In other words, he unveiled their plot. They were just bold faced deceivers and liars. Now this is the priest. This is the spiritual leadership of Israel. This tells you just how blinding religion is apart from the true and living God. You see, these were Sadducees. The priests, the high priest, they were all Sadducees. They didn't even believe in the angelic. They didn't believe in the resurrection from the dead. And instead of coming across with a great argument about that and in substantive debate overcoming the Pharisees, no, this is as old as time itself. When you don't have an argument, you start trying to kill the one who has the argument that's better than yours. This is being done in the political realm today in Washington, DC. It has spread to other countries. It is as old as time itself. There's nothing new under the sun. The devil has no new tricks. He dresses them up differently for every generation. But what I'm telling you is these men were bold face, bold type, italicized underland liars. And this is a plot that this young, courageous nephew of Paul immediately uncovered. He listened and he went and did the right thing. And he says, But do not yield to them, this is verse twenty one. For more than forty of them lie in wait for him. Men who have bound themselves by an oath that they will neither eat nor drink till they have killed, murdered Paul. And now they are ready, waiting for the promise from you. So he said, You're going to get a request, you better not listen to them because this is what they're doing. It's all a big trap. So the commander let the young man depart and commanded him, Tell no one that you have revealed these things unto me. And he called for two centurions. A centurion had a hundred persons band unto them, and he said to these two centurions, Prepare two hundred soldiers, get your men together, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen to go to Caesarea at the third hour of the night. This was done in the middle of the night. It was done before anyone woke up, and he wanted them quietly to get him out of the city so that he would have a reason to say Paul was sent to Caesarea during the night. And so he provided a mount for Paul, and Paul didn't have to walk. He rode on a horse, bring him safely to Felix, the governor, and here is the letter that he wrote in the following manner. We have the actual letter. This is primary source material. This is Claudius Lysius. This is the name of the commander to the most excellent governor, Felix. Now, the governor is the same position that Pontius Pilate had during the days of Jesus. And so he said, Greetings. This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them. Here he comes, the hero. Coming with the troops I rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman. Actually, he didn't learn that he was a Roman until after he was about to beat him, and he said to him, Are you going to beat a Roman? Are you going to do this to me? You remember the story. So it wasn't exactly like he said, but thank God that he did it. He said, and when I wanted to know the reason they accused him, I brought him before their council, and I found out that he was accused concerning questions of their law, of their law, but had nothing charged against him deserving of death or of imprisonment of chains. And when it was told me that the Jews lay in wait for the man, I sent him immediately to you. Why? Because he was a Roman citizen, and also commanded his accusers to state before you the charges against him. Farewell. And then in verse thirty one we continue, then the soldiers, as they were commanded, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris. Now this is a city where you would have known about this in the Old Testament because this is where Samuel said, Here I raise my Ebenezer, its name was changed to Antipatris. It is where a beautiful spring, a well is there as you go through the Shvila, down through the foothills into the coastal plain. It was a great stopping place on the Via Maris, the way from Egypt, the way of the sea, up to the north into the Jezreel Valley. And the next day they left the horsemen, and they went to go on with him, and returned to the barracks, and when they came to Caesarea and had delivered the letter to the governor, they also presented Paul to him. And when the governor had read it he asked what province he was from. And when he understood that he was from Cilicia, he said, I will hear you when your accusers also have come, and he commanded him to be kept in Herod's praetorium. Now Herod's praetorium was the palace that Herod built at Caesarea Maritime. If you go with me to Israel, you will see the remains of this palace. Not only will you see the remains of the palace, you will see its positioning and where it was near the theater, near the hippodrome, the horse racing track. Now don't think of Churchill Downs or someplace in Belmont. No, not at all. This was like Charlton Heston and the Ben Hur chariot races. The hippodrome was a circle where they raced chariots, and that was right near the praetorium, near Harry's Palace. He would have had a premier seat for all of this. It was right on the coast where the waves would dash up against at night the barrier wall, the sea wall. And it was in eyesight of the great harbor and the torch and the lighthouse that would have brought the ships in from the north and the south and obviously from the west. And so this was a beautiful place, and within this palace or this praetorium, there would have been sales for high level, high value prisoners like Paul. And this is where the account would have been given. Now after five days, this is beginning chapter twenty four. Remember there would not have been a chapter heading here. It would have just been a paragraph beginning the rest of the story. Now after five days, Ananias, the high priest, came down, that liar, that one who was in this plot to murder a man because he disagreed with him and he perceived him as a threat to his own position, he came down with the elders of the council, that is, and a certain orator named Tertullus. These gave evidence to the governor against Paul. Here's the evidence as stated by Tertullus. And when he was called upon, Tertullus began his accusation saying, Seeing that through you we enjoy great peace and prosperity. Oh he was already buttering him up, and prosperity is being brought to this nation by your foresight. We accept it always and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness. Nevertheless, not to be tedious to you any further, I beg you to hear by your courtesy a few words from us. In other words, thank you and let's get on with the small talk enough of it. Now I've gotten past that. We have found this man a plague, a pestilence, a creator of dissension among the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. This is what they were trying to say. He is an extremist. Does this sound familiar? Someone who messes up the status quo playhouse is always an extremist. And probably if they would have had time they would have developed a conspiracy theory, even though they were the ones that were involved in the conspiracy to kill and murder an innocent man. It says he even tried to profane the temple, and we seized him, and wanted to judge him according to our law, but the commander Lysias came by and with great violence boy, with great violence took him out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come to you. By examining him yourself you may ascertain all these things of which we accuse him. And the Jews also assented, that is, they all said, Hey, yes, amen, this is the way it is, maintaining that these things were so. Then Paul, after the governor had nodded for him to speak, Paul was just abiding his time. When a governor had nodded for him to speak, inasmuch as he says that I know that you have been for many years a judge of this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for myself, because you may ascertain that it is no more than twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship. In other words, I have just been around here a couple of weeks, how could I cause all this trouble? And they neither found me in the temple disputing with anyone, nor inciting the crowd, either in the synagogues or in the city where the temple was. Nor can they prove the things of which they now accuse me. But this I do confess to you that according to the way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers. He said what I'm doing is I'm worshiping in a way that's different than they worship, and it is killing them to the point that they want to kill me, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets. He's saying, I believe the Torah, I believe the prophets. What they say they believe. I have expectation, I have hope in God, which they themselves also accept the very same Bible, and they accept that there will be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust. I admit I believe all of that, and I do follow the way. This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men. He said, I'm just following what the prophets have always predicted. Now after many years I came to bring alms. I brought an offering to my nation because they have been in famine, and I wanted to help my people, in the midst of which some Jews from Asia found me purified. I was purified, I wasn't there causing trouble in the temple, neither with a mob nor with tumult. They ought to have been here before you to object if they had anything against me, that is, these people from Asia who caused all the stink to start with. Or else let those who are here themselves say if they found any wrongdoing in me while I stood before the council. The fact is they didn't. They were arguing with one another, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He says, unless it is for this one statement which I cried out standing among them concerning the resurrection of the dead, I am being judged by you this day. He said the reason they're so upset, these Sadducees here, is because they don't believe in the resurrection. They really don't. They don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, I do. They don't believe in the way that it is a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. They believe it's just a sect of Judaism that's radical. But when Felix heard these things, having more accurate knowledge of the way, in other words, he understood better about the way than what everybody thought he did, but Paul made it even more clear that he adjourned the proceedings and said, When Lysias the commander comes down, I will make a decision on your case. So he commanded the centurion to keep Paul and he let him have liberty and told him not to forbid any of his friends to provide for him or to visit him. In other words, Paul would have had to stay in the praetorium, but it was a very nice place to stay. And he said, You can let visitors come in, they can bring him stuff, it doesn't matter. In other words, this guy's not a threat, I'm not worried about him. But after some days when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jew, she was a Jewess, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ, because he wanted to know more about this. It'd gotten his curiosity up. And so as he reasoned about righteousness, that is Paul, self-control and judgment to come, Felix was afraid and answered, Go away for now, and when it's a convenient time I will call for you. Meanwhile, he also hoped that money would be given him by Paul that he might release him. Therefore he sent for him more often and conversed with him. But after two years, Porseus Festus succeeded Felix, and Felix, wanting to do the Jews a favor, left Paul bound. Now this is fascinating to me. And the reason this is fascinating, and it should be to you, is simply because when Paul was there in Caesarea, he continued to minister in Jesus' name. He continued to preach the gospel from the praetorium. And he even preached to Felix over and over again, and Drusilla, his wife, who was a Jewess. Now, why is this important? Because God was using him even in a prison cell. You see, you cannot bind the good news of Jesus. And all Paul was doing was just telling the truth. You see, when you confess who Jesus is, you don't have to make up something. The story is great in itself. It's the greatest story that's ever been told, about the greatest person who ever lived, about the greatest act that has ever been done, about the greatest event in history that's ever happened, and that is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Nothing tops that. And I believe other than the resurrection of Jesus, the greatest miracle that's happened in the last two thousand years concerning God's promises, since the resurrection of Jesus happened in 1948 when the Jews came back into the land, just as the prophets said they would over 2,000, sometimes 2,500, 2,700 years before they came back in the land. This is fascinating. We have in our lifetime and in our generation, we have seen a great miracle. And only the resurrection is greater in God being faithful to fulfill his promise. Now there's more promises to be fulfilled. But all Paul was doing at Caesarea was telling the truth. And when you tell the truth and the power of the Holy Spirit, and you are sharing the message of the Tanakh, of the law, the prophets, and the writings, and now of the Barita Shah, of the new covenant, it's powerful. So much so that it says, as Paul was reasoning about righteousness, how a man is made right with God, about self-control, that is how his life has changed, and the judgments that's to come to those who reject God and do not repent, it says Felix was afraid and answered, go away for now. The word afraid is not just the word phobas, it's imphobos. That means he was in a state, a condition of fear. He was trembling. He was troubled to the point to where his core was affected. And he said, Get away from me, get out of here now. I'll talk to you another time. But we don't read about him bringing him back in and going over the same thing. But instead, he wanted Paul from that point on to pay him something so he could release him, because he saw, oh my goodness, I've got to get this guy out of here. And so he didn't do anything for a couple of years and left it up then to the incoming governor whose name was Festus. Now the thing I want you to take away from this chapter is this God is in control, and wherever we are, and whenever we are there, wherever we are, that is a place for us to be salt and light and be what God has asked us to be. We don't have to be obnoxious, we just need to be filled with the Spirit, speak the truth, and watch God work. For On the Way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 21:14

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org, then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at Tony C R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.