Have you ever told your story two or three times and nobody gets it? Yeah, it's frustrating. It's frustrating. That had happened to Paul in Caesarea, but today will be different. A new listener today who seems to be qualified to understand what he's talking about.
Well, let's find out who that is and how it goes today. I'm more than ink. Hey, a wonderful summertime greeting to you. This is Jim. And I'm Dorothy.
And you have found us. This is More Than Ink, where we walk our way through the Bible and share our observations.
Sometimes I'm scared.
Sometimes scary. Yeah, sometimes scary. And hope that you're doing the same thing. We are firm believers in just reading the word. There's so much to pick up right at the surface level.
And so we want to encourage you through these broadcasts to read the Bible for yourself. It's an amazing adventure.
So we're hoping you join us in this adventure. We're near the end of the book of Acts, and we're following the life of Paul incarceration. And he's been locked up for two years or more at this point. That's right. Yeah.
Yeah. Felix put him in jail and, you know. And then Felix retired from governor. And Festus came in to become governor. Festus found him in the prison.
I mean, literally discovered him in the prison. Yeah, because Felix left his case unresolved. That's right. And then Festus, being sounds like a moderately better kind of administrator, decided he was going to iron this thing out. He immediately, when he gets in power, decides to go down to Jerusalem and figure it out.
Find out what's going on. The end of that, in the end, is that Paul wants to have his case taken to Rome and listened to by Caesar.
So, yeah, it takes a little while to get that trip arranged.
So he's still in prison. He's still up in Caesarea, the wonderful Roman beach resort. And then Festus has a visit by some very important people.
So we talked about Agrippa and Bernice last time. Last time. But let's just kind of remember who Agrippa was. This is Agrippa II. Agrippa II.
Correct.
So he is the great-grandson of Herod the Great, right? And he was regarded as king over not a huge area. But one of the more interesting things that Caesar had awarded him was the right to govern over the temple area. Yes.
So he would have only done that if he knew he had some understanding of Jewish religious affairs. And that's going to figure in today's passage a little bit. Really big deal. Yeah, this Agrippa, too, his father was the one early in the account in Acts who killed the Apostle James. Right.
So.
So, you know, if you were Paul, you probably would not like this guy at all. But, you know, a fascinating thing happens. Agrippa and Bernice come into town and they agree, hey, we want to listen to this guy.
So that's where we left things off. And today we get to listen to what Paul says to King Agrippa.
Okay, but we should probably say something about Bernice because sometimes when you see a man and a woman named in the same verse, they are husband and wife. But that's not the case here. Not so. Bernice was his sister. But historically, they were recorded as constant companions.
Yes, yes. Yes.
Make of that whatever you will. Rumors are flying.
So, yeah, there we go.
So we have a royal court today, and a very highly appointed guy, Agrippa, and Bernice. Um, they listened.
So let's see what Paul says in front of them.
Okay, so this is the very next day after they arrive, right? They come for whatever reason they come, but it's a beach resort, you know, and they're there for a relaxation.
Okay, but Festus has presented to them his conundrum. And so, starting in verse 23.
So, on the next day, Agrippa and Bernice came with great pomp, and they entered the audience hall with the military tribunes and the prominent men of the city. Then, at the command of Festus, Paul was brought in. And Festus said, King Agrippa, and all who are present with us, you see this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me, both in Jerusalem and here, shouting that he ought not to live any longer? but I found that he had done nothing deserving death. and as he himself appealed to the emperor, I decided to go ahead and send him.
But I have nothing definite to write to my lord about him therefore I brought him before you all, and especially before you, King Agrippa, so that after we have examined him I may have something to write, for it seems to me unreasonable in sending a prisoner not to indicate the charges against him.
So it seems like Festus is kind of in a pickle.
Well, he doesn't know what to do with Paul. Yeah, because he hasn't broken any Roman laws. And I really think that Festus felt like it was premature of himself to agree to Paul's request to have his case heard by Caesar because for what? What are you going to do? I mean, what do you say to Caesar by wasting his time and sending this guy?
And you send an introductory letter saying, this guy seems innocent to me. What do you think, Caesar? No, that's not going to go far in that role.
Okay, but if you read back, Paul made that appeal, well, knowing that the Lord Jesus had appeared to him and said we're going to Rome. But he made that appeal when it looked like Festus was going to hand him over to the Jews and let them finish it himself. Right.
And so he says, well, well, that's not right. I'm a Roman. I need to be tried in a Roman law. The charges are brought against me in a Roman court. I appeal to Caesar.
Yeah, but you see, if I was Festus, I would have said, okay, slow down. First, I got to figure out what you're guilty of before I waste. Caesar's time. But perhaps it was simply the law that if any Roman citizen said, I appeal to Caesar. That was a done deal.
I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I don't know either. You'd have to protect Caesar's time to some degree, so you just don't have, you know, it.
Well, anyway, here's the piccoles in.
So, so Festus not only is doing a little dinner and a show for his guests by having Paul strut in front of him, but he also has a real need. He has a real need to ferret out some kind of thing, maybe an offense to say to Caesar to send along when Paul goes to Rome.
So that's part of the problem right now. Look what a big deal this is, right? Did you pay attention to who all was there? Yeah. With great pomp, there's this big ceremony with Agrippa and Bernice publicly welcomed.
And then there's the military tribunes.
So those are the guys who've been in charge of those who are guarding Paul, or maybe even the ones who brought him there in the first place a couple of years ago. And the prominent men of the city.
So Paul's been there a couple of years and he's had freedom for his people to come and go.
So it's public knowledge. That he's been in jail and nobody knows what to do with him.
So, this has aroused a lot of public interest.
So, this is justn't a hearing. This is an event. This is a gigantic event that's going on right now. And Paul probably can't believe the fact that when God said to him that he was going to be speaking the truth to very important people, who would have figured that the entire important people of Caesarea would show up, including King Agrippa?
Some who had come from Rome. Yeah, so this is really a gigantic event.
So, it opens up not with Paul saying hello, old King Agrippa, but it's with Festus explaining, you know, here's the deal. This is the guy you asked to see. We have to figure out what charges to indicate against him before we can send him. But here's Festus's understanding because he says in verse 24, this man about whom the whole Jewish people petitioned me.
Well, that's not exactly quite true. Only the religious leaders came and made a big showing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, shout out to the ought not to live. But but even himself, right after that, 25, I found he he had done nothing deserving death.
So, you know, he appealed to the emperor, and I said, Okay, right, because I didn't know what to do with him. Yeah, so that's where we are.
So, so, uh, so here we are, all set up. Everyone knows what's going on. We're chap chapter 26, is what we're turning to right now. After that statement from Festus, yeah, and you know, it's kind of the hanging question in the air is: why should Rome even care? Why should Caesar even care?
Yes, right? I just don't know what I can write to send with him. That's a big problem. He is in political danger if he does this poorly, because immediately Caesar's going to say, Who's the doofus that sent this guy here saying I don't think he did anything wrong? What do you think?
This is no when the Roman soldiers and governors who were there specifically to take care of matters like this, right, to keep the peace in Israel, right? And uh, And to take care of the small matters, shield them from Caesar.
So, I mean, he is in a pickle. You just got to understand, Festus is in a deep need right here. And I think Agrippa himself is only just fascinated by the whole process. By the political circumstances. He doesn't care about the political danger Festus is in.
So, okay, so let's turn to chapter 26 and find out what gets said.
Okay, so in verse 1, Agrippa said to Paul, You have permission to speak for yourself. Then Paul stretched out his hand and made his defense. Boy, he's loving this. He's doing his oratory thing. This is the third time now that he has been given an opportunity to make his own defense in a Roman court kind of situation.
Okay, so starting in verse 2, here's what Paul says: I consider myself fortunate that it's before you, King Agrippa, I'm going to make my defense today against all the accusations of the Jews, especially because you are familiar with all the customs and controversies of the Jews. Therefore, I beg you to listen to me. Patiently.
So that's actually kind of a nice startup.
Well, it is. That's not just flattery. He's saying you're an appropriate judge for what's going on because you understand Argoth Archives.
Well, and apparently, Agrippa had a reputation as being a pious Jew. And I didn't realize that, but I read that earlier.
So that's pretty interesting to me that someone in this office of. Quote-unquote king was by reputation an observant Jew. Yeah, and you know, by contrast, Felix, the original governor, clearly in the narrative, he's confused. He doesn't know what's going on. He doesn't know why, he just doesn't understand why there's such an uproar from the Jewish community, from the leaders.
Yeah, he doesn't know about the customs. And Festus looks like he's in about the same, much smarter. Yeah, they're both, you know, Festus actually is a pretty recent recently moved from Rome to here in Caesarea.
So he's like a Roman, he's a Roman administrator who understands Rome better than Caesarea.
So they were both out of the water. And he's glad to have Agrippa here. Right.
So Paul's correct. Agrippa is a much better judge to listen to his case.
Okay, so here's Paul in verse 4. My manner of life from my youth spent from the beginning among my own nation in Jerusalem is known by all the Jews. They have known for a long time, if they're willing to testify, that according to the strictest party of our religion, I'm I have lived as a Pharisee. And now I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope, I am accused by Jews, O king.
Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? Yeah. Stop there for a minute. This is a very wise start because he doesn't say, you know, I'm the leader of a rabid, crazy bunch of sect of Jews. I'm just doing kind of center-of-the-road Judaism and all this stuff.
I'm actually promoting what our nation and what our people have already promoted that God had promised to us, to our fathers. But he does appeal to his own past as one of the strictest party of our religion, right? In Philippians 3, Call Paul's himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee.
Well, yeah, I'm a keeper of the law. But what I'm saying, he's saying I'm coloring inside the lines here. I'm not coloring outside the lines. Outside the Jewish lines. Exactly.
This is what God had promised to us. This is what the 12 tribes hope to attain when they worship day and night. And so it's because of this hope, this hope of life after death. I'm being accused by Jews, which is really quite ironic. In fact, the Jews are accusing him of something that Paul says God has always promised to the Jews.
So, this is the first time that I notice that we hear Paul actually publicly talking about the hope. Of the resurrection, the hope of Christ. But if you take your concordance now as a little study tip and look up hope in Paul's writings, you will find it some 50 times in his letters, a dozen times just in Romans.
So he is hope figures very strongly, the hope that we have because of the resurrection of God's promised one.
So this is kind of the beginning of that line of thought in what's written about what Paul says. Yeah, and you know, it made me think of Job 19, a very famous passage in Job 19, where Job writes about the fact that I'll just read it for you. I've got it right here.
So we talk about God raising the dead, not a foreign thing in the Old Testament. Job 19, 25, for I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. Oh, my heart falls. faints within me.
So this hope of resurrection, of life after death, is not a foreign idea in the Old Testament. It was a source of distinctive shouting between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, both ruling parties in the Jewish realm, because the Pharisees believed it and the Sadducees did not. But at this point, what Paul is saying is that I'm being accused by the Jews of doing something that's general-grade Judaism belief. See, now he hasn't connected Jesus into this yet, and that's really at the core of the issue. But what he's saying is I'm promoting the fact that there is hope, there's life after death.
And that's not a new thing. That's not a new thing at all in terms of what God has promised the nation of Israel. Which presumably Agrippa would recognize. Right.
Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it would sound familiar to him.
So, you know, and it also made me think of, you know, who thought it incredible by any of you that God raises the dead? And then I remember Matthew 19 when they were talking about, you know, rich men going through the eye of a needle, that kind of problem, getting into heaven. And his disciples said to him, Well, look, then who can be saved? Right.
And Jesus says, well, with men, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.
So again, we're back at this point that we're talking about something that's pretty routine in terms of Jewish thinking about who God is. Anything is possible, and there is indeed a hope of life after death.
So, Paul just starts off by saying, I'm just being a regular Jew. Just being a pure Jew. That's right. So let's see what he goes from after that because that's a really good start. He's not lying.
He's really being true. In that sense, following Jesus, new Jesus Messiah isn't a new turn in the road. It's a fulfillment of the large road of the Old Testament. It's a fulfillment.
So it's not a radical shift away from what God had always promised. But look how, right at the beginning of this defense, he has put the resurrection of the Messiah right front and center. Yeah, it's a big deal. As a very Jewish thing. As a very Jewish thing.
So now he begins to talk about his own history.
So in verse 9, I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme. And in raging fury against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities. That's really interesting to me because what he's describing is exactly what the Jews are now doing to him.
That's another great irony right here. He says, What they are doing to me, I used to do with zealousness. And then I want to include the next verse in verse 12 because he says, In this connection, right? Because I had authority from the chief priests and because I was just bent on doing many things to oppose this name. Verse 12, in this connection, I journeyed to Damascus, so outside Israel, with the authority and commission of the high priest.
So, you know, he was the chief executioner.
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So again, what he's doing is he is identifying with the people making the accusations. First, identifying, saying I'm a Jew just like they are. Secondly, they're condemning me just like what I used to do in condemning others. Right.
I was exactly like them. Yeah, yeah. So I just find this fascinating and all the way around. By the way, too, as a side thing, it says, but when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. That's the line I used to convince me that he was actually a member, a voting member of the Sanhedrin, because he voted against them.
And an interesting little trivia bit is that every member of the Sanhedrin had to be married. That was a rule of the Sanhedrin. Oh, that's interesting. And yet, when you get to Paul's letters to Corinth, 1 Corinthians 7, and stuff like that, he says, you know, I prefer you to stay single like I am.
So, somewhere along the line. What happened to his wife? Yeah, what happened to his wife? And we don't know.
Well, we're reading between the lines here. We really don't have any reference. We don't know. It's just a little curiosity that's impossible to resolve. And yet, you know, if you just think along those lines for a minute, the insight with which he writes about marriage later in his letters is really helpful if we realize that perhaps he was married at one time.
Yeah. And this is the only tidbit that gives us a glimpse that he might have been, because a voting member of the Sanhedrin, it was a rule you had to be married.
Okay, well if you remember earlier in Acts at the stoning of Stephen, The text says that they laid aside their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.
So if he was already a member of the Sanhedrin at that time, then he didn't want to get his hands dirty yet. That's true. Right.
Because he didn't pick up the rocks. He just watched the jackets of those who did. He approved it. Or he didn't want to be publicly seen as murdering. I don't know.
But somehow later on, he becomes a very public antagonist. Yeah. Yeah. So much so that he's ambitious enough to actually go to the leadership and say, Right, send me. Not just inside Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, but send me to Syria.
Right.
Let me track these guys out. I'll go as far as it takes, and I'm bringing back from Syria.
So he was maybe a hatchet man. It could be. And that's only something of the most ambitious type. Right.
So it paints a picture of Paul as not so much as ruthless, but just very ambitious to make games, be respected, climb up the ladder, all that kind of stuff. Climb the ladder. I'll take care of this problem for you. Yeah. So that's the kind of picture we get when we realize that he had the nerve to go to the leadership and say, send me to a foreign country and I'll bring him back alive.
Or dead. We'll see. I also enjoyed here seeing how much he not only identifies with the religious authorities, but he emphasizes two or three times that he had received the authority from the high priest to go and do these things. Right.
And it's the high priest who was here. Uh Um Accusing him. Right.
So, you know, we're going to stop here in the passage before Paul gets to talking about what happened to him on the road to Damascus. At this point, he just tells us his life before meeting Jesus. Yeah. And this is accurate. He was a law-abiding, very ambitious, toe-the-line Pharisee, you know, and ambitious to the degree that he was putting people in jail and voting to have them killed and taking from foreign countries.
Why is that so important here in his defense before Agrippa, do you think? That's a good question.
Well, it draws a very sharp contrast to the Damascus Road experience because this basically says I'm not some headstrong zealot who went off the rails. I was going to stay in this life that I just portrayed to you. I was going to stay in this lifestyle. And I was deeply, deeply committed. To Judaism and to eradicating the name of this false Messiah, he thought at the time, Jesus.
And so you look at that and say, boy, this guy was really in. He was in up over his eyeballs. I mean, he was doing what he was doing with great conviction, great ambition, great zeal. There's just no way around that. Raging fury, he says.
So, how do you change someone off of that course? How do you get them out of that? You know, does. Did he just become some kind of renegade leader who wanted to be in charge of everything? And so he changed and started a sect that was just weird?
Or, I mean, how do you explain?
So, at this point, with such a deep immersion into Jewish culture and leadership and ambition. You gotta ask yourself, well, then, why is he at odds with all the religious leadership now? What happened?
So, at this point in the story, we're stopping deliberately. That question's gotta be rattling around in everyone's heads. If that's who you were. Then, what happened? Yeah, what has so changed him that he is really unafraid for his life?
Yeah, right. It set me thinking of Philippians 1, which he wrote, Well, Philippi was a Roman colony, but he writes to them later in Philippians 1 because he's in prison when he writes Philippians. He says, You know, I don't know which to choose, but I'm confident that even now, as always, Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.
So, by that time in his life, his attitude is recorded as being, doesn't matter to me whether I live or die. Because both are game. If I live, it's for your benefit and more ministry happens. If I die, hey, I'm face to face with Jesus.
So I don't know which to choose. I'll let him choose. Yeah, yeah. That's a pretty. Amazing transformation.
That's a huge change in life. That's a huge change. But here's this guy who is fully committed. That might be more of his personality, fully committed to whatever he believes in and he's going to do, you know, in his previous life before Christ, fully committed, fully ambitious about accomplishing things that maybe other people wouldn't do after Christ, fully committed even up to the point of death. And that's what made the Jewish leaders so determined that he had to be killed.
Yeah. Because he was so dangerous. Because he was one of them and had turned coat. There were reports that were coming back from all over the world. That's right.
You know, and those reports came. We see that in the accounts we've already read, where he would have run into with the Jews in the areas he was going around. And I'm sure, well, in some cases, they had come up from Jerusalem.
So, yeah, the rumors were substantiated back to the leadership. They knew what Paul was doing. And not only that, it wasn't a small effect. It seemed to be having a gigantic effect across Asia Minor. In Greece.
So, I mean, it's just, they were concerned because this guy seems unstoppable. Yeah. And it really wasn't Paul that was unstoppable, it was the Holy Spirit that was unstoppable. But they figured if they stopped Paul, they could stop the entire thing.
So they were really concerned about this guy. Really, really concerned. You know, as we kind of wrap this up, you know, his own description of himself as trying to make people blaspheme, you know, and raging fury, raging fury in foreign cities. This is how he characterizes himself in front of Agrippa and Bernice and Festus. But at other times, I was curious.
I went back and read how he talked about himself in the same light. 1 Corinthians 15 is a great place. He says in 15:9, For I am the least of the apostles. Why would he say that? I'm the least of the apostles, unworthy even to be called an apostle, because I I persecuted the Church of God.
Wow, I persecuted the church of God. And he says the same thing to Timothy, too, in 1 Timothy 1. You know, he says, the saying is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came in the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. And why? This history right here that he's just accounted to Agrippa.
He was a man full of ambition and zeal to take down the followers of Jesus, even to see if he can force them, force them to blaspheme against God. And in that raging fury, as he looks back as he writes the letter to Corinth and writes the letter to Timothy, he says, Yep, that was me. That was me. But and the gigantic butt in the entire course of Paul's life is the Damascus Road experience. And he says, Who are you?
He says, I'm Jesus, whom you're persecuting. And from those words, everything changed. Everything changed. Paul's life is a great, is just really dramatic. It is interesting, like you brought up at the beginning of the show, it is interesting how many times we get a pretty detailed account of.
Of that whole event and the change in Paul's life. It's important to God that we understand from as many directions as possible, many tellings, to understand how profound this was: that what God did in Paul's life is changed the course of his life through this one interaction with Jesus.
So, I encourage you to read ahead if you're listening and reading along, because next week we'll talk about Paul's own description, and it is the most detailed of the gospel presentations where we've gotten to this point in Roman hearing.
So, you've heard the story before. You'll hear it again. You'll hear it again. So, we want you to come back and see if it fills in any cracks.
So, I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we'll come back and see exactly next time here on More Than Inc. There are many more episodes of this broadcast to be found at our website, morethanink.org. and while you are there, take a moment to drop us a note.
Wow, isn't it amazing that in Paul's defense, he begins with, he leads with how bad he was before. And he really was bad. I mean, raging fury. But sometimes that part of our story is as important as the story of coming to Jesus. The contrast is amazing.
So, yeah, I'm glad he told it. Me too. This has been a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City.
