One of the problems with this kind of Bible study is remembering to make it as practical as possible.
To be very honest, I get so caught up in the details of the research and exposition that sometimes I forget that these messages should attempt to make us better Christians not just smarter Christians.
This is something about which I wish that you would constantly pray.
For example, here we read of Paul’s defense before Felix.
We could look at this analytically and scientifically, studying what Paul said in the same way that a forensic scientist might look at some dry bones.
Or we could, and should, look at these words as if they were examples of the way that OUR testimony should sound before the world.
Tertullus, on behalf of the Jewish Priests, charged Paul with three things, only one of which was a civil crime.
He was charged with being a seditious trouble-maker, a pest, stirring up the Jews around the world.
As far as Felix was concerned, if the Jews had laws against these things, that was fine, but they were not concerns of his.
It appears to me that Luke has given us a fairly thorough outline of Tertullus’ words.
And the details given makes me wonder if he wasn’t actually present in the courtroom at that time.
And like the record of Tertullus’ words, I’m sure that what we read of Paul’s defense is pretty much exactly the way that it was given.
It probably took very little time.
In looking at Paul’s defense, what should the testimony of the Christian be before the world?
but his words don’t contain even a hint of the flattery with which Tertullus began.
What we do hear are words of confidence and boldness;
This morning in our Adult Sunday School class, I began with Bertrand Russell’s denial that Jesus Christ was a genuine historical character.
The rest of that lesson was filled with testimonies from secular history to the fact that Jesus did live and die in Israel about 2,100 years ago.
If I presented the statements of Tacitus and Josephus to Bertrand Russell,
In other words, for a great many people, what we say will never be accepted under any circumstances.
But that fact must not stop us from carrying out our responsibility of giving our witness for Christ.
Paul didn’t really concern himself with what Felix thought about him.
Whether he listened to the facts or the flattery didn’t matter that much to Paul.
It wasn’t that he had NO concern; it was that he didn’t have GREAT concern.
Because even though he was standing before Caesar’s bema, it was the Judgment Seat of Christ that is the more important.
The only reason that we should be concerned with the opinions of the lost, is because we actually do want to bring them to the truth.
If we are hypocrites and frauds, and the lost know it, then our testimony of the gospel will be rejected.
So at the very least we want to be known as honest, law-biding, people who are striving to bring glory to our Saviour.
But if Felix thinks otherwise, there may be nothing that Paul can do about it.
In verse 13 Paul said, “Neither can they prove the things whereof they now accuse me.”
These are words that both the innocent and the guilty might be apt to say.
The guilty say this, thinking that the police and the prosecutors haven’t found proof of his crime.
The innocent say the same thing, knowing there can be no proof of a crime which has never been committed.
There was absolutely no proof of sedition on Paul’s part; in fact there was proof of just the opposite.
As to the charge that he had polluted the temple, the Jews had no proof of that either.
And in regard to being a ringleader of the Christians, Paul didn’t even speak to that.
Christians and Christianity shouldn’t be ashamed to be judged by the world.
And they neither found me in the temple disputing with any man,
neither raising up the people, neither in the synagogues, nor in the city.”
Ever since the days of the Maccabaeus family, 200 years earlier, there had been attempts to drive the Greeks, and later the Romans, out of Israel.
Felix himself had been forced to deal with an Egyptian who claimed to be the Messiah,
But Paul had been nearly two weeks in Jerusalem, and he hadn’t spent ten minutes trying to raise an army or to incite a riot.
It was the Jews who were stirring up themselves about Paul.
Other than a brief visit with the church, Paul hadn’t directly met with any large groups.
In fact, rather than cause trouble, Paul had brought with him a quantity of money to ease the sufferings of some of the people of the city.
and the alms were the financial gifts of the Christians all over the Northeast Mediterranean.
(Don’t you find it curious that the Lord never revealed to us the size of those gifts.?
So Paul was not in Jerusalem to cause trouble; to raise an army; to lead a revolution or revolt.
Even though the gospel and Christianity should have an effect on every aspect of society, it should never become a political movement.
The kingdom of Christ will continue to be a SPIRITUAL kingdom until the Lord Himself comes to put down all the governments of men.
If miraculously, the majority of the citizens of some city, state or country became genuine Christians, then the world might expect to see major changes in governments as well.
But we have no commission from Christ to preach Christian politics; our commission is to preach Christ.
Christianity is not directly a threat to the stability of the Roman government.
Something else that we learn from Paul’s defense is that:
And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow,
that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.”
There are a few ignorant people who think that the God of the New Testament is Jesus, while the God of the Old Testament is Jehovah.
A Jehovah’s Witness cultist knocked on my door yesterday;
Unlike those Russellites, there are people who claim to believe in the deity of Christ, who wouldn’t consider worshiping the God of Paul’s Fathers.
But I am not one of those people, and neither was the Apostle Paul.
The God who came into the Garden of Eden to fellowship with Adam and Eve, eventually became incarnate and fellowshipped with Peter, James, John and the other disciples.
The One who told Noah to build a ship, was none other than the Lord Jesus.
Enoch preached the God whom he knew, and preached that He was coming to earth with ten thousand of His saints.
The One who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush spoke to Paul on the road to Damascus.
The God who gave the Commandments on Mount Sinai and made Moses’ face glow, was the same God whose brilliance blinded Paul.
If it wasn’t that I didn’t have time, I would have been happy to sit down with that JW, open up the Book of Isaiah and show to that poor woman that Jesus is the Jehovah of Whom Isaiah spoke.
In worshiping Jesus Christ, Paul was worshiping the God of his fathers.
The Jews said that Paul was a heretic because he was a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.
And how was it that he worshiped that Nazarene?
Well, he had stopped bringing blood offerings to the temple in order to make an atonement for his sin.
It wasn’t that he didn’t see the need for an atonement, but that the atonement had been accomplished by the sacrifice of all sacrifices – the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
And other than his desire to be in Jerusalem for Pentecost, he had stopped keeping the religious holidays of Israel.
He certainly didn’t tell the Gentile converts that they had to keep the ceremonies of the law.
But at the same time, he didn’t teach that the law had been disannulled.
The degenerating condition of modern society is proof of the importance of those divine laws.
On the other hand, Paul didn’t tell any man that through obedience to the law ,would come redemption or atonement from sin.
He prayed in Jesus’ name, that is, through the authority of Jesus Christ.
And he baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, something which the Jews didn’t to, but which Christ commanded.
In other words, he was still worshiping the God of his fathers, but in a way somewhat different from his fathers.
And the one thing that he specifically mentioned before Felix was his continued preaching of the Old Testament doctrine of resurrection.
It was “touching the resurrection of the dead that he was called in question.”
First and foremost, it was the resurrection of Christ Jesus, which was the catalyst to the great changes in his theology.
But he wasn’t preaching anything new, when he spoke of the resurrection of both the just and the unjust, the righteous and the wicked.
Not only were the Jewish Scriptures filled with examples of physical resurrections, but there were a great many promises and prophecies of the great resurrections yet to come.
By preaching these things he was preaching nothing that his fathers hadn’t preached.
Christianity is not contrary to the Old Testament.
It is the completion and fulfilment of the Old Testament through the person of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have recently spent some time on the subject of a good conscience, so I won’t dig into it again.
But besides the fact that it is possible for an evil man to convince his conscience that everything is fine, when it isn’t, we should strive to have a good conscience.
A good conscience before God means that we are in fellowship with Him because we are doing His will.
And a good conscience before men means that we not in any over ways causing them any injury.
These are some of the core essentials of Bible Christianity.
And Paul’s defense before Felix was his testimony that he was the kind of Christian that he would have been.
Now the question to you and me is this: Are you the kind of Christian that the Lord wants you to be?