Acts 25-26, How Do You React?

Acts chapter 25 and 26. How do you react to Christmas? With sentimentality, gifts, and decorations, and cheery songs, or traditional carols? Are you one of those, it's the most wonderful time of the year kind of people?

That's okay, I guess. But what do you make of the one who reacts like that to Christmas without reacting to Christ with faith? How do you react to being insulted? You get angry and insult back? How about to a challenge?

Someone says, I can run faster than you. How about to danger? Are you a fight person or a flight person? Once when I was working as a security guard at an apartment complex at 4 in the morning when my shift was just ended, two men started to come at me, one armed with a baseball bat and the other with a big wine bottle.

I could run to my car and drive away and go home or turn to them and deal with a threat. How do you think I reacted? How do you react to pain or loss? With escape, like intoxication, or numbing, or fake spirituality?

Pretending it's not real? Or by overcoming? Persevering? Hoping? How about being stolen from? Once here during Jim jr. Some kids stole my mp4 player. We tried to find it among the kids here but couldn't.

There was no use in putting up.

A.

Fit about it, getting furious and yelling at them, return my stuff! Because that reaction wasn't likely to get a good counter reaction. How do you react to insolent disobedient kids? Get angry and yell at them?

You're probably expecting in church to be told to never to do that, but I don't believe that. I believe sometimes, rare occasions, kids need to be yelled at. That if you want to teach them some things are outrageous, you need to show outrage.

That there is something wrong with kids who have been raised constantly told how adorable they are and that they've never been scolded or shouted at. When I hear I never yell at my kids, I think, you know, the rest of us got to endure your brats.

But to be the one yelling at them, you have to be in a relationship with them, to be committed to them. It's easy to be patient with kids if you don't care about them. If you don't care that they don't learn anything.

Don't learn how to behave. If you think I'll just pass them along and be rid of them soon enough. In one movie, a teenage kid is hanging out with some criminal, old enough to be his father, and says to him, You're so cool.

You don't care if I smoke, if I get a beer, if I stay up late, no bedtime. I like my parents who shout at me if I do. The old thug responds, Do you know why I don't get mad if you do that? Because I don't care about you.

Your parents do. Sometimes if you don't react by getting angry, that doesn't mean that you're self-controlled. It only means you don't care. How do you react to being falsely accused? I've gotten letters from people falsely accusing me of this or that.

Sometimes some true accusations mixed in with the false ones to help the false ones go down, I guess. Some don't bother to check whether their accusations are true, especially if they're accusing a pastor.

Some people say, You just have to take it. Like Jesus, I guess. But Jesus was accused by enemies of God. What about what his people in the church? You're supposed to be patient, so don't react, they say.

One way to appear patient is not to care. You don't care if the slanderer or hypocrite is a slanderer or a hypocrite. You may not like being slandered or commitments made to you broken, but if you think purely selfishly, what's in it for me if I call this sin a sin?

If I confront it, if I call it out, probably nothing. Maybe it'll make things worse, especially if the accuser was raised by being never yelled at and we're just supposed to take false accusations. How do you react?

How you react shows a lot about you. Doctors often do a reflex reaction test. I don't know why, but it says something about you when your leg reacts, if they hit that nerve in your knee at the right spot.

It's a knee-jerk reaction. Psychologists will do a word association, asking you to say the first word that comes to mind before you've had an opportunity to think what you should say. What's your reflexive reaction?

What do you really associate with whatever they say, like mother? If your first word is terror, they know there's a problem there. Reactions show a lot about you. They show who you really are, what you love, what you're attached to, what you really care about, what your idols are.

In 2013, at an Alabama versus Auburn football watch party, one fan reacted to Alabama's loss by killing someone else at the party who didn't react like she thought real Alabama fans should. Obviously, that kind of reaction shows that the Alabama fan put far too much importance on football than is healthy.

How do you react? Here we see reactions. We see how people react to the truth, to the gospel, to Jesus. We see here four kinds of people reacting. First, there's the religious, then the secular, then third, the respectable, and finally, there's the culled.

The Religious Reaction to the Gospel

How do you, how did the religious react? Here we see a new Roman governor, Porcius Festus, who we don't know much about except his name suggests that he was sent, maybe as a joke, to get a reaction out of the Jews.

His name, Porcius, means pig, and Festus, either happy, or festive, or festival, or feast. So he's either pork feast or a joyful pig. Either way, that Caesar sent a man named Pork Feast, or Happy Pig, to rule over the religious Jews, who saw all pigs as unclean, was sure to provoke a reaction.

He immediately goes to the religious leaders in Jerusalem, where he meets with the chief priests and the elders. They lay out their case against Paul. We see two reactions of the religious to the gospel, to Jesus.

First, they react with hate. It's been two years since Paul was snatched from their grasp during a riot in and around the temple. You might think that they'd have other things that would have caught their attention in two years, but religious people are so set on their own self-righteousness, the dignity that their religion gives them, that they react to the gospel with unceasing hatred.

Last time, in chapter 23, we saw that over 40 men vowed to not eat or drink until they killed Paul. Here, over two years later, they are still plotting the same attack. They try to entice Governor Pork Feast into bringing Paul from Caesarea, where he's kept safe, to Jerusalem with a scheme to ambush him on the way.

They haven't given up that plot. People whose self-righteousness has been offended, their belief that they are right with God because their tradition says that they were born as the people of God,.

Or that they've done the work,.

That they've done the works, they think, like getting baptized that saved them. Such people will never stop plotting against the gospel or its preachers. So here, after first asking the obnoxiously named Pork Feast, or Happy Pig, to send Paul to Jerusalem, they're put off.

They keep at it, in verse 6. They followed Porcius Festus to Caesarea, where they stood around Paul, in verse 7, and brought many insidious charges against him that they could not prove. Paul denied the charges, but the religious people wouldn't stop.

They wanted Paul brought to Jerusalem, of course, again to ambush him on the way, if they couldn't convince Festus to execute him.

One way or the other,.

They want Paul dead. Never underestimate how vicious sinners can be toward the gospel, how much they hate the real Jesus, or anyone who proclaims him. We're tempted to forget this around Christmas, because Christmas has been sold as such a pleasant, peaceful, happy holiday, all about peace on earth, and goodwill toward everyone, that the sweet baby Jesus, who amazingly doesn't cry, brought on earth.

But the real Jesus, as we saw last week,.

Said,.

I've not come to bring peace, but a sword. Conflict, hatred, deaths. The baby boys of Bethlehem were murdered after Joseph fled to Egypt, with his wife and newborn son. The monks came out to hiss, and scowl, and spew insults at Martin Luther, when he brought the gospel to Worms.

Hundreds of Puritans were burned at the stake in Smithville, England, because the religious Bloody Mary, Queen Mary, hated the gospel. You might think you can reason with them, but the second reaction of religious people to the gospel is that they are unreasonable.

Here, they first won't drop their obsession with killing Paul. They make accusations. They can't prove, in verse 7, Festus says that they asked for a sentence of condemnation, the death penalty. In verse 15,.

Then,.

They are so unreasonable, that Roman justice doesn't allow what they demand. If they thought about the accusation, they'd have to know that the accusations are false. But they don't think. They use words as weapons, not as tools for the truth.

They aren't interested in truth. It stunned me when I first became a pastor, and realized that there are many people in church that aren't interested in learning, changing, or being challenged. That they expect church to affirm them as they are right now.

They are religious people, whose religion has made them unreasonable. James chapter 3, verse 17, says the wisdom from above, that which comes from the Holy Spirit, from being humbled by the gospel, makes you, most of all, the pinnacle of what God, the gospel does for you, different than man-centered religion, is it makes you open to reason.

The Secular Reaction to the Gospel

The religious react to the gospel by being unreasonable. The second type of person we see reacting here is the secular one, like Festus himself. Festus is just trying to get results. Get his job done.

Keep the peace. Keep as many people as happy as he can. Most of the time, and keep, most of all, his boss, Caesar, happy, so he can keep his job. He's like many people that we deal with. Same kind of people we deal with every day.

He's not a religious person, but he's not, but he's not, well, he may be. He's not anti-religious either. And he's not driven by faith either. In fact, like a lot of people today, whether his faith is, whatever it is, makes so little difference in his life, it doesn't show up.

You can't tell what it is he believes by looking at his life. There's three reactions to the gospel we can see from the secular, from Festus. First, he is practical. He wants what works for himself. So he appointed governor of Judea.

He's appointed governor of Judea and soon comes to Jerusalem to meet the big shots there, the high priests and the principal men of the Jews in verse 2. They ask him to bring Paul to Jerusalem. He says that Paul is being held in Caesarea, his headquarters, and wonders why he should go to the bother of moving him to Jerusalem and having to come there himself to hold a trial.

So he invites them to Caesarea. When they come there, he holds a hearing where Paul is accused and reacts by saying in verse 8, neither against the law of the Jews nor against the temple or against Caesar have I committed any offense.

But Festus wants to ingratiate himself to his new people to placate them. So he asked Paul, really signaling, telling Paul that he's going to move the trial to Jerusalem like they want. Festus doesn't understand why they want the trial moved to Jerusalem.

It's inconvenient for him. He says he's found in verse 25 that Paul has done nothing deserving death. Even after hearing the case against him twice, he still has nothing to put his finger on in verse 27.

Nothing that he can write as a charge against him. He should let him go, but if it will make them happy, he'll throw them that bone. He'll send Paul to Jerusalem. Paul knows why they want to go to Jerusalem.

He knows why and knows that if that happens, he's going to, he's not going to be able to make it out alive. He has a mission to make it to Rome to take the gospel to the ends of the earth or at least the crossroads where it can eventually get to the ends of the earth.

If he's killed in an ambush on the way to Jerusalem, that won't happen. So he appeals to Caesar. Festus was willing to put Paul's life in danger, put him through yet another trial. He's just being practical.

Why be principled about his authority? Let the trial be held where his office is, about justice. He'll give them a favor. But when Paul appeals to his rights as a Roman citizen, he has to recognize that.

He does what he has to do. Secular people aren't principled. They're practical. Second, secular people are limited. That is, they can only see what can be seen. They're limited by what can be shown right now before their eyes.

Festus is perplexed by all this argument about theology he knows nothing about. When he's visited by Agrippa and Bernice, he tells them in verses 13 to 21 that this Paul, left here by Felix, your brother-in-law, by the way, is being accused of charges that I don't understand.

In verse 18, they brought no charge in this case of such evils as I suppose. It wasn't about murder or rebellion or terrorism. That's the kind of crimes he understands. That he was sent to Judea to keep under control.

Rather, in verse 19, they had certain points of dispute about their own religion and about a certain Jesus who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. Their differences, the accusations, had to do first with how the Old Testament was fulfilled and second, most of all, with Jesus who had been dead.

Everyone agrees on that. He had been a dead man. But the difference is that Paul asserts that he's alive. Festus can't see that. He only sees what can be seen. He's limited by what can be physically shown to him.

Third, secular people like Festus are incredulous. The secular react with incredulity to the gospel. Festus says he's at a loss about how to investigate the charges against him. In verse 20, he doesn't believe the law that Paul is accused of breaking.

He says he has nothing definite to write, in verse 26, in the official indictment against Paul when sending him to Caesar. He knows that the key difference is that Jesus, who was dead, Paul says is alive.

He doesn't yet seem to understand how Paul is saying Jesus is alive. Did he believe that the spirit of Jesus had risen to inspire his followers or maybe he or maybe he thought the ghost of Jesus was still hovering around.

He's incredulous. So when Paul makes clear in appealing to King of Rippa in verse 26 that he saw Jesus, that Jesus was physically resurrected, that he is the Messiah, the Christ, and he is the first to rise from the dead.

Then that becomes clear that that is what Paul is preaching. That the gospel is about the resurrection, that now Jesus is raised from the dead. And that's not only for Jews in verse 23, but to the Gentiles.

It's for all people. It's joy to the world. When that becomes clear, that's incredible to Festus. Lacking credibility to his mind beyond being believable. He's incredulous.

Paul asks,.

Why is it thought incredible in verse, in chapter 26, verse 8, that God raises the dead? The secular think it's incredible because they can't see it right now. So Festus, the secular man, cries out loudly.

Paul, you're out of your mind. Your great learning is driving you out of your mind. You've addled your brain with all your theology so that you're crazy. He's incredulous. Unbelieving. It's also, he is sure because life is about what can be seen.

Cash in hand, money in the bank, a good business, a nice house, luxury cars, a pretty wife, new gadgets, and he's talking about a dead man rising? It's also unbelievable, says the secular man. The secular can't be bothered to be violently opposed to the gospel like the religious can.

They're just incredulous. The third kind of people are the respectable, like Agrippa and Bernice, brother and sister, the brother and sister, by the way, of Drusilla, the beautiful wife of Felix. And so like her, the children of Herod Agrippa, who died in Acts 12, this Herod Agrippa, the second, inherited part of his father's dominion under Roman authority, of course.

So as a petty king, he comes to pay his respects to his new overlord, Festus, and brings along his sister, Bernice. When the Romans took over countries like Israel, rather than wiping out the local kings and rulers, they would try to co-opt them, to use them, to give Roman authority an appearance of respectability.

Here, Festus wants Agrippa Junior's help in understanding what to do about Paul. What can he write about him when sending him to Caesar? Here, we see three reactions of the gospel, three reactions of the respectable to the gospel.

First,.

They're curious, not like the religious, who have their minds made up. When Festus explains his quandary about Paul, that he doesn't know what to do with him, Agrippa Junior says in verse 22, I would like to hear it, the man myself.

The respectable may like to read books and listen to testimonies, to evangelists, to professors, explain the Bible, theology, church history, new things, TED talks, Jordan Peterson lectures. They like to be knowledgeable.

So they will always be learning, fascinated by new ideas, history, facts, people's accounts of what they've experienced,.

But.

They'll not want to come to a knowledge of the truth, because the truth demands commitment. It requires you to sacrifice for it. I've been in professors' offices where every wall is covered from floor to ceiling with bookcases and every book has bookcases full, maybe books stuffed on top of books, filling every available space.

Some respectable people collect knowledge like those professors, collect books, but never want to commit that these particular claims, the gospel, are the true ones and that demand my life, my soul, my all.

Second, the respectable are almost persuaded. Most of chapter 26 is Paul's appeal to King Agrippa, grandson of Herod the Great, who killed the baby boys at Bethlehem, trying to wipe out Christ in infancy, son of Herod Agrippa, who tried to wipe out the church in its infancy, killing James, arresting Peter.

Now, here's Paul preaching the gospel to him and he is almost persuaded. When Festus shouts at Paul that he's out of his mind, Paul responds in verse 25, I am speaking true and rational words, for the king knows about these things.

He's been paying attention. The events of Jesus and Paul weren't done in the corner, in some obscure place. It was all public and all common knowledge. Then Paul challenges Agrippa directly in verse 27.

King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you believe. If you believe the prophets, if you believe it in Micah, that from Bethlehem will come a new king to fulfill the covenant with David, if you believe in Isaiah,.

That.

Unto us the son is given, that the government will rest on his shoulders, that he was wounded for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, but the Lord will prolong his days by raising him from the dead.

If you believe the prophets, you have to believe in Jesus. Agrippa is almost persuaded. You can hear it in his reaction in verse 28. In a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian? Thirdly, the respectable are sympathetic, but not committed.

In a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian? Probably said with a smile and a chuckle. He feels the draw of the beauty of the gospel, the persuasive power of its truth, and Paul admits in verse 29, With a short or long, I would to God that not only you, King Agrippa, but also all who hear me this day, Festus, Bernice, the lawyers, scribes, attendants, the entourage, soldiers, guards, all of them might become such as I am, Christians, believers in Jesus, except holding up his manacled hands.

For these chains,.

Probably provoking a reaction of laughter. Agrippa was trying to diffuse the tension with a jest. People often react to conviction by trying to laugh it off. With that, the hearing dismisses and Agrippa can be heard saying, this man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.

He tells Festus, this man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar. They're sympathetic to Paul, but of course, they're not going to set him free. That would cause them trouble. They're not committed to justice and even though he was almost persuaded, he won't be committed to Christ.

He doesn't have a reason not to, just like they know they don't have a reason to continue to imprison Paul. He just has too much to lose. He has a little kingdom, some pomp and money, a comfortable life a man in his position can't afford, he thinks, to be persuaded to believe in Jesus.

He hasn't gained the whole world, only a small territory under Roman authority, but he has lost his soul. Then finally, there's the called. How do the called react to the gospel? First, they react by repenting.

That implies that they have something to repent of. Not everyone is saved by some dramatic conversion. It was they turned from a life of sin, overt sin, to Christ. Some are raised morally or saved young, but they still need to repent to change their minds and show it with their lives.

Paul says in verse 21 that all people should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. In other words, their changed lives show it. For Paul, that turning shows him being converted from a persecutor to an apostle.

For the third time in Acts, he tells the story of his call on the road to Damascus. It's so important that it's repeated three times. He tells about how he was among the religious, living according to the strictest party of our religion, a Pharisee.

As such, he says in verse 9, he opposed the name of Jesus of Nazareth. He locked up believers in Jesus, cast his vote to put them to death, tortured and tried to make them blaspheme to deny Jesus. He says in verse 11, enraging fury against believers.

He says he was enraging fury against believers in verse 11. Believers in Jesus. So he went to Damascus, but at midday, O King, when the sun is at its brightest, a light from heaven brighter than the sun shone around me, a voice called out in Hebrew,.

Saul, Saul,.

Why are you persecuting me? Who is he persecuting?

The church.

Jesus says it's him. Then he adds a detail he hasn't told before. The voice says it's hard for you to kick against the goads. A goad is a pointed stick used to prod an animal to go the right way. A goad is supposed to get the reaction of making the animal move forward, move it forward.

If an animal reacts against the goad, it only hurts itself. Sometimes the Lord sends goads into our lives to prod us forward, like an ox kicking against the goad. We only hurt ourselves if we react against it and we're bound to surrender.

So too, Paul's resistance, his raging fury against the gospel, is only hurting himself. Eventually, he'll have to surrender to go forward, to believe. He'll have to because that's how the called react to the gospel.

They repent, turning from the way in their rage that they were determined to go and goaded, that they must go the way they are called to go forward, the way they're goaded to go, following Christ. The called react like Paul by repenting.

The called react to the gospel with faith. When they hear it, they believe it. They believe it not because they are smarter or nobler or luckier than other people who hear it and don't believe. They believe because they are called.

God's call coming through the gospel, they hear, gives them the power to believe. Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and they come. Paul heard Jesus calling him. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Paul believes.

He reacts with faith. Faith that Jesus has been raised from the dead, that the resurrection wasn't just a promise in scripture, a hope for the future, a fable. It had happened with Jesus and so we can be right with God.

So he says he too is on trial. In his trial to King Agrippa in verse 6, he is on trial for the hope and the promise made by God, now fulfilled by Jesus. Because he's called, he believes by believing the gospel, by having faith in Jesus.

Jesus says in verse 18, believers are sanctified, set apart, separated from the religious who strive to be right with God, but aren't separated from the secular who are incredulous, from the respectable, who have too much to lose, they think, to believe.

The call, believe, is so turned from darkness to light. They can see by faith what can't be seen with mere eyes. They are turned from the power of Satan to God and receive forgiveness of their sins and a place in Jesus's flock.

The call, hear Jesus's voice and react by believing. The call, react by being a witness. Not everyone is called to be an evangelist, to speak before crowds. Not everyone has that gift, that particular calling.

We all have different gifts, but everyone can play a part. Here, Paul recounts how he was called. Jesus said to him in verse 16, I have appeared to you for this purpose, three purposes. First, to appoint you as a servant and a witness, to serve by witnessing to the gospel about Jesus.

Corporately, we're called to do the same together, to be a witness. That's why we run Jim Jr. and Jim Ministries. For Paul, that will mean opposition from his people and from the Gentiles, the Romans.

But Jesus promises to deliver him, to get him to the ends of the earth. At the end of verse 17, Paul's, Jesus says, I am sending appeal, apostleing you. I'm apostleing you to the Gentiles. Second, in verse 18, Paul is called to open blinded eyes.

Like those Ephesus, who can only see what can be seen. And then third, literally, to turn people from darkness, like the incredulous, to light. To turn them from the power of Satan, like false accusations.

Turn them from lies to God. Turn people from living just for the dollar, for partying, for the weekends, so that they are then forgiven and have a place in the kingdom of God. Paul uses this opportunity, nearly all of chapter 26, to be a witness to Agrippa, to persuade him.

And Agrippa is almost,.

Almost.

Persuaded.

Are you?

Are you almost persuaded? Or are you fully persuaded? What's your reaction to the gospel? Are you offended that your sense of self-righteousness is questioned? That your religion or morality is not sufficient?

That when you hear that you aren't acceptable to God, just as you are, is your reaction like a flattered child who was never yelled at? Or are you a more practical person? So practical, you hardly even think about things.

So far away is whether you have a place in the kingdom of God, whether your sins are forgiven. Do you only see the things that can be seen? The cold, hard cash and the stuff you can buy? Is your reaction to think you're out of your mind to be talking about stuff like that?

Or.

Are you more respectable? You like knowledge. You want to learn. But you never seem to be willing to make a commitment that some things are true. That Jesus is raised from the dead and so is Lord. You hear that and you might even like it.

You like Christmas, the lights and sweetness and songs, even the story about Jesus. But your reaction isn't to surrender to him as king, king of the world and of your life. Or you called. Are you one of Jesus' sheep?

And so right now you hear his voice and you believe. You react to the gospel by believing, by repenting, turning from the old life. As respectable as it might have been, you respond to Jesus by trusting him.

With joy,.

By committing to him. Even if you have to lose your life. Do you react by receiving your king?