Acts 25:1-12 Now when Festus was come into the province, after three days he ascended from Caesarea to Jerusalem.… We are now in the midst of great historical scenes. The painter cannot let them alone. There are some things which men willingly let die, but there are other things which will not die. I. WHAT A LONG LIFE HATRED HAS! Two years had elapsed, but the fury of the Jews had not cooled. We leave some things to time, calling it "all-healing Time." Time cannot put hell out! Well might the apostle warn the Churches against "bitterness and wrath and anger and clamour"; he had felt the hatred which he deprecated. Religious hatred is the worst. The Church has herself to blame for the little progress Christianity has made in the world. Religious hatred thought less of murder than of ceremonial pollution. The Jews desired that Paul should come to Jerusalem; and they would take care to have assassins on the road. Yet these men would not eat until they had washed their hands! The more you attend to mere ceremony the more you fritter away the substance of your character. II. HOW WONDROUSLY OPPORTUNITIES ARE CREATED BY HUMAN MISTAKES! The Christian elders thought that Paul had better make a compromise in order to do away with suspicion. If they had been out doing Paul's kind of work, they would have left compromise millions of miles behind them; but they had been in the metropolis studying — always a very perilous and risky business. So all this trouble came upon Paul through their weak-minded and mistaken advice. But the Lord turned the human mistake into a Divine opportunity. It gave Paul his highest audiences. He was talking to rabbles before — just an open-air preacher, a man taking opportunities as they occurred — but now he was a preacher to procurators and kings. We know not what we do. Could we stand back in the eternity of God and watch men, we should not be troubled by their doings. When they are making weapons against us, we should say, "No weapon that is formed against me shall prosper." "Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" There is only one man can do you any injury of a permanent kind, and that man is yourself. If you are right, you cannot be injured; your enemies will only be creating opportunities for you. The Lord maketh the wrath of man to praise Him; the remainder of that wrath He doth restrain. III. LONG-CONTINUED HARDSHIP HAD NOT SOURED THE MIND OF PAUL. That is the test of his quality. When he appears before Festus we mark in him the same quietness, the same dignity, the same defence — that is Christianity. If it were a fight in words the battle might go wrong for our cause sometimes, because there are men against us, skilled in sentences and arguments; but it is an affair of the sweetness of the soul. Long-suffering is eloquence. This is a Christian miracle. There are three remarkable things about Paul in this connection. Here presents — 1. Spiritual influence. He cannot be let alone. Chained at Caesarea, he is still an active presence in Jerusalem. You cannot get rid of some men. If you kill them, they will haunt you as Herod was haunted by the new man whom he suspected to be the beheaded John. Paul represented the kind of influence which follows society, colouring its questions, lifting up its wonder, troubling its conscience. 2. Spiritual confidence. He would rather be fighting, but the Lord had appointed him to waiting. "The battle is not mine, but God's. It is better that I should be shut up in Caesarea, that I may see how God can do without me." Presently he will see the meaning of it all, and write to his friends, "The things which have happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." 3. The highest aspect of spiritual culture. He is being trained, mellowed. All the land is better for the rain which softens it — aye, for the frost which reduces it to powder. From the human side, Paul was being punished; from the Divine side, he was being rested and trained. There are two sides in all human events. If we take the lower aspect of our life we shall groan, fret, and chafe; but if we take the upper view — that is to say, look down upon it from God's point — we shall see all things work together for good. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now when Festus was come into the province, after three days he ascended from Caesarea to Jerusalem. |
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