Acts 24:1-9 And after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the elders, and with a certain orator named Tertullus… The other day Paul was mistaken for "that Egyptian, which before these days made an uproar," etc. Today a hired orator describes Paul as "a pestilent fellow," etc. Does this tally with what you know about him? 1. There is no cause too bad not to hire an advocate to represent it. This Tertullus was the genius of abuse; the worse the cause the glibber his tongue. He lives today, and takes the same silver for his flippant eloquence. 2. How possible it is utterly to misconceive a great character! There is a key to every character, and if you do not get the one you never can understand the other. The difficulty of the man of one idea is to understand any other man who has two. Some of us are so easy to understand, simply because there is so little to be comprehended. No character was so much misunderstood as Jesus Christ's; and He said, "If they have called the Master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of His household!" 3. Here, too, is the possibility of excluding from the mind every thought characterised by breadth and charity. It does not occur to the paid pleader to say, "This man is insane, romantic, has a craze about a theory too lofty or immaterial for the present state of things." Sometimes a charitable spirit will take some such view. But Tertullus knew that he was talking to a man who could only understand coarse epithets, for he himself, though a judge in those times, was the basest of his tribe. Yet, without viciousness, there may be great narrowness. You will contract that narrowness if you do not sometimes come out of your little village into great London. I am not wishful to make every man into a Tertullus who opposes apostolic life and thought. It is possible honestly to oppose even Paul, but the honesty itself is an expression of mental contractedness. What is perfectly right to the eye within given points may be astronomically wrong when the whole occasion is taken in. So men may be parochially right and imperially wrong; men may be perfectly orthodox within the limits of a creed and unpardonably heterodox within the compass of a faith. 4. How wonderful it is that even Tertullus is obliged to compliment the man whom he was paid to abuse! (1) He was a pestilent fellow. There was nothing negative about Paul, and Tertullus confirms that view. Paul was not a quiet character; wherever he was he was astir. According to Tertullus, Paul was also "a mover of sedition, etc., among all the Jews throughout the world" — a sentence intended to touch the ear of the Roman judge. Felix might well listen when the man before him was accused of being an insurrectionist. That he was "a mower of sedition" in the sense implied by Tertullus was not true, but Paul was the prince of revolutionists. Every Christian is a revolutionist. Christianity tears up the foundations, and, after this, begins to build for eternity. (3) Paul was "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." So the prisoner is not made into a little man even by the paid accuser. Paul never could be held in contempt. Put him where you will, he becomes the principal man in that company. A rich banker said, when someone asked him questions regarding his fortune, "I cannot help it; if I were tonight stripped and turned into the streets of Copenhagen, I would be as rich in ten years as I am now — I cannot help it." Paul could not help being the first man of every company. 5. What is the inevitable issue of all narrow-mindedness. Falsehood (ver. 6). Imagine Tertullus being excited regarding the purity of the temple! How suddenly some men become pious! What a genius is hypocrisy! You cannot misrepresent the people in the temple and yet be concerned honestly for the temple itself. Conclusion: The incident would hardly be worth dwelling upon were it confined to its own four corners, but it is a typical instance repeated continually in our day. The good develops the bad ever. Let a George Fox arise, and how will he be characterised, except as "a pestilent fellow," "a mover of sedition," and "a ringleader of a sect"? Let a John Wesley arise, or a George Whitefield, a John Bunyan, or a John Nelson; read the early annals of English Christianity and evangelism; read the history of the early Methodist preachers, and you will find that every age that has brought a Paul has brought along with him a Tertullus. Thank God! nothing but epithets can be hurled against Christianity, yet Christianity stands up today queenly, pure, stainless — every stone thrown at her lying at her feet. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And after five days Ananias the high priest descended with the elders, and with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul. |
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