Accused of Sedition
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2018 · 4 March 2018
Let us turn to Acts 24. Some passages in the Scripture are very theological and some books are very much historical narratives, and this is one of those. Often, doctrine is implied rather than stated. So what we are really seeing is the moving of God in the life of one man, Paul. Last week, we saw the providence of God during the attack on Paul. We learned that God works today more through providence rather than through miracles.
However, the miracles God performs today primarily are the miracles of the new birth. But this is not the time when people are doing miracles. This is the time that God is ordering His will through providence. Again a miracle is when God violates the natural world to accomplish His purpose. And providence happens when God uses all the circumstances of the natural world to accomplish His purpose.
Nevertheless, God is still continuing work. But it looks like God is now beginning to phase out the apostolic miracle era. In the beginning of Acts, you see miracle after miracle. Then all of a sudden toward the end, you begin to see that God starts working more with His providence through the circumstances rather than injecting Himself and violating what is the normal flow. God begins to work through the circumstances.
Remember, early in the book of Acts when Peter and John were in jail? An angel just came down and escorted them out. Later in the book of Acts, what happens? Through a series of circumstances and decisions between the Romans and the Jews, Paul gets out. But it isn't miraculous; it is providential. So we begin to understand the changes in the way God works. It becomes more and more a historical narrative.
In the background God is continually moving. In this evening's discussion, we will only get to Acts 24:9, although we would need to cover verse 27 to get the whole story. Of course, you will have to come back next week to see what God is moving toward, because that is good too. It is the story of Paul, but it is also the story of Felix. Felix was a bad man in every sense. He was corrupt and he stole someone’s wife.
When she was still a 15-year-old girl, she married another man, a king. But Felix seduced her and stole her. Tacitus, the historian, said about Felix, "He had the office of a king but he ruled it with the mind of a slave." He had opportunity but he blew it. But the greatest opportunity lost in the history of man is Judas. Can you imagine living three years in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and still being condemned to hell?
But there is another one like Judas, and his name is Felix. Do you realize that, as we will see in our story today and next Lord's Day, Felix had the Apostle Paul living in his house for two years? You say, "Well, maybe Paul didn't say anything." You don't know Paul. That's opportunity. There wasn't a mind like him; there wasn't a man like him. But Felix rejected all that Paul stood for and proclaimed.
His name is Antonius Felix and he is the governor of Judea. He follows in the line of Pilate. He ruled in Judea from A.D. 52-59, and the reason he ruled is because his brother, Pallas, was close friends with Claudius. So he got the job that way, not because he had any great qualities. His term as governor was marked by trouble; the Sicarii, the professional assassins, were around during his time.
He did manage to quell some riots, but he overdid it to the extent that he killed so many people that he alienated the Jews he was trying to protect. They hated him. And he comes off, in this story, not only as indecisive and a procrastinator, but also as a coward. As we look at this passage, we have to take it as one unit from verses 1-27, even though we will divide it. It is the trial of Paul before Felix.
You can look first at what Paul is doing (that's what we will do tonight), you can look at what God is doing (that's what we will learn next week), and you can look at what Felix is doing (that's what we'll sum up the next time). You could use this to teach about the attitude of Paul in trial. You could use it, to teach about the tragedy of procrastination. And you could use it to teach the providence of God.
Paul is the man who took the Gospel to the Gentiles, and he really took three tours to the Gentiles. As we come to Acts 24, he has just finished his third mission trip. This is the last of his trips as a free man; he is now a prisoner. His ministry as a prisoner took place in three cities: Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome. He only spent a few days in Jerusalem, a few years in Caesarea, and then he went to Rome.
Claudius Lysias, was the ruler of Fort Antonia in Jerusalem, and he assumed Paul must have done something terrible for people to try to assassinate him. But he tried to get an accusation but couldn't. So he decided to torture Paul and stretched him out on a rack to scourge him, but Paul reminded the soldiers standing by that he was a Roman and in a panic, they cut him loose. So there still was no accusation.
Claudius then decided to take him before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Council. But they started fighting each other, and he still didn't have an accusation. So he wants to keep his job, and he can't execute a Roman citizen who is guilty of nothing. But in an area like Jerusalem, he needs to pacify the Jewish people or he will have a riot on his hands, and maybe lose his life and job because he hasn't been able to keep the peace.
Then he finds out that the Jews want to kill Paul. In order to try and get out from under the burden, he takes Paul out of town in the middle of the night and uses 470 Roman soldiers to escort him to Caesarea. Well, he has turned Paul over to Felix now, but now Felix is saying, "What should I do?" Felix too has a sense of Roman justice and an obligation to Rome. And without an accusation he has to pacify the Jews too.
Acts 24 is divided into: the prosecution, the defense and the verdict. Let us look at the prosecution. Claudius Lysias sent Paul and a letter with him, saying, "I'm sending this guy, but as far as I can see, it's only a matter of Jewish theology. He hasn't really done anything for which he should be put in jail or killed." He gives Paul a verdict of innocence. Then, he says to Paul's accusers, "Tell Felix what Paul has done wrong.”
These Jewish leaders wanted him dead. He was a tremendous threat to them. You see, he undermined their security. They loved their spiritual prominence. Then Paul came along and called them hypocrites, and preached Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the Messiah, the very one they had deemed a blasphemer and executed through the Romans. So Paul did the same thing Jesus had done - he was destroying their theology.
Besides, he was winning Jews to Christ all over the place, and this was really creating problems. So they marched down to Caesarea for 60-miles to accuse him. We see the prosecution in verse 1, “Now after five days Ananias the high priest came down with the elders and a certain orator named Tertullus. These gave evidence to the governor against Paul.” In addition to Ananias, there were the elders, the key leaders of the Sanhedrin.
They hired a smooth-talking orator, Tertullus. He probably spoke eloquent Latin, and he was the guy they were going to have plead the case. It says at the end of verse 1 that, “He gave evidence to the governor.” Verse 2, “And when he was called upon, Tertullus began his accusation, saying: “Seeing that through you we enjoy great peace, and prosperity is being brought to this nation by your foresight.”
Tacitus, the historian, says, "Felix thought he could do any evil and get away with it. He indulged in every kind of barbarity and lust." Verse 3 gets even more exaggeration, “we accept it always and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness.” Felix didn't believe it, but he was there smiling because those Jewish people had to endure all this baloney. There was nothing noble about him at all.
Verse 4, “Nevertheless, not to be tedious to you any further, I beg you to hear, by your courtesy, a few words from us.” The real truth was that he didn't have anything to say. Verses 5-9 give us the accusation. Notice that the accusation falls into three categories, sedition, sectarianism and sacrilege. Sedition is a violation of Roman law; sectarianism is a violation of Jewish law and sacrilege is a violation of God’s law.
First, the accusation of sedition can be translated as treason. Verse 5, “For we have found this man a plague, a creator of dissension among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” What that really says is he is a nuisance. Nowadays you would say, this man is a pain in the neck. That isn't an accusation, it is just a general statement.
Sedition is against the Roman government. Paul is accused of creating sedition among all the Jews throughout the world. There is insurrection, riots are happening. Paul would preach, surely someone would get angry and stir up the riot, and he was usually there when the riot was happening. But Paul could never justifiably be accused.
Notice the exaggeration, “He is a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world.” He doesn't name any riot, because if he had named any area, it would have immediately removed the responsibility from Felix to that area under whoever had jurisdiction there. The accusation of treason is just not true. He created dissention everywhere only because people responded to what he was preaching.
All through Acts, Christians are on trial for their preaching. With great detail, the Holy Spirit records all the features of the trial. Why does the Lord feel that all the details of all these trials have to be here? The Lord put it here because throughout history, in the early church in particular, Christianity was always condemned on the basis that it was treasonous, that it was an insurrectionist movement, a revolutionary movement.
In Acts, it is clear that they were innocent of any violation of civil law. Christianity is not political treason. Jesus said in Matthew 22, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Paul said in Romans 13, “the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” 1 Peter 2 says, "Submit yourselves to the kings and governors and police." Christians are not political insurrectionists; Christians should be first class law-abiding citizens.
Claudius Lysias had already written a letter where he said, “I perceive this to be a question about their law, having nothing to do with death or bonds." In other words, "It isn't a legal matter for us to consider, it's strictly a theological issue between them." This is a vague, non-specific charge, which is really inadmissible as any kind of evidence. The second accusation is sectarianism against the Jewish people.
Verse 5 says, "A ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." Six times in the book of Acts, Jesus is called a Nazarene. It was a term of contempt. There were a lot of Messianic groups at the time. So by calling Paul a ringleader of this sect of the Nazarenes, he throws him in the bag of troublesome, Messianic offshoots of Judaism. From their Jewish standpoint this is heresy. He is anti-Jewish and he violates Jewish laws.
The third accusation appears in verse 6, “He even tried to profane the temple, and we seized him, and wanted to judge him according to our law.” Now the temple was very sacred. There was an outer court, and it was where the Gentiles could come. But Gentiles could not go past the barricade into the inner part of the temple. In fact, there were signs posted there, disallowing them to go in. If a Gentile went in, he would pay with his life.
The Romans allowed the Jews to have the right of capital punishment for that offense only. The Jews had to get the Romans to crucify Christ, because in any other area of violation of their law, they had no right to take a life. When Paul was in the temple, these Jews from Asia Minor who saw him there, accused him of bringing a Gentile in there. He hadn't done that, but they just used that as an excuse to kill Paul.
It's amazing to me that religious people are often the most immoral and unethical. Throughout the history of civilization, you find terrible things done by Christians. Things like the Crusades, where the 'Christians' marched across Europe to take the holy places from the Turks, and while they were marching, they slaughtered all the Jews along the way so the Jews wouldn't hassle them about the holy places, all in the name of Christ.
That is why Jews have a hard time with Christians. They know that Germany was the birthplace of the Reformation of Christianity, the home of Martin Luther. And the Catholics and Protestants are still killing each other, and all in the name of Christianity. This is not true Christianity, but does the world understand that? True ethics and true morality only come with a true relationship with God.
What happened when they came and accused him? Some manuscripts do not include the end of verse 6, all of verse 7, and the first part of verse 8. Let's just accept that it is still in. So what Tertullus is saying is, "Look, he has profaned the temple and if you'll examine him, you'll find this out." But Paul didn't do that. That's the problem.
So in verse 9, he brings in witnesses, “And the Jews also assented, maintaining that these things were so." They just perjured themselves, lying blatantly. In the name of God, 'servants of God' they called themselves, 'lovers of God, lovers of the law and here they are lying in order to preserve their religion and to execute a man they didn't want around. This is a clear illustration of what all Christian should expect.
The Apostle Paul loved those people. In his heart, he had compassion for Ananias and the elders, just as we would for Jewish people. There's no need to even separate them. You don't love the Jews as a little glob in the corner as some strange commodity, these are just people that God loves. Yet, in God's wonderful plan, they have a unique place. Come back next week and hear the defense of Paul. Let us pray.