Paul’s Trial before Felix
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2024 · 25 February 2024
Turn to Acts 24. Some passages in this scripture are very theological. And other books are very much the opposite, they are mostly a historical narrative, and Acts is one of those. So, at the end of Acts, we’re really seeing is the moving of God in the life of Paul We saw God’s providence work. We said that God works today through providence rather than through miracles.
There are still miracles today, and God performs today primarily are the miracles of the new spiritual birth. This is not a time when people are doing miracles. This is a day when God is ordering His will through providence. A “miracle” is when God violates the natural world to accomplish His purpose. Providence is where God uses all circumstances in the natural world to accomplish His purpose.
As we move through Acts, rather than seeing dramatic miracles, we see God working through providence. And it’s almost as if God is beginning to phase out that apostolic miracle era. In the beginning of Acts, you see miracle after miracle after miracle. And all of a sudden, as you flow toward the end, you begin to see that God starts working more with His providence through circumstances.
Remember, early in Acts where Peter and John were in jail? And God just created a local earthquake and yanked them out. What happens later in the book of Acts? Through a series of circumstances and plays between the Romans and the Jews, Paul gets out. But it isn’t miraculous; it’s providential, and we begin to see this. And so it becomes more and more a historical narrative.
This is really the story of Paul, but it’s also the story of Felix. Felix was a bad man. He was bad in every sense; he was corrupt. He stole his wife. As a 15-year-old girl, she married another man, a king. But he lusted after her, and seduced her, and stole her. Tacitus, the historian, said about Felix, “He had the office of a king and he ruled it with the mind of a slave.”
Felix is kind of a later Judas. Do you realize that Felix had the apostle Paul living in his house for two years? There wasn’t a mind like Paul; there wasn’t a man like him and Felix rejected all that Paul stood for and proclaimed. He was the governor of Judea from AD 52-59, and the reason he ruled is because his brother, Pallas, was close to Claudius, not because he had any qualities.
His term as procurator was marked by trouble; everything went wrong. He did manage to quell some riots, but he did it in such a dramatic way, that he overdid it to the extent that even when he stopped the riot, he killed so many people so that he alienated the Jews he was trying to protect. They hated him. He is a figure of infamy. He comes off in this story just as a coward.
There are three ways to look at it. You can look at what Paul is doing; that’s what we’ll do today. You can look at what God is doing; that’s what we’ll do next week, and, you can look at what Felix is doing; and that we’ll sum up next time. You can use this passage to teach the attitude of Paul in trial. You could use it to teach the tragedy of procrastination.
And you can use it to teach the providence of God. You can use it to teach the hatred of unbelief and the hardness of men’s hearts when they turn against Christ. Acts records the history of the church from the day of Pentecost until the church had finally spread itself to Rome. Two people dominated those years. The first few years are dominated by Peter, and the last are dominated by Paul.
And we’re in the midst of the story of Paul, who is the man who took the Gospel to the Gentiles. He really took three tours to the Gentiles. And as we come to Acts 24, he has just finished his third one. This is the last of his tours as a free man. He is now a prisoner. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he was really trying to pacify some of the Christian Jews by showing them he wasn’t anti-Jewish.
Claudius Lysias rescued Paul and he assumed that he must have done something terrible for people to be so adamant at trying to assassinate him, so he tried to get an accusation, but he couldn’t. So, he decided to torture Paul. He stretched him out on a rack to scourge him, and Paul reminded the soldiers standing by that he was a Roman, and in a panic they cut him loose, and there still was no accusation.
Claudius Lysias 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. As a Roman, he has a sense of justice and honor toward Rome and he wants to keep his job, so he can’t execute a Roman citizen who is guilty of nothing. But in Jerusalem, he has to pacify the Jewish people or he’ll have a riot on his hands.
So, when he can’t accuse Paul of anything because he has no accusation, in order to try to get out from under this burden, he shuffles Paul out of town in the middle of the night and he uses 470 Roman soldiers to get him to Caesarea. So they got Paul to Caesarea, and that’s where he’s turned over to Felix now. And now Felix is saying, “What do I do? You pushed the whole thing upstairs.”
Now, the passage divides itself into three parts: the prosecution; the defense; and, the verdict. What are they going to accuse him of? Claudius Lysias sent Paul with a letter where he said, “I’m sending this guy, but as far as I can see, it’s only a matter of Jewish theology and he hasn’t really done anything for which he should be put in jail or for which he should killed.” So, he says he is innocent.
Maybe these Jewish leaders would be content just having Paul gone. But no, they wanted him dead. He was a threat to them. Because, he undermined their security. They loved their spiritual prominence. And Paul came along and just called them hypocrites and preached Jesus Christ as the Messiah. They had deemed Jesus a blasphemer and executed Him through the Romans.
So, they march on down to Caesarea. We see the prosecution. Verse 1, “Five days later Ananias the high priest came down with some elders and a lawyer named Tertullus. These men presented their case against Paul to the governor.” Now for Ananias, the high priest to get in on an accusation is unusual. This guy was upset. Of course, Ananias was as corrupt as you could be in every way.
Then you’ve got the elders, which were the key leaders of the Sanhedrin. So you have the Supreme Court there too. They didn’t want to do it alone, so they hired a smooth-tongued, slick character by the name of Tertullus, a professional lawyer; a guy who could come in there and figure it all out, and then could go and plead the case. This is a man who was well versed in legal procedure.
It was very common for orators in those days to do what Tertullus did. He praised Felix up with flattery, even though the man is intelligent enough to know that the Jewish people hated him. Verse 2, “When Paul was called in, Tertullus began to praise Felix and said, “We enjoy great peace because of you, and reforms are taking place for the benefit of this nation because of your foresight.”
Felix had made absolutely no contribution to Roman peace whatsoever. In fact, the only time that Felix had brought peace was when he stomped out a riot that shouldn’t have started in the first place if he had known what he was doing. And he did such a lousy job that he alienated everybody else. And so he hadn’t really done anything that really contributed to peace.
Verse 3, “We acknowledge this in every way and everywhere, most excellent Felix, with utmost gratitude.” And Felix didn’t believe it either, and he was there with his tongue in cheek, smiling from ear to ear because those Jewish people had to stand there and endure that. Verse 4, “But, so that I will not burden you any further, I request that you would be kind enough to give us a brief hearing.”
So there they are. All the accusers and their hired lawyer, have come down to bring their case against Paul. Verses 5-9 give us the accusations, which fall into three categories. The accusations are sedition, sectarianism and sacrilege. They accuse him of sedition which is a violation of Roman law, sectarianism is a violation of Jewish law, and sacrilege is a violation of God.
They accuse him on his relationship to Rome, to the Jews and to God. First, the sedition. Sedition means “treason.” And if the Romans think that this man is committing treason, or he is stirring up insurrection, he is in deep trouble. Verse 5, “For we have found this man to be a plague, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the Roman world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.”
That isn’t an accusation; that’s just a general statement reflecting their attitude. “He causes us trouble.” He creates problems against the government. He is a mover of sedition among all the Jews in the world. The idea is that he is getting Jews to revolt against Rome. This man is gathering Jews and they’re all over the world revolting, treasonous, insurrection. Riots are happening.
Well they could have supported that. Paul didn’t stir up riots, but he sure was in on a lot of them. He would preach, and then some people would get excited and stir up the riot. But we’ll see, that even in the midst of those riots, Paul could never justifiably be accused. The Romans had placed all their rulers and soldiers in these areas to keep the peace; and this is the one thing they feared.
This particular accusation was very common in ancient times. You know, tyrannical emperors used this concept of sedition or treason at will to execute anybody who disagreed with them. It is interesting to me that all through Acts, Christians are on trial for their preaching, and that with great detail the Holy Spirit records all the features of the trial. Why does the Holy Spirit tell us every detail?
The Lord put it here because throughout history, Christianity was always condemned on the basis of the fact that it was a revolutionary movement. And the Holy Spirit is careful to record, in the book of Acts, trial after trial after trial after trial of Christians, where in every single case in the book of Acts, it is abundantly clear that they were innocent of any violation of civil law.
Now they accuse him of this insurrection. Now, I don’t think Felix believed this, because Claudius Lysias had already written in his letter, “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. So it starts out, with a vague charge, which is not evidence.
Six times in Acts Jesus was called The Nazarene. It was a term of contempt. Apparently, it was a very popular term, because Tertullus does not bother to explain it to Felix. There were a lot of Messianic groups at that time, and these factions were very troublesome to Rome. And so by calling Paul a ringleader of these Nazarenes, he throws Paul in the bag of Messianic offshoots of Judaism.
The third accusation is in verse 6, “He even tried to desecrate the temple, and so we apprehended him.” There was an outer court, where the Gentiles could come. But Gentiles could not go past the barricade into the inner part of the temple. There were signs posted there disallowing them to go in. The signs said that if a Gentile went into the inner part, he would pay with his life.
Rome gave them the right to take the life of one who violated that. Now, when Paul was in the temple, when these Jews from Asia Minor who saw him there accused him of bringing a Gentile in there. He hadn’t done that; and they were going to kill Paul. Well, that was ridiculous. If the Gentile came in there, the Gentile was the one killed, not Paul. So, they were lying about the whole thing.
Some old manuscripts do not include the end of verse 6, all of verse 7, and the first part of verse 8. And so what Tertullus is saying is, “Look, he’s profaned the temple and if you’ll examine him, you’ll find this out.” If he really examined Paul, he wouldn’t find that out because Paul didn’t do that. “But the chief captain Lysias came on us and with great violence took him out of our hands!”
So Tertullus says, “Look, I’ve given you the accusations. If you want corroboration you can get it from your chief captain. We were trying to carry out justice.” And then he swooped down there and with great violence he hauls Paul away, “commanded us to come to you.” Verse 8, “By examining him yourself you will be able to discern the truth about these charges we are bringing against him.”
Verse 9, “The Jews also joined in the attack, alleging that these things were true.” And here they are, blatantly lying in order to preserve their religion and to execute a man they didn’t want around. This is a clear illustration of what a Christian should expect. If you’re going to live a godly life in the midst of an ungodly society, you’re going to get some flack. Two things. One, have a blameless life.
Two, have a clear testimony and let happen what happens. Jesus says in Matthew 5, “Blessed are you when men shall revile you and speak all manner of evil against you falsely.” The apostle Paul loved those people. You don’t love the Jews as a little glob in the corner as some strange commodity; these are just people that God loves, and yet in God’s wonderful plan they have a unique place. Let’s pray.