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Festus Did Not Understand - Acts 25
Festus Did Not Understand - Acts 25
Paul is brought before him as a criminal that has done such evil that he deserves to be put to death under Roman law. Festus has no choice, he must examine this. The Jewish leaders then brought ‘many serious charges against him – which they could not prove’! I wish that I could read the transcript of this ‘trial’! Festus gives us a brief description of the controversy as it was laid out before him: the accusers ‘simply had some points of disagreement with him about their own religion and about a dead man Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive’ (25:19).
Concerning Roman law, Festus confessed that he “found that he had committed nothing worthy of death” (25:25). Festus however missed the main point of this whole controversy! It was not what Paul had done, but that Jesus had been RAISED! He had in fact heard the basics of the gospel message and simply missed the importance of it!
1 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, (1 Corinthians 15:1-4).
It wasn’t what he did with Paul that mattered, it was what he DID NOT do with the message of Jesus that made an eternal difference for him! He had HEARD the message! There is simply no acknowledgment, no confession, no belief.
How many today are so wrapped up in their work, their politics, their daily activities that the message of the gospel is dismissed as ‘simply some points of disagreement about religion’? All other activities and choices are nothing if we fail to perceive, believe, and submit unto this ‘dead man Jesus, whom Paul asserted to be alive’.
