Outside Ears
Notes
Transcript
Now three days after Festus had arrived in the province, he went up to Jerusalem from Caesarea. And the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul, and they urged him, asking as a favor against Paul that he summon him to Jerusalem—because they were planning an ambush to kill him on the way. Festus replied that Paul was being kept at Caesarea and that he himself intended to go there shortly. “So,” said he, “let the men of authority among you go down with me, and if there is anything wrong about the man, let them bring charges against him.”
After he stayed among them not more than eight or ten days, he went down to Caesarea. And the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought. When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.” But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?” But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar’s tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you yourself know very well. If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.” Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, “To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.”
Now when some days had passed, Agrippa the king and Bernice arrived at Caesarea and greeted Festus. And as they stayed there many days, Festus laid Paul’s case before the king, saying, “There is a man left prisoner by Felix, and when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews laid out their case against him, asking for a sentence of condemnation against him. I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him. So when they came together here, I made no delay, but on the next day took my seat on the tribunal and ordered the man to be brought. When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. Being at a loss how to investigate these questions, I asked whether he wanted to go to Jerusalem and be tried there regarding them. But when Paul had appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of the emperor, I ordered him to be held until I could send him to Caesar.” Then Agrippa said to Festus, “I would like to hear the man myself.” “Tomorrow,” said he, “you will hear him.”
We are getting closer to the end of Acts. We are now in the final four chapters, and, Lord willing, we’re going to finish up this month, likely on Thanksgiving Day. I know it can be hard to endure and stay enthusiastic during a long book series, but I think it’s worthwhile. We see throughout a lengthy book of Scripture how things changed over time and connections that are made through repetition and other literary means. Hopefully, it continues to be true that all of us are learning about Acts, about Paul’s life, and about the early church. As we learn about what God was doing back then, we’re hopefully encouraged to think about what God can continue to do through the church and in the world today, as well as how he desires his people to live and minister.
We pick up Luke’s account with Paul still in prison, where he’d been for more than two years. He wasn’t in a dungeon, though. Felix had allowed him a bit of freedom—talking to him, permitting friends to visit him; he wasn’t completely free, but it could have been worse. Now Felix was out of power, and had been replaced by Festus. The new governor was trying to figure out what to do with this prisoner in Caesarea.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you needed a reminder, yesterday marked the 503rd anniversary of Martin Luther’s nailing the 95 Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. He, a Catholic, posted 95 things that he struggled with—that when reading the Bible, he was torn up about what the Church, the Catholic Church, was doing. He felt these things needed to change.
That iconic scene wasn’t the end of the story, though. Three years later, Pope Leo X issued his own lengthy list of problems with Luther regarding his 95 Theses and other writings. He referred to him in the papal bull as a “wild boar from the forest” seeking to destroy the Church. The pope wasn’t just airing his grievances, though; no, this was the ultimatum for Martin Luther—take it back or else. The following year, Luther was brought to the Diet, or assembly, of Worms, not for debate or discussion or wondering if a compromise was possible; no, this was Luther’s last chance to recant. They wanted Luther to tell them that he had been wrong and that he’d submit to the Catholic Church, but of course Luther didn’t do that. He came to the conclusion that’s been passed along: “Here I stand, I can do no other. God help me,” or something along those lines.
When we look at the Reformation, we’re looking at people who claimed to know the Bible versus other people who claimed to know the Bible. If you go through John Calvin’s writings from a couple decades later, he saw parts of this which fit the Jew versus Christian divide. Yet he went so far as to say it was false church versus true church. Others have called it the “dead” church versus what Luther and others were leading as alive or real. At the very least, the Catholic Church back then had terribly distorted biblical faith, and yet remnants of the Bible remained in it.
I tell you this, not to try and stir up annual angst against Catholics, not just to inform you of a small bit of Reformation history, but to remind us that we might think everyone already knows what we know about the Bible. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the protests on both sides of the 16th century Reformation and assume everyone should’ve thought and known the same things. It’s also easy to think about our Christian bubble in a small town and imagine everyone has at least a basic understanding of Christianity and the Bible and Jesus. Yet there are folks around us who are much closer in understanding to Governor Festus.
We begin today towards the end of our passage with our first point that matches the title: outside ears. In verses 19 and 20, Festus was speaking to King Agrippa about this trial he’s picked up at the beginning of his rule, “‘…[The Jews] had some points of dispute with [Paul] about their own religion and about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive. I was at a loss how to investigate such matters…’” This is a huge change from where we were last week and what we know about his predecessor, Felix. Chapter 24 verse 22, “Then Felix, who was well acquainted with the Way…” verse 24, “…his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewess…” Felix had known what this Sanhedrin group and what Paul were about, he was on the inside of this whole Jew versus Christian conflict that had been going on since Jesus’ life. Maybe we assume, if you were alive back then, particularly this close to Jerusalem, then there’s no question you had some idea or understanding about this; but that wasn’t the case.
Try and put yourselves in Festus’ sandals. Instead of strict criminal or civil accusations, these guys start arguing religion. Maybe you think, “Okay, this is weird, but every religion is a little different, so differences between the Jewish faith and this Way faith aren’t all that surprising. But then this dead guy, Jesus, got brought up, and now Paul’s saying he’s alive. What do I do with that? How do I find Jesus? Let’s go find him.” Well, if Festus got to that question, he probably wasn’t very amused by the answer. “Oh, he ascended into the sky almost 30 years ago. Okay, Paul.” I say this, of course, not to mock Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. But if you’ve had little to no connection or history to the Christian story, unlike what many of us have experienced, unlike what went on during the Reformation, then this probably sounds so foreign, even made-up. Other religions did refer to their kings as gods or the sons of gods and were thought to have divine power, but for this to be all around one man you’ve never heard of—why are these people so mad about this, why are they in court, why does Paul want to go before Caesar over it?!
It’s easy as people with “inside or insider ears” to take the Bible and trace a line back from the early church to the exiles and captivities of God’s people to the kings and judges and back to Moses and then back to the Patriarchs all the way back to Adam and Eve, and then to look almost 2,000 years into the future from the early church and find ourselves. Because we’re immersed weekly or more frequently in the Bible, this is our story and the story of the world. Because Jesus is the only Savior of humankind, because there is only one God, because he created all things and when Christ came to earth we have history-changing events—this is the biggest deal! How can people not know about it?
But there are so many other parts of the world and people and heritages throughout all human history that have disconnected from this line and from God’s redemptive story. Festus was a part of that. But that keeps on going today. There are groups and languages in remote parts of the world that the gospel has not been translated for yet. There are people in places that are hostile to the gospel who don’t know Jesus or Christianity, or they think Christianity is just a part of American culture—it’s like baseball or apple pie. That can be incredibly hard for some of us to believe, but it’s true. You don’t know what you don’t know.
Yet ears that have not heard before are not necessarily ears that will never listen or ears that can’t hear. As we looked at with Felix, Paul didn’t give his defense simply for the sake of arguing over and over again with members of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He spoke and preached so that God might minister to anyone who was listening. In Acts 25, that included the governor, but then the governor told the king—there’s a continuing testimony to outside ears about the gospel.
It’s not a mistake Jesus repeated the statement, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” As he went to different places and talked to different people, Matthew 13 is filled with that language. A similar statement is spoken to each of the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3, after encouragement and rebuke, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” Acts 28 verse 27 will bring us back to the Old Testament roots of this. These are words that are spoken to people who need to listen up. Because what they’ve been taught or what they’ve been doing does not match up with the truth or what’s necessary. There are people whose ears have not been tuned in or tuned in correctly to God that he’s able to tune in or to open them when he chooses. We should pay attention to what we might consider “outside ears.”
For our second point, I only have two, let’s go back to verses 11 and 12, where we find clarification of what God promised Paul back in Acts 23:11: the gospel is going to Rome. If we wonder why Luke included certain details in the book of Acts, why we hear repetitive themes and events, the trial before Festus shows us how Paul officially found his ticket to the Caesar in Rome.
Think about this, though. We’ve looked before at how any charge the Sanhedrin accused him of, he’s been proven innocent. We’ve heard he didn’t deserve death. There hasn’t been clear and convincing evidence for him to be on trial period. He appealed to Caesar, and Festus granted that, which either means there should have been at least one charge that stuck, that Paul was appealing, or God simply worked through these circumstances that this trial could be a front for evangelism. We could just say his trial was going to Rome, but I don’t even know if that’s really correct at this point. It is, however, the movement of the gospel there.
The second interesting piece here is who Paul would be going before. You hear Caesar and maybe you think of Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus, but the Caesar who was in power at this time was Nero. Honestly, I don’t know a whole lot about the Caesar family or first century Roman politics, but I know that Nero was a bad guy—accused of killing his mother and his wife, he accused the Christians of setting fire to Rome, and possibly was the one who executed both Peter and Paul. If we think Paul was just trying to go see someone who’d view him favorably, who he would be friends with, an emperor sort of on the way to being a Christian already—Nero was not that guy. Yet Paul was convinced and had been directed by God to go to Rome and to Nero.
On one hand: we have confirmation, as the Lord said he would do, so he has made a way. We also see: Paul was willing to go without having all the details of what would take place there. He’s talked about death; he was ready to die for his faith, if indeed Nero was the one who executed him, but the itinerary was pretty open. Paul was following God on this one, much like we’ve seen him do throughout this book.
We all need this reminder. In a very divisive time in our society, in a very isolating time in our world, in circumstances which may constantly seem like the gospel is being pushed farther and farther out of reach for people, being under intense attack from evil forces—God will make a way for what he has in store. When it comes to sharing our faith in deed and in word, we need not worry, we need not have all the details, we need not assume the conclusion of our efforts to decide whether we should go forward or not.
If we are willing to accept that promise, then let’s also accept Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians 3 verses 6, 12, and 13, “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us…We command [idle busybodies] and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat…Never tire of doing what is right.” I think it’s going to be really easy to sit idly be a TV or a radio or a website this week waiting for the official results to come in. So many people right now are prone to stress and anxiety and fear and anger, yet with all that’s on around us and that we are involved in, our calling is still to focus on and commit ourselves to doing things that matter, things which serve and please our Lord.
Brothers and sisters, as we head into a week in which it is so easy to say, because of the election, “This week changes everything,” or “This week changes how people will look back at history”—maybe that’s true—but it’s not the greatest moment. The moments that truly changed everything, the moments and the impact that need to continue to be told and should be louder than any news network with whatever spin or bias are those moments that Festus didn’t understand and that Paul would continue to have opportunities to inform inside and outside ears. The life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are the most important moments in human history, when full God in our flesh took on all of our suffering—all the suffering that we and others have intentionally done to others, all that which has been perceived as harmful, all that which we do not know, all that which we didn’t do.
We who are sinners in America or sinners across western Europe in the 16th century or any of the Jews or Greeks of the first century—we need not another political victor who we think or dream of saving us. We need and we need to submit out of love to the one and only infallible Savior. The one who truly laid down his life for us. May Jesus reign in our hearts now and always, and may he be the reason for how we live and how we serve. Amen.