Turning The World Upside Down: Preaching the Gospel to Felix: Acts 24

I. Paul’s Accusations vs. 1-9

A. Like any lawyer, Tertullus painted his clients as the victim.

B. All of his accusations to Paul were unsubstantiated.

II. Paul’s Answer vs. 10-23

A. Paul clearly states that the Jews in Asia had cause to accuse him of riots not the Jews in Jerusalem.

B. He then admits to the mistake of his attitude and causing conflict with Sanhedrin.

III. Paul’s Address vs. 24-27

A. “Background information about Felix and Drusilla helps us catch the full import of this celebrated interview. Antonius Felix was the first slave in the history of the Roman Empire to become the governor of a Roman province. That would have been quite a distinction if he had earned it, but that was not the case. As a child, Felix, along with his brother Pallas, had been freed by Antonia, the mother of Prince Claudius, a future Caesar. As they grew up, Pallas became a close friend of Claudius, so much so that when Claudius became emperor, Pallas persuaded him to make Felix a government official in Palestine under Cumanus. When Cumanus was deposed, Felix obtained Cumanus’ office through shameful intrigue.

During Felix’s governorship, insurrections and anarchy dramatically increased throughout Palestine because of his brutality. Josephus tells us that he repeatedly crucified the leaders of various uprisings.1 The Roman historian Tacitus described him as “a master of cruelty and lust who exercised the powers of a king with the spirit of a slave.” 2 Antonius Felix was an unscrupulous, avaricious, brutal, scheming politician. Drusilla was his third wife, and Felix was her second husband. Drusilla was the youngest daughter of Agrippa I and had originally married Azizus, king of Emesa, a small kingdom in Syria. She did not find Azizus very exciting and won Felix’s affection with the help of a magician named Atomas, eventually becoming Felix’s illicit lover and “wife.” She was barely twenty at the time. Unusually beautiful, her ambition and lust equalled that of her new husband. Unlike Felix, a pagan, Drusilla had been raised as a Jew (v. 24), though she no longer had an active faith in the one God.”- R. Kent Hughes

B. Felix became convicted and secretly hoped Paul would bribe him. Felix thought that Paul was like the other religious leaders of Judaism that he had met.

C. Felix like many religious folk wanted to be entertained by the preaching. Those folk talk of wanting to hear good preaching, they will talk of the preacher getting loud, excited, and whatever the preacher took off (coat, tie, rolled up their sleeves), but they never talk of what the preacher said. Why? They don’t care what’s said, they want to be entertained, and they want to hide their sin, instead of repent of it. They want to fill guilty, but do nothing about it that ain’t showy. They’ll do something, but it is always with an audience.

D. If you continually put off conviction, you will be like the religious leaders of Jerusalem, they couldn’t not understand truth. Matt. 13:13 ““Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.”

E. Or you can no longer remember the truth you once knew or believed. Matt 13:12

Matthew 13:12 NASB95

“For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.

F. Felix would experience both just like the religious leaders of Israel.

G. Felix couldn’t let Paul go, because the Jews would protest, so he left Paul in prison, for political reasons.