Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 24:22-26:11 (September 22, 2026)

September 21, 2026:  Bible Study on Acts 24:22-27, 25:1-12

May our Gracious Lord and Savior surround us with his presence throughout today.

This week, please keep Camille in your prayers. She completes her radiation treatments tomorrow. She is off from work and feeling pretty worn out. Pray that these treatments take care of her cancer. Also, Maggie is home recovering from a fall, and a couple of broken ribs. She is doing well. Cathy is also home after a difficult hospitalization for kidney stones and becoming septic. She is really relieved to be home with her dog, and of course, not having that kidney stone caused pain. Pray too for our Jesse who is home ill from work today.

I am doing a double passage today, so that we can complete our study of the Acts by next Tuesday. We have two passages this morning. The first is Acts 24:22-27. In this passage we discover how Paul's hearing before Felix is going. It is important for us to remember that Felix is shrewd, and willing to extend Paul's hearing before him to please the Jews, keeping them calmed down. The amazing reality is that this hearing before Felix takes two years, and though Paul is under guard, he has quite a bit of freedom during those years. The hope of Felix is that Paul will come up with money to pay him off so that he can be released and found not guilty. Felix must have known about the large sum of money which Paul brought to Jerusalem so that the Christ mission there could feed the poor and cover their expenses since there had not been enough money to help the mission for which Peter was responsible. It is also true that Felix was interested in the community of believers in Jerusalem who were called the Way. That interest would have had to do with keeping that very tense peace, which was so important to the position which Felix held as governor. During the two years that Paul was kept close to Felix, he was frequently requested to return for conversations with the governor, all in hopes that Felix could maneuver some money out of Paul.

In the first passage, we discover that that Felix gets replaced by Porcius Festus, but to keep the peace with the Jews he had Paul remain a prisoner of the governor. In our second Passage Festus immediately heads to Jerusalem to see if he can take care of this situation with Paul, and hoping, just as Felix had done, to ingratiate himself with the Jews, Festus spent several days in the midst of the Temple authorities trying to get a handle on this very difficult, and long-lasting complaint of the Jews against Paul. Staying about 8-10 days in Jerusalem, Festus orders the Jews to send men who are authorities to Caesarea to stand before the Roman judgement seat, and to lay claim to all that Paul had done that had been so offensive and against Jewish law. Of course, once again the accusations were baseless, yet Festus, as a new governor, was working hard to make certain that he did not offend the Jews. After being surrounded by the Jews who had come to lay down claims against him, Paul, knowing that to go back to Jerusalem would be deadly for him, finally claims once again that he has broken no Jewish laws, nor offended the Temple rules in any way, and now uses his Roman birth citizenship as a means to moving all of this to Rome to come before Caesar for the emperor's judgement over the claim being made against him. It seems certain that Paul wanted the opportunity to share his witness and mission in Rome, but under very different circumstances than going there for the final word of Caesar over the baseless Jewish claims. In all of this we might see Festus as a bad guy, however, when Paul made his request to be moved to Rome and Caesar, Festus had no choice but to grant Paul's request. We do not know much about Festus, but his governorship seems to have been just and fair. He dies just two years after taking the position from Felix, and though recorded history doesn't tell us much about him, it also doesn't tell us that his time in Palestine was unjust and heavy handed.

Tomorrow we will continue into several more passages about how it is that Paul comes to witness to the Jewish King, Agrippa. I thank God that you are with me today.

With the Love of Jesus Christ, Pastor Kim.

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September 22, 2026:  Bible Study on Acts 25:13-21, 22-27, 26:1-11

Blessings and Peace be with you all, and may they surround this planet with the Savior's Grace and forgiveness. Please continue prayers for Regina as she undergoes a few more surgeries on her eye. Doctors remain hopeful that she will regain her sight. Thanks to God too for Debbie who has been doing most of Regina's travel, getting to appointments for all this care. Please continue to pray for Camille as she recovers from radiation treatments for cancer. And thank God for Sharyn and Denise who have been assisting Camille with her transportation. I thank God for all of you, and all that you do.

Today we are going to take a moving glance at the next three passages, but every time I say that I know that doesn't necessarily mean that what I will share with you will be shorter than normal.

Let's start today with our first reading from Acts. Acts 25:13-21. This passage tells us about the relationship that Festus encounters with King Agrippa. In a quick reading of this passage, we might think that Agrippa is a leader with much power over a sprawling Palestine, but the reality is that Agrippa was a "little" king over just Galilee and Peraea, which was a small area in Palestine. What power Agrippa held was granted to him by the Romans. Festus is new to his rule and position in Palestine, so he needed to speak with someone who had intimate knowledge of the Jewish faith. Also, in this passage we find Festus trying to get a handle on why the Jews have been so compelled to persecute Paul. For Festus this all seemed like a local religious issue that really did not feel very compelling, especially compelling enough for Paul to be brought before the governor from Rome. Everyone seems to want Paul's issues to be handled between him and the Jews in Jerusalem, but Paul knows that his life will be taken if he travels to Jerusalem to defend his beliefs about Jesus. It becomes clear that there was indeed a reason for the failure of the Jerusalem mission. The encounters between the new Christians and the Jews could easily lead to death of those who believed in Christ's Resurrection. After telling a straightforward recounting of Paul's crime according to the Jews, we know that the only action which Festus could take was to honor Paul's request to go to Rome for Caesar to hear his confession of faith and trust in God.

Our next passage for today is Acts 25:22-27. Both Festus and Agrippa find that they need greater understanding of why Paul's words and faith have become such an issue. Festus feels that he needs more than just a few words about Paul's circumstances over all of this. Roman law required that if a governor sent a citizen to Rome to stand before the Caesar's judgement, then he must be accompanied by documents which clearly define the reasons for that individual's being brought to Rome for trial. Festus felt that Agrippa might be able to provide him with enough background, and an understanding of why the Jews were so offended by Paul who in every way was the epitome of a faithful Jew who had since become a believer in an off-shoot group, all of whom believed that their rabbi and master had been resurrected. At this point, even Agrippa is intrigued, and when he is offered the opportunity to speak with Paul, he is anxious to do so. It is important for you and me to remember that Matthew 10:18 says that the faithful, in defense of their faith, will be called to stand before Kings. This may well have been on Paul's mind, and it seems clear that he was ready to have this opportunity. Agrippa, and his wife Bernice had come with all the finery of royal garments and the grandiose style of a king in all his worldly power and glory. Just so that you and I can have a complete picture of Agrippa and Bernice. Bernice was the sister-in-law of Felix! She was also Agrippa's own sister! Yes, they were King and queen together in marriage. Things in Palestine got complicated when the men in power wanted to keep all their power centralized. Agrippa was no different, even though he truly had very little power any longer. I am not sure that we could call Paul humble in any way. He carried the authority of a Pharisee, and though he was a tent maker and itinerant preacher, on a mission for Christ, his humility was in the way that he had come to understand the significance of his own life, against the unsurpassable grace and love of Jesus Christ. Like us, Paul certainly had gifts that were important to his mission and teaching about Jesus and the Resurrection. If we listen to the people around us, we may just hear what our gifts are, as others experience us in the world of our faith and lives. Every gift that Paul carried, and every one of them which is ours to use to proclaim Christ, are from the Spirit, given that the work of the Kingdom of God will be completed and spread to all people.

In our last passage for today, we find Paul sharing his story with Agrippa, its details are the ones which we have heard from Paul many times, and they are indeed the proclamation of the Kingdom of God. In this passage, Paul admits his faults, which were conducted in God's name as judgement over those who had already come to believe in the Resurrection of the Savior. Every one of us has plenty of failures in our lives. Paul had plenty of sin to proclaim, like us, something that we can only do when we come to proclaim Jesus Christ as the Savior of all of creation. Our weekly confession at the beginning of worship gives us a means for being intentional about what we know and don't know that has been displeasing to God. But God does not condemn us for our sin, instead He chooses to Redeem us through the sacrifice of His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, and to save us because He loves His whole creation.

Thank you for being a part of our Acts of the Apostle's study. I will be back next Monday to share more of Paul's surrender to the Christ of God, and to discover how our common journeys take us to exactly where Christ needs us in His world.

With Love in Jesus Christ, Pastor Kim