Daily Bible Reading

JANUARY 25— Genesis 26; Matthew 25; Esther 2; Acts 25

THE CHANGE IN GOVERNOR FROM FELIX to Porcius Festus (Acts 24:27) brings no immediate improvement in Paul’s condition. Yet God remains in control, and in this chapter, Acts 25, under God’s providence Paul takes a decisive step. How was this brought about?

(1) New to the area and still relatively ignorant of its political and religious dynamics, Festus is determined to get off on the right foot. A mere three days after arriving at the regional Roman capital of Caesarea, he travels up to Jerusalem to meet the local Jewish authorities. He could have summoned them; he could have delayed his visit. But off he goes, and is promptly informed what a terrible man Paul is. The Jewish authorities see the accession of Festus as an opportunity to do away with Paul. They express their desire to have him brought to Jerusalem for trial, but in reality they plan an ambush that would ensure his demise (25:1-3). Festus replies that Paul is being held in Caesarea and insists that his interlocutors press their case there.

(2) In the next round of legal maneuverings the charges against Paul and his responses to them (25:6-8) provide Festus with no clear idea of what to do. Still trying to make a good impression on the Jewish authorities (and thus far more likely to listen to them than to a solitary man already in jail for two years), Festus asks Paul if he is willing to stand trial before the Roman court, but in Jerusalem.

(3) There is no hint that Paul is tipped off as to the planned ambush. Nevertheless, two years earlier he had been warned of a similar plot (23:16), and it would not take much to figure out that such a plot was likely being hatched again. If he agrees with Festus’s suggestion, he will be murdered; if he declines, he will appear obstreperous and arrogant. So he exercises the right of every Roman citizen in the first century: he appeals to Caesar. That was the judicial equivalent of appealing to the Supreme Court. Humanly speaking, this was a desperate move. Emperor Nero did not take kindly to frivolous suits, and he was already known to be corrupt and intoxicated by his own power.

(4) Yet by that means, as the rest of the book shows, Paul finally arrives in Rome. As Joseph was brought to Egypt’s palaces by way of slavery and prison, so Paul is brought to testify for King Jesus before the mightiest human authorities by way of prison and corrupt justice. Indeed, how did Jesus gain his place at the Father’s right hand?

JANUARY 24 — Genesis 25; Matthew 24; Esther 1; Acts 24

IN THE TRIAL OF PAUL BEFORE FELIX (Acts 24), the governor comes across as a man in authority who has no moral vision authorizing him to take decisive action. He is, in short, a moral wimp. He also represents the many powerful people who are disturbed by the Gospel, and at some deep level know that it is true, yet who never become Christians. Note:

(1) Judging by his approach and oratory, Tertullus is an orator trained in the Greek tradition and thus well able to represent the Jewish leaders in this quin- tessentially Hellenistic setting. The charge against Paul of temple desecration (24:6) is serious, punishable by death. When Tertullus encourages Felix to “examine” Paul (24:8), he means more than that Felix should ask a few probing questions. Roman “examination” of a prisoner was open-ended beating until the prisoner “confessed.” Roman officers did not have the right to “examine” a Roman citizen like Paul, but a governor like Felix could doubtless manage to waive the rules now and then.

(2) Paul’s response, no less courteous than that of Tertullus, denies the charge of temple desecration (24:12-13, 17-18) and provides a plausible explanation of the uproar by describing the actions of “some Jews from the province of Asia” (24:19). Paul also seizes the opportunity to acknowledge that he is a follower of “the Way”—a delightful expression referring to first-century Christianity, bearing, perhaps, multiple allusions. Christianity is more than a belief system; it is a way of living. Moreover, it provides a way to God, a way to be forgiven and accepted by the living God—and that Way is Jesus himself (as John 14:6 explicitly avers).

(3) Paul insists that he believes “everything that agrees with the Law and that is written in the Prophets” (24:14). This expression does not make the Law the final arbiter, yet nevertheless insists that the “everything” Paul believes agrees with the Law. The Law is thus a critical test that points to the “everything” Paul believes, but it is not the substance of everything he believes. Compare Matthew 5:17-20; Romans 3:21 (see meditation for January 31).

(4) And Felix? Owing to his Jewish wife Drusilla (24:24), he has some acquaintance with “the Way” (24:22). Yet here he ducks a decision between justice and his desire to placate Paul’s opponents, appealing to the need to hear from Lysias the commander. It is all pretense. He enjoys talking with Paul, and even trembles before his message, but always dismisses the apostle at the critical moment. For two years he is torn between a desire to repent and a desire for a bribe. In eternity, how will Felix assess those two years?

 

This reading is from For the Love of God, vol 2 by D.A. Carson. You can download the entire book as a free PDF here: For the Love of God, Vol 2. Alternatively, you can pick up a hard copy at the church or at your favorite book retailer.

JANUARY 23 — Genesis 24; Matthew 23; Nehemiah 13; Acts 23

ONE OF THE MOST STRIKING EVIDENCES of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.

That is the sort of situation Nehemiah faces toward the end of his leadership in Jerusalem (Neh. 13). He has been away for a time, required by his responsibilities toward the Emperor Artaxerxes to return to the capital. When he comes back to Jerusalem for a second term as governor, he finds that commercial inter- ests have superseded Sabbath discipline, that compromise with the surrounding pagans has displaced covenantal faithfulness, that greed has withheld some of the stipend of the clergy, and therefore their numbers and usefulness have been reduced, and that some combination of indiscipline and sheer stupidity has admitted to the temple and to the highest councils of power men like Tobiah and Sanballat, who have no interest in faithfulness toward God and his Word.

By an extraordinary combination of exhortation, command, and executive action, Nehemiah restores covenantal discipline. Doubtless many of the godly breathe a sigh of relief and thank God for him; no less certainly, many others grumble that he is a busybody, a killjoy, a narrow-minded legalist. Our permissive and relativizing culture fits more comfortably into the latter group than the former—but that says more about our culture than about Nehemiah.

Genuine reformation and revival have never occurred in the church apart from leaders for whom devotion to God is of paramount importance. If, absorbing the values of the ambient culture, the Western church becomes suspicious of such leaders, or else reacts with knee-jerk cultural conservatism that is as devoid of biblical integrity as the compromise it opposes, we are undone. May God have mercy on us and send us prophetic leaders.

JANUARY 22 — Genesis 23; Matthew 22; Nehemiah 12; Acts 22

READING PAUL’S IMPROMPTU DEFENSE to the crowd (Acts 22), one is struck by the sparse simplicity of the narrative. But two details urge reflection here:

First, we must ask why the crowd turns nasty when it does. When Paul starts to address the people in their mother tongue, Aramaic, initially “they became very quiet” (22:2). They listen to the entire account of his conversion and call to ministry without breaking out in anger. But when Paul says that the Lord himself told Paul, “Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles” (22:21), the unleashed malice of the mob will be satisfied with nothing less than his death. Why?

Inevitably, the answers are complex. Some of the pressures Jews felt to remain distinctive from the Gentiles were doubtless sociological: their self-identity was bound up with kosher food laws, Sabbath observance, circumcision, and the like, and a man like Paul, who was perceived to be reducing those barriers, was threatening their self-identity. But the heat of their passion cannot be explained by merely horizontal analysis. At least two other factors must be acknowledged. (1) For devout, conservative, Jerusalemite Jews, what was at issue was the Law of God, the exclusive primacy of the temple, their understanding of Scripture. From their perspective, Paul was destroying what God himself had set up. He was entangling the people of God in compromises with pagans. Not only was he jeopardizing their identity, he was blaspheming the Almighty, whose people they were and whose revelation they were appointed to obey and preserve. (2) At the same time, it is hard to miss the element of ownership: these people were acting as though God was so exclusively the property of ancestral Jews that Gentiles could not get a look in. From Paul’s perspective, this entailed a profoundly mistaken and even perverse reading of the Old Testament, and a sadly tribal vision of a domesticated God. Of course, their error is often repeated today, with less justification, by those who so tie their culture to their understanding of Christian religion that the Bible itself becomes domesticated and the missionary impulse frozen.

Second, we must ask why Paul stands on his Roman citizenship here, avoiding a flogging, while on occasion he simply takes the beating. At least one of the reasons is that he tends to appeal to his legal status when doing so is likely to establish a precedent that will help to protect Christians. One of Luke’s arguments in these chapters is that Christianity is not politically dangerous; rather, it is repeatedly legally vindicated. Paul, thinking of his brothers and sisters, acts, as usual, for their benefit.

JANUARY 21 — Genesis 22; Matthew 21; Nehemiah 11; Acts 21

IN ACTS 21 WE FIND PAUL AND THE CHURCH in Jerusalem trying to be as accommodating as possible, but nothing will avail. Paul is arrested, in line with the prophecies to the effect that he would be seized and bound (21:4, 11). Note:

(1) This is one of the “we” passages in Acts (21:1, 17). On the face of it, Luke the author is at this point traveling with Paul and is a witness to the events described here. That is worth noting, because many critics find these events completely unbelievable.

(2) The church and its leaders warmly receive Paul and his reports of gospel fruitfulness among the Gentiles. This is entirely in line with their earlier delight when Paul reported many Gentile conversions (e.g., Acts 15). In other words, experiences in Samaria (Acts 8) and Peter’s visit with Cornelius and his household (Acts 10—11) have prepared the church to delight in the manifest progress of the Gospel among the Gentiles.

(3) Nevertheless, the leaders are painfully aware that substantial numbers of conservative Jews are out to get Paul. They have heard that he is counseling “all” the Jews in the Diaspora not to circumcise their children or follow the Law of Moses (21:21). So they devise a plan to help him regain a reputation for observing conservatism (21:23-24). “Then everybody will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law” (21:24).

It is this passage that is especially controverted, for does not Paul himself say that he is flexible on such matters (1 Cor. 9:19-23; Gal.)? Yet before we write off the Jerusalem elders and Paul himself for massive inconsistency, or Luke for making up stories, observe: (a) The initial charge is that Paul exhorts all Jews in the Diaspora to abandon circumcision and the Law of Moses. That he does not do. He refuses to allow circumcision and kosher observance to become a test of spirituality, but he does not advocate universal abandonment of the Law. He himself circumcised Timothy to advance the communication of the Gospel. (b) One suspects that the biggest fear of some conservative Jews was that Paul would desecrate the temple (21:27-29). The elders therefore sought to show that while he was in Jerusalem Paul was a carefully observant Jew, even paying for the temple purification rites of others. After all, neither Paul nor the Jerusalem leaders imposed full observance on all Christian believers (21:25; cf. Acts 15; see vol. 1, meditation for July 28).

So in the providence of God, Paul is arrested. Thus he arrives, for the first time, in Rome, and the Gospel is heard in Caesar’s courts.