Let’s turn in our Bibles to Acts chapter 25 tonight. You can find that on page 934 in the pew Bibles. In Acts 25, we get one of those phrases or idioms that have made their way from the Bible into the broader English language. Some of them that we are familiar with are like the ones we heard one of the children answer earlier this evening in the children’s devotion – “the forbidden fruit.” We know about “the writing on the wall” and “the good Samaritan” and “the prodigal son.” That was one that we used in our house recently when our cat disappeared for 27 days and came back a couple of weeks ago and she is now the prodigal cat! There are lots of them, lots of idioms that we could talk about from the Bible in the English language. Two of them have to do with Caesar, the emperor of the Roman Empire, like “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars,” and “an appeal to Caesar.” The last one comes from Acts 25 when Paul is standing before Festus, the Roman governor, and he said, “I appeal to Caesar,” to which Festus replied, “To Caesar you have appealed, to Caesar you shall go.” Now to appeal to Caesar means to go to the highest authority. It means to appeal to the highest possible court. And that’s exactly what Paul is doing in Acts 25. He has been languishing in jail for over two years. Nobody seems to be listening to him. He is about out of options, but he is a Roman citizen, and as such, he is entitled to certain legal provisions, such as the right to appeal to the emperor in Rome.
Now all this legal jargon, all this formality and procedural detail that we have here, all of this what may seem like wasted time, really why does it get so much attention in the Bible? Why is it important? Why does it matter? Well those are the questions before us tonight as we look at the first twenty-two verses of Acts 25. And I want us to notice two things from this passage. As we seek to answer that question, we’ll take our two points from that first idiom about Caesar. Our two points will be – the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s. We’ll hope to see that from Acts 25 – the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s. Let’s turn to God and ask for His help before we turn and hear His Word to us tonight. Let’s pray.
Father, we come tonight to commit all of our time to You and to seek Your help and Your grace. We look to Your Spirit to illumine Your words to us tonight, that all Scripture is breathed out by You and worthy of our attention and to train us. And so we pray that You would speak to us tonight, for Your servants listen. We pray that You would work in us by Your Spirit, that You would help us to see in this passage, to see Jesus, our Savior, our Redeemer, our King, our Lord. And we pray all of this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Acts 25, beginning in verse 1:
“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.’”
The grass withers and the flowers fall but the Word of our God endures forever.
First, the things that are Caesar’s. And Caesar’s name is all over the place. If we wanted to come up with one sentence to summarize this passage, it might be something like this, that “Paul is both preserved and prepared to be sent to Rome by an appeal to Caesar.” Six times, Caesar’s name is mentioned in the proceedings that we just read. Paul says that he had committed no wrong against Caesar. He says that he is standing before Caesar’s tribunal where he ought to be tried. And when he appeals to Caesar in verse 11, Festus says in verse 12, “To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.” Now Caesar himself does not appear anywhere in person in this scene, but his influence is everywhere in these verses.
But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Because where is all of this taking place? Well, many people may pronounce it Caesarea, but it doesn’t take much to see the connection between Caesarea and Caesar. This is Caesartown, Caesarville, Caesarburg, or as some people might say, Caesarburrough. That’s where this is taking place. This was a city that was named after Caesar. This was the town from which Caesar’s authority extended from Rome into the province of Judea. Caesarea was the capital of the region, not Jerusalem. And this was the place where men like Pontius Pilate and like Felix and Festus, this is the place where they held office. And this city, it had paved streets, it had a sophisticated sewer and water system. There was a theater and a bathhouse and palaces and temples, an impressive harbor, all of it in honor and in service to the Caesar, the emperor in Rome.
We were driving to Starkville a few weeks ago and there is a little community in Webster County called Tomnolen. Tomnolen, Mississippi. It’s not two words, like “Tom” and “Nolen,” but it’s together, “Tomnolen.” And there’s not much there but there is a water tower that says “Tomnolen” on it. There is a Tomnolen Baptist Church and there is a Tomnolen volunteer fire and rescue there as well. But do you know what I thought as we passed through this little community of Tomnolen? “I wonder who Tom Nolen was?” I wonder how they decided to name this little community after this person? And why did they smush his name together to form just one word, “Tomnolen.” Of course I googled it, I did a little research, it lead me to an article in The Webster Progress Times – I won’t go into all of those details with you tonight, but all that to say, when we come to Acts chapter 25 and we see Caesar’s name all over the place and we see that this is taking place in the city of Caesarea, we have to ask ourselves, “Who was Caesar?”
Well, for one thing, you have to understand that Caesar wasn’t actually a name. Well, it had been originally; it was the name of the last ruler of the Roman Republic, Gaius Julius Caesar, but after him, many of the rulers of the Roman Empire took on the name of Caesar to themselves so that you have men like Caesar Augustus, Tiberius Caesar, Claudius Caesar. It came to be synonymous with the word “emperor.” In fact, it is the word “emperor” in many languages. Think of the word “kaiser” in German or “czar” in Russian. The Caesar was the man. He was the most powerful man in the empire. He was the most powerful man in the world. Just the other day I saw some highlights from the Oregon-Michigan football game from a couple of weeks ago. And in the clip, the Oregon coach tried to motivate his players, to motivate his team by showing them movie clips of the Colosseum and the gladiators and their lives in the hands of the Roman emperor. It seems that people can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire and about the power of the Caesar.
According to historians, the Roman Empire constituted the whole of the civilized world, that ultimate political authority rested squarely in this one man’s hands and the emperor himself held final control over the armies and over the finances. He had absolute power and his commands amounted to law. In fact, his power was such that it rose to the level of religious devotion. There was a Roman imperial cult. It was the practice of venerating Roman emperors and their families as having divine attributes. In fact, there was an article that was published just in the last few days in The World History Encyclopedia that described some of what that means to be an object of worship. That there were temples dedicated to the emperor’s ancestors. There were myths about the Caesar being fathered by a god. There was the belief that the emperor was deified at his death. Now think about all of that and then think about that phrase, “kaiser kurios” – “Caesar is lord.” Think about what that means in light of the position of the Roman emperor.
And then, to think that all of that power rested in the hands of someone like Nero. Nero, when we see Paul appealing to Caesar in Acts 25, he was appealing to Nero. And historians tell us that his atrocities are among the most remembered acts of the Caesars. Yes, at first some of his actions were exemplary, but then, Nero, who always nursed his vices, at one point he murdered his interfering mother. That when his influential advisor, Seneca, died, the worst of him emerged. In fact, there is another idiom about a Caesar, isn’t there? That “Nero fiddles while Rome burns.” And it was a legend that Nero played the lyre while Rome burned down. The historian, Tacitus, tells us that Nero blamed the Christians for that fire and it set off a period of intense persecution for those in the church. There were arrests and torture and mockery and crucifixion and being burned at the stake.
Now do you get an idea of who Caesar was? He was powerful. He was impressive. On the one hand, he was revered and worshiped. On the other hand, he was a figure of absolute fear and dread. These are the things of Caesar that we come to in Acts 25. These are the stakes for the apostle Paul in this chapter. He is in Caesar’s territory, he is being charged with disturbing the Caesar’s peace, he is standing before Caesar’s tribunal, and he is about to be sent to Caesar for the decision of the emperor.
What’s the point in all of this? Well I think it’s to make us see, and in all of this about Caesar is to make us recognize and to find – What are the things of God here? And that’s exactly what we want to see in this passage – the things of God in the midst of all of this about the things of Caesar. Because it’s all the things of God, but do you know what? At first it doesn’t seem like very much. And isn’t it strange that there is so much attention, so much space devoted to this part of Paul’s life in ministry. It’s been noted before that this last section of Paul’s arrest and incarceration, it’s actually slightly longer than the section of Acts about his missionary work, so much so that when we read Acts as a whole it’s Paul the prisoner even more than Paul the missionary who we are meant to remember. Now why is that? And it’s true. There really isn’t much missionary going on in this chapter, is there? We don’t hear Paul preaching the Gospel. There is no one coming to faith in these verses. There is no coming in the power of the Holy Spirit. There is no miraculous. There is nothing here about the church. In fact, that’s what makes some of these last sections of the book of Acts tough to figure out how to preach it. But there’s got to be something here. There’s got to be some reason that Luke includes all of these details for us.
And I think that there are at least four things that we can notice and point to in these verses tonight, four things to say about God’s providence working in the midst of the politics of man. Four things to say about Paul’s ministry. And before we say what those things are, let me just make it clear that when we talk about Paul’s ministry everywhere throughout the book of Acts, and we talk about the ministry of the apostles, we are talking about the ministry of the risen and ascended Lord Jesus Christ. So what can we say about Paul’s ministry in these verses?
Well one thing we can say is that Paul’s ministry is not discredited by his chains, but it’s actually validated for its Christlikeness. Now think about it. Do you remember how the gospels end? Do you remember the focus of the last part of the gospels, of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? It’s about 30% of the gospels that focus on the last week of Jesus’ life and ministry. They focus in on the most intense of His suffering. Why? Well it’s because of the significance of His suffering. It’s because of the significance of the cross. But also it’s because it was unheard of. This idea of a suffering Messiah, of a dying Deliverer – it was ridiculous. But Jesus’ resurrection is the vindication that Jesus was exactly who He said He was, that He is the Messiah, He is the Christ by virtue of His resurrection. And this was God’s plan the whole time for Jesus.
Well it was just as absurd in Paul’s day that a respected teacher or orator would be a chained and imprisoned teacher or orator. Think about it. Think about what Paul wrote to the Corinthian church. He wrote about how they thought Paul was too weak and that he had a burden on himself to commend himself to them again to validate his message in light of all of his suffering that he had gone through. Well that’s what we are told about this culture of this day. It was a shame and honor culture. There was a stigma attached to incarceration and bonds. It was degrading. And Paul in prison here in this section of Acts, it was a massive frontal assault against his status, his credibility and his missionary vocation. But what Luke is doing here is he is showing to us clearly that Paul is the chosen messenger of Christ and that all throughout his imprisonment God is protecting him, He is preserving him, He is providing for him, and He is directing his path every step of the way. Because this is God’s plan for the apostle Paul. This is God’s plan for the spread of the Gospel. There is no shame in his chains. This is God’s story being played out in the midst of his suffering and his imprisonment.
And then secondly, we see that Paul’s ministry was not threatened but it was advanced by Caesar. There is a whole view of history contained in these verses because who would have made all of the headlines? Caesar, Festus, Agrippa. They were the ones that mattered politically speaking. It was nothing about this unassuming man Paul who had been in custody in Caesarea for over two years who was only there because of some religious dispute about the Jewish religion. Nobody cares about the details of that story. That’s not making the history books. It’s not making the headlines. But let’s take a step back. And who has had and continues to have the biggest impact on all of history? Well it’s the apostle Paul and his message about the Lord Jesus Christ.
And what these verses are saying to us is that history serves God’s purposes. There is a bigger story going on here. There is a bigger story about what’s happening behind the scenes and in unlikely places and with unlikely people – like the story of Paul and how the authority of Caesar, of a Nero actually became the means by which Paul was preserved and transported to Rome with the message about Jesus. And what we see here is that ultimately it’s not Caesar who is to be feared and adored, but it is God who is to be feared and adored. I couldn’t help but think about some of the reactions and the headlines from this past week and the election. There was elation and there was grief on different sides of the spectrum. One of the headlines said, “This is the Donald’s World and We’re All Just Living in It.” Another one said that, “This Country is About to Become a Different and Much Worse Place.” But none of that is the main story, is it? And the main story is that God is sovereign over it all and that He can use elections and political figures like Caesar to work out His purposes. Take someone like a Putin. He is one who is met with both fear and adoration on different ends of the spectrum. What do these verses have to say about someone like that?
Well just think about it. How would Christians have read these verses in the first century? Here is Paul, he is appealing to Caesar, to Nero, who is the cause of all of their distress and suffering, and God used that person, God used Caesar for the spread of the Gospel and the good of the church. We always have to remember that the bigger story is the kingdom of God. That’s what Luke is doing here for us, and he is situating the politics of Rome within the bigger story of the kingdom of God and the providence of God and surely, surely that’s where real hope and real comfort has to be found.
Number three, Paul’s ministry was for Caesar too. You know it would be easy to think that the purpose of these verses is merely administrative, that there is religion and there is politics and never the two shall meet. It would be easy to think that the people and the things of Caesar have nothing to do with the things and the people of God and the church of God because Nero was the enemy of the Christians – right? Let me ask you this – Who was the original recipient of the book of Acts? Who was the original recipient of these two books, Luke and Acts? Do you remember? It was a man named Theophilus. And we read back in Luke chapter 1 that Luke writes and refers to “Most excellent Theophilus.” Most excellent Theophilus. Now I believe that the only two other times that that word “most excellent” is used to describe someone else in the Bible is in Acts 24, “Most excellent Felix,” and Acts 26, “Most excellent Festus.”
We were on our way to church tonight and there was a billboard and it had some GenZ lingo terms on it. And I didn’t know what it was talking about! But some people do because it’s speaking their language. Well you know, you come here and all this talk about Felix and Festus and Caesar and Agrippa, that’s speaking Theophilus’ language. That’s his world. He knows about these sorts of people and these sorts of events. He knows about all of this. And what’s very clear from the books of Luke and Acts is that this message is for him. Jesus is for a Theophilus. This is a message for Caesar’s kind of people. Now it’s not that the church and its mission depends on a person like Theophilus or Caesar. After all, Nero was probably the one who had Paul executed. But what do we read in the greetings at the end of the book of Philippians? Philippians chapter 4. Paul is sending his greetings out and he says this. He says, “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.” It may not have been Caesar himself, but the Gospel reached Caesar’s household because there’s no one, there’s no one that’s too excellent and there’s no one too low to be exempt from the invitation to hear and to receive the Gospel message.
And that brings us to the last thing, and it’s that Paul’s ministry did not stop when he was delayed. Did you notice in these verses who it is who comes the closest to preaching the Gospel? It’s not Paul; it’s actually Festus. Verse 19 says, “Rather” – these are the words of Festus – “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.” Those are Festus’ words – that Jesus was dead but asserted to be alive. That is what Festus had gathered that Paul was all about. That was the core of his message.
Now I wonder about us. What about you? If you were on trial, what would people say that you are all about? I heard a preacher say one time that when he was going to a new city, to a new church, he was playing golf with one of the congregation members and at some point during the round of golf that person said, “Tell me, what’s your thing? What’s your thing? What’s your theological pet topic or something like that?” And he wanted to say, “I don’t have a thing, but I have the Gospel.” What’s your thing? It could be good things, it could be distracting things. It could be Jesus and a political party. It could be Jesus and a moral issue like pro-life, marriage. It could be Jesus and Christian education. But I wonder, would it be so clear to other people that the basic message of your life, the driving force of your life, the good news is Jesus and His resurrection, that this certain Jesus was dead and is alive again?
Of course people will misrepresent you, of course people will hear whatever they want to hear, but for Festus it was crystal clear, wasn’t it? This was what the case was all about – Jesus and His resurrection. You know what that means? It means that Paul had been speaking to Festus about Jesus and the resurrection. In other words, Paul didn’t stop preaching, he didn’t stop his ministry just because he was in this time of delay. And we know, don’t we, from Paul’s letters in the New Testament that he was writing letters to the churches from prison, whether that was from Caesarea or Rome, we don’t really know, but when Paul was delayed, when he was in a time of trial and hardship, the mission and the message about Jesus did not stop.
There was an old preacher who told a story about two friends of his and they were debating something. They were debating, many years ago, “What was the most trying part of a long journey?” He said one of them argued that the initial steps on setting out was the most difficult part, and that the weary road that stretches out interminably before you, every stick and stone seems to be shouting at you to turn back and take your ease. The beginning is the most difficult part. But his friend said it was the other end. It was the final stage. This is when he says the exhausted pedestrian at the end of his journey, scarcely able to drag one blistered and bleeding foot in front of the other. It’s the end that’s the most difficult part. And this preacher, this writer says they are both wrong. Actually it’s the middle part. It’s what he calls “the tireless trudge.” He says, “It is the intermediate stage that tests the metal of a person. It is the long, fatiguing trudge out of sight of both starting point and destination that puts the heaviest strain on heart and brain.”
This was Paul’s tireless trudge. He’s on his way from Jerusalem to Rome but it seems like he is stuck. He’s stuck in all of this legal machinations and bureaucracy. These are the in between times. These are the waiting days. These are the difficult days for Paul. Surely he would have felt discouraged and tired in the intermediate stage of his journey and ministry. I wonder about for you. What are your in between times? Maybe it’s when you are in school, you are training for your career; you are trying to get established in your career. “And once I get this established, once I get this figured out, then I’ll put my focus on what God is calling me to do in service of His ministry.” Maybe it’s in a time of unemployment or underemployment. Maybe it’s when you are sick and going through a time of suffering. Maybe it’s singleness or marriage that’s your waiting time. But what these verses are saying to us is in our delays, that the ministry that Christ calls us to continues on. And what we see here, there is no shame in suffering. God works through unlikely people in unlikely places. We don’t know who’s watching, who’s listening to our message. And the calling to follow Christ and to make disciples is not put on the sidelines when we are going through difficult times. All of those things, every part of our lives, are the things that are God’s. They belong to God and to His service and to the glory of Jesus. And what we see here in this passage in all of these little details, we see the providence of God at work and we see the perseverance of His saints. May it be so for us as well. Let’s pray.
Our Father, we come before You and confess that there is much that could sideline us and distract us from Your calling in our lives. We give You thanks for Your sovereignty, for Your providence, for Your plan, for Your work, and for the way we see it vividly before us in the life of Paul and the early church. And so would we take heart, help us to be courageous, to be encouraged, to persevere, to endure for Your name and for the sake of Christ that all would see in our lives the beauty and the glory of the good news of Jesus, dead and alive again, His life and His resurrection, and that He reigns. Jesus is Lord. We come and we go from here with that confession on our lips, and we pray all of this in His name. Amen.