Next chapter, verse 22, just before I get started, you all can turn there and review. I trust that we're getting familiar with some of the names and some of the incidents that are here. And the Lord is giving this for us, but he's giving this for our learning. And I trust that we'll learn something new this morning. And I think we will. And when Felix heard these things, having more perfect knowledge of that way, he deferred them and said, When Laëtius, the chief captain, shall come down, I will know the uttermost of your matter. And he commanded a centurion to keep Paul and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance to minister or come unto him. And after certain days, when Felix came with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jewess, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, Felix trembled and answered, Go thy way for this time when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee. He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him. Wherefore, he sent for him the orphan and communed with him. But after two years, Porcius Festus came into Felix's room and Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound. This is the end of Acts 24, as we read verses 22 to 27. It brings up a real question about politics, policy, legalities, Jewish law, Roman law, and more importantly, above all of that, God's law. And so when we see this here, we understand that Paul, should have been loosed. He should have been let go. And this is wrong. There is no reason that Paul should have been held for two more years. Once again, I trust that no one is saying, oh, no, not again, not another arraignment and trial of Paul. It seems once again, as we talked about last night, that this is being rehashed. But every time I read this, I find something new that the Lord lays on my heart in order to study and to share. And when I see this, something very incredible once again comes out today. There's nothing boring in scripture. If you love the Lord and if you read your Bible and you try to connect the dots and you study, you will find things and you will trip over them. The Lord will have you literally trip over them, sometimes fall on your nose in order to wake you up and to see what's going on here. The Holy Spirit is inspiring this book and is trying to teach us an application this morning, maybe one or more. And I think as we see this, we'll see what we'll see what basically some of the real main applications are. There's political wrangling going on. And here it is, it's against Paul. Paul is the one serving Christ. And no matter where we go in life, no matter what we do, if we love Jesus Christ, Satan is going to pursue us and try to do everything he can to be in a complete, competitive, defiant state against him. And that is obvious here because Paul the Apostle here is defending the truth and there's no one standing in his stead. He's doing this alone. He has no attorney, he has no lawyer, he has nobody, but he has what Stephen had. He has Jesus Christ on the right hand of God watching him with lasers. And that is where, that is the place that we want to be. Here it is that they assented. They agreed to approve of Paul being able to be left back. They concur. And basically, we see it's amazing how a multitude of counsel, there were no matters that were established truthfully regarding the words that Paul had said. And now we saw a defense. Last week, we have one little defense here that is plugged into the end of these verses, as we see in verse 27. And Paul takes them, basically, I believe these are the foundational principles, the Romans chapter 12, when you go into verses 9 all the way to 16 to the end, you will see that Paul is giving practical, rational, Christian applications. And the one he's in custody, he's teaching them. He's taking them to the schoolroom. We saw last week a couple of very troubling statements that were made that were quotes that we see here. And then I saw another one yesterday. But there is a warning. There is a pastor that wrote this that warns that the very essence of Christianity is in crisis, as the words of Jesus Christ today are mistaken for liberal talking points. And something came out yesterday. There was, I don't know if you saw this or not, but there has been more archaeological evidence that have arisen about Sodom and Gomorrah. And now, what are the churches are saying about Sodom and Gomorrah? They're finding evidences. They're finding burnt cedars. They're finding all these little proofs. And maybe, I don't even know if it was recent or they were going back to see what was discovered in 1986 and there was a few years later. They found these charred runes underneath that were unearthed. And they found these great big salt licks out in the Dead Sea. But guess what they're saying now? And pastors are preaching this. Sodom and Gomorrah wasn't a bad homosexuality. And they pulled out all these Bible verses in Matthew. I didn't even write them down because it was such a raping of Scripture. I couldn't even, I wasn't even going to waste my time. We got good Scripture for good applications and I'm not even going to waste my time trying to mimic what this idiot's talking about. But what they're doing and they're spreading in churches because they have to conform to community conscience, which Paul would not do. What they're saying here, homosexuality is not the problem. It was about the people in Sodom and Gomorrah were not being welcoming to the travelers. They were not being meek. They were not adhering to the tenets of the Sermon on the Mount. That basically what was going on was that they were not being hospitable, and that's against Jesus. But it had nothing to do with sodomy. That's okay. Matthew. It did. But what I'm talking about is something that just came out from some new evangelical. I don't even know what it is. Some writing that it was. I didn't even bother to write the names. Maybe I should have. But what they're saying is they're teaching in churches now, not back then. I'm not talking about back then. They're teaching now. that we need to reconsider the words in Genesis 19, especially verse 5, regarding the men that came to the front door, and they're saying if you go into the New Testament and study the words of Jesus and go later on to the prophets, you'll see that it had nothing to do with homosexuality. It had everything to do with being hospitable, being kindly, affectionate, and being meek. Then they're bringing all this stuff up, and all that is is a smokescreen. So basically, yes, the Sermon on the Mount came after that, but this is something going on now that they're trying to connect. But I will give them at least a little bit of credit. At least they're trying to say something about the Old Testament. It's distorted and as perverted as it is. This just came out yesterday. And this never ends. You see that there's such an absolute vandalization. What was it? There was a governor, I think he was a governor, some kind of political leader. I think his name was Abraham Kuyper back in the early 1900s in the Netherlands. And he talked about that what we see with the Bible being torn apart is not biblical. Some word that he used, he basically said it was biblical vandalism is when people are distorting the Word of God. It's vandalism. And he's right. Paul would not cower, he does not schmooze Felix. He recognized him only as a judge. Paul gives a timeline, 12 days and what had gone. And he basically said, as we learned, we kind of left off last week. He says, 12 days, how did I have time to incite riots? And how did I have time to do all these things you're accusing me of, Ananias? Ananias, basically you're the high priest and you're accusing me of rioting? It was your people that were rioting. You can't even get along with your own sect of religion because half of you, a bunch of you, don't even believe in the resurrection. And the rest of you don't even believe in Jesus Christ. I'd say that's a pretty big doctrinal problem, isn't it? And Paul's standing there by himself, one person, one person standing there holding the truth up on his shoulders. It's incredible. Paul gives a timeline. He gives the gospel. He gives a defense. And this is now his fourth defense coming up we're going to look at this morning. And we see regarding the prophets, he speaks about them before, and now he's speaking about applications. And he talks about hope in God, the great hope of God. He speaks of the resurrection. We read last week, John, Job 19.25, and I'll read it one more time. For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Did Job sound like many people today that say, well, I hope I make it to heaven? I hope it's a nice place. Or like at the funerals, you know the funeral? Oh, he's in a better place. Oh, is he? Is she? Are you sure about that? I know it's kind of hard for the pastor to stand there. That's a tough thing to do for a pastor to preach a funeral to somebody that might be not saved. He can't stand there and say, well, there's old Edward roasting in hell. I know he can't do that. But this is what you hear. People have no concept of heaven, and you find that out at funerals. It's very sad. But here, Lisey. Yeah. It's a vulnerability and you know the question is that you to ask someone like that and I believe we will all get that chance again. Yeah, it's kind of tough to do right there, you know, but please describe to me. What's this better place? I want to know. Is it something I don't know about? What's your manifesto, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Buffett died. He's up there. He's playing his guitar. They say he's wasting away in Margaritaville. It is very sad. They have no concept. And it's not funny because what we're talking about here is we're unraveling what really happens. See, Paul had the details and we do too. You know, we don't stand there. He's in a better place. No, what we say is, in my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I have come to prepare a place for you. Let your heart not be troubled. For where I go there, ye may be also. I'm not going to a better place. I'm going to see my Savior. And He's going to have me. He's going to invite me. And that's different than a better place. I don't want a better place. A better place is going from to me like McDonald's to Chick-fil-A or something, you know, but that is the place, you know. Anyway, we go forward. Apostle Paul, he's not skeptical. He's not melding to any of these other sects of religions that are there. You have the Romans that believe in all the Greek philosophy, the Sadducees, Pharisees, and all that. He doesn't sit there and rub elbows with them. He doesn't sit there and try to form some embargo with Felix. And Felix was Felix was nothing but an operator. That's all that he was. He was a political operator. And look what happens. Felix now, as we move forward in verse 22, he adjourns the situation. Although being a very violent governor, he holds back on releasing Paul to the Jews and does not allow them. You see how he's playing the fence here? He will not allow the Jews to execute Paul. But he wants Paul basically as like some kind of bargaining chip. So he won't allow them to execute him, which we'll see in the next chapter. Basically, what they want him to do is go to Jerusalem so that they can intercept him on the way and they can murder him. And Paul says, uh-uh, I'm going to Caesar. Man, that guts. You're going in front of Caesar. Let me tell you something. You're going in front. And it just turns out to be, we're going to find out who this new Caesar is. And basically he says, I'm not going back to Jerusalem. I'm going to face the Roman Empire myself because I have Christ on my side. And so basically here we see. he defers or he postpones this with the Jews. He will not let them have him, but he won't let him go. He is invoking a Roman principle known as what was called Amplius, A-M-P, if you want to write this down, A-M-P-L-I-U-S, which is a final delay or reservation of a final judgment after proceeding over a judicial matter. He's postponing this. So basically, what does that mean? He's like the January 6th Capitol rotters that are left there, that are left to rot because they put a rock through a window. And he's left there to rot. I mean, Paul didn't do anything like that, but still, you can see what happens. The Roman divided the law into two forms. into what was called JUS or just scriptum the written law and just non-scriptum unwritten law or it's more like a just it's like a dictatum basically what it was. So they had two ways of basically legislating and basically enforcing their law. It could be done by the book like we have a constitution or they could do it by dictatum. They could just use it from their mouth and they could basically put a wax nose on it and change it according to what they really wanted to do according to the political wrangling. So you had basically here you had just scriptum or written law or just, J-U-S, non-scriptum, unwritten law. By unwritten law he meant the custom by that was a custom that means it was written. It was on paper, or it was on vellum, or whatever, papyrus, whatever. And they meant not only the laws derived from legislation, but literally laws based on any written source. So when you're standing in front of them, you're basically at their mercy as to how they interpret the law. Does that sound familiar in our court systems today? In other words, this freed them to invoke their own laws by their own interpretation by their tyrannical dictators. And Paul is not convicted, but has his case delayed for Lysias. Here's something interesting. We read in the verses that Felix was waiting. He said, well, we're going to have to wait till Claudius Lysias comes back from Caesarea or comes back from his area. But actually, Felix was from Caesarea. Claudius Lysias, I believe, was from I can't remember the name. I don't know. It's right around there. But anyway, Claudius Laetius was the Jewish ruler that got furious that Felix took Paul away. Remember him? He was another bloodthirsty captain. And he says, Felix says, well, we'll set Paul in jail and we'll wait till Laetius returns. And when he returns, we'll fix the matter. He never even shows up. He never even comes. He never even appears. And so Paul is left. So here we see that Lysias never came. You read the word, reverses, we don't see him appearing. And then we read here in another verse, a perfect knowledge of the way that we just read. And the Jews called the people of the way the followers of Jesus Christ. And basically, they declared them as heretics. But what's interesting is that Felix understood something about Christianity. He did understand it. If you do a little bit of research and you look back, we see here, I just said that Felix is the governor of what area? Caesarea, correct? Does anybody remember something interesting that happened in Caesarea? You go back to Acts chapter 10. What's very interesting is that somehow, someway, Felix had a compassion on Christianity to the extent that he knew that there was goodness and there was an honest nature to it. Why is that? Somebody go back and read Acts chapter 10. I tell you what, why don't, let's see, Noah, why don't you read Acts chapter 10, verses 1 through 4, and can I get Charlie, could you look up Acts, same chapter, read Acts 10.24. Okay, that's Acts 10 verses 1 through 4, Noah. It's about man. And I wonder if you could talk about all these thousands of people who gave much almost to the people. It's about all this. We saw in the visions that we had seen about the ninth hour of the day, that angel of God coming into them. His hands were up. He looked at one of them. He looked up, breathing, and said, where is this one? Great, thank you Noah. Charlie, Acts 10.24. And he became very hungry, and would have eaten. But while they made bread, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheep. and let them to the earth. Wherein for a long time before it was east of the earth, a wild beast was feeding there. Peter said, No, not so, Lord, for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. This was done for us, thus it was received from the head of the devil. Now I'll read it out to him himself. What this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made inquiry for Simon's house, and stood before the gate. I just needed you to read verse 24, but it's good that you're reading up to that because there's something very interesting about that. You're bringing together the point much better than I imagined, for sure. Now bring it home. 20 to 24. These are good ones. Go ahead. rise therefore and get thee down and go with them. That no one doubting you, nothing for I have sent them. And Peter went down to the pen, which were sent unto him from Cornelius, and said, Behold, I am he whom you seek. What is the cause therefore ye have come? And they said, Cornelius, a centurion, a just man, and one that fears God, and of good report among all the nations of the Jews, there is one from God, like an holy angel, to send for thee into this house, and to hear words of thee. Then call thee no end, and Thank you, Charlie. There's two characters here. They were from Caesarea. At the time now, we have a time span. For five years, Cornelius was the governor of Caesarea. In Caesarea, the governor would have known everybody. They would have had the lineup to pay the taxes. They would have seen him at the temples. They would have seen him out on the streets. So there are two figures here. And what's very important about this, I believe one of the reasons why Felix did not take Paul and off him many reasons actually but this is one of them. One because he declared he was a Roman citizen and that made it very dangerous for Felix to just off him like that. But all of a sudden basically we see a little bit of like possibly a compassion for Christianity because Paul was actually left in the prison but he was left in more of a federal prison. If you read these verses it says he was allowed to have friends. He was allowed to have people bring him like some kind of goods and some kind of nice things to have. And he could talk with them and he could minister to them. And that's very important for a lot of reasons. But here I believe Felix knew Cornelius because he was what? What was his profession? What was his faith? Yeah. But what was his faith? He was a Christian. He was a Roman centurion. Talk about a conundrum. Or an oxamoron. I mean, he's a Roman soldier, a Roman centurion. Remember at the foot of the cross, there was a Roman centurion that said truly this was the Son of God. Was it Cornelius? Could it have been? The time frame's not off. This Roman centurion loved Jesus. He loved Christ. But then there was another. Who else are we talking about here? Peter. There's no doubt in my mind Felix knew Peter. He was a better friend to Jesus than Peter. He was the one that spoke up at the Caesarea Philippi confession and said, Thou art the Christ of the living God. And he said at the end of John 11, which is one of the saddest chapters in the Bible, where all these disciples left Jesus and said, Thou have a hard saying, how can we know it? And our Lord Jesus Christ says to Peter, Are you going to leave me? Because only thou knowest eternal life. This is Peter. And so if Felix knows Peter and Felix knows Cornelius, he knew this. Christians had integrity. They had a good reputation. You see here that this Cornelius must have known Felix. Where was his headquarters? Acts 23, 33, who, when they came to Caesarea and delivered the epistle to the governor, presented Paul also before him. He was in Caesarea. Cornelius is a Roman centurion, and we see here about Peter. And Paul is speaking to Felix now about righteousness and the judgment of God. And Felix now makes his final deduction of this message. and turns Paul over. This is what happens. Claudius Laetius, to this point now, has never even shown up. And we see this in verse 23. Look at this. Does Antonio, Antonius Felix, which is his full name, does he release Paul? Not at all. He gives him liberty to have visitors and forbid no one to see him, but he keeps him in custody, which he should have never done. The problem is he's kept in prison. At this point, this brings up an incredible political lesson. At this point, it's more of a liberal kind of federal type of prison that perhaps Paul was not rotting in, like a basement with rats, and it was wet, and it was horrible, and cold with wet surroundings. Perhaps this time his arms were not stretched out in chains, but he was left there for two years, and that's a long time. He could have friends. And it's very evident here that there is a very, very good possibility. The writings of Josephus kind of allude towards this. But if he was allowed to have friends, if these words were written and such detail is given in these chapters, this would tell us the whole time Dr. Luke was with him. He was in prison with him and he was sitting there writing down and dictating these words that we're reading in the book of Acts. Paul had no idea that these words that he's writing in the book of Acts, billions of people would read these words and many people would be brought to the gospel of Jesus Christ by these very words and the detail that's here in this book. I think that's incredible. Why did he do it? Why did Felix do it? Even in our culture today, where our judicial system is set up comparable to some of the judicial systems in Rome, there is an axiom, a statement accepted as true as the basis for argument that says justice delayed is justice denied. And now we're seeing that in our own court systems, letting people just rot in jail. Look at the one man that had to go into the Fulton prison that was defending Trump in the election. They left him there. The governor, the judge decides to go on one of his little paid for vacations over the weekend. and left that man in a jail for six days, and they showed pictures of that jail. It was one of those filthy, vile things I've ever seen, where this poor man that had done nothing wrong two weeks ago had to stay there for six days away from his family, done nothing wrong. And that's what we have today. Justice delayed is justice denied. It's not justice. To appease the Jewish council, was to be judged by expediency. Was it any different with Pilate at the fixed trial of Jesus? Lady Justice had a veil over her eyes. Justice is to be blind. Lady Justice peeked to see which way the wind was blowing and to look out the window to see who grabbed the baton and ran with it with the masses. Money's always at the bottom of that. Does this sound familiar? Look at what happens in our courts today. Who knows Ashley Babbitt? Does anybody remember Ashley Babbitt? Who is she? Yeah. She was in our Air Force. She actually belonged to the Capitol National Guard Guardians, where she was defending people. Michael Byrd of the Capitol Police. Such a chivalrous, absolute, strong, courageous man, takes a gun and shoots her in her neck, murders her. Murders her in broad daylight. Does anybody hear what happened to him? Yeah. He's now the captain of the Capitol Police after murdering this woman. It happened two weeks ago. Talk about Lady Justice not being blind. She had her veil off on that one. Tell me that's not sending a message. Lady Justice pulled her blind off and smiled and thumbed at a murderer. This is what wicked rulers do. And then if Felix isn't bad enough, then there's this very interesting girl that pops up. Who's the girl's name? Drusilla. Yeah, Lisa. I was just going to say, you know, there's a text called Go, for reasons that I don't want to get into here, but at the same time, it also, I mean, he was from an involved world. He was terrified. Yes, he was. Right. Because of the concern of the cat for being his own life, he just, you know, he kept him there until he...talked to him. Right. And then, for a point, he did. But, see, if you do something like that, you have to protect that. You have to protect it. That's not good. But, you know, he was probably, at that time, it was... He talked to him temporarily. And then we read the last two verses. We see what really happened. Same thing that would happen today if we were in one of our local court systems. I get I get disdain when I see this because this is us now. This is where we're at now. This is very interesting. Drusilla. She's not even 20 years old yet. She's already been married and Felix actually from all accounts and from everything I read, Felix fancied her because she was beautiful. She had already been married. She's barely 20 years old now. What does he do? for the years that he was in the governor's mansion, he went and got her, took her away from her husband, and had her live with him. He was living in sin with Drusilla. She was wicked, very wicked. And the reason why, let me read you this, she's not even 20 years old, it's Felix's third wife now. Felix is her second husband. Her first husband was a lesser monarch from Assyria and did not embrace Judaism at all. Felix played the fence. Felix found Drusilla at 16 years old and lived with Felix before she married him. And by the way, Drusilla and Felix had a son named Agrippa. Didn't turn out too well for Drusilla and Agrippa. Felix had his own problems, and it's said that he may have been executed. But Drusilla and Agrippa were killed, and their ashes were in that of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, buried by the ashes of Mount Vesuvius. Drusilla and Felix, they both heard Paul. And here's what I love. Paul steps up. I don't want to get off of my notes because I have a little more impact on my notes than what I'm remembering here. I try to remember some because I don't want to just read and read and read and read. I like to say things. But here, Paul gives another defense. I can't get enough of it. If there were a thousand defenses, I'd want to read every one of them. There are more defenses that are not recorded in scripture. I'd love to read them. This defense is a little bit different. The last defense was specifically about the gospel, which is what you need to do, which you have is to open up with the gospel. Like Paul would go into the Jewish synagogues and he would start and go to the Jewish, those synagogues. He would give the gospel. He would drive home the gospel of Jesus Christ. They would come after him. They would want to, they would want to incarcerate him. And then he would say, all right, I'll shake the dust off again. I will go out into the streets and I'm going to bring this to the Gentiles. And here he doesn't just do it in the streets as some kind of like open air preaching. He does it right in the courtroom. And he stands there and basically he's getting the law of the Romans thrown at him. But Paul has another law. He throws back the law of the Jews back in the Old Testament, right back in Felix's face. And then he gives him the law of God, talks about temperance, as we see here in the verse, which verse, let's read that again, because it's so important. We see this Paul in verse 25. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come, like Lisa said, Felix trembled and answered. But then he says, go thy way for this time. Be gone from me. I've heard enough. And so here's what happens. Paul is reasoning of righteousness. Paul gives another account. He reasons of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come. He preaches the gospel and the wrath of God. And he gives another account here. He doesn't give some mystical divinity, nor a deep academic doctrinal thesis, but a rational, practical preaching, just teaching, just like you would read in the end of Romans 12. No doubt Paul continued with the bodily death of Christ, his perfect resurrection and his mediatorial work between God and man. He taught soberly and righteously. And in Titus 2, 12 and 13 we read, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present world. looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. We should not be mingling with the world, because the world will suck us in and turn us into nothing. And Paul knew that. That's why he said so many times, oh, wretched man that I am. He saw what he had done previously in his life. Who will free me from the wrath that God can give me? And here he's standing in front of Felix and Drusilla, and he's saying, you're not righteous. You're not temperate. You're a violent, bloodthirsty man. And then he says, there's a judgment coming. You think I'm scared of your law? Wait till you stand before my God. And listen, we all have a date. We will all be standing before Him. All of us. Paul's reasoning of righteousness and temperance is due to Felix's unrighteousness and intemperance. Paul is the one in custody and he is a reigning Felix before Drusilla. Ephesians 5, 6 says, Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Here Paul is the watchman given fair warning to both these wicked, adulterous tyrants. And here Luke emphasizes that Paul is putting the emphasis on righteousness. I'm just wondering if he was doing to Felix the very same thing John the Baptist did to Herod. And he's warning him and saying, you're an adulterer. What are you doing with this woman? I mean, so basically we've covered every single point of the fact that Paul could have died a thousand deaths by now. He should have been dead. He should have been dead on the road when the horsemen saved him. And now he's standing there, you talk about machismo and guts, he's standing there telling Felix he's an unrighteous man and he's the one in chains. That's why I find that incredible how you talk about a superhero, he's got real guts, but he doesn't care about himself. What's he really saying? He's telling Felix for me to live as Christ, to die as Gain. Don't threaten me with heaven. I'm not going to back off. And you know, here's another thing he doesn't do. This is what I love. He's getting the Roman law presented to Paul, but Paul turns the tables and he's taking Felix to the law of God and declared that he's not a non-righteous man. Here's what he doesn't do. You would think that Paul would be crying out, get me out of this place. I'll do whatever you want. I want out of here. But he is saying for me to live as Christ and to die as Cain, he is not at all cowering to the Roman establishment empire. But he was basically saying, don't threaten me with heaven. He does not go to Felix and say, I tell you what, Felix, if you give my church some exemptions if you give my church some financial backing I'll go back to the Christian church I will tell them to keep their mouth shut just let me mention Jesus every now and then and say Jesus this Jesus that I won't talk about Drusilla I won't talk about Nero I won't talk about all these men and I'll just sit back on my hands and we will just have a nice big ecumenical church here I'll try to rub noses with the Pharisees I'll try to get along with the Sadducees even they don't believe in a resurrection not own your life. He wouldn't even take a bribe. He wouldn't even allow Felix to be bribed. He wouldn't even offer him a dime. And we see Felix said, well, if he at least bribed me and given me some good money, maybe I would have let him go for a little while. We even doubt he would have done that. Paul does not cower. Just told Felix basically all he cared about is Paul told him what is going to happen to him. when he dies, and he says, you are an unrighteous man. So what happens? Felix goes back to his quarters, no doubt with all the other politicians, and basically says, yeah, that's what you get when you talk to the radical right. That's when you talk to these Jesus freaks, these crazy Christians, because he certainly wanted to protect himself. And he wanted to honor the Jewish council and make sure that he kept his standing with them. And that's how he was left. It's amazing that now Felix will only last another two years before he is upended from his political duties. And hear what happened. Felix rejected the moment of conviction. His conscience was sealed as with a hot iron. 1 Timothy 4.2 says, Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared as with a hot iron. What a tragedy. Can you imagine Paul the Apostle coming to you and talking to you about righteousness? If he did that, you better learn about righteousness and you better listen to him. Felix just totally thumbs him in the nose. He says, well, sorry, you're going to rot in prison for two years. But it's amazing how you watch the lives of these so-called powerful politicians and how they start falling apart. Felix only lasts for a couple of years. But now was the day of salvation. And he rejected it. How many have said, I just want to have a good time now and we'll get around to going to church or thinking of eternity later? And they didn't make it. That's frightening, isn't it? Now is the day. The time is at hand. Why do you think Christ and John the Baptist started off saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is down the road a ways. You can wait, have fun, live it up, party. No. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is now. The axe is laid at the root of the tree. And it's about to fall over. You don't have time to wait. Paul knew many people. Felix wanted to bribe. Going back to what just happened to Felix, 2nd Corinthians 6.2 says, For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I secured thee. Behold, now is the accepted time. Behold, now is the day of salvation. Now, basically when it comes to this, there is no tomorrow. Now is the day. Don't wait. Felix called for a bribe, verse 26. He would have been thinking if the bond was lucrative enough, he might consider letting Paul go, maybe just for a season. Paul knew many people. He knew leaders. He knew people in the Pharisee, the Pharisee communities. He knew people in Corinth. He knew people in Corinth. They had money. That was a great trade region. And here we see in verse 26, he hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul. And then he sends an orphaner. That backs up basically what's saying here. He sends him like an accountant. or whatever, the guy that holds the money, and just kind of like, you know, hints. Maybe Paul would pay and give us enough money, and then we could do something. No, not Paul. He's not giving up anything. He is not for one minute going to bend. So, we see here in the last verse, in verse 27, But after two years, Portius Festus came into Felix's room. And Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound. That was a power play. That was to cater to the Jews once again. But then, if you didn't think Paul was courageous enough, I'll give you a window in next week and what happens. All of a sudden, Felix turns over Paul to Portius Festus. And he has more of a better demeanor. He doesn't go on vacation when he comes into the governorship. He gets right into Jerusalem and he starts working. And so basically he starts assessing the situation and he's figuring out the names of the players. Give him credit for that, he's doing his job, which very little politicians do. So he takes Paul under his wing and he says, Paul, I tell you what, I'll take you to Jerusalem. If you want to go to Jerusalem and be tried there, we'll give you a fair trial there. This is where Paul, I mean, if you didn't think he was a hero now, I mean, he just never, he never ceases to fail us. I'm not going to Jerusalem. I'm going to Caesar. He's going to Darth Vader. That's basically what he's doing. He's going to see the worst of the worst. And what's sad about this is at the time, who is the Caesar that he goes to see, that he's getting ready to see? the beast. But at this time in Nero's career, he's actually being mentored by a guy named Seneca, who was the brother of Galileo. And Seneca was actually kind of like a, what was his name under Paul? Gamaliel. I was about to say Gargamel, but that's a smurf. I want to say that. Gamaliel. And all of a sudden, he's much like that. And Seneca actually is mentoring Nero. And actually at the time, Nero is a normal guy. Until Paul gets in front of him. Then he turns into this maniac. And he just starts illuminating his gardens with Christians and killing them. And so basically Paul, I don't think Paul cared. I don't think he thought it was funny. But he was like, I am going to go in front of Caesar. And Festus says, then to Caesar you will go. And that's how it ends. That this next part of it, when we go into the next part, we'll see the details there. But this is quite an account here. I think the application that I love the most, I think that's most important in this, we read that we were in Acts chapter 24 today, verses 22 to 27. This part, I'm going to read this one more time and we'll finish. Paul gives another defense. And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled. That's what the gospel of Jesus Christ does to you. And the way Paul presented it, I can't imagine those words. I'd love to know what those words were, but it made him tremble. And he went back with Drusilla. He didn't want it. He was like, I don't want to hear this anymore. This is a hard saying. How can I know it? Sound familiar, Lisa? Right. All right. Right. Well, that's an interesting point. And it brings up something I think it's interesting that we can leave on this note now. I've said that before. We'll leave on this note. People talk about, I have my faith. You have your Jesus. I have my faith. And they like to say stuff like that. But do they ever tell you what their manifesto is? Where are the high priests right now in front of Felix giving their manifesto and talking to Paul why he's doctrinally wrong? They couldn't do it. They had nothing that they could say, just like our Lord. In front of Pilate, Pilate says, what is truth? He's standing there looking at the way of the truth and the life. And nobody could come up and defy what our Lord Jesus Christ said, because the truth just oozed out of him. And there was no defying that at all. And basically, nobody would stand up and try to even begin to go after our Lord and go head-to-head with Him like these debaters all over the country now with the resurrection and them now talking about Sodom and Gomorrah has nothing to do with homosexuality and all that. That just came out yesterday. We were talking about that earlier. No, they couldn't debate Paul because he had the truth on his side. And what did Paul say later on? You can do nothing against the truth, but what? For the truth. We'll end with that. And Jacob, could you close us with prayer? Thank you.