Acts 24:27-25:5 (NIV)
When two years had passed, Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus, but because Felix wanted to grant a favor to the Jews, he left Paul in prison.
Three days after arriving in the province, Festus went up from Caesarea to Jerusalem, where the chief priests and Jewish leaders appeared before him and presented the charges against Paul. They urgently requested Festus, as a favor to them, to have Paul transferred to Jerusalem, for they were preparing an ambush to kill him along the way. Festus answered, “Paul is being held at Caesarea, and I myself am going there soon. Let some of your leaders come with me and press charges against the man there, if he has done anything wrong.”
Paul’s imprisonment in Caesarea lasted two whole years – much longer than anyone would have imagined. But, as we saw in the last section, Paul had become a political prisoner. Even though Felix knew that Paul was innocent of the charges against him, he couldn’t figure out how to release him without causing a major uproar. So, when he was summoned back to Rome, he left Paul in prison as a “favor” to the Jewish leadership, a problem for his successor to deal with if he saw fit.
The next governor, Porcius Festus, knew nothing about Paul when he arrived in Jerusalem, but the Jewish leaders there gave him an earful of information. They figured that, being new to the province, Festus would probably be open to acceding to their request in order to save himself the problem of having to deal with this political prisoner. All he needed to do was to send Paul to Jerusalem, to the Sanhedrin, so that he could be “legally” tried in the correct venue.
But these leaders, whitewashed tombs indeed, had no plans to conduct a trial, legal or otherwise. Instead, they had already set up an ambush designed to intercept the transport and kill Paul before he ever arrived in Jerusalem.
Thankfully, Festus was a justice-minded man. His discernment showed him that something was not quite right about this request, so he denied it, foiling the plot. He was anxious to clear up this matter, but it had to be done in accordance with the high standards of Roman law, not Jewish law. Therefore, anyone with charges against Paul must come to Caesarea with him and present their case in his legal court.
Even though two years had passed since Paul’s arrest and transfer to Caesarea, God still had not forgotten him, as he himself knew. God was still moving people and events toward the end that He had planned. And so, Paul simply waited and worked.
Father, as a rule we are an impatient species. Once we have an objective or goal in mind, we want to get there in the shortest time possible. But You don’t work that way. It was literally thousands of years from Your first promise of the Messiah (Genesis 3:15) to its fulfillment (Galatians 4:4-5). But in those thousands of years, You worked in and through people to orchestrate events so that, when Jesus finally arrived, things were ready, not just for him, but for the explosive growth and expansion of Your kingdom through Him and His followers. It has been two thousand years since Jesus promised to return, and we are still waiting. But in that time, You have been working in and through people to greatly increase the reach of Your gospel in order to save more and more people before the final trumpet (2 Peter 3:8-10). Lord, help us to have patience, to wait expectantly, diligently doing Your work in the waiting time, just like Paul. Amen.
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