Almost Persuaded

Passage: Acts 26:24-32

Acts 26:24-25, Governor Festus, this is completely crazy.

This is a pastor’s nightmare.  You’re preaching along, really getting into the heart of your message when suddenly someone yells, “Pastor, you’re crazy.  You’re out of your mind.”

Paul was just warming up to his defense of the Gospel.  He was coming to the best part, the part he loved the most, the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This was his passion, this is why he suffered all he suffered, this is what made all the suffering worth it.  This was the light for a dark world.

One wonders if as he became more passionate he might also have become more animated, moving and gesturing, chains clanging.

It appears Paul had more to say, but he was interrupted.  Festus had heard all he could stand.  And even though this is King Agrippa’s trial, Festus interrupts it.

Festus was a pagan Roman politician.  He was ignorant of Judaism and Christianity (25:19).  He was an atheist Festus with no categories for the possibility of a god breaking into our world.  This resurrection business was all a bunch of crazy talk, just religious superstition, not logical, not rational.

He was a materialist, this world is all there is, all you get.  He worshiped the idols of this world, money, sex, and power.  He was a hedonist who could not even begin to conceive of anyone choosing a life of suffering over a life of pleasure.  That’s just plain crazy.