Paul Before Festus

Passage: Acts 25:1-12

Introduction.

The Bible is truly the most remarkable book ever written.  There is no other book like it, which stands to reason since it is written by God.  As you know the Bible is actually a library of 66 books.  Written over a period of 1600 years on two continents, in three languages, by 40 different authors from a wide range of backgrounds and educations, who wrote in a wide variety of genres.  There are histories, prophecies, poetry, wisdom literature, apocalyptic literature, letters and a new genre called Gospels.

All of this makes preaching the Bible an interesting challenge as you try to navigate and interpret all these different styles of writing.  The narrative or historical books have there own challenge.  The temptation that is easy to fall into is to just preach the facts, the events.  He did this and then this happened and then some more things happened.

When I come to a text like ours this morning I pray and I ask God to open His Word to me to understand not just what it meant then, but what it means now.  I am asking “so what?”  My concern is to get past just information to transformation, how does this speak to our consciences, how does this confront our sin, how does this strengthen our faith and encourage us in hope?

I will speak to each of those three things as we look at God’s Word given to us for our benefit.