Good Monday May eighteenth as we learn God’s word to grow in our faith.
Paul’s nephew just happened to be in the right place to hear the plot being arranged by some forty men with the leaders of the Sanhedrin. The plan was to have the Sanhedrin ask the commander to bring Paul again before them and before he’d get there that this group of forty plus men would kill Paul on the road. The nephew told Paul who told him to share what he had heard with the commander who is Lysias. Remember Paul had been told by Jesus Himself that he Paul would go and preach the gospel in Rome, but how Paul got there and when, Paul had no idea, only the word that he would be in Rome before kings. Isaiah 55:8“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.” Proverbs 20:24 “Man’s steps are ordered by the Lord. How then can a man understand his way?” Sometimes I believe not knowing the details protects us from the worry, and here Paul knows without a doubt that he will be in Rome, and why? Because the Word of God, Jesus the Son of God, told him, and that was final. 2Peter 1:13 “By his divine power the Lord has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of the one who called us by his own honor and glory.” Let’s read together from Acts 23:31-35 “Then the soldiers, as they were commanded, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris. The next day they left the horsemen to go on with him, and returned to the barracks. When they came to Caesarea and had delivered the letter to the governor, they also presented Paul to him. And when the governor had read it, he asked what province he was from. And when he understood that he was from Cilicia, he said, “I will hear you when your accusers also have come.” And he commanded him to be kept in Herod’s Praetorium.” Luke tells us the soldiers from Jerusalem travel through the night and come to Antipatris which was a Roman military outpost some thirty five miles northwest of Jerusalem halfway to where Felix is in the city of Caesarea. The two hundred plus foot soldiers are released to go back to Jerusalem having done their job protecting Paul and getting him safely out of Jerusalem. Luke then says that the rest of the soldiers brought Paul to Caesarea where Felix will hear from Paul and soon those leaders from Jerusalem. Interesting Felix according to Luke first asks, “What province he was from” why would he asks this question. It was important for Romans to get a fair trial, and that one needed to be before their own peers, and the person judging them needed to be the correct person to try them, so Felix asks and is told Paul was from Cilicia a province which he oversees.
Understand Paul like you and I are now citizens of heaven, although we may be on earth living in the state city we reside in our hometown now, we are citizens of heaven. John 18:36 “Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”Paul is being hated because he has been transformed from his old religious beliefs to knowing the truth that God loves all and wants none to parish. After Felix learns that Paul is in the right place, Paul then is taken by the soldiers to the hall of judgment “Herod’s Praetorium.” Do you know God’s plans for you? Remnant
