“Crazy Like a Christian”
Acts 25-26
August 10, 2008
It’s what Patsy Cline sang that that was what she was, for making the mistake of falling in love. It’s what Paul Simon sang that he still was, “after all these years”. Alanis Morrisette and Aerosmith have weighed in on the subject in song; Britney Spears said that we drove her there, and apparently now, Gnarls Barkley wonders the same thing, if he/they/we are…crazy. “Crazy” is the verdict that one man reached about the apostle Paul, and it’s our subject of study for the morning.
Prologue: A Crazy Scenario – Acts 25
Here’s chapter 25 in a nutshell, a chapter which serves to set up the events of chapter 26, a crazy scenario involving the continuing trial of a man who by all rights should be free: Paul. The arrival of Porcius Festus in Palestine was a welcome event, following as it did on the heels of the disastrous administration of the ruthless governor Felix. OK, let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning, because I know what most of you are thinking: Festus? The situation when Festus arrived in approximately A.D. 60 was one which required immediate action, as there were many opposing factions within the Jewish nation which threatened the Roman peace. Thus, he spent only three days getting settled into his quarters in Caesarea before heading to Jerusalem.
When he got there, the Jewish religion boys again attempted to cook Paul’s goose, by asking Festus to bring him to Jerusalem. After he’d been in prison for two years, their hatred for him still burned hot. Another attempt would be made at an ambush, to kill Paul; failing that, they reasoned, perhaps they could get him into a Jewish trial before the Sanhedrin on the single charge of profaning the temple, and they could convict him and execute him on that charge. They knew that these charges of rebellion and treason they’d made against Paul were a shot in the dark, since they really didn’t have any evidence to support them.
Festus instead invited the religion boys back to Caesarea to try him there, and similarly to what we saw in the last chapter, they ended up unable to prove their charges. But instead of releasing Paul, Festus gives him the option of going back to Jerusalem for trial there. Paul though, knowing that nothing good was likely to come of returning to Jerusalem, claims his ultimate right as a Roman citizen: he appeals to Caesar in Rome. And though Festus had it in his power to simply acquit Paul of the charges, it might have been political suicide, as the newly-appointed governor of the region, to tick off the leaders of the very people he was governing; to grant Paul’s wish of an appeal to Rome would get this fellow out of his hair once and for all!
We’re introduced in :13 to King Agrippa, who is the ruler of the kingdom that adjoined to the north that of Festus, and so he and his sister Bernice come to pay their respects to the new governor. Since Rome considered Agrippa an authority on the Jewish religion, Festus decided that maybe Agrippa could help figure out what to do with this sticky Paul fellow. After laying out the whole scenario to Agrippa, Agrippa decided he’d like to hear for himself what Paul had to say.
And so in come Agrippa and his sister, Bernice, with great pomp, arrayed in purple and with golden crowns on their heads. Festus, because of the occasion, would have donned the scarlet robe of the governorship. Paul, by contrast, had on the meager clothing of a prisoner, not to speak of chains. Question: who has the power in this scenario? Is it the king with all the trappings of royalty and splendor, or the governor in his territory, or is it the prisoner in chains? Agrippa had the title, Festus the position, but Paul had the message of the gospel, the “power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). The power of the state, in all its splendor, comes face to face with the power of God. Now, with that set-up, we look at the longest testimony Paul gives in the book of Acts. It starts with
I. A Crazy Opening - 26:1-3
What made this opening crazy? Consider the heritage of King Agrippa, as Paul stood before him. His great-grandfather, Herod the Great, had plotted to have the infant Jesus put to death. His grandfather, Herod Antipas, had beheaded John the Baptist. His father had put James, brother of John, to death with the sword. He was a vile man, living in an incestuous relationship with Bernice, his full-blood sister. And here he sits in royal pomp, listening to this physically-unimpressive prisoner give an oration, a prisoner who represents the very movement that his family has been instrumental in persecuting for generations. A lesser man would have been quite intimidated, but Paul was ready, armed to the teeth with the life-changing power of the gospel, and the indwelling Holy Spirit, armed and ready to confront the entire lot with the message of Christ, from the pompous king to the rest.
Likely still remembering the rash words which he had used against the high priest Ananias, Paul makes doubly certain that he addresses King Agrippa with the respect due a man of his stature—even if his personal life, like that of Felix as we saw last week, was in shambles.
II. A Crazy Irony - :4-8
There were many who remembered Paul from his youth, sitting at the feet of the great Jewish teacher Gamaliel, who could testify to the zeal with which he had pursued God. And his Pharisee brethren had shared not only a belief in the resurrection of the dead, but a belief as well in the coming of a Messiah who would deliver them. In Jesus, Paul had found the answer to both questions: Christ had established His claim as Messiah by Himself rising from the dead.
How ironic that the charges brought against Paul were brought by Jews, people who above all others ought to know that there was more to this life than this life, who of all people ought to know that the God Who had brought them into existence was a God big enough to raise to life those who were dead. Some of those same accusers had undoubtedly seen Jesus perform miracles, perhaps even raising dead bodies to life again.
Paul is on trial because of his hope. We need to be able to give a reason for the hope that is in us. Ours is a sure hope. We hope in the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and earth, and in His Son, Jesus Christ.
III. A Crazy Zeal - :9-11
Before his conversion, though Paul accepted the resurrection of the dead, he did not accept the idea that Jesus had risen from the grave. And the fact that others did—when he considered Jesus to be an impostor—made him furious, and drove him, in his zeal, to desperate acts against the Way.
Say this for the pre-conversion Paul: he was a man who was filled with zeal. Misplaced zeal, to be sure, crazy zeal, but he was a man of deep conviction and determination to live his life committed to his beliefs. Why did he make such an effective follower of Christ? Because he understood what many of us as professing Christ-followers do not: Christ calls for our all, our best efforts, our full surrender, whereas we often are all too willing to give Him our second- or third-best efforts, even our leftovers.
IV. A Crazy Testimony - :12-18
Think about how crazy this must have sounded to the ears of a secular pagan such as Festus. King Agrippa had heard some of this before, but Festus may well have been getting this firsthand for the first time. A blinding light on a backroad? A dead man, speaking? And even crazier, Paul, a seemingly rational guy, telling this story in the first person? Small wonder Festus reaches the verdict he’ll reach!
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” To Paul Jesus had been, one minute, a dead religious pretender, and the next, the risen Lord. And notice this fact as well: to persecute the followers of Jesus, as Paul had been doing, was to persecute Jesus Himself.
“It is hard for you to kick against the goads” was an expression indicating opposition to God; Paul makes it plain to his Jewish listeners that it was God that he had been opposing when he was fighting against Jesus and His followers. And it’s not easy to fight against God. It takes effort to resist the work of the Holy Spirit, drawing us toward Him. And I wonder if God is drawing some of you—I believe He is.
Christ not only appeared to Paul to bring him from darkness to light, but He gave Paul a mission—something that He does for each of us, albeit not generally as dramatically as a blinding light and an audible voice from Heaven.
V. A Crazy Mission - :19-21
In the previous verses, Paul’s call is clear: he is to be a servant and a witness, a servant of both Christ and people, and a witness of Christ to people. In the power of God, eyes blinded by sin will be opened; those wandering in darkness will see the light for the first time. Those under the power of Satan’s influence will find themselves forgiven members of the family of God. Now, in these verses, we hear Paul give testimony to his faithfulness to the call of God. Did Paul have some idea that this mission God was sending him on would be fraught with difficulty, pain, imprisonment? Sure. But Paul now had a new Master, and since the word “Lord” was more than idle chatter for him, he knew that he had to do what his new Lord required.
Notice something else that is true about the message Paul preached: conversion is more than simply adding eternal fire insurance; it involves a radical reorientation of our lives around a new life purpose, because our lives are now organized around a new Master. The entailment of the gospel of Christ is changed lives. Paul speaks of “deeds in keeping with repentance”. This is always the case: those who have been saved by the power of God evidence the reality of their salvation by living lives committed to Him, lives characterized not by old-lifestyle words and deeds, but by doing the will of God.
VI. A Crazy Message - :22-23
Though the Jews had opposed him in taking the gospel directly to non-Jews, Paul testified that he had received the help and comfort of God, and had testified to everyday people as well as, now, to kings about the fact that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah promised by the Old Testament prophets. Paul includes the basics of the gospel story: the necessary sufferings (and death), as well as the resurrection, of Christ, and His proclamation of light to the whole world, Jews and Gentiles alike.
Isn’t this a crazy message? As we’ll see in the next verse, this was where Festus reached his limit. But I fear that twenty centuries, and the familiarity of the message, can tend to deafen us to the radical, yea “crazy”, idea that the central tenet of our faith is the belief that a man dead and buried rose physically to life again. One writer speaks of “what a challenge the resurrection of Christ is to any human worldview… If, in general, resurrections do not happen, then what is claimed about Jesus did not occur. But if it did happen to Jesus, then a central feature of one's worldview, belief about what happens after death, must be radically reoriented.” This is what Paul was preaching, that something which is utterly foreign to our experience—resurrection from the dead—had happened to Jesus Christ, and that further, it happens to all people, a life after this life, lived forever in either Heaven or hell. And for all of humankind, the watershed moment, the turning point, the rise-or-fall dividing line, is the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Festus, not having likely heard much before in the way of Christian proclamation, could contain himself no longer. He declared his verdict on Paul:
VII. A “Crazy” Verdict - :24
He acknowledged that Paul was a learned man, but this talk of a man rising from the grave sounded like that of a crazy man. Rising in Festus’ pagan, materialistic mind were so many objections to Paul’s seemingly self-defeating way of thinking and living that he could no longer contain himself.
Festus’ words are similar to words echoed down through the ages by people so preoccupied with what can be seen that the idea of the supernatural is offensive to them. Let’s face it: a resurrection contradicts common sense, does it not? It sounds…crazy! We don’t see these things happening; when we attend a funeral, none of us expect to see the dead person rise up from the casket and begin walking and speaking. It just doesn’t happen in the normal course of our lives. Further, it would seem to contradict common sense for us to do some of the things that we do as followers of Christ:
• Freely give our money away in a church offering plate/box
• Give our time to help strangers
• Refuse to cheat to get ahead
• Speak/act with polite patience when we are abused
• Stand on principle in a pragmatic, do-what-works world
• Care for people who can’t care for us in return
And so on. Some people call us crazy…are we?
VIII. A Crazy Challenge - :25-29
Crazy? “Au contraire”, is Paul’s response. The ministry of Jesus was well-known in Jerusalem, and Agrippa would be well aware of it. Jesus’ death and resurrection were widely known, and had been preached for three decades now throughout the region. Now, the prisoner becomes the interrogator: “surely, King, you believe the prophets?” In other words, “compare what the Old Testament prophets said with what you know to be true of Jesus. Search it out! Really take a look at it!” Christian faith invites investigation; Christian faith isn’t averse to honest questions. But here is the thing: search! Look! Determine to find the truth, and don’t stop looking until you find it! Take the initiative, and don’t take the “one of these days I’ll get around to it” approach that many seem to take. Paul had done what could scarcely be imagined by the observers: he, the prisoner, had put a deeply-personal question to the king himself; had ever a prisoner acted with such impertinence as to call the king to examine his own life?
This question embarrassed Agrippa and put him on the defensive; doubtless he had not expected to be himself put in the crosshairs of Paul’s testimony. Agrippa, searching for an answer, evades the question; not wanting to really have to answer publicly in front of others as to the state of his own heart, he parries Paul’s advance by asking, “do you think you can so quickly persuade me to become a Christian?” By the way, this is one of those few points at which, if you typically carry a KJV, the wording there is regrettable; even the old hymn, “Almost Persuaded”, is based on this wording. Paul had not “almost” convinced him to become a Christian, but rather startled, searching for an answer, Agrippa had responded that he couldn’t pull it off in such a short time!
Paul is ready on the draw with a comeback: with extreme politeness, he replied that it was his prayer that in time, his hope was that Agrippa would become like himself. Undoubtedly, this hope and prayer extended as well to all the other dignitaries seated there. Then, recognizing sheepishly that he had a chain attached to him, he probably raised the shackles in the air and said, “oh, uh, except for these chains!”
Crazy…that’s what they called Paul, for believing in a dead Man Whom Paul said was risen from the grave, for wasting his life, undergoing persecution, pain, imprisonment, and ultimately execution because of his faith in Jesus Christ. Are we…crazy?
I began this morning by reciting the names of just a few folks who had sung on the subject: “crazy”. I’d like to finish with a song that I hope rings in your mind as you talk around the tables. Appropriately, it’s also named…”Crazy”. Meach, can you put the different slides/verses up as the song plays in the background??? Thanks!
Table Talk
We are to be ready at all times to give a reason for the hope that is in us, according to the Bible. How would you answer the person who says that Christian faith is “crazy”? That the idea of a resurrection is “crazy”? That living our lives for God is “crazy”?
