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In this episode of The Bible Guys, Jeff and Chris explore Acts 25, where Paul stands trial before Festus and once again faces accusations for his faith. Despite pressure from leaders and opposition, Paul remains steady and appeals to Caesar.Jeff and Chris unpack what it looks like to trust God when your situation feels out of your control. They discuss integrity, patience, and staying grounded in truth even when circumstances are uncertain.If you’re navigating unfair situations or waiting on God’s timing, this episode will encourage you to remain faithful.🎧 Listen now and learn how to stand firm when everything feels uncertain. #TheDailyBibleGuys #Acts25 #FaithUnderPressure #TrustGod #ChristianLiving #BibleStudyPodcast #FaithInAction
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Well, Jeff, today we're going to be experiencing an infest the station. What infest the station? Are you talking about the governor Fastus? Oh? Yes, Okay, Well he's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible Guides. Okay, Chris, He tried to say, Okay, Chris, all right, Well, I'm just so excited about this one. I always say it, and I have to say it again. I love the Babylon B segments. That's right. Well, you know, we only get the best news for people and the highest quality, and so our favorite kind of news is satire, and so the Babylon B is always satire. There's a very important article that I thought was going to be important for you personally. When I saw this, I thought this is going to really mean something to you. Here's the headline. Japanese admit that sushi was just a massive prank to see if they could get people to eat raw fish. Which is great. This is my favorite fit. Yeah, yeah, I know you love sushi. We just had sushi together, did Yeah, we did. Yeah. So the Prime Minister of Japan admitted today that sushi was just a giant prank by the people in Japan. To see if they could get people to actually eat raw fish. We got you, good laugh, Prime Minister at Plumo Kashita. It's been so hard keeping a straight face watching you dopes eat raw fish. This is the best prank in the history of pranks. The joke reportedly started in nineteen seventy four. It was hatched by the Prime Minister Prime Minister chef during a visit by President Gerald Ford. Just for giggles, the chef put a piece of raw fish on mister Ford's plate and said it was Japanese tradition to eat it that way, said historian Amiko Nikaya. To everyone's shot, mister Ford proceeded to take a huge bite of raw tuna. The Prime Minister had to leave the room as he couldn't hide his laughter. Thus sushi was born. Ever since the prank's inception, Japanese chefs are taking delight and create progressively more disgusting creations to see what people will eat. It's insane. We can roll up raw fish and literal seaweed, but then call it a dragon roll and people will eat it. To Kai, I love dragon rolls. The other day, one of the other chefs dared me to put fish eggs on top of rawsquid and call it Emperor's delight. A dozen people ate it. Oh man, I was gagging behind the counter just watching them. The Japanese people also admitted that they came up with the idea of karaoke just to watch people make idiots to themselves. Oh my goodness, that is so funny, just just the idea that they are sitting behind the scenes. Good. Can't believe you eat it, you crazy people, and you do it. Man, you love it. I love sush You eat sushi every day. I mean it'd be you know, too high in murky. I couldn't do it, but but but I gotta tell you my taste buds would want to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you love it. What's your favorite? Love it sushi listeners? To be honest with you, I my go to is a rainbow roll. So it's it's it's all. It's pretty much a California role with an overlay of different types of raw fish. So so then they slice it, so sometimes you'll get like just avocado laid over, and sometimes you'll get you know, salmon, then you get whitefish, then you get you know, my favorite, which is uh the salmon. Then you get the raw tuna and then I think, uh oh, then shrimp as well. So those are those are the ones. So you love it? Oh, love it? You love it, love it, love it. So I like, if you ever go and you're not sure to our listeners, if you're not sure that whether or not you like sushi, just order it tempura. That means they fry it right right and is going to be good. Yeah. Yeah. So we were in East Africa one time. We were in Dara, Salam and we had a bunch of the African pastors with us, and uh, we had an evening that was kind of free and so chat our executive pastor and I we were like, hey, let's go to the sushi place. Supposed to be the best sushi place in East Africa's right on the Indian Ocean. And so we invited several of these pastors and they got there and they said they don't cook the fish. We said no, and they're like, we are not eating this stuff. And so they ordered, you know, we ordered a couple other things and they ate all the appetizers, ate everything else, but they wouldn't eat the sushi. For a long time. Finally, one of the guys tried it, and you know, Chad was showing them, you know, put it on the ginger, put it on the what's the green stuff sabi, and then put a little sic sauce. It's like umami in your mouth is so good, and so on. One of the guys tried it because you and next thing you know, he's just hitting it hard. And next thing you know, all these guys it was like a vacuum cleaner. So they went for thirty minutes, wouldn't touch it, and like in seven minutes, every piece of sushi was gone. So they went from being afraid of it to loving it. And I think a lot of times people are just afraid of what they don't know. You just described the journey for every person who tries fish for the first time. Yeah, yeah, right, Oh no, no, no, that's not everybody everybody's journey, but everybody who continues. Everybody who loves sushi. Yeah, everybody loves sushi says I was afraid of it and then I tried it. Yeah, I love it. It's fun, it's fun to try new things. But as it turns out, according to the Babylon Beat, it was always prank. It was never supposed to be taken here. That concept is really really funny. Okay, So yesterday we talked a little bit about how Festus's job kind of comes to an end during this two year Felix's Yeah, I'm sorry, Felix's job comes to an end at the end of this two year period. And then God has the Roman Empire appoint this guy named Festus, and Festest comes in. He's a man of integrity, and so he decides, hey, this is crazy, We're leaving this Roman citizen, you know, without having finished this trial. So, if Felix was the predecessor to ponscious Pilot, he was a successor or successor, not processor, right, then Portius Festus was the he comes after. Yeah, the successor is the same job. That Pilot had right now is the governor of Judas. Which, by the way, is interesting because I'm not sure I ever thought about that before. Yeah, yeah, same guy. Yeah, interesting role. So it says three days after Festus arrived in Cesarea to take over his new responsibilities, he left for Jerusalem, where the leading priests and other Jewish leaders met with him and made their accusations against Paul. They asked Festus as a favor to transfer Paul to Jerusalem, planning to ambush and kill him on the way. They'd already failed at this two years before, but they're going to do it again. But Festus replied that Paul was at Cesarea and he himself would be returning there soon, So he said, those of you in authority can return with me. If Paul's done anything wrong, you can make your accusations about it. Eight or ten days later, Festus returned to Cesarea, and on the following day he took a seat in court ordered that Paul be brought in. When Paul arrived, the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem gathered around and made many serious accusations they couldn't prove. Paul denied the chargers. I'm not guilty of any crime against the Jewish laws, or the temple or the Roman government, he said. Then Festus, wanting to please the Jews, asked him, are you willing to go to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there? But Paul replied no, this is the official Roman court, so I ought to be tried here. You know very well I'm not guilty of harmony the Jews. If I've done something roorthy of death, I don't refuse to die. But if I'm innocent, no one has a right to turn me over to these men to kill me. I appeal to Caesar. Festus conferred with his advisers, and then he replied, very well, you've appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar you will go. A few days later, King Agrippa arrived with his sister Bernice to pay their respects to Festus. During their stay of several days, Festus discussed Paul's case with the King. There's a prisoner here, he told him, whose case was left for me by Felix. When I was in Jerusalem. The leading priests and Jewish elders pressed charges against him and asked me to condemn him. I pointed out to them that Roman law does not convict people without a trial. It must be given an opportunity to confront their accusers defend themselves. When his accusers came here for the trial, I didn't delay. I called the case the very next day. Order Paul brought in, But the accusations made against him weren't of any crimes I expected. Instead, it was something about their religion and a dead man named Jesus, who Paul insists is alive. I was at a loss to know how to invest to gate these things, so I asked him whether or not he would be willing to stand trial on these charges in Jerusalem. But Paul appealed to have his case decided by the Emperor, so ordered that he be held in custody until I could arrange the sendate to Caesar. I'd like to hear the man myself, Agrippa said, and Festus replied, you will tomorrow. Are we reading all the way through? Or are we done? Isn't that where it ends? Yep, you're right? Okay. So that's so interesting, isn't it. And so he appeals to Caesar and infested this, of course, shows his integrity by not, you know, doing the favor of letting Paul be killed. And you know, and Paul just sticks to his guns. When I hear the word agrippa, you know what I think of. Losing it? No, no, no, no, I think of unless his enemy has studied his agrippa, which I have. That's a line from a. Movie Princess bratte Yes, yes, yes, remember. And then then he jumps over any flips and he says, unless his enemy is a studies a good. That's right, that's funny. My name is an Ego Montoya. Yeah, have to die. Yes, So King heered A Grippa. By the way, I also uh named a mop King Agrippa. Uh. When I was a janitor for a year or two years in college, we had these mops that would you know, the mop heads, but would have to be gripped, and so these things would loosen up and they would grip them up and then you have to sort of fasten it down. And uh. And I wanted that mop and so I put a big piece of tape on it. I called it king a gripping. It's another memory that has no bearing on this part. Not thank you. Yeah, well, you know, it's just rattling around. People are so interested in. These things, like, wow, Chris is so interesting. Yes, here's an idea talk about the Bible. You just read. That's so good. Ye, the mob guys, So there were there were a few King Agrippas, by the way. So this King Agrippa is King Agrippa the Second. He's the son of King agripp Of the First, which is clever, and the grandson of I think Herod the Great, is that right? Yeah, his great grandfather and his grandfather and his father all had the name Herod, right, they were all kings, but Herod the Great was in his line as well. So these guys are basically power players that have some They have some authority, but mostly their tax collector type guys, and they kind of work alongside of a governor. So where the governor like Pontius, Pilot or Felix are now Festus, they were more on the legal side of things and commanding the Roman garrison. The Agrippas or the Herods, they were kings that had a lot of authority, but were really more about being embedded in the region of Israel in Judea rather than being spread all over the Roman Empire like Festus, Felix, Pilot. They come and go. They come in, they serve a term, they stay a certain amount of time, and then they leave. The Herod family stays in power for a long period of time. It kind of rules alongside of them. That's that's how that works. But every one of these Herods is crooked, every one of them. Yeah, it says each generation had a confrontation with God that failed to realize the importance of the moment. Each generation of Herods of Herods. Yeah, yeah, it says Herod, a grip of the seconds great uncle Herod and Tippet Antipas. Antipas actually met Jesus during the trial, but failed to see him for who he was. Remember, he left Pilot and went and Pilot sent him to go see Herod wanted him to do miracles. He was Jesus was the hot potato back there. That's right, that's right, And Herod wanted Jesus do miracles, and Jesus wouldn't do any miracles. So Harrod got bored and sent him back to Tipilot. Right, And it says a grip of the second heard the gospel from Paul, but considered the message only mildly entertaining. And by the way, we're about to read and get into that later on. Right, he found it humorous that Paul actually tried to convince him to become a Christian, right, so, as we're about to see, right, Yeah, so he thinks that's humorous. Yeah, So that's interesting. So this narrative of Paul being you know, bounced around, you know, obviously it's got to be really bad in order for Paul to yell out, I appeal to Caesar and I would guess that Festus would be that was the best news Festus could have heard. Yeah, it would have been surprising because that's a pretty final thing, right, And I think they were all you know, Festus doesn't seem to be but Felix was looking for a bribe. Clearly the herods would have taken a bribe, right, They all were pretty bad. So it mentions Bernice here. So Bernice was a sister, a stepsister of different people she was having affairs with. She winds up going on and becoming a mist of Titus, the son of the emperor. She's not a good person either. These people are are just antithetical to everything Paul was about. But Paul is showing gentleness and peace with them and trying to share the gospel as best he can. He's not being judgmental towards them. But when Festus gives him the opportunity, hey are you going to go back? You willing to go back to Jerusalem? You know, he's just trying to get rid of him at this point, and he goes absolutely not if he had just stopped there, he probably could have still avoided going to Jerusalem, because they couldn't find any reason to execute him, but instead he said, I appeal to Caesar. I'm a Roman citizen. I appeal to Caesar, and that guaranteed. Now the next eight nine years, he's on his way to Rome the whole time. You know, isn't it interesting to see the tenacity of the crowd of these people who wanted Paul dead. I mean, here's it's unreasonable. Yes, it's unreasonable, but they but they want him. They want him gone because they now understand that he has become just as big of a threat in many ways as Jesus was. Obviously there's no comparison. Right, but they were feeling that way, they were treating it. They were feeling it that way because but what they were seeing was the effect of. Things, right, because thermiety was spreading so fast. Jesus had one hundred and twenty followers at the Upper Room right after his resurrection, but now there's hundreds of thousands of Christians all over the Roman Empire. So yeah, it would have maybe seemed like it was a bigger deal with Paul. Yeah, because because again when we look at Jesus compared to Paul, we say it's no comparison because of who Jesus is and who Paul is. But they didn't really recognize it that way. They were just like the amount of trouble that this guy gave us versus the amount of trouble that this guy gave us. It's getting worse. It's getting worse. Followers of the Way, man, it's spreading everywhere. They turned the world upside down. And you know, later Paul writes about though, and I love this. Paul writes a little later, He'll say, we don't fight against flesh and blood. So he didn't see these people as his enemy. He said, it's a spiritual battle that's happening. And so, you know, it seems unreasonable. If this is just human human issue fighting against you know, Paul, then they would have eventually lost interest, right, it just would have gone away. But I believe that this is a supernatural, demonic fight against Paul. Take him out of this fight, take him, take him out of his influence and impact. And you know, Paul's just facing it with grace and kindness and all this stuff. But you know, we've mentioned before that you know, when you're telling a narrative, when we're when you're in the Bible and you're reading doctrinal passages, and Paul's just telling us how to live or how to behave That is all for our benefit, either to know how God works from a technical aspect doctrinally or how we should live practically, right the application side of it. But when we read these narratives like this, and you know, it's several chapters here in a row of just telling the story, the Bible says that God gave us these things, told us these stories of ancient times for our benefit, and so we look for what are the things that we can take away for our benefit. One of them is Paul's grace under fire, under pressure, and the fact that he wasn't afraid to leverage his position. His position was, I'm a Roman citizen. I don't have to go to Jerusalem where these crooks and these crooked people are going to try to kill me. Right, I'm going to Rome. And so he pulled the levers that were available to him without manipulating. He didn't manipulate the system. He just pulled the levers that were available to him in the moment. And there's some advantage I think to be Jesus taught us to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves to understand how the world works. There's one point where Jesus is frustrated with his disciples. They're talking about money issues and things, and Jesus is a little frustrated, going, how is it that the people of the world know this? But you know, you don't know these things, and you need to be as harmless as doves, but you need to be wise as serpents. And so here's Paul being gentle. Paul's being peaceful, he's defending himself, but he's also a wise person. He knows all the tools available to him. And at this point, rather than going and getting assassinated on the road back to Jerusalem, he pulls the lever and goes, nope, I'm appealing to Caesar. That was the next level up, and that solved everybody's problem. Yeah, well solved bestus problem because he wanted to get rid of him. Yeah. And you know, even back when you talked about Jesus being the potato, it was sort of that way back then as well. We noticed that, you know, he appears in front of Pilot and you know what Pilot says. Pilot says, I just I just want this to be somebody else's problem, right, you know, so they said the Caiaphas. Then he bounces back to Herod. You know, he's back and forth because everybody just didn't want to have to deal with it, and all, you know, all they really want to do is they want to just keep the peace. So, you know, just like Pilot again, the same exact position. Festus just wants to keep the peace because that's what he's charged with. And he can't even Festus can't even really figure out what's going on, which is funny, right, It's like, what right, right? This must be a bad guy. I mean, Felix kept him here for two years, be a bad guy. And then he's down in Jerusalem and the High Priest goes, hey, we want Paul. We want Paul executed, and Festus goes, well, hey, I'm going back to Cessa. I want you to just bring some people so they come back again. And then but when he's trying to explain to us to Herod, Herod shows up with Bernice and he goes I called the case the very next day and ordered Paul brought in. But the accusations made against him weren't any of the crimes I expected instead, and this is what's so funny. It was something about their religion and a dead man named Jesus, who Paul says is alive. And I was at a loss to know what to do or how to investigate these things. Festus is like, that's what this is about. I don't want some dead guy named Jesus, and Paul says he's been resurrected, and you know, it reminds me of when Paul writes he said, you know that the things of God are foolishness to the world, right, And Festus is not thinking about things of God. First Corinthians one eighteen. Yeah, and and Festus is not thinking about the things of God. Festus is just trying to figure out how to get his job done, and he's brand new at it. And apparently this guy must be a bad guy because Felix kept him for a long time And then he goes, what some dead guys alive? Right, right, that's what he's arrested. And by the way, it's the exact wording is instead it was something about right, right, like like I don't even know what he said, Yes, some dead guy named Jesus, something about their religion. I was thinking it was actually gonna be a crime, right, because you're you Jews in your little religious you know, whatever you guys have going on, it's no concern to us. But because I'm assigned to keep the peace, and because apparently it's a big deal to you, right, I've got to deal with this. So then he sends him on to Caesar. I'm telling you it's the best news for Festus. He could have probably heard that's right, but anyway, yeah, you're right. We look, we look at Paul and we try to, you know, take examples like what does this mean for us? And what we can see in story narratives like this one is that there's character by by by the words that he uses, by his actions. For instance, you know, we know that he's still sharing the gospel, we know that he's not appealing, we know that he's keeping his integrity. But then also there's there's things, there's things that are present that that aren't written right, So we can learn just as much from what he didn't do then what he did do, right, because he could have done all sorts of things, and had you and I been in that position, we might find ourselves doing all sorts of things. Sure, but instead what he leaves is precisely and and and if you'll indulge me for a second, what I take away from this passage is Festus had no concept of the Jewish faith, had no concept of the faith of the people of the way this dead guy named Jesus. And when he leaves his encounter with Paul, this first encounter with Paul, he doesn't understand it all, but he definitely knows Jesus rose from the dead. Those two things are central. And I wonder when people confront us, do they leave only going I don't understand everything he said, but apparently these are his political views. Well then maybe I missed it, or I don't know what he said, but apparently he doesn't like those kind of people or that kind of lifestyle or whatever. And they know the things we're against, or they know the thing. But what Festus, who doesn't understand it all, comes away going, Jesus is the center of their faith system. And they believe you was risen from the dead, Right, that's really the core. So if you're trying to figure out how do you share your faith, it's not about arguing all the things you're against. It's about saying Jesus is the answer and God raised him from the dead. Right, that's it. And so Paul I think did a great job at least if that's all Festus took away from it. Paul did a great job of presenting the gospel. Yeah. Yeah, And it's a great policy to actually say, as Christians, people should not necessarily know what we're against as much as they should know what we're for. Right, And we're for Jesus, Jesus God. That's right. And we're for all the positivity that that God wants to bring, you know, from the church, the change that God wants to bring about from the church. We need to stand for what we're for. Be about those things, be talking about those things, be bragging about those things, you know, spending your words and your energy and your time on all the things that were for, not the things that we're against. But if they only know one thing in this spiritual conversation you had with them, Jesus, the Son of God got great. So a guy named Jesus, he insists, is still alive. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great place to end. So we'll see you next time on the Bible. Guys,