Honor God

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

HONOR GOD

Acts 25:8-12

8 Then Paul made his defense: "I have done nothing wrong against the law of the Jews or against the temple or against Caesar." 9 Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, "Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?" 10 Paul answered: "I am now standing before Caesar's court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. 11 If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!" 12 After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: "You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!"

NIV

We are about to go to Rome, but before we get there we find Paul standing before Festus having heard the charges against him by the Jews and now making his defense. From this narrative we are not seeing Paul explaining all the points of his defense as he did before Felix, but rather the simple statement that he has done nothing wrong against the law of the Jews or the temple and most importantly to Festus, against Caesar. We do have the rest of the conversation which details the result of Paul appealing to Caesar and as a Roman citizen, under Roman law he has that right and therefore we are headed to Rome. It would seem our life lesson for today is from what Paul told Festus about his behavior. The fact that Paul did nothing wrong against the law of the Jews or the temple or Caesar might be difficult to translate into our present day lives but there could be some applications. Let us consider what would be similar to the law of the Jews first. This is the basis for their religion. Although Paul preached Jesus being the Messiah, it was not against the basis of their religion, as the Prophets pointed directly to Jesus. Today we do not have the law, but we have the scriptures. As long as we preach what the scripture says, we are doing no wrong. True some would say there are different interpretations, but that is what the case was with Paul and the Jews. They saw the law, and the prophets differently, Paul was right, they were wrong. This certainly points to the simple truth that if we stay with the scripture we will not be doing anything wrong against it. As far as the temple, we could relate that to our local church or even to our particular denomination which we determined to associate ourselves with. As long as we are partaking in fellowship with a certain church we should not preach against it, or for that matter, speak negatively about it. Paul followed the prescribed method of ceremonially cleansing himself before going to the temple, showing respect for the meaning of its importance in his life, the place to worship God. We should do no less then to respect the house of God, the church as a place to worship him. Now when we consider that Paul did nothing wrong against Caesar, we could certainly relate that to the laws of our land. Caesar or as we refer to the Roman Empire certainly had laws, decrees which all Roman citizens were subject to or be punished. Although Caesar was considered, if by only himself, as a god, Paul was not in any way indicating he worshipped Caesar, but only that he had not offended Roman law. The truth of the whole matter is in fact in the words of Jesus about rendering onto Caesar what is Caesars and onto God what is Gods. God is actually an anarchist never intending that any man should rule over another man, or has the right to steal another man’s possession, which in fact are exactly what taxes are. But we should focus more on the case that we have a form of self-governess and we have agreed to abide by the laws of this country therefore we should not doing any wrong which would include such things, like speeding or illegally parking and the such. Most of the other laws like stealing, killing, rape, and such are actually laws borrowed from God. Living a life defined by God rather than by man will always bring us to a defense, the same as Paul’s, which is honoring God.