SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2018 8:13 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-1 “The Plot Frustrated”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts
23:23-35
Message of the verses: “23 And he called
to him two of the centurions and said, "Get two hundred soldiers ready by
the third hour of the night to proceed to Caesarea, with seventy horsemen and
two hundred spearmen." 24 They were also to provide mounts to put
Paul on and bring him safely to Felix the governor. 25 And he wrote a letter
having this form:
26 “Claudius Lysias, to the most excellent
governor Felix, greetings: 27 “When this man was arrested by the Jews and was
about to be slain by them, I came up to them with the troops and rescued him,
having learned that he was a Roman. 28 “And wanting to ascertain the charge for
which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their Council; 29 and I
found him to be accused over questions about their Law, but under no accusation
deserving death or imprisonment. 30 “When I was informed that there would be a
plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, also instructing his accusers
to bring charges against him before you."
31 So the soldiers,
in accordance with their orders, took Paul and brought him by night to
Antipatris. 32 But the next day, leaving the horsemen to go on with him, they
returned to the barracks. 33 When these had come to Caesarea and delivered the
letter to the governor, they also presented Paul to him. 34 When he had read
it, he asked from what province he was, and when he learned that he was from
Cilicia, 35 he said, "I will give you a hearing after your accusersarrive
also," giving orders for him to be kept in Herod’s Praetorium.”
Lysias’
actions as seen in the first part of this section show that he was a really
good commander. He had to get Paul out
of Jerusalem for if he was assassinated then he would have been responsible for
the death of a Roman citizen. He decided
to pass the problem onto his supervisor who was the Roman governor Felix.
I
have always thought that it was overkill as far as the amount of soldiers that
would take Paul to Caesarea, which was a 65 mile trip, and was the seat of the
Roman government in Judea, and this was where Felix was headquartered. Perhaps it was with good reason that he had
so many troops because of the threat that he had heard about with the
Jews.
Lysias
did not even wait for morning as they left at 9:00 P. M. He also provided a mount for Paul so that
they could move faster.
John
MacArthur writes “As was required when a Roman officer sent a prisoner to his
superior (Everett F. Harrison, Interpreting
Acts: The Expanding Church [Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1986], 373), Lysias ‘wrote a letter’ of explanation to Felix,
which Luke summarizes:” The letter can
be seen above verses 26-30, the indented part of our Scripture reading for this
section.
“Claudius
was the Roman name he took (perhaps in honor of Emperor Claudius) when he
obtained his citizenship (22:28). Since
Lysias is a Greek name, it signifies he was probably a free-born Greek by
nationality.”
We
will end here as I have mentioned that Sunday’s I do a shorter SD because of my
responsibilities of teaching Sunday school.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Pilate” (John 18:31).
Today’s Bible question: “Where did the first angel in Revelation 16:2
pour out his vial?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/26/2018 8:36 PM
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