This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
When we stand before the Lord, we won't be standing in the
judgement seat in the sense of the judgement of sinners,
because we've been forgiven of our sins.
We've been declared just. But all the people who have not
received Jesus Christ since the beginning of time up until now
and and in the future are unjust.
They have no purpose or sense of ability to stand before the
Judge, the Creator, and say they're innocent.
Have you ever been sent to the principal's office?
Or maybe your mom yelled at you using your full name.
Your hands probably began to sweat and your stomach turned
inside out. But if in these scenarios you
were innocent of any wrongdoing, all your anxiety disappeared.
Today, Pastor Clark encourages you that this is exactly how it
will be when you stand before Jesus as a believer.
You'll be found innocent because your sins were already forgiven
through the sacrifice. You'll have nothing to fear now.
Here's Pastor Clark in Acts chapter 24 with today's edition
of Living Waters of Grace. We are in the book of the.
Acts Acts chapter 24 If you have your Bibles, open your Bibles to
Acts 24. And as we study.
This section of Scripture in Acts, I want you to sort of put
yourself in the time that Paul was living, he was living in
very difficult times in regard to countries being open to
Christianity and also governments being led by a
ruthless leaders and godless leaders and Pagan leaders.
Nothing new under the sun, is there?
We face a lot of similar things right now, but.
Not as bad as what? He was going through there at
that time. Or what Christians go through
like in China or Pakistan or other countries that are really
against Christianity and against freedom of religion, freedom of
speech. So we have to learn, I think,
how to maneuver living in times like this without getting
frustrated or mad or angry or depressed or.
Discouraged because God always. Works in the midst of situations
that seem impossible, what might seem unfair to us at times
politically or as Christians. From God's perspective, he can
get us through those things. He wants us to look to Him for
wisdom and for ability to know how to get the proper counsel to
get represented in ways that we need to be represented so we can
have fair trials. That as we know, Paul's trials
were far from fair and the trials of Jesus Christ himself
were not fair. But yet God orchestrated these
trials way ahead of time, even though they seem unfair to us.
When we read these scriptures and wonder how in the world
things got so messed up and so unfair, and how apostles and
prophets and Jesus himself were mistreated and eventually
martyred and crucified and killed.
God still had his way and still was glorified, and they still.
Speak through the scriptures. That we have today, so I think
you know the time. That we're living in.
Right now when I study the Bible and I, I read the Bible and I, I
endeavor to teach the Bible. I want it to be real.
And something that you can sort of hook yourself to and find
some solace and some counsel and some wisdom.
No matter what it is we might be going through in America right
now, it is far better than what Paul was going through in
Jerusalem, as well as Macedonia and eventually the Roman Empire.
The governors and the leaders of that time weren't interested in
anything other than themselves and their own wealth and their
own success. They weren't.
Interested in this movement called the Way Christianity?
But nonetheless, this movement that started out very small has
captured the world and captured the earth, and it is by far the
number one. Religion in the world.
Christianity and always has been and always will be, in spite of
people trying to put it out or to cause it not to expand.
Matter of fact, the more it's persecuted, the more it does
expand. The more people come against you
in regard to your faith and don't want to hear it, the more
you have a desire to tell them, right?
Because we love people. We want them to know what it is
we know just because they say they don't want to hear it or
they don't want us to talk about it isn't going to silence any of
us isn't. So let's pray as we get into
this today. Father God, we thank you for
your word. We thank you for the testimony
of Paul got himself in some tough situations by going to
Jerusalem, but nonetheless. You used it for your glory.
He was able to. Witness the kings and priests
and leaders and many many people got to hear the gospel and to
consider it. In these different trials that
he went through 6 different times, he gave a defense.
So Lord help. Us to learn some things here
today. Even when we're unjustly treated
or. When?
People slander us or try to. Put us in positions that aren't
comfortable. Lord, we can learn how Paul
lived his life in the midst. Of persecution and trial, even
in our day that we live. Today, Father, none of us know
when we might be. Given the.
Difficulty at work because of our testimony or our witness.
Sometimes people don't don't want us to be in the company
anymore when they find that we have a moral values and we have
convictions and we have things that we stand on and are not
negotiable. We won't change our testimony,
we won't stop our belief in Jesus Christ, and we surely
won't silence Lord our witness. So Lord help us in these.
Days to be this as bold as Paul. Was but to be wise and to be
loving and to be gracious. And we pray all these things in
Jesus name, Amen. So starting in chapter 24, Paul
is being accused of rebellion, sedition, they're.
Saying lies that he's an insurrectionist.
And he wants to. Turn the whole country upside
down and bring. False religions in all.
These things are being. Discussed and so he begins to
after five days of where we were last week, it says.
Now after five days, Ananias, a high priest, came down with the
elders in a certain order named Tertilius.
These gave evidence to the governor against.
Paul. So this was a.
Setup. There was things that they
wanted to. Bring across to this leader at
the time, Ananias. And the charges?
Were that Paul's. Influence was causing trouble.
In the Jewish religion, the second incident that they were
accusing him of was this illegal religion.
That he was developing or posturing and they called him a
seditionist. And third, he was called and
said that he had. Profaned the temple in Jerusalem
as something that was not. Religious from the Jewish point
of view. And so he's endeavoring Paul and
his ministry always to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ and every
conversation and every trial and every challenge.
His only. Focus is to get.
The gospel out because you. Realize when you have people
that don't want to hear what you have to hear, they need to hear
it right. You just can't like, accept
their. Ignorance or their posturing
against you in regard to your faith in Jesus Christ.
You have to continually have this heart to want to get the
message. Across at least to.
The point that people can be. Able to make a decision whether
they want to believe or they don't want to believe, but a
lot. Of people don't even have the
ability to make the decision because they don't even know
what people believe lots of times, right?
So it's really important to be able to communicate to people.
Why you're a Christian. Why you follow Jesus Christ and
what He's done for you, that is something that most people don't
really know anything about today.
And so they're going to give this testimony against Paul to
the governor in verse 2. And when he was called upon,
Tertilius began his accusation. This guy's a real smooth talking
attorney. He knows how to flatter, and he
thinks he's going to. Get on the good side of Ananias.
He says, seeing that through you we enjoy great peace and
prosperity is being brought to this nation by your foresight.
We accept it always and in all places, most noble Felix, with
all thankfulness. Nevertheless, not to be tedious
to you any further, I beg you to hear, by your courtesy, a few
words from us. This guy's a smooth talker.
He sets it up. To the flatter Felix, for we
have found this man a plague, a creator of dissension among all
the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of
the Nazarites. He even tried to profane the
Temple, and we seized. Him.
And wanted to judge him according to our law.
But the commander Lyceus came by, and with great violence took
him out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come to you.
By examining him yourself, you may ascertain all these things
which we accuse him. And the Jews also ascended,
maintaining that. These things were so.
So everything is posturing here from a Jewish.
Perspective they want to do. All they can to implicate Paul
as being a false teacher, an insurrectionist, and someone who
causes havoc wherever he goes. So this is what is being
communicated. So Paul's there in this audience
and he's listening to what's being said about him.
And in verse 10, he's going to be given the opportunity to.
To say some things. Verse 10 Then Paul, after the
governor had nodded to him to speak, answered.
And as much as I know that you've been for many years a
judge of this nation, I do the more cheerfully answer for
myself, because you may ascertain that it is no more
than 12 days since I went up to Jerusalem to worship.
And they neither found me in the Temple disputing with anyone nor
inciting the crowd, either in the synagogue or in the city.
So right away he's invalidating every lie.
That they've said about him, he's not afraid to speak up and
speak the. Truth, because the truth is the
truth, and they're giving them the opportunity to clarify these
accusations. Nor can they prove the things of
which they now accuse me. And this is the craziness of
setups when people are accusing. People of things not based on
factual evidence, it's lies. It's innuendo, it's dismayed up
and these things go on to this day, he says.
But this I confess to you that according to the way in Capital
WAY signifies this new movement. Of Christianity in the.
World following Jesus, which they call a sect.
So I worship the God of my Father's, believing all things
which are written in the law and the prophets.
So Christianity didn't. Fall out of thin.
Air. It was rooted.
In the teachings. Of the Law and the prophets,
ever since the book of Genesis, all the way through the
Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, all through the
Old Testament writings of the Law and the prophets that
emphasize the fact that the Messiah would come and then he
would be the Savior of the world.
And these are all rooted in the scripture.
Paul didn't make any of this stuff up.
This all came from God's Word, the word that the Jewish.
People believed up until this time.
Paul, Paul's father, is the same God and.
Father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Your Father God is the same. God that Abraham.
Isaac and Jacob. Followed and believed in.
So there's no messing around here with what the Word of God
says. So he tells them that these
things have been written for everybody to look at and examine
and use that the Scriptures to prove whether Paul's a false
leader or false teacher. None of them can obviously do
that. He says in verse 15, I have hope
in God, which they themselves also accept that there will be a
resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.
And so Paul's preaching now what's the deal here?
There is going to eventually be a final resurrection at the end
of time where God will judge all people, the just and the unjust.
Now for us who are justified by Jesus Christ, when we stand
before the Lord, we won't be standing in the judgment seat in
the sense of the judgment of sinners, because we've been
forgiven of our sins. We've been declared just.
But all the people who have not received Jesus Christ since the
beginning of time up until now and, and in the future are
unjust. They have no purpose or sense of
ability to stand before the judge, the Creator, and say
they're innocent of committing sin.
It's impossible. They're in trouble, they're
unjust. They need to be just.
They need to be justified. So the only thing that makes you
and me different, we're all sinners.
Lost people are sinners. Christians are still sinners,
right? But we're sinners, saved by
grace. And so now when we stand before
a holy God, we're not going to walk in arrogantly and say we
never sinned or we're not sinners or whatever.
We know what we are, right? But we've been accepted by Jesus
Christ because of what he's done for us, right?
He shed his blood for us. He died for us and we believe in
him and we depend upon him and we've been declared just because
of our faith in Jesus Christ, not our faith in ourselves.
All the unjust, the people living up until this time and
the people who are complaining about Paul have no defense
before the judge. On that final day.
They are considered at this point in time unjust like every
other human being on the face of the earth that doesn't have
Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are unjust or
unjustified. This being said in verse 16, I
myself also strive to have a conscience without offense
toward God and men. So not any are we justified by
Jesus Christ and we're forgiven, but we're all endeavoring to
have a different way and vision of how we live our lives.
We're conscious of things that aren't Christ like.
We're disturbed by behaviors and attitudes and temptations and
failings in our lives that don't line up with someone who's been
genuinely transformed by Jesus Christ.
Those things, if you're a Christian, disturb you.
So you want Christ to continually work in your life
and to change you and to perfect you and to sanctify you, make
you more Christ like. And that's the evidence that
you're really a Christian when you become more like Jesus
Christ, right? You're not going to just stay
like you were before you became a believer.
You can't. It's impossible.
The Holy Spirit's in you now, and He's living in you and
through you to make you more and more like Christ.
And that's the awesome. Work of our salvation that this
isn't knowing we're going to go to heaven, but our lives are
actually changed and are being changed as we speak.
And so he talks to them about his history.
Now after many years in verse 17, I came to bring alms and
offerings to my nation. This is a special offering.
It was set up for the personal, executed and poor people in
Jerusalem at the time, in the midst of which some Jews from
Asia found me purified in the Temple, neither with a mob nor
with a tumor. So Paul went in to sponsor 4
people who were committing themselves and sacrificing
themselves to the will of God and the work of God as Jewish
believers in the Temple. Paul was with them, but it was
just him and the four. There was no one else.
There was no anything going on. It wasn't considered right or
kosher or pure from a Jewish perspective.
They were lying about him. Now they ought to have been
there here before you to object if they had anything against me.
Why? In other words, why did they
wait so long to bring this up? If it was such a big deal, they
should have immediately brought this offence to you.
But they of course they did. Verse 20.
Or else let those who are here themselves say if they found any
wrongdoing in me while I stood before the council.
So he's giving them a chance. Go ahead and tell everybody and
tell me personally right here in the midst of this audience, any
wrongdoing that I've done, unless it is for this one
statement which I cried outstanding among them
concerning the resurrection of the dead.
For I'm being judged by you this day.
So as I said last week, you had the Pharisees and you had the
Sadducees. The Pharisees were more
conservative in their Jewish tradition, and they believed in
the Scriptures, all the Scriptures, just not the first
five books of the Bible. And they believed in a little
resurrection. So when Paul talked about the
resurrection, they're like, hey, we believe in the resurrection
too. But the Sadducees, the other
members of the Sanhedrin, the ruling elders, did not believe
in a little resurrection, nor did they believe that we had a
spirit or soul and that there was anything after this life.
They were adamantly opposed to any teaching and doctrine that
would proclaim A literal physical resurrection from the
dead. That's what their big biggest
uproar was. So Felix in verse 22 when he
hears these things, he now has more accurate knowledge of the
way he adjourned the proceedings and said when license the
commander comes down, I will make a decision on your case.
So no decision is no decision right now wisdom.
So he commanded the centurion to keep all and let him have
liberty and told him not to forbid him any of his friends to
provide visiting him. So in other words, he was in a
really plush palace in this area of the empire.
He was given freedom to eat and to hang out.
It was nice atmosphere. He was allowed to have friends
come in and hang out with him and visit him.
So this really wasn't imprisonment.
And if this leader, Felix, thought that Paul was really
guilty, he wouldn't have given him all these liberties.
So what happens here? Now in verse 24, after some
days, Felix comes down with his wife Drusilla, who was a Jewish.
She was sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in
Christ. So she already knows what's
going on and what's being communicated to all the people
in the land at the time regarding the gospel of Jesus
Christ. She's certainly not a believer
and she's a very young woman, supposedly around 20 years old,
very attractive. This couple together is not a
really good team together. God, let's spend anyway.
They're there and they're going to have this conversation.
Now is he reasoned about righteousness?
See Paul, right away the opportunity.
Drusilla is here with Felix again.
Neither are my believers. What are you going to do?
You're just going to say, hey, let me go free because I'm
innocent? No, right away He starts the
gospel again. He tells them about the need to
be righteous. They're not righteous.
They're unrighteous. They're godless.
They're sinful Pagan people. So he's communicating what
righteousness is versus what unrighteousness is.
Then he talks about self-control.
They have no self-control. They're just doing what makes
them feel good and what makes them happy, which human race has
a tendency to do. No issues of self-control.
And then not only that, but the judgment that's eventually to
come. So it says Felix was afraid, so
he's under conviction. He's bothered by what it is that
Paul's telling him. Just like you and I should be or
anybody should be. The Bible says that the Holy
Spirit convicts the world of sin and of righteousness and of
judgment because they don't believe in Jesus.
So whenever you get to people and you begin to tell them about
the gospel and they start getting uncomfortable and all
that, that's the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit.
That's what he does. But the only way the Spirit can
really convict people of the things that they need to be
convicted of is to hear the truth.
And the truth only comes by the Word of God.
You can have conversations about religion and spiritual stuff all
day long, but if you don't give them the pure teaching of the
gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the
scriptures, that he was buried in the third day he rose again
from the dead. You haven't given him anything
to think about or anything to be convicted by.
Honey, the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse us from our sins.
So Felix is afraid and he says go away for now.
When I have convenient time, I will call for you.
In other words, like he's bothered.
The day's a day of salvation, right?
Like if you're an unbeliever and you're like, hey, I, I'm nailed
here, man. I got to make a decision.
I have to believe this. And if I don't, I'm in trouble.
I mean, when you start thinking that way, that's good news
because this is the day that you want to be saved, the day that
you get it and you're convicted of it and you know you need a
savior. You don't want to put it off.
Paul says today is a day of salvation.
Behold, now is the accepted time.
Behold, now is a day of salvation.
And in Acts 1730, it says God commands all men everywhere to
repent. So this not here in Macedonia or
Jerusalem or the Roman Empire. Greensburg, Latrobe, Irwin,
Pittsburgh, Ligonier, you know, California, Texas, South
Carolina, Pakistan, Africa, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine.
Everybody needs to hear this, right?
And we're the ones that are supposed to tell them.
And if we're afraid because, well, what if they fire me from
my job? Or what if they put me in jail,
or what if they make fun of me, or what if they don't like me
anymore? Or what if they don't invite me
to their house anymore? All these thoughts that get in
our head, you know, 'cause us to be afraid of sharing the truth,
right? But this is supposed to be told
to everyone, everywhere, for all times and all places.
Just not hearing acts, but right now we're hearing this stuff.
So meanwhile, he also hoped that money would be.
Given to him by. Paul.
So he's thinking, hey, maybe Paul, give me some money and
then I'll let him go. Bribes are illegal.
This guy has got problems, right?
That he might release him. Therefore he sent for him more
often and converse with him. So he keeps having him come
back, but not so much to hear the gospel.
He's hoping eventually he'll give me some.
Cash, right? He wasn't.
Looking for money, so Procus Festa succeeded Felix.
Felix is done with the deal here.
They got a new guy now that's going to come on the scene.
And he wants to do Jews a favor. And he leaves Paul bound.
Thanks for joining us on today's edition of Living Waters of
Grace, a ministry of Calvary Chapel, Westmoreland.
Today, Pastor Clark is teaching about the book of Acts.
And as we learn more about Acts, it becomes clear that the early
church didn't miss a single opportunity to share the gospel.
In nearly every chapter, you see apostles like Peter and Paul
stepping into conversations, crowds, and crises with
boldness, ready to proclaim the name of Jesus.
Their example challenges us to consider how we might step into
gospel moments in our own lives. What doors might God open this
week for you to speak truth, offer hope, or live out your
faith in a way that points others to Him?
The story of Acts reminds us we are part of the same mission.
Today, let's live with eyes open and hearts ready to respond.
We hope you are challenged by today's message.
If you're in the Greensburg, PA area, we'd love to see you in
person this Sunday at 10:30 AM at 400 E Pittsburgh St., Unit
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