Acts 25:1-12 - Homiletics

Persistent hatred.

There is a bitterness and a dogged persistency in the enmity of an Oriental, and an inextinguishable thirst for revenge, which are unlike anything we know of among ourselves. Some knowledge and perception of this are necessary to enable us to understand many things in the Old Testament, including allusions to his enemies in some of the Psalms of David. The conduct of the Jews to St. Paul is a remarkable example of this persevering hatred, which nothing could avert or mollify. Passing over the previous displays of it at every place in Asia and Europe where the apostle preached the gospel, from the first outbreak of it at Damascus to the last conspiracy against him at Corinth ( Acts 9:23 ; Acts 20:3 ), we notice the allusion to its existence, and to the cause of it, by James in Acts 21:21 . We then saw the steps taken by St. Paul to conciliate those enemies, and to convince them that their prejudice against him was unfounded. But how vain these efforts were soon appears. In the very temple court where he was taking pains to humor their prejudices and to soften their hatred, that hatred broke out into a flame of unparalleled violence. In an instant the whole city was upon him, and would have torn him to pieces had not the Roman soldiers rescued him from their hands. A momentary lull while they listened to Paul's Hebrew speech was followed by a more furious burst of passion than before. When violence had failed to take away the hated life, they had recourse to guile and to the arts of the secret assassin. Baffled again at Jerusalem, they followed him to Caesarea. They hired an advocate to vilify him before the Roman judge. They heaped charge upon charge and lie upon lie in hope to compass his condemnation, and when for two whole years their malice had been defeated, while the object of their hatred remained a prisoner out of their reach, and at a time when the miseries of their country called for all their attention and solicitude, far from time having dulled the edge of their malice, or the calls of patriotism having diverted their thoughts from the object of their revenge, they were more intent than ever upon Paul's destruction. Their first thought on the change of government seems to have been, not thankfulness for the cessation of the oppressive tyranny of Felix, but the hope of working upon the inexperience of Festus so as to get Paul into their power. Again the baffled assassins were ready to fall upon the doomed man by the way; again the restless hatred of the chief priests carried them to Caesarea to try what false accusations could bring about. But this spectacle of unwearied and unscrupulous hatred and persistent malice, hideous as it is, acquires a value of its own when we contrast with it the love and the kindness of the gospel of Christ. Whence must those precepts of patience and forgiveness and love for our enemies have sprung, which shine like precious jewels in the pages of the Bible? Or look at St. Paul. He was a Jew like them: were they Hebrews? so was he. And yet, while they were cursing, and conspiring, and Persecuting, and blaspheming, he was loving, enduring, forgiving, striving to overcome evil with good. They were moving heaven and earth to take away his life who had never done them any wrong; and his heart's desire and prayer to God for them, his cruel persecutors, and the labor of his whole life as well, was that they might be saved. It is a wonderful contrast. It sets out the Divine origin of the gospel and its heavenly character with singular force. It is a most luminous comment on our Lord's words, "Ye are from beneath; I am from above" ( John 8:23 ). The bright star of love shines all the brighter in our eyes from being thus, as it were, surrounded by the thick darkness of a persistent hatred.