Dennis Tuuri

# CLEANED TRANSCRIPT

with his wife Drusilla, which was a Jew, he sent for Paul and heard him concerning the faith in Christ. And he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come. Felix trembled and answered, “Go thy way for this time. When I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” He hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that he might loose him. Wherefore he sent for him the oftener, and communed with him.

But after two years, Pontius Festus came into Felix’s room and Felix, willing to show the Jews a pleasure, left Paul bound.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We pray, Lord God, that you would illuminate to our understanding. May your Holy Spirit, who is in our presence and in each of us, and in particularly in this congregation, Lord God, take this word, seal it to our hearts, and help us, Father, to commit ourselves to repair, to amend, to confess our sin before you, and commit ourselves to a renewed righteousness.

And we pray, Lord God, that your Holy Spirit would affect this work in our hearts, and that the same thing might occur in the context of the Sabbath schools provided for the young ones, that those teachers may indeed have been given strength from you, and may your Spirit use these scriptures they speak to change these little ones’ lives. In Jesus’ name we ask, and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

May be seated.

Young ones—whose parent—sex, money, politics, and power. That’s what we have in this account of the interaction between Paul and Felix. May not appear that at first glance to you, but I suppose you can see the money and the politics at work. A little tougher to see the sex at work here, but it’s there. We have Paul speaking here with Felix, who we’ve had a little bit of acquaintance with last Lord’s Day. A happy one who delays, and who will delay here again, unto his probable eternal damnation.

Now we’re acquainted with his wife, Drusilla, and we’re not told much about her here, but enough. The historical accounts of Drusilla’s life are very well documented. However, it is a tad confusing because Felix had three wives, at least, and this was his third. Apparently, many think that he actually had two different wives named Drusilla, and one was the granddaughter of Anthony and Cleopatra.

Nonetheless, you’ll see what kind of historical time we’re talking about here. But this particular Drusilla, instead, is a Jew. The scriptures tell us that, and historical accounts tell us much more about her. We know that this particular woman was related by birth to the ruling families in Israel. It’s been remarked that her father was the one who killed James. Earlier in the context of the book of Acts—and whose dreadful judgment by God was declared for us in the context of the book of Acts—where he essentially declared himself to be God, or at least was seen that way by the people, and he refused not that kind of title, and so God judged him most severely and killed him.

This was her father. Her great-uncle Herod Antipas slew John the Baptist, and her great-grandfather Herod the Great was the one who murdered the babes of Bethlehem, in addition to many other murders. So she’s got quite a heritage here.

Now, she was originally betrothed to Antiochus Epiphanies, or rather, yes, to Antiochus Epiphanies, but that particular individual refused circumcision, and as a result, there was no marriage. She was then actually married to another king, a king of another area, who did become a Jew. But Felix apparently was smitten by her beauty in the context of the pagan world. We know what that means. And so arranged to have her become his wife and leave her other husband. And so we have then Felix’s proclivity—this is his third wife—to such marriages, and in his passion for her, he woos her away, apparently not too difficultly, from another king.

And so that’s how she comes to be Felix’s wife. Sex, money, and power.

Felix communes with Paul here. He speaks with him, and the tense of the verb in verse 26, where he hoped also that money should have been given him of Paul, that tense of that verb tells us that also was part of his intention when he called Paul forth to explain to him the Christian faith. So while in verses one and two of this text, he wants to hear them, and Drusilla wants to hear Paul—verse three tells us part of the motivation, not all of it necessarily, but part of it was this search for money on the part of Felix.

He’s hoping that Paul recognizes that he’s in a position of power over him and his rich friends will come and bail him out to have his freedom. And power and politics is the last thing that scriptures tell us in this text about Felix, because it’s his desire to please the Jews that is given as the reason why he leaves Paul bound.

We said before that after two years, he’s replaced, and the reason he’s replaced—historical records tell us—is that indeed those Jews were upset with the way he had treated the country, and so they made appeal, and so they had a new governor given to them. Well, so him knowing that he had some problems with that particular area and he didn’t want these guys to accuse him too badly—that’s one of the reasons he left Paul. It is the reason he left Paul bound: his desire to play politics, to curry the favor of men, rather than do what was right in terms of justice, and do what was right in terms of particularly God’s servant here. And so we have that kind of account before us.

It’s almost like a CNN news account here. But the beautiful thing, of course, about scripture is that it gives us these kinds of pictures of real human life and what actually happens in the context of men’s lives. But it rightly interprets those things for us. And I think as we look at this text and look at the correct interpretation of how this is all placed in the context of the witness of the gospel of Paul, we’ll see a correct interpretation. We’ll see much more than that. We’ll see here a corrective, I think, of what the gospel is.

Now, I think my—the tapes for today—I titled this sermon “Paul’s Gospel: Justice, Self-Control, and Eschatology.” And while you could object that this is not specifically the content of the gospel—we’re told in other places of scripture that the gospel is the historical account of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection—nonetheless, we read in this text that Paul spoke of faith in Jesus Christ to Felix, and we are told specifically that Paul, in terms of explaining what that means, reasoned with him of these three things: righteousness, the synonym for which is justice; temperance, which has to do with self-government and self-control; and the judgment to come, or eschatology. And so in the context of this, looking at the right interpretation of how God’s word comes to a man who is involved in sex, money, and power and politics, we’ll get a corrective as to the gospel.

We’ll see something here as we look at it. Do I sound dry? Oh, I guess I’ll drink it then. It’s probably good for dramatic purposes, at least, huh?

So we’ll see a picture here, I think, of Paul’s evangelistic methods as well. What’s Paul doing here? And I think this is a great corrective to us, and maybe not quite obvious from the text, but what is God doing through Paul? We’ll look at that a little bit. We’ll see that his evangelistic methods are not quite what some would have them to be.

We’ll see a corrective here to a failure of the church today to recognize continuity between Old Testament and New Testament. I think there’s some things we could talk about that. We’ll also see some discontinuity here as we look at Paul and what Paul says and its correlation to a gospel account that I think is a parallel passage. We’ll see in the context of all of this a challenge, as it were, to us in terms of our justice, self-control, and our understanding of the judgment to come relative to these things.

We’ll also see the picture of the gospel itself played out for us. So it’s a wonderful account we have here to deal with. And I pray God that I not muck it up with my own thoughts or inability to communicate correctly.

Now, first of all, let’s look at the presentation of Paul to Felix. That’s what I want to do here. I want to look at two basic elements to this. I didn’t bring an outline, but the first element of this is Paul’s presentation of faith in Christ, or the gospel, to Felix and Drusilla directly. What he said to them, and then we’re going to look at, a little bit in the context of that, their reaction. And then secondly, I want us to turn later on in the sermon to John 16, to what I believe can be seen as a parallel passage where we have the work of the Holy Spirit and what he will do when he comes, being told of by the Lord Jesus to his disciples. And so we’ll look at that secondly.

So let’s first look at the relationship of these three responses you could say to sex, money, and power: righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come—specifically as they’re given to Felix and Drusilla.

Now, let me say, first of all, that I mentioned last week that Lensky in his commentary here said that Paul, unlike many gospel preachers, begins with the gospel and then moves to law, because it says in verse 24 that he heard him concerning the faith in Christ, and then he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and the judgment to come. I don’t really think it’s necessarily correct that what we have here is a chronological statement that Paul deals with the gospel and then with the law. I think rather, the way I read this text, is that he told him about faith in Christ. That’s why he was there to speak to Felix. Felix wanted to know more about this Christian religion apparently. And then the content of what he told him relative to faith in Christ is capsulized as these three-point outlines, so to speak, of Paul’s address to Felix: justice, self-government, and eschatology.

And so this tells us something about the presentation of the gospel to a pagan unbeliever as well as to a woman who was Jewish. And in a way, this is the first time we have that combination of two people being spoken to in the gospel account, or in the book of Acts, rather. And so it’s important for us to recognize this.

Now, I mentioned justice, self-government, and eschatology as synonyms to help us understand what these words mean a little bit. The first term used is righteousness, and you may not necessarily be accustomed to hearing that as a synonym for justice, but it is. Like I said a couple weeks ago, we tend to use Christian terms that we don’t understand ourselves. Righteousness has to do with justice, or being just.

And in the scriptures, there are a couple of different ways it can be used. One way is the way we commonly think of it, and that’s the righteousness of faith that God imputes to the believer. And it’s certainly legitimate to look at Paul’s presentation of righteousness here as being at least based upon the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to our account. You know, righteousness or justice. How can a man be justified before God? What’s the basis of our salvation, our right standing with God? This is where Rome and the Protestant church depart. And you know, if you’re going to talk to a Roman Catholic, you don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about Mary and that kind of stuff. What you want to focus in on is the doctrine of justification by faith and how righteousness is imputed to the believer.

There are two different ways of looking at this. The Roman Catholic doctrine has been, for several hundred years now, explicitly that what God does to save somebody is to infuse, or put goodness, righteousness, justice into the believer. Now, they won’t say it’s of works. They’ll say it’s of grace, because without the work of Christ on the cross, God couldn’t do that. But nonetheless, it becomes a personal righteousness: my good deeds done in my body, or then in the context of purgatory, being purged of my bad deeds. Well, that’s not Christianity. That’s not the teaching of the scriptures.

The scriptures teach that righteousness is by faith alone. That God imputes, forensically declares, judicially pronounces you righteous. It’s not an internal righteousness, though it is an external, outside of me, righteousness that is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. It’s not your personal righteousness. It’s Christ’s righteousness put to your account by God in the book, so to speak. You know, you’ve heard the illustrations. It’s like you need a million bucks to get into heaven. You don’t have a million, but God transfers into your account. That’s an okay illustration, but don’t think that somehow it’s because you become more personally righteous.

So when we hear righteousness in the scriptures, frequently we hear it in the context of the righteousness that is required to avoid judgment by God. You see, it’s not enough just to have our sins forgiven. Justification is not just “as if I never sinned.” It is also the positive imputation, the declaration by God, that he will treat you according to Christ’s goodness. And Christ did not simply come to earth to die on the cross. He also came to live a totally righteous, just life. And that righteousness is declared by God to your account when you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, being enabled to by God himself that of faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. So that’s certainly a true scripture. But there’s another sense in which the word righteous or justice is used, and I think that’s the sense being used here. And that does have to do with one’s personal acts—never good enough to merit heaven, but nonetheless, the scriptures do tell us. In this very book of Acts, we’ve had a couple of illustrations. We read in Acts 10:22 that Cornelius the centurion was a just man—same term, a righteous man. You see, his life was characterized by justice or righteousness, a life lived in terms of positive actions relative to God’s law.

And then again in verse 35, Peter says that in every nation you have them that fear him and work righteousness, and they are accepted with him. Peter’s not saying there that the working of righteousness, the working of justice, the doing of what’s right as opposed to what’s wrong, merits God’s grace or salvation or acceptance with him. But he does say that it is a characteristic of those that God has called to salvation. And it is this personal sense of justice—doing what’s right as opposed to doing what’s wrong—I think, that Paul is speaking of here. Because the other term used, temperance, is certainly not a positional temperance with God. And so if we’re going to interpret temperance as the actions of men, whether they’re moderate in what they do or not, whether they’re under the control of the Holy Spirit or not, then I think it’s proper exegetically to look at this term justice and say the same thing.

Paul reasons to Felix of justice—doing what’s right as opposed to doing what’s wrong.

Paul also speaks with Felix and Drusilla of temperance, moderation. One might say J. Alexander says temperance here is not in a restricted modern sense of abstinence from strong drink, but in that of self—it is that of self-control and moderation as to the appetite, with special reference in ancient usage to chastity or continence, which last term is derived directly from the Latin word answering to the one here used. So it means chaste, continent, self-governing, one might say.

Now, this word is listed only several times. There are only about eight verses where it uses this particular word. In Galatians 5, verses 19 and following, we have the works of the flesh that are made manifest. And then specifically in verse 23, we have listed, verses 22 and following, the fruit of the Spirit. And one of the fruits of the Spirit in verse 23 is temperance—that’s this same word here—temperance or moderation.

Again, in Second Peter, chapter 1, in the address in the opening address to that particular epistle, Peter says this: “Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to your virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, or moderation, self-control, self-government, and add to temperance patience, and add to patience godliness, and godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity.” Whole list there of the fruits of the Spirit. And in the context of that, we have the admonition relative to self-control or moderation.

By the way, to remind us that Paul exercised himself to have a conscience devoid of offense toward God and men. Remember that from a couple of weeks ago? Second Peter goes on to say in chapter 1, “Brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure.” You’re supposed to move toward these particular manifestations of virtue with great diligence. Because the fruit of the Spirit—it doesn’t mean that somehow it just sort of happens in your life, you know. No, we’ve said before, we said a couple of weeks ago, I remind you again today, that the positive attributes of God’s righteousness—justice—and the extension of, or rather, the self-control that is required relative to these texts is to be result of careful and diligent labor on your part. And in that epistle, it says that diligence is to make your calling sure.

So temperance is also listed in Titus 1:8 as a qualification for those men who should be considered for church office. Then in 1 Corinthians 9:9, we read that if some cannot contain themselves—that is, in relative to sexual activity—let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn. And so there, that word contain is the same word for having temperance, moderation, self-government.

Again, that epistle goes on in chapter 9, verse 24: “Know ye not that they which run in a race run well, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain. Every man that strives for the mastery is temperate in all things.” So if you strive for mastery, to win the race, you are temperate, self-controlled. This word here, “in all things,” the word has to do with self-government. The word has to do with a control of one’s passions, a control of one’s emotions, a general pattern of life that is marked not by excesses and wild swings, but rather by temperance and self-control.

It is the sort of thing that Felix should have applied relative to his married life and should have left another man’s wife alone, but of course, he didn’t. Just as righteousness or justice is something that Felix should have applied in the context of Paul’s case. And both things could be said in terms of his use of money. Money—he was not controlled in his desire for money, and he perverted justice because he wanted money from Paul. He wouldn’t let him go because he wanted money.

Well, this same characteristic is very important for us to look at in terms of our own lives. Both these things really are. This characteristic of temperance—years ago, a group of men from Reformation Covenant Church drew up a series of evaluators and qualifications for office. This, of course, is one of the things that we had to do with. And let me just read you here what we came up with as a group relative to the word temperance.

Now, there’s a synonym to this word used in the listing in Timothy for office, and that word is prudent. And let me just read here the definition that we came up with. These two words are very similar in meaning—that is, temperate and prudent. Those two particular Greek words used. In fact, their meanings are so close that they are occasionally translated interchangeably in different versions.

Considered in the context of First Timothy, these words express the general idea that the elder is to exhibit a life of careful self-governance. More specifically, the word temperate in this case refers to self-control over the mind, while the word prudent indicates a command of the body with its passions and appetites. And so, if we take this word that Paul is speaking of and combine it with the parallel or synonymous word that is used in the list of qualifications for elder, and we take those two words together, it implies self-government relative to the body and its appetites, but also relative to the mind. You know, the mind is like any other of the great gifts God has given our bodies—it must be controlled. And that control must be exhibited by ourselves, or preeminently, of course, by the Holy Spirit.

And when we speak of self-control, we do not mean to use that term in isolation from the Holy Spirit. It’s not really self-control. It is the control of the Holy Spirit ministered through our own volitions and wills.

Some of the questions that we came up with, you know, in the qualifications for office sheet that we developed—we thought it’d be good to have some questions to help people think through the practical application. And here’s one of the questions we had: “Is your life balanced in the various areas of responsibility and involvement—family, church, politics, recreation, et cetera—or does one area predominate to the detriment of another area?”

We have responsibilities in many areas. Many men allow themselves to spend so much time in their vocation, or their calling. My brother Mike L. reminded me that vocational calling is really redundancy, because vocation means calling. Vocabulary, vocation—calling. But we’re so far away from that in our day and age that we have to remind ourselves that vocation, what you do for work, is indeed a calling from God.

But in any event, many men allow their vocations to crowd out their responsibilities relative to the church, or relative to the family, or relative to the civil state—their responsibilities in those areas. To allow that to happen is a manifestation of a failure of temperance or moderation, the word that Paul here is preaching as essential to the very idea of faith in Christ. Paul equates faith in Christ with these particular words: justice and self-government.

So this word is very important for us, and it’s very important for us to analyze ourselves.

A couple of other questions we had here: “Have you reached a point of relative stability in your intellectual, philosophical, and theological development, or do you find yourself changing views frequently?” Again, the idea of self-governance and temperance. “Three: Have you given serious thought to your core tenets to determine whether they are in conflict at some points and are in harmony with each other?” The idea of balance. “Do you attempt to avoid situations which you know may present you with temptations?” It’s an excellent question in terms of analysis—if a person has moderation or temperance in their lives. I mean, if you know you have particular proclivities to difficulties, or failings, or sins in particular areas, then part of the way you govern yourself is to avoid those things.

You know, in terms of my self-control that God has given me relative to diet: Now, I don’t particularly want to have a big box of chocolates sitting on my desk at work. It’d be a silly thing for me to do, and I don’t think it’d be a big deal for me. But you see, it’s just not a good idea to put yourself in the way of temptation that way. If you know you have a difficulty or have a particular need to stay away from some things.

“Five: How well are you able to maintain control over your emotions and your physical appetite?” And that last one sort of sums up what this word is. And so relative to faith in Christ, temperance is given by Paul as one of the specific manifestations of faith in Christ, or a failure of faith in Christ—a lack of temperance. In this verse, Matthew Henry points out that in Titus 2:12, it says the grace of God teaches us to live soberly and righteously. You see, so there too, the grace of God is summed up in terms of the way it affects our lives—rubber on the road sorts of issues—that we do things soberly and righteously, justice and temperance, or self-control.

And so these things are summed up in that way.

Paul then moves to the third point of his outline, so to speak, his message of faith in Christ: righteousness, temperance, and then he speaks of the judgment to come. He says that there will be judgment to come. Pretty straightforward. This is not the only place. This essential part of the gospel is repeated again and again in the book of Acts. For instance, in Acts 10:42, to Cornelius, Peter said that he commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the judge of the quick and the dead. And then in Acts 17:31, “He hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness.” Over and over again throughout the book of Acts, throughout the scriptures, the gospel—an essential component of proclaiming it correctly—is that there will be a day of judgment.

And of course, when we take the simple facts of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, the resurrection is what teaches us there will be a judgment to come. Paul has made that clear in various presentations of the gospel in the book of Acts. And so the judgment to come is an essential part that we must witness to in the context of our proclamation of what faith in Christ is all about: the judgment to come.

Now, just as righteousness can be seen as having a positional relationship, the judgment to come here undoubtedly speaks to the once-for-all return of Jesus Christ and the resurrection of the just and the unjust. But it also, of course, refers to eschatological judgments that come throughout time in history. Judgment had come to Drusilla’s father in the form of God’s wrath against him. The judgment to come comes quickly. It doesn’t just come at the end of the age. Christ is present as king throughout history now. And so in that sense, his judgment is always upon us.

And so Paul preaches of these three things specifically to Felix and Drusilla as they ask what this faith in Christ is all about. He tells them what it’s all about. He says that it is about our conduct—our justice or failure of justice. He says that it has to do with self-control, a life governed by and essentially ourselves with the Holy Spirit holding all, as Lensky said, all the passions and desires in check.

Lensky asks the question in his commentary: Could these two face God with reference to these parts of the law? Can they face God in the context of whether they have done justly and whether they have exercised self-control and moderation? And if not, the phrase “judgment” brings to them the responsibility to answer such things before God Almighty.

In another commentary, we read here that Paul taught about knowing right from wrong—that’s what justice is about: the virtues of self-control and chastity, and an unavoidable day of judgment. And so we have the presentation of a different sort of gospel than we hear today very frequently. You know, it’s a gospel—and I have two comments here: One, this is not the gospel of “Do you want a better marriage?” or “Do you want to be a better governor?” No, this is the gospel that speaks to specific admonitions of God’s law, and then reminds men that if they fail to have lives characterized by that, and if they fail to exercise belief in the Lord Jesus Christ that produces the only true vision of what those things are, then judgment is surely upon them.

It’s a different sort of gospel. But recognize too—it’s very interesting here—how Paul doesn’t preach to them about specific things. He accentuates the positive. That’s the song I was thinking of this last week as I was meditating on this verse. He accentuates the positive, eliminates the negative. He lets them draw the conclusion as to whether they have been just or temperate. At least that’s what the text seems to indicate.

He says, “This is what the law of God requires. This is what a man who has a relationship with God and is under the control of the Holy Spirit through belief in Jesus Christ is supposed to be. He’s supposed to be just. He’s supposed to be self-controlled.” And he lets them think about the implications. And then he says, “And there will be judgment to come.” Felix gets the point. He doesn’t need Paul, nor do any men need Paul, to tell them specifically what his sins are.

Now, it’s not bad to do that. He does that in other places—don’t get me wrong—but in this particular presentation of the gospel, the simple assertion of the requirements of God’s law and what a life should look like lived in a relationship to the control of the Holy Spirit should look like, the Holy Spirit does that work of bringing judgment upon the people that he’s spoken to. And we see here specifically that Felix then trembles as a result of this.

He’s frightened. He who would judge Paul is now declared by Paul to be under the judgment of God. By implication, he who would cause Paul to tremble enough to give money to get out, he himself trembles under the sentence of God’s emissary and ambassador to him. He trembles.

Now, the demons also believe and shudder, but they don’t convert. He trembles, but he doesn’t convert. He’s frightened. His conscience is awakened to his sin, his failure in these areas. I pray to God that we be not more callous than Felix. I pray to God that when we hear the requirements to live a just life in reference to our fellow man, and to exercise moderation in our appetites, in our intellect, and in our passions, and then we hear that God will judge us in relationship to these evidences of gospel faith—I pray to God we’re not more callous than Felix. I pray to God that we also tremble when we think of judgment. That we tremble when we think of our own deaths. And we tremble to think that there’ll be a day in which God will call us forth and will, according to the scriptures, judge every man according to his works. Not that works can save, but they’re a demonstration.

I pray that we tremble as Felix trembled in that sense, but I pray we tremble to the end that we might have evangelical repentance, as it was used in the old days by Matthew Henry. Evangelical repentance used to be understood as a different sort of repentance. It’s a different sort of trembling. It’s a trembling that trembles for the offense we’ve caused God in a man’s life and comes to faith in Christ and throws ourselves before the judgment seat of God, pleading nothing but his blood. That’s evangelical repentance. This is forensic repentance, judicial repentance, but it has nothing to do with the change of heart in Felix.

What is Felix’s response? The jailer earlier in the book of Acts trembled and asked, “What shall we do? What can I do to be saved?” Felix trembles and says, “Uh, take that away from me, please.” We’ll talk about that later. But “Please go away now, and I’ll call you when it’s a convenient season.”

And I pray that we, after week as the word is ministered here, and day after day as the word is administered by the Holy Spirit in your daily reading of the scriptures, that when the Holy Spirit strikes that chord of conviction with you and you tremble, that you don’t just close the book up and put it away and stop thinking about it, or you don’t just turn the pastor off because of the pressure and then just stop thinking about it. No, that’s what Felix does to his damnation.

Quoting from another commentator, he said: “Righteousness, self-control, and judgment to come. These were, however, the last things calculated to soothe either the governor or his wife. Righteousness had small part in Felix’s administration. Self-control was not prominent in the court favorite who had persuaded the young Jew at his side to abandon her husband, Azius, king of the Arsaces. And judgment to come was a direct reminder, even to a man who took little thought of the hereafter, of that summons to Rome, and alas, a last accounting, rather, which ultimately befell him. Felix was tangled in a web of evil circumstances of his own weaving, and the time was not convenient to cut himself boldly free.”

See, Felix trembled, but he did not convert.

Now, these terms then that are central to Paul’s presentation of the gospel to Felix and Drusilla have correlation to other portions of scripture. I’m reminded as I read this text of the three requirements of man according to Micah: to love justice, to do justice rather, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. And at least two of the three here are repeated, aren’t they? To do justice, to do righteousness. And Paul spoke of righteousness, and to walk humbly with God—that implies a knowledge of his judgments upon us. And so the judgment to come and the extension of mercy is related, albeit maybe in a little bit of an extrapolated fashion, to moderation.

Moderation or self-control involves death to self. That’s what it’s always about. And I think that every growth in the Christian life has is bittersweet. There’s a bitterness to our growth in Christ because to grow in Christ is to die to ourselves and the conception of who we are.

I remember using a silly illustration, I suppose, but it comes to mind, and I think it will maybe help a little bit. I remember years ago I was hitchhiking around the country, and I jumped into a car real quick, and I swung the door open and hit my tooth. And I still have a little piece of tooth missing—one of my two front teeth. Well, if you ever wondered why that or how it happened, that’s how it happened. Foolishly swinging a door right in my own mouth. Believe that. And you know, I was real depressed for a few days after that.

Now, what’s the big deal? A little bit of tooth. And it wasn’t—people might think, “Oh, he’s got a crushed tooth.” No, I think what it was—God’s reminding me of my own mortality, a reminder of my own death. And a depression related to that. Well, I think that when God crucifies us, when we are told to take up our cross daily and deny ourselves, it shows us that self-denial is a death to self. And there is a bitterness. There’s a sadness to us. There’s a depression to dying to ourselves. But of course, that’s quickly washed away with the realization that we’re being revivified. We’re being raised up to life in Christ. We’re to die to ourselves and to live to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so a moderation, self-government, is about dying to yourself. And it’s about living to Christ. And if you understand Christ’s relationship to his church, it’s about living to other people in the context of the church. It’s about loving mercy, loving the demonstration of covenant faithfulness on a horizontal plane. And so really, these same three requirements of Micah, I think, can be referred to here in the context of what Paul told Felix.

But there’s an even greater correlation, I think, to another text. As I mentioned earlier, John 16. Turn to John 16 if you would. We’ll look at verses 7 and following.

John 16:7 and following. And what our Savior does here is he’s talking about him going away. And they don’t want him to go away. Would you? You know, remember that Jesus is the epitome of everything that we believe and talk about in the rest of the scriptures. And if you’ve come to place great delight in the doctrines of God, praise God for that, and recognize that all those doctrines and all those truths focal down into the person and work of Jesus Christ, our Savior, his person.

Remember, I said before, “That’s true. Ideas of consequences, and it’s very important we know that.” But we have here the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and when he walked this earth, can you imagine an understanding of who he is and the culmination of all the scriptures teach—the scriptures that are so beautiful to us, so desirable, more to be desired than gold, than fine gold, tastier than the best, sweetest honey you can get—standing right there in front of you, the Lord Jesus Christ? They didn’t want him to go away. Well, they shouldn’t have wanted him to go away, but he says it’s important that I do go away. That’s very important. For the reason we understand what he says. What he’s going to tell them here is, and what I’m going to read, he says, “I got to go away because then the Holy Spirit will be sent. And when the Holy Spirit is sent, he’s going to do a couple of things: one in reference to the world, one in reference to you.”

Here it is. John 16:7 and following.

“Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come unto you. But if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, what will he do? He will reprove the world, convict, judge judicially the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin because they believe not on me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all the truth. For he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come.”

And Jesus says, “The Holy Spirit’s going to come.” That’s why they should be willing to let him leave. And when he comes, he’s going to do two things: he’s going to convict the world, and he’s going to lead you, the elect, into all truth. And it is my belief that what we have here is the work of the Holy Spirit through Paul, one of the emissaries of the Lord Jesus Christ, Christ through one of his saints, convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and justice and judgment to come. And that’s what he does. He witnesses to Felix and Drusilla of righteousness and temperance, which has to do with sin and a failure to be self-controlled relative to their actions, and judgment.

You know, the Apostle Paul had a different view, I think, probably of evangelism than we do. He may not be seen here as an effective evangelist. These folks don’t come to the faith, but he was effective. Not because the only ones we’re supposed to reach are the elect—that’s true, that’s one side of it. I thought of our confessional statement. We probably add a phrase to it one of these days, because we talk in there about the need, in spite of our belief in God’s sovereignty, to witness the gospel, if perchance God might give someone saving faith to believe, if we reach the elect. And sometimes we think of preaching the gospel as trying to find the elect. And we use that illustration. That’s an okay illustration. But, you know, there’s another side to it, because you’re also finding the non-elect. And it’s not as if the presentation of the gospel is a waste of time if you present it to the non-elect.

What Paul, I think, believed was that he had the same two functions because he operated in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. And his function, being used by the Holy Spirit to preach the gospel, to preach the implications of faith in Christ, was to convict some—the non-elect, the world—of sin and of righteousness and judgment, and to lead the elect into all the truth. When we preach the gospel, we witness to our faith and speak to people about what faith in Christ is all about. I think we’ve got to keep in mind that’s what we’re doing.

And if God has you for a day, a week, a month, or a year only to bring a witness of judgment to those who are outside of the faith, well then you’re not ineffectual, because that’s one of the two very purposes for which God has sent the Holy Spirit to earth. You see what I’m saying? He places it on a par with leading the truth, leading the elect rather, the disciples into all truth. The other half of the Holy Spirit’s work is to convict the world. So I think that this tells us some very important things, and I want to just spend a little bit of time here on this passage from John as a parallel passage to the passage from Acts.

I won’t spend a lot of time, and I’m going to rely here—and I would say that it’d be a good thing for you to do if you have R.J. Rushdoony’s systematic theology—to look on his section on the Holy Spirit and specifically section 8: the coming of the Holy Spirit. I’m going to read a couple of things from that as we go along here, and maybe I won’t read them, but I’ll refer to what he says here. He talks about how in the Old Testament the Spirit was certainly present. In fact, he said the Spirit was the most present of the three members of the Trinity in the Old Testament. And he reminds us that David in his, in the Psalms, said, “Take not thy Spirit away from me,” and so certainly the Holy Spirit was present in the Old Testament, and yet we can speak of the coming of the Spirit in a dramatic, noncontinuous sense, so to speak, relative to New Testament times. And it doesn’t just refer to the day of Pentecost. And so what I want us to see is that while Micah shows us continuity—remember I talk about continuity of the central message of God’s word to man—Micah tells us continuity. John 16 reminds us of the discontinuity of the day and age in which we live, because now the scriptures say the Spirit has come in a fuller sense. And specifically, the advent of the Spirit is tied to the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he’s speaking of that truth here to his disciples before he leaves. And so we have something different at play today.

And what Mr. Rushdoony posits, and I believe he is correct, is that the great difference here is that the Spirit now comes not just to lead the elect into truth. There’s a difference there too. We have an anointing now with the Holy Spirit we did not have in the Old Testament. But there’s a radical difference in terms of the conviction of the world relative to sin, justice, and the judgment to come. That’s what Jesus said happens now with the coming of the Holy Spirit. It’s not just to lead the elect into the truth. It’s also to convict the entire world of these three particular things—to convince them, to convict them, to judicially be against them.

And the word “Paraclete” is used here of the Holy Spirit in this text. That word is a judicial term. It means one who stands close to someone who is under judgment and brings them deliverance from that judgment. So that’s part of what the word means. But the word also means, in the context of judicial proceedings, one who also brings judgment against somebody else. And so the Paraclete is here to be at our side, to be with us, to guide us into truth, to seek our right standing with God, and to bring us effectively into more and more maturation of that. But he is also there to accuse and convict the world of sin.

And I think that this little vignette from the book of Acts is a perfect picture of that very work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as R.J. Rushdoony says, now in New Testament times, comes to prosecute the witness of Jesus Christ in the hearts of men. He mentions—and I think I mentioned this before—that he doesn’t bring conviction of sin at a time when there were wicked Canaanites. He didn’t come at a time when there were wicked Canaanites in the context of the people. The people of Israel were essentially moral people, understanding traditional family values, Judeo-Christian ethics, sort of moralists, the world at its best. It’s what Rushdoony points out from this: the world at its best, in terms of moralism, et cetera, in terms of the Jewish nation at that time, rejected Jesus Christ, murdered him, killed him, and then his followers—the manifestation of Christ through the Spirit—also killed and persecuted. And that’s why we’re at this particular place in the book of Acts where Paul’s trying to be put to death by these moral, upstanding people.

Moffatt in his commentary on this text says the following: “The world is guilty, but it requires the Spirit. It requires the Spirit to bring this home effectually. The Spirit convicts the world in two senses. In the first place, he shows the world to be guilty. In other words, he secures a verdict of guilty against the world. But in the second place, we should take the words to mean also that the Spirit brings the world’s guilt home to itself. The Spirit convicts the individual sinner’s conscience. Otherwise, men would never be convicted of their sin.”

And you see it here with Felix. It’s not as if he doesn’t have a conscience, but it’s as if the Holy Spirit’s particular job is to awaken that conscience in the case of those who are not elect. And so it happens here in the context of this particular vignette in the book of Acts. And as I said, there is a correlation between these things: the way in which this is accomplished in the life of Felix and Drusilla and then the work of the Holy Spirit generally spoken of in John 16.

Rushdoony says: “The coming of the Holy Spirit means that the Old Testament presence is now an expanded and worldwide presence. The Spirit will not allow the world to forget Christ. He works in the hearts of all men, including those not yet evangelized, to bring forth conviction—a recognition of their guilt and their rebellion against Almighty God.”

Now, the text from John tells us specifically, in talking of these three things, that he’ll reprove or convict the world of sin because they believe not on me. All sin stems from that great sin: that they believe not on the Lord Jesus Christ. Sin is not some kind of impersonal, abstract thing. It is