Acts 24:25

"But" While Felix had been flattered by Tertullus (Acts 24:2ff), he gets an ear full from Paul. "Paul was at liberty to choose for himself the special topic of discourse, and he did so with direct reference to the spiritual wants of his hearers" (McGarvey p. 240). "As he was discussing righteousness" That is, God's standard of moral purity, and what. person must do to become righteous, which would include faith in Christ, repentance and baptism. "Self-control" And Felix had lived his life up to this point without much self-control, secular sources actually describe him as. man given to unbridled excess. "The judgment to come" This drives home the need to be righteous and exercise self-control. Felix and Drusilla desperately needed to hear these topics, in other words, morality, salvation, sin, and hell fire and brimstone. "Felix became frightened" Which tells us that Paul painted. very clear picture of eternity for someone who did not repent. Notice, nothing is said about Drusilla's reaction. "As he glanced back over the stained and guilty past, he was afraid. He had been. slave in the vilest of all positions, and the vilest of all epochs, in the vilest of all cities. What secrets of lust and blood lay hidden in his earlier life; but ample and indisputable testimony, Jewish and pagan, sacred and secular, reveals to us what he had been---how greedy, how savage, how treacherous, how unjust, how steeped in the blood of private murder and public massacre. There were footsteps behind him; he began to feel as though the earth were made of glass" (Farrar p. 550). If one is not right with God, then one should be frightened when they hear about such topics. Being frightened is. good initial reaction, but how one deals with such fear is crucial.

Acts 24:25 "Go away for the present" This is the wrong choice. The right choice is, "Sirs, what must. do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30). "When. find time" As if getting ready for eternity is not. pressing matter. Felix will take the needs of his soul and bury them under all less important matters. "I will summon you" As far was the record goes, Felix never found this time. "The terror which seized him was the beginning necessary to. change of life; but lust and ambition smothered the kindling fires of conscience, and he made the common excuse of alarmed but impenitent sinners to get rid of his too faithful monitor. The 'convenient season' to which he deferred the matter, never came, and it never could come: for how could it ever be convenient for. man to put away. beautiful women with whom he was living in sin. This change must be made at. sacrifice of such convenience" (McGarvey pp. 240-241).