Acts 25:13f, 26:28


Sermon preached on November 12, 2006 by Laurence W. Veinott. © Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Other sermons can be found at http://www.newlifeop.org/.

Last week we all heard the news about T.H., pastor of a church and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was accused of certain sins. He resigned and the first thing I heard was that he was proclaiming his innocence, yet he resigned for the good of the church. But later it came out that he did admit that some of the charges against him were true.

That pattern is very familiar. People sin and when the truth starts to come out they deny what they did. They say that it's not true. Why is that? On one level you could say it's that people don't want to be embarrassed, or go through the shame that sin brings, or lose their positions. That's true. But it also shows us something about the nature of sin—a characteristic of sin that we should cause us to be very wary of it. The fact is that

sin traps.

Often people think of sin as a one time thing. They think,

"I'm just going to do this once and then I'll stop and I won't do it again."



They are also very sure that they'll only commit that one sin, that it won't lead to others. They think,

"I'm just going to commit this sin, and I'll stop. I'm not going to commit any other sin besides this one."



But what happens? They commit the sin and then they do it again and again. Or, they commit the sin only once like they planned, but that sin leads them into other sins that they had not anticipated. That's what sin does. It entraps.

The Bible warns us about this in many different ways. Sometimes it just states it. For example, in 2 Timothy 2:26 the apostle Paul spoke about,

"the trap of the devil"

and how he takes people,

"captive to do his will."

We see the same principle in 1 Timothy 6:9 where Paul warned people about greed and said,

"People who want to get rich
fall into temptation and a trap
and into many foolish and harmful desires
that plunge men into ruin and destruction."

Sometimes the Scripture personifies how sin is a trap. In Ecclesiastes 7:25 Solomon told how he turned his mind to understand,

"the stupidity of wickedness
and the madness of folly."

Then he personified evil as a wicked woman. He wrote,

"I find more bitter than death
the woman who is a snare,
whose heart is a trap
and whose hands are chains.
The man who pleases God will escape her,
but the sinner she will ensnare."

Note how there are four references there to sin being a trap. Over and over again the Bible tells us that sin traps.

But in other places the Bible gives us examples and illustrates how sin is a trap. This section of Acts gives us two such examples.

First, consider Festus and how sin trapped him.

Festus had a very great problem. He hadn't found Paul not guilty and released him like he should have. Then Paul appealed to Caesar. That put Festus in a bind. He has to send Paul to Caesar, but what is he going to tell Caesar? There are no valid charges against Paul. Listen to what Festus says to King Agrippa in verses 26 and 27.

"I have nothing definite to write
to His Majesty about him.
Therefore I have brought him before all of you,
and especially before you, King Agrippa,
so that as a result of this investigation
I may have something to write.
For I think it is unreasonable
to send on a prisoner
without specifying the charges against him."

Felix is desperate to find something to write to Caesar so that his sending Paul to him would not seem absurd. If Festus tells Caesar the truth, Caesar is going to think that Festus is incompetent and wasting his time. As James Montgomery Boice wrote, (Acts, p. 402)

"Why should Festus be bothering the emperor with trivialities he could not understand himself? … the testimony of Felix was that Paul had done nothing wrong—nothing that would merit his being put to death. It seemed to him that this was the situation also. So what was he going to do? Did he dare send Paul to the emperor saying, 'There is no real accusation against him, at least none that we can understand, and as far as what we do understand goes, there is nothing that merits either your attention or his death.'?"



Festus is in a bind. So when King Agrippa comes down, Festus wants him to help him and get him out of this situation.

Poor Festus. After only a few days in office, his sin of wanting to please the Jews has him trapped. Festus had started his governorship so well. When he arrived he got right down to business. He had heard Paul's case. But he hadn't released him as justice dictated. So Paul appealed to Caesar. Festus' promising start had bogged down. His desire to please the Jews and his unwillingness to give Paul justice had led him into a trap. We're not sure what was in the letter to Caesar when he sent Paul, but we can speculate fairly confidently that it was something like that of the commander Lysias in Acts 23, a distortion of many of the facts and an attempt to portray himself in the best possible light. We can be fairly sure that Festus' not giving Paul justice led him into lying to Caesar about it.

Festus' reign was short. Less than two years after this Festus was in his grave. His governorship was like that of King Belshazzar—he was weighed in the balances and found wanting. He hadn't freed Paul. He was trapped by sin and it destroyed him.

But Luke's example of Festus' being trapped by sin is only a small one compared to the one that follows—that of King Agrippa.

Sin trapped King Agrippa and destroyed him.

In Acts 26:28 we see that King Agrippa refused to believe the gospel. He said to Paul,

"Do you think that in such a short time
you can persuade me to be a Christian?"

Like Felix before him, King Agrippa refused to believe. There's a common thread here that we should not miss.

Why didn't Felix believe? One of the reasons is because if he became a Christian he would have to give up Drusilla. She was really the wife of another man. Felix didn't have a right to her. Thus when Paul discoursed on righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix became afraid, but he didn't believe. No doubt one of the main reasons was because of his relationship with Drusilla. He was trapped. Sin led him into a trap and then the trap closed around him and he could not escape.

It was the same with King Agrippa. Who was Bernice? She was his sister. But he was living with her as if she was his wife. It was an incestuous relationship. So if King Agrippa was going to become a Christian, what would he have to do? He would have to give up Bernice. But he was not willing to do that. He was trapped. Sin had ensnared him.

Both Felix and King Agrippa got what they wanted. Felix got Drusilla and King Agrippa got Bernice. But once they got what they wanted, once they got their sin, it trapped them. It wasn't going to let them go. It destroyed them.

Do you see what happened with both Felix and King Agrippa? Sin had entrapped them. They both realized that if they became Christians, they would have to give up something important to them—an important sin. They were offered the greatest gift in the world—the forgiveness of their sins in Jesus, an eternal life of joy and happiness with God in glory—and they turned it down because sin had entrapped them.

Sin traps. Never forget that. Did you ever see a moth get caught in a spider's web? It's trapped. It can't get out. The more it struggles the more entangled it gets. The web has it trapped, it's helpless as the spider comes to kill it. That's what sin is like. It traps.

We see this in many places in Scripture.

Consider David and his sins.

When did David get trapped? It was when he looked when he shouldn't have when he saw Bathsheba bathing. David was on his roof because he couldn't sleep. That first glance was not sinful because it was unintentional. But when David looked lustfully, he was trapped. He sent to find out who she was and then he sent for her and slept with her. He was trapped after that first look. Later Bathsheba sent him word that she was pregnant. He was trapped. What was David going to do? He wanted to protect Bathsheba. How could he do that? Only by sinning more. Sin had him trapped.

You'll remember how David reacted. He called her husband home from the battlefield and he urged him to go home. He thereby deprived his army of a great soldier. 2 Samuel 23 lists the greatest of David's mighty fighting men. First it lists the three greatest—and then it lists those who were known as the Thirty. Among them was Uriah the Hittite. But David called him home in order to try to cover up his sin.

But when Uriah returned to Jerusalem, he didn't return home the first night. So what did David do. He purposely got him drunk. It's not only wrong for you yourself to get drunk, but it's even worse to get someone else drunk. But that's what David did. But Uriah still didn't go home to his wife.

So what was David going to do? Sin had him trapped. He could only protect Bathsheba by getting rid of her husband. Sin demanded more.

So the next day David sent him back to the army carrying his own death warrant. In it David ordered Joab to put Uriah where the fighting was the fiercest and then withdraw from him. (2 Samuel 11:14-15) So David involved not only Joab, but other soldiers in his plot against Uriah. And not only that, but because of David's plot, some of the soldiers around Uriah were killed unnecessarily. Joab was afraid that David was going to be angry when he heard about it so he made the messenger emphasize that Uriah the Hittite was dead also.

Sin had trapped David. Was his conscience going to bother him? He had to make his conscience hard. We see evidence of this in the message he sent back to Joab regarding Uriah and the other soldiers who were killed. The message was, (2 Samuel 11:25)

"Don't let this upset you;
the sword devours one as well as another."

How sin trapped David. The only way he could protect Bathsheba was by escalating sin upon sin.

Peter's denials of Jesus also shows how sin traps.

Peter denied Jesus three times. The first denial is sinful, but it's the least sinful of the three. What we see in Peter's denials is an escalation in sin. Sin had trapped him. The first denial happened when a servant girl recognized Peter and said that he had been with Jesus. Peter denied it before them all and said, (Matthew 26:70)

"I don't know
what you're talking about."

Then he slipped away from the fire and went to the gateway. He probably thought he was safe there, that sin hadn't trapped him. But it had. Another girl saw him and said to the people there, "This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth." But Peter denied it again, this time with an oath, saying,

"I don't know the man."

There was an escalation in the denial. But the third was the worst. More people came up to him and said that he was one of them, that his accent gave him away. We read that Peter,

"began to call down curses on himself,
and he swore to them,
'I don't know the man!'"

Sin had him trapped. One sin leads to another and there is usually an escalation in sin.

The story of Ananias and Sapphira also shows how sin traps.

You remember the story. They sold a piece of property and gave most of the money to the church. But they kept back part of the money yet they told the church that the money they gave them was the full amount. Ananias was struck dead because of it. But his wife didn't know that. When she came in about three hours later Peter asked her what the price was that they sold the land for. What was she going to do? If she told the truth she'd be getting her husband in trouble. Sin had her trapped. So she repeated Ananias' lie. She too was struck dead. Sin traps.

The incidents of Sapphira and David show us part of how this happens. For we see that

sin perverts our priorities and our sense of what is right and wrong.

That's one of the ways that it traps.

Consider Festus. When Paul proclaimed Christ as risen from the dead, Festus interrupted him and shouted that Paul was out of his mind, that his great learning had driven him insane! (Acts 26:24) Felix was hearing the only thing that could save him—the preaching of the gospel about Jesus—and he discarded it as nonsense. Sin distorted his thought processes.

When Paul replied that what he was saying was true and reasonable, he asked King Agrippa if he believed the prophets. But at this point King Agrippa was confused in his thinking as well. He said to Paul,

"Do you think that in such a short time
you can persuade me to be a Christian?"

The forgiveness of sins was offered to him, deliverance from eternal punishment, a eternal life of happiness and joy was offered to him—and he rejected it because he needed more time to think about it? His response should have been,

"Let me think about it… Yes!"



But he didn't. He was lost because sin had distorted his thought processes.

It was the same with David. After he had committed adultery, David felt he had to protect Bathsheba. According to the law of Moses she would have been put to death for her adultery. David couldn't let that happen to her. So he had Uriah killed. David's priorities were all wrong. His sense of what was right and wrong became perverted. He thought that protecting Bathsheba was the right thing to do. But it was in conflict with what was truly right and proper. But David couldn't see it. Sin had trapped him.

We see the same thing in King Saul. When he allowed hatred against David to grow in his heart, it corrupted his sense of right and wrong. He thought that everyone, including his son Jonathan was conspiring against him. Remember his words to Jonathan in 1 Samuel 20:30. He said,

"You son of a perverse
and rebellious woman!"

But Jonathan wasn't conspiring with David against his father. David never conspired against Saul. Neither did Jonathan. Jonathan died fighting alongside and for his father. Yet just after King Saul said the words I just quoted to Jonathan, he took up a spear and tried to kill Jonathan with it. (1 Samuel 20:33) Saul allowed his hatred to grow and it perverted his priorities and his sense of right and wrong.

We see again in his killing of the priests of the Lord at Nob. The priests of the Lord were faithful to God and King Saul. They did not conspire against Saul. But when David fled from Saul, David came to them at Nob. Ahimelech was surprised that David was alone and questioned him about it. David lied to him and told him that he was on a secret mission for the king. Because of the urgency of his mission, David asked for bread and for a sword, so Ahimelech gave him some consecrated bread and the sword of Goliath the Philistine.

Later, when Saul found out about it, he wouldn't listen to the truth. He accused the priests of conspiring against him with David. The priest Ahimelech defended himself with the truth. He said to King Saul, (1 Samuel 22:14-15)

"Who of all your servants is as loyal as David,
the king's son-in-law,
captain of your bodyguard
and highly respected in your household?
Was that day the first time
I inquired of God for him?
Of course not!
Let not the king accuse your servant
or any of his father's family,
for your servant knows
nothing at all about this whole affair."

But sin had so perverted Saul's reasoning and sense of right and wrong that he said, (1 Samuel 22:16)

"You will surely die,
Ahimelech,
you and your father's whole family."

Then Saul gave orders for the priests to be slaughter and they were. That day King Saul had 85 priests put to death, along with the town of Nob, with its men and women, its children and infants, and animals. Saul killed all those people because his hatred had distorted his thought processes. Sin had trapped him. It had perverted his priorities and threw his thought processes all out of whack. Sin traps.

Now what does this mean for you?

There are four lessons for us here.

First, for Christians, see sin and temptation for what they are.

Sin and temptation are things that seek to trap you, to have you, to destroy you.

Don't let temptation entice you. If sin ever looks attractive remember that it's not really like that.

I love some of the special effects that they can do today in movies. Did you ever see a scene where a hideous and disgusting monster disguised itself as a handsome man or beautiful woman? But then you see it turn into this revolting and vile creature. It's horrible. That's exactly what sin is like. Remember Satan's words to Eve about the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. He said, (Genesis 3:4-5)

"You will not surely die.
For God knows that when you eat of it
your eyes will be opened,
and you will be like God,
knowing good and evil."

Eve then looked at the fruit and saw that the fruit of the tree,

"was good for food and pleasing to the eye,
and also desirable for gaining wisdom,
she took some and ate it."

But what a horrible surprise she received. Suddenly they were not fit to be in God's presence. They were banned from the Garden. Then Cain murdered his brother, Abel. Can you imagine how Eve must have felt when she saw his dead body? Then both Adam and Eve died. Instead of living forever, ruling over God's creation and displaying God's glory—they brought alienation, suffering and death—to themselves and to the world. Sin deceived, it trapped, it destroyed. Christians, recognize temptation and sin for what it is. It seeks to trap you and destroy you.

Secondly, this shows you that you have to

be careful what you desire because you may just get it and it may destroy you.

Felix wanted Drusilla. She was another man's wife. But Felix got her and it destroyed him. From what we know he's in hell's fires today because of it. King Agrippa wanted Bernice. He got her and it destroyed him. Be careful what you desire because you may just get it and it may destroy you.

Sin traps. Don't ever set your heart on something that is sinful. It will destroy you. King Ahab set his heart on Naboth's vineyard. He got it. But it destroyed him. (1 Kings 21) David's son Amnon fell in love with his half-sister, Tamar. He set his heart on her. He got her and it destroyed him. (2 Samuel 13:1) Solomon set his heart on foreign women. He got them to be his wives, and it led him into great sin. (1 Kings 11) Samson set his heart on Delilah and it cost him his eyes and his life. (Judges 16)

Be careful what you set your heart on. You may get it and it will destroy you.

What all of us should realize is that God's way is best and that His commands are for our good.

When God gives a command, like, not to covet your neighbors wife, (Exodus 20:17) it is for our good. To covet your neighbor's wife is the way to ruin, to destruction. God knows that. That's why He tells us not to do it. Christians, love God's commands. Realize that they are your life—and are more precious than gold or silver. (Psalm 119:72)

Also in this regard, you who are Christians, desire God's will.

In the Lord's Prayer Jesus taught us to pray, (Matthew 6:10)

"Your will be done
on earth, as it is in heaven."

God's way is best. I think that sometimes our desires can be tainted with sin, or sin can be close at hand, even when what we desire is not sinful. It's because we don't have the proper attitude. Our desires and requests should be like that of Jesus, (Luke 22:42) who, in the Garden of Gethsemane, said,

"Father, if you are willing,
take this cup from me;
yet not my will,
but yours be done."

When King Hezekiah was struck with sickness, God sent the prophet Isaiah to him to tell him that he was going to die. But King Hezekiah didn't want to die. So he pleaded with God about it. God granted his request and let him live fifteen more years. But what is known about him in those fifteen years? That he showed some Babylonian messengers the treasures of his palace. God then told him that the day would come when the Babylonians would carry those treasures away and that some of his descendants would be carried off and become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon. Hezekiah didn't seem too upset, as he thought, (Isaiah 39:8)

"There will be peace and security
in my lifetime."

Your desires should always be based on God's Word. Even when they are, you should be praying,

"Not my will,
but yours be done."

As Proverbs 3:5-6 says,

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight."

Thirdly, for Christians,

how thankful you ought to be for Jesus who has rescued you out of sin's clutches.

Colossians 1:13 says about God,

"For he has rescued us
from the dominion of darkness
and brought us
into the kingdom of the Son he loves,"

Romans 6:6-7 says,

"For we know that our old self
was crucified with him
so that the body of sin might be done away with,
that we should no longer be slaves to sin—
because anyone who has died
has been freed from sin."

And in Romans 7:21f, Paul details his struggle with sin. He wrote,

"So I find this law at work:
When I want to do good,
evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God's law;
but I see another law at work
in the members of my body,
waging war against the law of my mind
and making me a prisoner
of the law of sin at work within my members.
What a wretched man I am!
Who will rescue me from this body of death?
Thanks be to God—
through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Through Jesus we have deliverance from sin and its power to trap. How thankful we ought to be for God's power working in our lives.

Lastly, for those of you who are not Christians, what you should realize is that

you have been trapped by sin and by yourself you are unable to get free. You need Jesus to save you.

Sin traps people. How has it trapped you? Sin traps in so many ways.

I don't know what kind of hold sin has on you now, or how tight the trap is that holds you. But you can be sure that it will tighten its grip as time goes by.

You need Jesus. He's the only One who can rescue you. He's the only One with the power to do so. When the Pharisees saw Jesus casting out demons they accused Him of using the power of the Beelzebub to do it. Jesus responded, (Matthew 12:25f)

"Every kingdom divided against itself
will be ruined,
and every city or household
divided against itself will not stand.
If Satan drives out Satan,
he is divided against himself.
How then can his kingdom stand?
And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub,
by whom do your people drive them out?
So then, they will be your judges.
But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God,
then the kingdom of God
has come upon you.
Or again, how can anyone enter
a strong man's house
and carry off his possessions
unless he first ties up the strong man?
Then he can rob his house."

Jesus has come to rescue you from the power of darkness. Go to Him. He's the only One who can save you. Trust in Him today.