Mismeasurement of the great and small.
There is something ludicrous as well as instructive in the scene which Festus here describes to Agrippa. Nothing could well be more incongruous than a Roman judge presiding at a tribunal before which "niceties of the Jewish religion" were brought up. He would feel utterly unsuited for the work, and he gladly enough availed himself of the presence of Agrippa to gain some notion of the subject which had so completely perplexed him. It appeared to him that the men over whom he was called to rule were permitting themselves to be passionately absorbed by questions not worthy of a moment's consideration. It probably also occurred to him that one at least was strikingly and unaccountably indifferent to those things to which alone he himself attached importance. How thoroughly he mismeasured everything we see if we consider—
I. THAT HIS OWN POSITION AS PROCURATOR OF JUDEA WAS A MATTER OF THE LEAST IMPORTANCE. Doubtless to him that seemed the one substantial fact in comparison with which "certain questions of the superstition" (religion) of the Jews and of "one Jesus" were small indeed. Now, we are only interested in Festus because of his accidental association with these questions. But for this connection not one in a thousand who now know something about him would have even heard of his name. How important to each one of us seem his own personal affairs—his income, his position, his reputation, his property! In how brief a time will these things be as nothing—his possessions scattered, his name forgotten, his office handed over to another! It would do us all good to be occasionally asking of ourselves—What will be the value of the things we prize so highly "when a few years are come"?
II. THAT MATTERS PERTAINING TO THE HEBREW FAITH ARE OF NO SLIGHT IMPORTANCE. "Certain questions of the religion" of the Jews would seem very trivial to a Roman ruler. But we know that they are worthy of the attention of mankind. Not only the great question of the Jewish Messiahship, but other and inferior matters respecting sacrifices and ordinances, have a place in our record which has outlived and will outlive proudest dynasties and mightiest empires. Students will read and investigate Leviticus and Deuteronomy when the annals of the empire are disregarded. Everything which bears on our relation to God, and everything which is even remotely related to that "one Jesus," has an interest which will not die.
III. THAT THE "ONE JESUS," TO WHOM FESTUS SO SLIGHTINGLY ALLUDED, WAS THE DESTINED SOVEREIGN OF THE RACE. Nothing could exceed the contemptuous indifference with which Festus speaks of the Savior (verse 19). Nothing was further from his thought than that this One would live forever in the honor and love of the world. But the Stone which the Jewish builders refused has become the Headstone of the corner, and the Prisoner whom the Roman soldiers crowned and clothed in cruel mockery now reigns in such majesty and wields such power as golden wreath and imperial purple will not symbolize at all. He who was dead, and whom Paul, the prisoner, so innocently and unaccountably "affirmed to be alive," is now worshipped as the risen, the reigning, the living Lord and Sovereign of mankind. How have Procurator and Malefactor changed places! How has the first become the last, and the last become the first! Let us