A Devotional Study of the Living Word of God

Psalm 119:79 Seeking the fellowship of eternity minded people is like anticipating the visit of a close personal friend. Those who know the testimonies of the LORD, those who FEAR Him too! All sharing in this sweet fellowship; this is the joy of having eternity in our heart! Ecclesiastes 3:11

Good Morning

There is a ship that I served on from 1963 to 1965, the USS Forrest Sherman (DD-931). It carried the title of the “The First and the Finest” Being that it was the first built of that class of destroyer and the finest one because it was determined by officials to be a “show boat”. The ship never saw any action, and was most always sent to various military events to display our modern Navy. It was sent on a cruise around the world, just after being Commissioned in 1958 for this very reason. The ship was decommissioned in 1982 and sold for scrape to the Fore River Shipyard. When the Shipyard went bankrupt the ship was returned to the Navy and now the Navy has it up for adoption as a museum piece. There is a “foundation” for the restoration of the ship and an effort to home port and display the it somewhere on the Maryland shore. The prophet Hosea has a similar experience with his wife Gomer, as she displayed herself as immoral and she ended up a prostitute on the street. Her life landed in the hands of a bankrupt world. Yet, God provided Hosea with strength; strength that forgave her, to remarry her and restore her as his lovely bride. The restoration of Gomer is a perfect picture of God's grace over each of us. Like Hosea, Christ has regarded our helpless estate, through His blood He reclaims each of us personally and by His Grace he adopts us into His family. Hosea 1:2-9 will give us the picture of Hosea's worldly family. The book is fourteen chapters of Gods compassion and desire to restore sinful Gomer (Israel). The redeeming power of the church of Jesus Christ is 2,000 plus years of God's compassion and desire to restore people like Gomer to the the joy and fellowship of His family through Justification, sanctification and glorification, these are the processes of our ongoing salvation experience.

Acts 25

Acts 25:13-19 On occasion you run into someone who sort of lives in a “box”. Festus is such a person. He became procurator of Judea 21 years after the our LORD died and rose again, he governed Judea from AD 58 to 62. To have this position and be ignorant of the land's history, Jewish law and custom is like filling the seat of governor with an ambulance chasing lawyer, when there are no constitutional lawyers available for the job. Just put a warm body there, no one will notice!

Acts 25:20-21 Festus does acknowledge his uncertainty and is somewhat relieved to have King Agrippa in town for a visit. He claims that Paul has appealed to Caesar Augustus, resulting in the decision of Festus to keep Paul incarcerated until such time when he could be sent to Rome. Agrippa desires to hear what Paul has to say and Festus is only, to happy to oblige, he set up a meeting to happen for the following day.

Acts 25:22-27 We would like to think that the matter of Paul's arrest and the condemning accusations of the Pharisee and Sadducee contingent of Jewish leaders is a minor thing. But, in the eyes of an unbelieving world a case like this can be very large. In these verses it would seem that the pageantry of King Agrippa's entrance into the auditorium is a bit to much, but it does establish the reigning authority that may have been weakened somewhat by Festus. Festus is very thankful for the presence of Agrippa, and without some solid input from Agrippa, Festus has nothing to write to Caesar Augustus about.