Living by the Spirit, Following the Way

Not Yet

Text: Acts 24:22–27  | 
Series: Living by the Spirit, Following the Way  | 
The Way Church KC — Rosedale, Kansas City, KS

Your phone has a button on it. It shows up when there’s a software update: Install Now, and underneath it, in smaller letters, Remind Me Tomorrow. Some of us have hit that second button every day for a month. We never once decided not to update. We just said not now — four hundred times in a row. That’s the thing about not now: it’s a decision that doesn’t feel like one. In Acts 24:22–27 we meet a man who heard the gospel from the apostle Paul — face to face, in private, repeatedly, for two years — and never once said no. Governor Felix just said not yet. Last week’s trial is over and both sides have made their case. Now the judge has to rule. And he doesn’t. This is the verdict that never comes, and Luke gives the stall its own scene before skipping two years in a single verse.

1. The Governor Who Knew

Acts 24:22–23

Look at how Luke describes Felix: “having a rather accurate knowledge of the Way.” Not a vague knowledge. Not a rumor. Accurate. Felix had governed Judea for about five years, and the church had been in Caesarea — his own capital — since before he arrived. Philip the evangelist lived there. Cornelius the centurion was converted there. Felix knew what the Way was and what it taught. He also had a letter in his desk from the commander in Jerusalem saying, in black and white, that Paul was “charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment.” The verdict was sitting in his own filing cabinet. So what does he do? “When Lysias the tribune comes down, I will decide your case.” Read the rest of Acts — Lysias never comes. He was never sent for. It sounds like due process. It’s actually a man who knows the answer and doesn’t want to say it out loud, because saying it would cost him something with the people in the room. The delay is not ignorance. It’s convenience.

This is the most common spiritual condition in Kansas City. It isn’t hostility — not many people in Rosedale are angry at Jesus. What we meet over and over is Felix: well informed about the Way, grew up in church or around it, knows the songs, likes the pastor, thinks Jesus was probably a pretty good guy. Accurate knowledge. And never one step down the road. Information about Jesus is not the same thing as following Jesus. The most gospel-informed pagan in the book of Acts is the man in the judge’s chair. But don’t miss the grace in verse 23. Felix loosens the chain and orders that “none of his friends should be prevented from attending to his needs.” For the next two years, somebody from the church in Caesarea walked up to the governor’s palace with bread. Somebody brought a cloak when it got cold. Somebody sat with him. That’s how God keeps a man alive in a season with no verdict — not with a miracle, but with friends who keep showing up. If you’re that friend for somebody right now, keep going. That’s not small. That’s verse 23.

2. The Sermon Nobody Ordered

Acts 24:24–25

Felix’s wife Drusilla is a Herod. Her father was the King Agrippa of Acts 12 who executed James and dropped dead in his royal robes; her great-grandfather is the Herod who killed the babies in Bethlehem. She’s probably nineteen or twenty, married off as a teenager to a Syrian king until Felix saw her, wanted her, and sent a hired magician to talk her out of her marriage. That’s the couple on the couch — and remarkably, they send for Paul. Luke says Paul spoke to them about “faith in Christ Jesus,” and on the way there he reasoned about “righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment.” Read the room: he preaches righteousness to a judge who sells verdicts, self-control to a couple whose marriage began with a magician and a divorce, and the coming judgment to a man who is currently refusing to render one. Paul is the one in chains, and by the end of the conversation the judge is on trial. He could have kept it friendly and kept his access. Paul brings up their marriage instead — not because he’s rude, but because he loves them too much to be polite.

And it lands. “Felix was alarmed” — the old King James says he trembled, and Luke uses the same word for Cornelius when the angel appeared and for the women at the empty tomb. This is real, God-shaped fear. Then Felix says the sentence the whole passage turns on: “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.” He’s asking for an opportunity while standing inside one. The apostle Paul is in his living room, the Spirit of God has his heart in a fist, and he says later. I know that moment from the inside. In treatment there’s an hour nobody tells you about — lights-out, when the building goes quiet and there’s nobody left to perform for, and what’s true gets loud. Every night at lights-out I knew what Felix knew in verse 25. And most nights I said exactly what he said: not tonight, when I get out of here, when things settle down. Sixteen hundred years ago Augustine prayed the most honest prayer most people ever pray: “Give me self-control — but not yet.” Years later, weeping in a garden, he finally said the other sentence: “Why not now? Why not this very hour?” Same word; he just took the “not” off. Here’s what lights-out taught me: the fear doesn’t save you. Felix trembled and went to bed and woke up the same man. Conviction is not conversion. Fear is a door, not a house — you walk through it, or you don’t. And God is not waiting for you to clean things up first. Paul preached righteousness, self-control, judgment, and faith in Christ all at once, right there in the mess. He’s asking you to stop saying not yet about it.

3. Two Years of Tomorrow

Acts 24:26–27

Why does Felix keep calling Paul back? Verse 26 tells you, and it’s ugly: he’s fishing for a bribe. Paul had mentioned bringing money to Jerusalem for the poor, and Felix heard one thing — this man has access to funds. So he keeps the case open and the conversations going, hoping Paul will buy his way out. Paul never does. One envelope and he walks, and he sits in that cell for two years instead, because the man who preached righteousness to the governor will not purchase his freedom from him. But notice the phrase: “he sent for him often and conversed with him.” Felix is the most gospel-exposed pagan in the entire book of Acts. He had the apostle Paul on retainer — private sermons, any time he wanted — and I think he liked it. You know people like this. Some of us are people like this: the church podcast in the car, the Bible app streak, the pastor friend, the WayGroup we attend without ever saying a word. Proximity to Jesus feels like progress toward Jesus. It isn’t. C.S. Lewis put it in the mouth of a senior demon: “The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” That’s verse 26. No fist in the air. Just two years of interesting conversations and not yet.

Then verse 27. New governor, and Felix’s one recorded act toward Jesus in two years: “desiring to do the Jews a favor, Felix left Paul in prison.” The word for favor is the ordinary Greek word for grace. Felix had the grace of God explained to him in his own living room for two years and traded it for the favor of a crowd — and it didn’t even work; the Caesarean Jews followed him to Rome and accused him anyway. Nobody stays neutral for two years. Not yet is a decision, and it always costs somebody. It cost Paul two years. It cost Felix everything. And here’s the gospel: Felix is not the first Roman governor to look at an innocent man, know he’s innocent, and hand him over to do a crowd a favor. Pilate said “I find no guilt in him” three times — and then, “wishing to satisfy the crowd,” handed Jesus over. Felix’s favor kept an innocent man in chains for two years. Pilate’s favor put the only truly innocent man who ever lived on a cross. The thing that made Felix tremble — the coming judgment — Jesus walked into first. The Judge of all the earth stood before a corrupt judge, received the verdict we deserved, and took the judgment to come now, on a Friday outside Jerusalem. Then He rose. So for everyone who trusts Him, the judgment to come has already come. The Judge was judged so the guilty could stop trembling and start following. Felix said “when I get an opportunity.” Jesus never says that. “Today, if you hear His voice.” “Now is the day of salvation.” Jesus never says “later.” He says “today.”

“And as he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said, ‘Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.'”

— Acts 24:25

Informed, or Following?

Two people need to hear this. First, the well-informed. You know the Way. You could probably preach this. You’ve been around church your whole life, or around us for a while, and you’d say you’re on good terms with Jesus. So here’s Felix’s question: are you informed, or are you following? Only one of those is a relationship. Felix could have passed a test on Christianity and never once walked the road. Don’t be the most gospel-informed person in the building who leaves the same way you came in. Second, the one who’s afraid. Maybe you felt something — the thing Felix felt — and the next sentence in your head is the one that lived in mine at lights-out for a very long time: not now, not here, when things calm down, when I’ve fixed the thing. The fear is not the enemy. The fear is a door, and the Spirit of God is standing in it, pointing at the solution. But you can’t live in a doorway. You walk through it, or you leave through the exit Felix used — the one with the sign that says Remind Me Tomorrow. Felix hit that button for two years and never got the tomorrow he was waiting for. You don’t clean it up first. You don’t get the marriage sorted and the bank account right and the habit handled and then come. Paul preached it all at once, in the mess, to a governor and a Herod — and that’s how every one of us got in here, with the thing still on us. When Jesus saved me out of addiction on January 20, 2015, I didn’t come clean. I came. So I’m not asking you to feel it; you already do. I’m asking you to take a step. Today. Tell somebody one sentence: I’m done saying later. That’s how following the Way starts.

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Questions People Ask About Acts 24:22–27

What is Acts 24:22–27 about?

Acts 24:22–27 describes what happened after the apostle Paul’s trial before Governor Felix in Caesarea. Felix, who already had “a rather accurate knowledge of the Way” (the early name for Christianity), postponed a verdict he knew he should give and kept Paul in loose custody for two years. During that time he and his wife Drusilla listened to Paul speak about faith in Christ, righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment; Felix became afraid but sent Paul away, saying he would call for him “when I get an opportunity.” He kept summoning Paul, hoping for a bribe, and when he was replaced by Porcius Festus he left Paul in prison as a favor to the Jewish leaders. The passage is a portrait of someone who was informed, moved, and afraid — and never took a step toward Jesus.

Who was Felix in the Bible?

Antonius Felix was the Roman governor (procurator) of Judea from about AD 52 to 59, and the judge who heard Paul’s case in Acts 23–24. He was a former slave freed by the emperor’s family whose brother Pallas had influence with Nero, which is how a man born in chains came to govern a province. Ancient historians were harsh about him: Tacitus said he “exercised the power of a king with the mind of a slave,” Suetonius called him the “husband of three queens,” and Josephus says he arranged the murder of the high priest Jonathan. Felix was eventually recalled to Rome after Jewish leaders from Caesarea accused him there. In Acts he is not hostile to Christianity — he is informed, interested, and frightened by it — yet he never responds.

Who was Drusilla in Acts 24?

Drusilla was the Jewish wife of Governor Felix and a member of the Herod family. Her father was Herod Agrippa I, the king who executed the apostle James and died suddenly in Acts 12; her great-grandfather was Herod the Great. According to the historian Josephus, she was married as a teenager to Azizus, king of Emesa in Syria, but Felix fell in love with her and sent a Cypriot Jewish magician named Simon to persuade her to leave her husband and marry him. She was probably about nineteen or twenty when Paul spoke to the couple about “righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment” in Acts 24:24–25 — a message that directly addressed how their marriage began.

Why was Felix afraid when Paul spoke to him?

Acts 24:25 says Felix “was alarmed” (the King James Version says he “trembled”) when Paul reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the coming judgment. Each topic struck home: Felix sold verdicts for bribes, his marriage to Drusilla began by breaking up hers, and he was at that very moment refusing to render a judgment he knew was right. The Greek word Luke uses for his fear is the same one used for Cornelius when an angel appeared and for the women at Jesus’ empty tomb — a real, God-produced fear. Yet Felix responded by delaying: “Go away for the present. When I get an opportunity I will summon you.” The passage shows that feeling conviction is not the same as responding to it.

Why did Paul stay in prison for two years in Caesarea?

Paul remained in custody in Caesarea for two years (Acts 24:27) because Felix refused to rule on his case even though a letter from the Roman commander Claudius Lysias stated Paul was “charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment.” Acts 24:26 gives the reason: Felix hoped Paul would offer him a bribe, so he kept the case open and kept summoning Paul for conversations. Paul, who had just preached righteousness to the governor, refused to buy his freedom. Acquitting Paul would also have angered the Jewish leaders Felix needed to keep happy. When Porcius Festus replaced Felix, Felix left Paul in prison as a parting favor to them. The delay ultimately moved Paul toward Rome, where Jesus had promised he would testify.

What does Acts 24 teach about putting off a decision about Jesus?

Acts 24:22–27 shows that “not yet” is itself a decision. Felix never rejected the gospel outright; he knew it accurately, heard it often, felt real fear about the coming judgment, and simply kept postponing a response until his opportunity ran out. The passage teaches that information about Jesus is not the same as following Him, that conviction is not conversion, and that staying near the gospel can feel like progress without being any. It also points to the good news behind Felix’s fear: the judgment Felix dreaded is the one Jesus bore on the cross, so that anyone who trusts Him can stop trembling and start following. Scripture’s answer to “later” is “Today, if you hear His voice” (Hebrews 3:15) and “Now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).