Book of Common Prayer

^23-24 Then he summoned two of his centurions, and said, “Get two hundred men ready to proceed to Caesarea, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen, by nine o’clock tonight.” (Mounts were also to be provided to carry Paul safely to Felix the governor.)

The Roman view of Paul’s position

^25-30 He further wrote a letter to Felix of which this is a copy: “Claudius Lysias sends greeting to his excellency the governor Felix. “This man had been seized by the Jews and was on the point of being murdered by them when I arrived with my troops and rescued him, since I had discovered that he was a Roman citizen. Wishing to find out what the accusation was that they were making against him, I had him brought down to their Sanhedrin. There I discovered he was being accused over questions of their laws, and that there was no charge against him which deserved either death or imprisonment. Now, however, that I have received private information of a plot against his life, I have sent him to you without delay. At the same time I have notified his accusers that they must make their charges against him in your presence.”

Paul is taken into protective custody

^31-35 The soldiers, acting on their orders, took Paul and, riding through that night, brought him down to Antipatris. Next day they returned to the barracks, leaving the horsemen to accompany him further. They went into Caesarea and after delivering the letter to the governor, they handed Paul over to him. When the governor had read the letter he asked Paul what province he came from, and on learning that he came from Cilicia, he said, “I will hear your case as soon as your accusers arrive.” Then he ordered him to be kept under guard in Herod’s palace.

Jesus sends John a personal message

^18-19 John’s disciples reported all these happenings to him. Then he summoned two of them and sent them to the Lord with this message, “Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?”

²⁰ When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you with this message, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?’”

^21-23 At that very time Jesus was healing many people of their diseases and ailments and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. Then he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind are recovering their sight, cripples are walking again, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, dead men are being brought to life again, and the good news is being given to those in need. And happy is the man who never loses his faith in me.”

Jesus emphasises the greatness of John—and the greater importance of the kingdom of God

^24-27 When these messengers had gone back, Jesus began to talk to the crowd about John. “What did you go out into the desert to look at? Was it a reed waving in the breeze? Well, what was it you went out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? But the men who wear fine clothes live luxuriously in palaces. But what did you really go to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, a prophet and far more than a prophet! This is the man of whom the scripture says, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you’.

²⁸ Believe me, no one greater than John has ever been born, and yet a humble member of the kingdom of God is greater than he.

^29-30 “All the people, yes, even the tax-collectors, when they heard John, acknowledged God and were baptised by his baptism. But the Pharisees and the experts in the Law frustrated God’s purpose for them, for they refused John’s baptism.

^31-35 “What can I say that the men of this generation are like—what sort of men are they? They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling out to each other, ‘We played at weddings for you, but you wouldn’t dance, and we played at funerals for you, and you wouldn’t cry!’ For John the Baptist came in the strictest austerity and you say he is crazy. Then the Son of Man came, enjoying life, and you say, ‘Look, a drunkard and a glutton, a bosom-friend of the tax-collector and the outsider!’ Ah, well, wisdom’s reputation is entirely in the hands of her children!”