Acts 21:15-31. This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on September 15, 2024.
Paul will now leave Caesarea on the coast and travel inland to Jerusalem. It is clear that Luke has been setting up what will be a showdown in Jerusalem. There will be a clash of the Gospel of Jesus with those who refused to accept it. We are going to take several weeks to look at this clash.
Let’s look at our passage.
As Paul leaves Philip’s home in Caesarea, we are reminded that he not only has a group of men with him who are both Jews and Gentiles from both Greece and Anatolia, but that he picks up some believers from Caesarea who are also traveling up for the feast of Pentecost.
Luke doesn’t tell us how close to the feast it is, and when these coming events happen in relation to the feast. Regardless, there are a lot of people showing up in Jerusalem every day.
We are also told that a man named Mnason of Cyprus travels with them from Caesarea. They will be staying at his place in Jerusalem. Mnason is not named again in Scripture, but we are told that he was an early believer in Jesus.
When Paul arrives in Jerusalem, verse 17 tells us that they are received gladly by the believers. This doesn’t necessarily mean that he met with all the believers of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a large city. It is tough to know exactly how many believers were there. But, we do know that it is in the magnitude of tens of thousands. Note: The word “myriad” (NKJV) in Acts 21:21 literally means 10,000 and it is in the plural. However, it also can be used metaphorically to mean a great number. We also know that persecution has come in waves that has caused some to move on, but others to believe. Regardless, I do not believe Paul has somehow met with all the believers, but a select few that Paul had good relationship with.
This is a good start. Have you ever been in an environment where you knew it was going to turn bad, but at the moment things were good? We need to learn how to enjoy the good that God gives us in the now, even when we know that difficulty is coming. We will talk more about how to do that, but let me say up front that the answer is not in ignoring the difficulty that looms ahead.
We can be this way throughout our life, where we are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and we are never embracing the current blessings of the Lord. Of course, the opposite can be true as well. I can be thinking that now is always bad or imperfect, and always looking ahead to when it will be “better.” People who become stuck looking to the horizon of life can lose the peace and rest that God is trying to give to them in the present. More than just living in the moment, we want to live in connection with The One who is giving us this moment, and to be thankful for the goodness in it.
The next day, Paul meets with James and the elders of the Jerusalem church. Peter and John are not mentioned in this account so it is likely that they are not there. The apostles often traveled. Paul details for them everything that God was doing among the Gentiles through his ministry and the ministry of the people with him. Of course, the book of Acts is such a detail.
The response of the elders and James is to glorify the Lord (v. 20). There are some today who would malign the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is generally pictured as a destroyer of wonderful cultures. There is a certain narrative that is pushed in which Christians are spoken of as oppressors and the cultures they interacted with are spoken of as victims.
Let me just say up front that not all in the Church were truly saved and understood the message of Jesus Christ. Even some who were saved were trapped in traditions that developed over long periods of time. No matter how much truth a community has, there will always be a difficulty in keeping the foundational principles of the group in place due to the tension created by those who are following their flesh and do not believe.
Yes, we all want to be brothers and sisters. Yet, we know the reality. Some are wolves who were never saved, and some are believers who have perverted the truth and are apostatizing from the ways of Jesus. However, none of this changes Jesus, the Christ, who is the hope of glory. Our hope is not based upon a pastor, a bishop, a patriarch, or a pope. These can all fail, but Jesus never fails.
The true story is not the destruction of wonderful cultures by Christians. These cultures were at the end of a long time of descent into ruin. What started at the Tower of Babel as mere rebellion led to the casting off of truth and exchanging it for a lie. Of course, each of these cultures were not completely darkened. Some more than others had remnants, splinters of truth in their mythologies or traditions. It is a common story for Christian missionaries to come to a particular culture and discover these splinters of truth that are truly God’s grace.
We must understand that any people, or even a single person, that we go to with the Gospel, has been prepared by God to hear it. He was there before you working in their life. There are things in their life and experience that can help them to understand the Gospel. It is through real relationship that we can discover these things and use them to present the Good News about Jesus.
Does this mean that they will always be saved? Of course, it doesn’t. What if I do a perfect job in presenting Jesus, would it guarantee their salvation? You could be the perfect picture of Jesus and share perfectly his message. You could even lay your life down on a cross for people and yet, many of them will still reject you. No one is saved by a perfect witness (unless you are speaking about Jesus himself). Rather, they are saved by accepting the grace that God is giving them. That grace includes the imperfect men and women sharing the Gospel. It includes the imperfect societies that they created along the way, or at least were created by a clash of prior cultures with the Gospel.
This is what Paul is doing here. He is doing this for Jesus. The Gospel of Jesus goes forth to redeem people and their cultures. It goes forth to rescue them from the darkness and slavery they have fallen to, even the inheritance that they have lost.
After glorifying God, the elders warn Paul of rumors that are being spread in Jerusalem about him. I will point out up front that the elders concerns are with how the believers in Jesus will receive Paul, i.e., unity within the church, than they are about how the unbelieving Jews will respond to him.
These believers were very zealous for the Law of Moses, and have been hearing rumors about Paul that somehow he is not zealous for the law. They have heard that he actually taught Jews in Gentile lands to forsake the Law. In Particular, the had heard that he was teaching Jews not to circumcise their children nor to follow the customs, traditions of Israel.
Of course, this is a perverted reading of what Paul taught. In Galatians, Paul warned Gentiles against being circumcised because they were doing so out of fear. Jewish people were telling them that they had to keep the Law and believe in Jesus. Paul is telling them that this is not true. Circumcision cannot save you. Only faith working through love. Thus, the real point is not circumcision, whether you do or don’t. Rather, it is about faith working through love. It is somewhat unclear what Paul would say to Jews. However, his point would be similar. If you are looking to the Law to draw the grace of God, then you have walked away from Christ. However, if you continue in the traditions out of faith in Christ and seeking to love your fellow Jews, then it is fine.
Ultimately, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Law points to. In fact, even Gentiles can fulfill the Law, not by trying to keep it, but by obeying the same Spirit of God that was the source of the Law.
Regardless of these misunderstandings, the elders realize that word will spread among believers that Paul is in Jerusalem, and it will cause no small stir within the Church community.
At this point, they present a plan to Paul for nipping this issue in the bud. They counsel him to assist four men who were completing a Nazirite vow.
The mention of shaving the head is the clear sign that this is a Nazirite vow. A person would vow to separate themselves from three things and unto God for a particular period of time. It was usually at least 30 days, but could be longer. The Nazir (person doing the vow) would separate themselves to God by not eating nor drinking anything from the fruit of the grape vine. Secondly, they would not touch any dead bodies, even if it was a close relative that needed burying. Someone else would have to do it. The third thing was that they would not cut their hair during the period of the vow.
It sounds like these four men had come to the end of their vow and needed to go to the temple to present themselves to the priests, do the particular sacrifices, and thereby complete the vow and be officially released from its obligations.
So what are these elders thinking? Paul would attach himself to this group by purifying himself and then going to the temple with them to cover the expense of the sacrifices. This would involve three animals for each person (a yearling, male lamb, a yearling, female lamb, and a ram). It was considered an act of righteousness to help cover the cost of someone’s vow-completion sacrifice. This would openly demonstrate to the believers that Paul didn’t have a problem with Jews doing things from the Law of Moses.
Of course, the elders are quick to state that they are not calling for Gentiles to obey the Law, as was determined in Acts 15 during the Jerusalem Council.
Let’s move on in our passage.
Luke is not always clear on the details that we may want. Part of this is due to the fact that he is writing in an environment where people are not so removed from the cultures as we are. We miss things that he assumed people of that day would know. Also, part of this is due to the fact that Luke is focusing us on what is important, not satisfying our every curiosity about the story.
I say this because in acts 27:21 it speaks of the ending of seven days. Is this in regard to the purification of the men? It wouldn’t seem to be about the feast of Pentecost because this feast happens on a particular day. It is not like the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Tabernacles, which both last 7 days. It could, however, be a reference to the counting of the seven weeks. Perhaps this is the ending of the 7th week and the 7th day of the 7th week, etc.
I won’t go into the details of how this might connect to the purification because it is clear that this is not what is important to Luke. What is important is that Paul and these four men have cleansed themselves, and they are in the temple to complete their vows to God. Thus, they are righteously fulfilling the requirements of the Law regarding a vow. It is in this environment that Paul is going to be seized and dragged out of the temple. In short, Paul will be treated extremely unjustly. There was no call for what they would do.
There would be lots of people in the Temple compound. Verse 27 has Paul being recognized by some Jews who were from the province of Asia (the area around Ephesus). The seize him and create a commotion around him by hollering for help. This leads to the whole city being stirred up as word quickly spread.
Let’s first look at the content of their cries. “This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place.” Of course, Paul did not teach against these things. He did reveal that the Law by itself could not make any man righteous. He did teach that those who rejected Christ would find no righteousness through the temple sacrifices.
The second thing they cry is this. “[F]urthermore he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” This was completely fabricated, and was based upon an assumption. They had seen him earlier in the city with Trophimus and Ephesian Gentile. They assumed that Paul had brought Trophimus into the Temple in order to defile it.
We do a similar thing all of the time. We can make quick judgments about people we disagree with that we would not like being done to us. We can stretch the truth and assume the worst case motivation for them and not worry about how much evidence we have. We can act as if we have a gift of intuitively knowing what is in a person’s heart. This is unjust and against the commands of Christ and the Law of Moses.
Of course, maybe you would never do this. However, if it was done to you, what then? We can sometimes feel justified to give back to people what they have given to us. God will surely understand! Of course, Jesus rebuked his disciples with these words. “You know not what manner of spirit you are.”
Is it possible for a person who is following Messiah and being led by the Holy Spirit to end up in a place where they are responding to an antichrist spirit, the spirit of this age? Yes, it is. This is the testimony of Scripture.
James and John wanted to call fire down on a city. Peter rebuked the Lord for talking about being killed. Judas betrayed the Lord for thirty pieces of silver, and then he hung himself.
It is not enough to be on the right team. You need to decrease and Jesus needs to increase. That is our battle that we will need to armor up to do. We need the armor of God, which starts with the Belt of Truth!
We are told that Paul is dragged out of the temple and the gates are shut. This would place them in the large plaza area around the Temple, whether to the north or to the south of it. The area to the east was not as large, but they could be there too.
I am going to press pause on the story at this point. But, I want to take some time to ask some questions about the choice of Paul and the advise of the Jerusalem elders.
I mentioned last week that I do not believe Paul made a mistake coming to Jerusalem. He had “purposed in the Spirit” to go to Jerusalem at a particular point in time. This reminds me of Jesus who did the same thing. Jesus purposed to go to Jerusalem knowing he would die there. It was not a mistake it was the will and the love of the Father.
The will and love of God can sometimes take us to some tough and harsh places. Places that our flesh would complain about. “God, you can’t ask me to do this! It’s not fair!”
I use the word “ask” on purpose. God forces nobody to do anything. He is not a tyrant. Some will try to complain that the restraints of the laws of nature and creation are themselves a tyrannical straight-jacket. This is just silly. There has to be some basis of reality for anything to happen. We can look God’s grace in the face and claim it is a tyranny, but none of us can create a different reality. Our problem is not the laws of physics and the nature of man’s mortal being. It really is the problem in our heart. We are willing to redefine good things as bad in order to satisfy the lust of our flesh, instead of accepting the goodness of God.
Were the elders wrong to suggest their solution to Paul and was he wrong to go along with it? Did Paul compromise with the Jerusalem leaders? First, I remind us that the elders’ concerns were with church unity. However, this is not the problem. No matter what they did or didn’t do, the problem would always be the jealousy that the Asian Jews had towards Paul (as well as some Jews from Jerusalem and elsewhere). These elders are doing their best to keep the peace among believers. That is good. However, God doesn’t solve every problem. Leaders need to keep this in mind. There is a problem already, and Paul’s coming into Jerusalem only brings it to a head.
How might God be using this event? He is challenging those in Jerusalem who refuse to believe that Jesus is Messiah. He is also giving Paul a platform to preach the Gospel one last time to Jerusalem, and to dignitaries and kings. He is also inviting Paul into a special relationship of suffering with Jesus for His cause.
When things go wrong, even Christians start looking for who is to blame. Is it Paul’s fault because he didn’t look exceptionally pious when he entered the temple? Is it his fault because he didn’t foresee the foolishness of having a Gentile with him in the city during a feast? Could he have done a better job preaching among the Gentiles so that no rumors would have come back to Jerusalem about him?
Listen, there will always be rumors about you. And, some of them will be true because you are human and not perfect. But, the reality is this. Some people do not like what you are doing. The real question is not whether people are against us or not. It is about whether or not you are with Jesus.
I may have fallen down, skinned my knees, and broken my arm, but am I with Jesus? That is what really matters. Paul was on a mission with Jesus Christ, and it brought him to some tough situations like this one. Is not Jesus a stumbling block to all people? We are all going to trip over Jesus. It will hurt when it happens and part of you will want to shrink away from him. But, I challenge you. If you fall and are hurt on the Rock, the Lord Jesus, He can heal you. If you don’t look to him for healing, then the day of judgment will become a day of crushing. However, if by faith you call upon him for his grace, he will lift you up.
There are things that we need to do for and with Jesus. Some of those things require a choice that will bring hurt to you. Didn’t Jesus make choices that hurt? Yes, but he did it out of love for the Father and out of love for you and me.
Paul’s heart can be summed up in 1 Corinthians 9:19-27. Go ahead take the time to read it right now and then come back to this.
What matters is that Jesus be presented to a person in a way that they can understand. You will have to do this over the top of obstinance and hard hearts. If Paul needed to refrain from eating particular foods to share Jesus with someone, then he would. That is a really small sacrifice.
Notice that Paul is not talking about sinful things. You cannot sin with people in order to save them from sin. Yet, you can lay down your right to make certain choices that will bring good to you, in order to help others. This is what Jesus did, and this is what Paul is doing in this moment. Let’s go forth and be like Jesus.