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The Book of Acts
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BIBLE STUDY ACTS 21:1-36 REVIEW: Chapter 20 was basically a “travelogue” of Paul’s itinerary after his three year stay in Ephesus. At the beginning of the chapter, Luke in six short verses summarizes about a year of journey and adventure: that Paul went to Macedonia; then to Greece (Achaia – Corinth) where he stayed for three months; his return through Macedonia (where he was joined by at least seven named companions from various churches); and then to Troas where Luke and others joined him. As I (Pastor George) mentioned, it is interesting to note what Luke does not mention in his account – such as the troubles in the Corinthian church; that he wrote his letter to the Romans during his stay in Greece; and that one of the major reasons why Paul was traveling from city to city was to collect an offering for the less privileged Christians in Jerusalem. Luke next highlights an interesting story of a young man named Eutychus, who became overcome by sleep during Paul’s long speaking and fell out a window to the ground three floors below. After detailing more details of Paul’s itinerary and his desire to arrive in Jerusalem by the day of Pentecost, Luke then narrates a long farewell message that Paul gave to the elders of the Ephesus church. CHAPTER 21:1-14 “No Retreat” “When we had parted from them and set sail, we came by a straight course to Cos, and the next day to Rhodes, and from there to Patara. When we found a ship bound for Phoenicia, we went on board and set sail. We came in sight of Cyprus; and leaving it on our left, we sailed to Syria and landed at Tyre, because the ship was to unload its cargo there. We looked up the disciples and stayed there for seven days. Through the Spirit they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. When our days there were ended, we left and proceeded on our journey; and all of them, with wives and children, escorted us outside the city. There we knelt down on the beach and prayed and said farewell to one another. Then we went on board the ship, and they returned home. When we had finished the voyage from Tyre, we arrived at Ptolemais; and we greeted the believers and stayed with them for one day. The next day we left and came to Caesarea; and we went into the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the seven, and stayed with him. He had four unmarried daughters who had the gift of prophecy. While we were staying there for several days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. He came to us and took Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “Thus says the Holy Spirit, ‘This is the way the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.’” When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Since he would not be persuaded, we remained silent except to say, “The Lord’s will be done.” Luke again picks up his “travelogue” narrative of Paul’s journey to Jerusalem. But besides the geographical details, the main point of this section as a whole is that Paul is journeying toward persecution and imprisonment – and that this journey “re-enacts” Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and Jesus’ predictions of his coming passion. In his farewell message to the Ephesian church elders in the previous chapter, Paul had stated “that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me.” (Acts 20:23). Now Luke details some of those specific warnings. Not only that, two characters from earlier in Acts suddenly make a reappearance in Luke’s narrative. We last heard about Philip in Acts 8:40 – when after baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch he had come to Azotus and then to Caesarea (which apparently was his home town). Now Philip has four daughters, who like their father also have the gift of prophecy. Also, Agabus – who earlier in Acts 11:27-28 had come down from Jerusalem to Antioch and “predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine over all the world” also reappears. His dramatized prophecy that Paul will be bound and handed over to the Gentiles is remarkably close to the passion predictions of Jesus in Lk. 9:44 and Lk. 18:32. This similarity is reinforced by Paul’s response that he, like Jesus, is willing “to die in Jerusalem.” Paul is determined to go on and accomplish his ministry no matter what, just like Jesus. The final response of Paul’s friends that “The Lord’s will be done” also reminds us of Jesus’ response in his prayer on the night of his betrayal: “not my will but yours be done.” (Lk. 22:42) This is the appropriate response of obedient faith for all of Jesus’ followers. CHAPTER 21:15-26 “Paul and the Jerusalem Leadership” “After these days we got ready and started to go up to Jerusalem. Some of the disciples from Caesarea also came along and brought us to the house of Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple, with whom we were to stay. When we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers welcomed us warmly. The next day Paul went with us to visit James; and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. When they heard it, they praised God. Then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. When then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. So do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Join these men, go through the rite of purification with them, and pay for the shaving of their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you, but that you yourself observe and guard the law. But as for the Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” Then Paul took the men, and the next day, having purified himself, he entered the temple with them, making public the completion of the days of purification when the sacrifice would be made for each of them.” As Luke Timothy Johnson states in his commentary, this is one of the most difficult and painful parts of Luke’s narrative – not only for what is said but also for what is not said. As he writes: “some of the difficulty and pain are connected to the conflicts Paul will experience in the city. But some is attached to the reader’s sense that there may be some distance between the story as Luke tells it and the historical realities as they are suggested by Paul’s letters. Luke’s account is not utterly transparent, and its obscurities may owe something to an attempt to make his story come out better than the evidence suggests it did.” Indeed, when we consider the evidence it seems most likely that Paul’s ministry was not accepted by the Jerusalem church. As we know from Paul’s own letters, the major reason for his journey to Jerusalem was to deliver an elaborate collection from the Gentile churches as a symbol of reconciliation between these communities and the Jewish believers in Jerusalem (Gal. 2:10; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8-9). He saw the collection as a way of completing his Eastern mission before beginning a new venture in the West, for which Rome was to be his new base of operations (Rom. 15:22-29). He asked the Roman Church to pray that his ministry (alt. reading; “my bringing of a gift”) “may be acceptable to the saints.” Yet Luke makes no mention whatsoever of all this. Instead, after writing that “the brothers welcomed us warmly” – he then goes on to relate that many of the Jewish believers have been told that “you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs.” To me (Pastor George) this is hardly the sign of a warm welcome. Indeed, instead of emphasizing that Paul “remember the poor” (which Paul in Gal. 2:10 says was the agreement the Jerusalem church made with him), they once again bring up their judgment (from Acts 15:20) that Gentile believers “should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.” We also note that after Paul is later arrested and imprisoned, Luke makes no mention of him receiving any support from the Jerusalem church – in stark contrast to how during Peter’s arrest and imprisonment in Acts 12:3-5, “the church prayed fervently to God for him.” All of this taken together seems to indicate that Paul’s ministry of reconciliation to the Jerusalem church did not go as he had hoped – and was in fact a failure. Instead of mentioning this, Luke portrays the issue as being one of Paul’s own fidelity to his Jewish heritage. We know from Luke’s narrative so far in Acts that Paul personally is an observant Jew. He had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16:3) and had personally taken a Nazirite vow (Acts 18:18). Supposedly, James and the elders know this. But to appease the zealous majority of observant Jewish Christians in the Jerusalem church, they ask Paul to “prove” his fidelity to the Judaism by publicly joining four Jewish Christians completing a Nazirite vow and paying the offering for their rite of purification. As William Barclay writes in his Daily Study Bible commentary, there can be no doubt that the matter was distasteful to Paul. But it is the sign of a truly great man that he can subordinate his own wishes and views for the sake of the Church. There is a time when compromise is not a sign of weakness but of strength. CHAPTER 21:27-40 ”The Riot in Jerusalem” “When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, who had seen him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd. They seized him, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place; more than that, he has actually brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was aroused, and the people rushed together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. While they were trying to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in an uproar. Immediately he took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. When they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came, arrested him, and ordered him to be bound with two chains; he inquired who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd shouted one thing, some another; and as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. When Paul came to the steps, the violence of the mob was so great that he had to be carried by the soldiers. The crowd that followed kept shouting, “Away with him! Just as Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the tribune, “May I say something to you?” The tribune replied, “Do you know Greek? Then you are not the Egyptian who recently stirred up a revolt and led the four thousand assassins out into the wilderness?” Paul replied, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of an important city; I beg you, let me speak to the people.” When he had given him permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the people for silence; and when there was a great hush, he addressed them in the Hebrew language, saying:” Luke has already noted the hostility of the Asian (Ephesian) Jews towards Paul (Acts 19:9; 20;19). Part of their charge – about Paul’s supposed teaching against the Jews and the Jewish law – echoes the rumors which the Jerusalem church elders have already related to him in the previous section. But the charge that actually starts the riot is that Paul has “brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.” It is interesting to note that this charge is in some ways similar to what had been made against Stephen (“This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law; for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses handed on to us. – Acts 6:13-14) and even against Jesus himself (“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” – Mk. 14:58). Bringing Gentiles into inner court of the temple was a capital offense. We know that Paul was innocent of this, but Luke notes that the Jews from Asia had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian (Acts 20:4) with him in the city and (wrongly) assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple. (An interesting side-point: no mention is made of any of the rest of Paul’s gentile companions mentioned in Acts 20:1-6.) After they dragged Paul out of the temple, “the doors were shut” to keep the ensuing riot outside of the sacred precincts. The Romans rescue him from the mob, and then the tribune ordered him to be bound with two chains (thus fulfilling Agabus’ prophecy in Acts 21:11). The tribune at first believes that Paul is an Egyptian rebel who stirred up a revolt during the governorship of Felix in 54 C.E. The Jewish historian Josephus also mentions him. The Romans had swiftly deal with the rebellion, but the Egyptian leader had escaped – and that is why – especially since Paul spoke cultured Greek – the tribune thought that Paul might have been him. Paul in reply says that he is a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia (which would explain his understanding of the Greek language). When he stated his credentials, the tribune knew that, whatever he was, Paul was no revolutionary thug – and he gave Paul permission to speak to the people – which he then proceeds to do in their language of Hebrew (or “Aramaic”). -------------------- George R. Karres, Pella Lutheran Church 418 W. Main Street Sidney, MT 59270
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