Acts, 21:1-40

Okay Okay, so you got here's here's Paul looking at last week's passage. Here's Paul. He's making a beeline to get back to Jerusalem by the time of this Jewish festival and Remember he had Kind of set up this idea. He was going to he was going to head back to to Jerusalem and he had this vow and then the elders and leaders sat down with him and he recounted the things that had been happening in the churches and they rejoiced with him in it and they also devised this plan they were going to go into the temple and Paul, as was the custom, was going to pay the expenses for four others who had made this vow as well. Now, Paul got into trouble here, and we're just starting to see it. We're just beginning to see it. Paul had plenty of warning.

And so the question we run into is this one here. Paul kind of insisted, even though he had warnings from different groups, even Luke himself, because the indication was, we urged him. So here's Luke, the author of Acts. Including himself in that with the first-person plural pronoun What's behind this?

Thing where Paul is insisting I'm gonna go there did Paul make a mistake or what do you think there? What's your assessment? You don't think he made a mistake here's Bob it says he's behind Paul all the way rah-rah Paul, okay, and You don't think he made a mistake? He knew it! And he went anyway? What kind of a thought process is that? Okay. Yes? Ah. Okay. Okay. Let's Let's hold your question, but that's a very good one. Okay?

I think if you look through on top of page 4, this is the Acts 21, 1-40 handout there. If we look at the top bullet there, Acts 16, 6-10, This was a situation where Paul was led of the Lord to go to Philippi. And did he run into trouble in Philippi? Yeah. And this is indeed, as we look at it, this is credited to the Lord, concluding that the Lord had called him. Now, let's look at your Acts 20 Twenty-two? Or is it twenty-one, twenty-two? Twenty verse two. Okay. Twenty, twenty-two.

And see, now I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there. Okay? And so your question is? Compelled by the Spirit. So your question is, is this his own human spirit or is this the Holy Spirit? Ah, okay. I don't know the answer to that question right off. Other than immediately afterwards he talks about the Holy Spirit indicating ahead of time that he's going to go. So let me take a closer look at that one before I give you an answer. I have to take a look at the Greek and study it.

Because, yeah, I have some translations both ways, that's what you're saying. I have some of them that will say spirit in its lowercase and others that will say spirit in its uppercase. So I'll take a look at that and see if we can draw a conclusion. That is one thing that takes a close look. Because in the Greek text they didn't capitalize it to tell us one way or the other. And there's the human spirit and the holy spirit and breath, pneuma, all the same word.

So we'll have to take a close look at that one and see if we get some indications there. Any other thoughts? Bob's behind Paul here. Got anybody that questions what Paul's doing here? It's pretty interesting because it doesn't seem like anybody comes out and says, don't go. It's more of, this is what's going to happen. Ah, okay, yeah, it's interesting. Nobody comes out and says, the Holy Spirit expressly says, do not go. Different, isn't it? Different.

Should a person move right ahead into something that he or she knows is going to be trouble. Let's take something fairly simple. You're driving down the road and you can see ahead that, uh oh, there's a snarled mess and I've got an exit right here. I can take this exit, go around this snarled mess on the freeway and, you know, get back and get past it. Should you just say, well, I'm on this route and I can't get off? What should be our attitude towards difficulties that we see on the road ahead? What's that?

Yeah, I mean, ordinarily we would say, head off. But Paul evidently, in spite of, he's getting warning, so it's not like this is coming by surprise, this pressure change thing here. That's not the spirit, that's just pressure. Yes, Art. Even in our example of the road, if I were familiar with the territory, I might prefer to get off and avoid the conditions. Right. But on the other hand, if I were not, if I were some other state that's traveling through and not knowing how to get around this difficulty, it might be wise for me to stay right there. Sure. Sure, yeah. Lack of familiarity.

Taking your key here, is Paul familiar with Jerusalem? Oh yeah, I mean he knows it. As a matter of fact, he even says that, and we'll read it in a chapter or two here, he even says that that's where he was brought up. He was born in Tarsus and brought up there in Jerusalem. Had spent lots of time there. He knew the people in the Sanhedrin well. So he'd spent plenty of time there. He'd gotten plenty of warnings as to what was to take place. And yet, the indication was clear. He was headed there in spite of the warnings.

And I think that's something for us as Christians to think about. There will be times when we can see trouble ahead and barring some particular constraint from the Lord that says, yeah, you need to keep going right ahead into the trouble, it's fine for us to avoid it, but there may indeed be times when the Lord directs us right into the trouble. Ever had that? Ever had that happen? You stayed right in, right the course, knowing that, hey, this is trouble, but this is where I've got to go. Nobody seems to have had that experience? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

One of the things that as parents Have you ever been in a situation where you see, you know, if I don't tie into this thing and tackle what's going on here, this is going to get worse. Sometimes there's a time where you see, you know, am I headed for a conflict? Yes. Is it the right thing to do? Yep.

And it's time to tackle some of those things and get into it because that's the right thing to do. And if you do not, later on it's going to be a whole lot worse. So, yeah, there is a time. Sometimes it has to get worse in the process. Yes, yeah. And so there are times when you have to do that.

And as we look at this, Paul had indeed, and we spell out several places here in Acts 20, he spells out in retrospect in Acts 24, Paul had reasons for continuing on even though he had warnings, clear warnings. I think that's something to take a look at.

We may indeed encounter situations where trouble is coming up. It doesn't mean automatically that if we're having trouble that we're somehow out of the Lord's will or the Lord is disfavoring us or something of the sort. That's not a good conclusion. Nancy and I were in a church situation some years back where a number of the church leaders kind of had this idea that if you got into some kind of difficulty that the Lord must not be blessing you. And we found that problematic because in truth there are a lot of situations you may be doing exactly the right thing and run into some trouble of varying magnitudes. So sometimes doing the right thing is going to get you into some difficulty. But that's what needs to happen. That's what needs to happen. Okay, let's take a look here at the second question.

Were the four prophetesses who were the virgin daughters of Philip the Evangelist operating outside of Paul's teachings given in 1 Corinthians 14.35 and or 1 Timothy 2.11.12? Why or why not? I see a big grin on Josiah here.

What's that? Alright, that was one that is probably not a one-liner answer, right? Anybody dig into that one? What did you come up with? I see a grin on your face. What are you pondering here? Let me think here. I think it was not quite Or possibly about that same time, but the prophetesses wouldn't have even had time to get copies. That that would be as soon as... So it would have been later when they would have received copies of this. Paul, I think, had just written the letter.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, I think that's one thing. And also that First Timothy passage is even later after that. So, yeah, one of the questions that would come up is, you know, how would they even know in the first place? Okay? So that's a good point. That's a good point. The likelihood that they would have gotten either one of those passages that I referenced by this time is slim to none. All right. But, let's say that they had. Do you guys have a problem? What's that? It's interesting, yeah.

It says there's four prophetesses, they're recognized as such, and interestingly, and I made note of it in the handout, those prophetesses are recorded in later church history. because they were younger and still in contact with the apostles. They were in Caesarea, so they had contact with Paul, and they were close enough to Jerusalem to have contact with a lot of the other apostles. So in later years, because they were younger, a lot of people would come to them to get accounts of, you know, tell us about the apostles, tell us stories of what they did and what happened, and they would come to them, and they later on also moved to areas around Ephesus and Laodicea and Hierapolis and that. So, real interesting, they pop up in church history shortly after this time.

But here's the piece of information we don't have. It says that there are prophetesses. It doesn't say, even considering The point that Joanne brought up, and that is that they probably hadn't gotten these letters yet at this particular instance in time. It doesn't say how they used them. So there is a possible context for them to have used them properly. Right? Yes, Josiah?

Before the New Testament was completed, the gift of a prophet was found to be able to communicate God's truth. The New Testament church is a Christian church, and we know that women have a vital role in the church. They don't teach men's people to men, but they have a certain vital and important teaching that's given by the ladies.

Yeah, so so there would be a context in which they would be able to say things I think there's there's something else too, and that is that if you look at at first Corinthians chapter 14 Considering and reviewing what a prophet says was also a factor you don't just take what a prophet says and just It must be the case. You look at it, you weigh it. And that's one reason for having one prophet at a time and three at the most so that you can put some focus on it, weigh things, make sure that we've got something that's sound here. So that's the other aspect of this thing.

Anyway, we don't have the facts to really judge whether or not they were carrying it out unbiblically. The truth is, they could have, and they subsequently would have gotten the information to help guide them as to how this would have been carried out. But they could well have carried it out biblically.

Yeah, Dave? Can you draw the conclusion that since they were both Evangelist daughters, he probably had rubbed elbows with Paul? Uh-huh. They all knew what was right and what was wrong. Yeah, I think that would be one of the things. Yeah, they would have plenty of access to solid teaching about how do you carry this gift out? How do you do it biblically?

Being in Caesarea is obviously they have contact with Paul from this account and being in Caesarea is a place where here's Philip who is one of the seven deacons who was chosen in Acts chapter 6 had plenty of opportunity to have other contact with the other apostles so Yeah, it would be a pretty fair assumption that they'd had good, solid instruction on how do you carry this out.

That would be in contrast to, say, a couple of prophetesses who were with Montanists in the second century. They each left their husbands in order to go along with this prophet Montanist, and for no reason other than that. And they went and carried out their prophetic ministry in ways that were in multiple counts, unbiblical. So that would be in contrast. Here, we don't have an example of how they used it, so we can't judge it explicitly, other than to say that they really did have every opportunity to get solid teaching and know how to carry it out biblically.

Okay, let's take your next handout here. And this next package here is two weeks. So this is chapter 22 and what we'll get on to next week is Acts Revisited Part 1. We'll kind of step back and take a look at a section from the past here. Alright, the deal is this. Here's Paul. He's just started to get himself into trouble.

And you remember what had happened is that They had rumored that he had brought a Gentile into this inner court. Now, let's take a look at these overheads we got here. See, here's the kind of model of the temple area, and you've got the court of the Gentiles, which is sort of an area around the inner temple. Gentiles could go there, Roman soldiers, somebody coming from Any of the Gentile lambs could walk in there. Somebody from Babylon could walk into this court of the Gentiles and that was acceptable. This perimeter area that we see around the edge, I mean that went all the way around. And by the way, this whole temple area, including the court of the Gentiles, was several football fields in the area.

Just to kind of give you a magnitude. So they could go in this court of the Gentiles and then there was this inner temple wall And the one I would say correction to this, because this is a model, would be, I better point it out. The descriptions we have that there would also be doors here and over here on each side, but it would be like this one, additional doors on each side. What would happen is the Jews would then go into this inner court area, go past these warning signs that were Posted and we found two of the warning signs that the Romans of course tore everything to shreds but we found two of them amongst the rubble that the Romans left and The it was rumored that Paul had taken a Gentile past the gate and The warning sign says, you know death penalty. Basically you have yourself to blame If you're a Gentile and go past this point Well, if Paul, being a Jew, had brought Gentiles past there, they were upset with him for doing so.

And so, anyway, here over at the Fortress Antonia, the guards are up here at the top towers, and they'd be along here on this wall. So between the towers and the wall, there would be Roman soldiers just looking down. And then there were two flights of stairs that came down from the towers and then down into the courtyard area.

And so these soldiers come in and they come and they grab Paul and they just, because basically this thing's turning into mayhem. The one thing Romans don't want is to have, you know, things get out of hand. So instead of having things turn to mayhem, they grab Paul, put a soldier on each side, they got him chained up, and they haul him off into the fortress.

So he's up here and then he says, allow me to speak to him. So he gets on the stairs and it's possible that those stairs are the ones that come down here so that people would be gathered around in this colonnade that you see here and be able to see him in the stairs that come down through the colonnade.

So here he is standing on the stairways addressing these people and as he does so, He talks to them, and a lot of your translations in the Hebrew language, well, it's most likely that he spoke Aramaic, which is a similar language, so it would be a language that the Hebrews would speak, is probably the way you'd bring it across. Aramaic was the language that they got from, originally, centuries back from the Assyrians, but it had been one that they'd Caught from the Babylonian exile and being over with the Babylonians and the Persians and then having come back So in Israel Aramaic would most likely be the language that they would speak there Paul was a multilingual fellow Greek likely Latin is a Roman citizen Hebrew and Aramaic so those four languages would would have been Paul's range of languages possibly more but certainly those Now, he gets up to talk to them, and this speaking in Aramaic is going to immediately calm them down a little bit. As a matter of fact, the passage says that they were even quieter when he began speaking in Aramaic, because that would have said, oh, Paul's not an outsider. It's not one of those Greek-speaking guys that comes to us and talks in a Gentile language, but talks to us in a language we understand.

So there he is on the stairs. He's talking to these people. And then he goes and kind of recounts his personal history. And so far everything seems to stay quiet. It's a lot of the things that we've seen already in Acts, but there's a few points that he brings up as he talks to the people that we haven't seen before.

And one of those is we got this fellow Gamaliel. He had been Paul's rabbi or Paul's tutor. Gamaliel was so well respected. We brought him up back in I think it was Acts chapter 5. He was so well respected that when he died, the mourning that the various rabbis did included one of the rabbis writing, when Gamaliel died, the law died. And that certainly wasn't literally true, but there was just a way of expressing how deep into the law Gamaliel was.

So Paul says, I was a student of Gamaliel. So that would have brought a great deal of respect on the part of the Jews that were listening. Then you have this thing here, Paul indicated that he sought the death of any following the way. And of course, any of the Jews that were zealous would have thought that that was a good thing too. I went and sought the death of these people.

And then, He quotes something from the Lord that we don't really find elsewhere. It's real interesting. Paul does make a few quotes of the Lord that we don't find in the Gospels. So, interesting. Is that a problem? That's not one of the questions here I decided to ask you. Is that a problem? That Paul quotes and says things that the Lord said that we don't find in the Gospels? Problem? Yes? No? Anybody violently ill over that thought? No? No? Okay. Why is it not or why isn't it a problem? Ah, okay. Yeah. One is Paul had direct contact with the Lord. So that would be one point there. Okay?

What else might there be? What else would explain Paul giving quotes that aren't directly given in the Gospels? Ah, yes, at the end of the Gospel of John. He writes, Jesus did a great many things that are not written down. And he made some statements about, had they been written, he supposed that all the ink and scrolls that you could come up with couldn't hold it. So there were other things that Jesus said. And so we know that what the Gospels record is true, but not exhaustive.

So this is one of them. How about, it is better to give than to receive? That's another one of Paul's quotes of Christ that's not in the Gospels. So, interesting. So, this is a part of it. Then, Paul reaches a turning point. Everybody's, so far, they're along with him. Until he does one thing. And it's interesting. You would have thought, big deal. But it was a big deal.

When he told them that the Lord had told him Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles. They demanded death by three signals. One of them, as they said, away with him, and that was a word that was used, and we have a couple of quotes there in John and Acts there, for somebody to be done away with, to be killed. So Iroh is the word that's recorded there.

The other thing is they would take off their coats. Remember, Stephen was stoned, and what did Paul do? Paul held the coats. So one of the customs was when you're going to stone somebody, you take your coats off, or the outer garment, right? And so one of the signals that they're ready to stone somebody is they start taking the garments off. You see a whole crowd of people and they start taking the garments off, it's not because it got real hot all of a sudden. It's because this is a signal, I'm getting ready.

The other is throwing up, casting up dust. And it's interesting, dust, casting it up, or even throwing it up so that it falls on yourself, was an expression of grief, of great distress, among the Jews. Job's friends did it, for example. Here, you know, Job had these huge losses and his friends sat down with him and the first thing it says they did is they threw dust up in the air. So among the Jews, it was a cultural thing. They would cast dust up in the air as a signal of great grief. To us, we wouldn't necessarily understand that. We'd say, what are you making a mess for? But to them, it would be understood as, this is a signal of great grief.

So they had three things, what they said, what they took off, and what they cast up into the air. All three of those things says, we're getting ready to do this guy in. We're mad. We're ticked. And it's when he'd said, The Lord sent me to go to the Gentiles. That's what ticked them off. Now, at this point, the Roman commander, and by the way, let's think about something.

Paul started a talk in Aramaic. All the Jews can understand him. Is it likely that the commander can understand him? Likely not. The commander would have spoken Latin and Greek. Unusual. for him to have spoken Aramaic. So he doesn't understand what's going on. He's just hoping that somehow things will get surfaced and resolved. But he says, this isn't working. He's looking and he's seeing these people are starting to yell and scream. And he sees them starting to take the coats off. And he may not understand Aramaic, but he understands when Jews start taking their coat off all at once that something's going on. And they start throwing dust up in the air. And by the way, you look at this, you say, where's the dust? You wonder about that? Where's the dust?

The temple was under construction until about roughly ten years after this event. So there's all kinds of construction going on, things of that sort, and they didn't have guys constantly sweeping it. So this is a fairly cleaned up model that you see in front of you here. They finished it up just in time to get it wrecked. They put decades into this thing. Because you see that middle temple?

You can't have Gentiles work on that because it's an operating temple. So what they did is they trained a thousand Levites. They had Gentiles come in and train them how to do things. And even Jews, if they were trained, but not Levites, couldn't go in there and start working around. So they trained a thousand Levites in the crafts and skills that were necessary to do everything in the naos, the inner temple.

So these guys were picky. But nonetheless, the work in the temple would be one of the reasons why you'd find dust. The other thing is they didn't have guys sweeping it all the time. So you'd find dust, you'd find chunks of stones and rocks and things like that from the construction that was ongoing in the temple. And they just went around and did portions of it at a time.

Okay, so now what happens? The commander says, this isn't working. They say, pull him up. So they pull him back up into the fortress again. So instead of being out here in this courtyard, they pull him back up into the Fortress Antonia. This is the place where Jesus had been interrogated, if you will, by Pilate. This is where Jesus had been abused and scorned by the soldiers The the top part of the fortress was torn down when the Romans attacked Jerusalem in 70 AD less than 20 years after this event but the the Floor the pavement area is still there, and you can still see it So anyway, here's the Roman soldiers are pulling them back up in there the commander says hey, we got to get some answers You know this isn't working And this little experiment we had with Paul talking to these guys in Aramaic, that obviously didn't do the trick. The Jews just got all ticked, and I didn't understand anything they were saying.

So, interrogate this guy, and so here's Paul, and what they would do is they would, getting ready to interrogate him, and you have in your handout a picture of their scourge, okay? They would chain him up, on the hands and they'd chain them up on the feet and stretch them out and then they'd start going after them with this thing and asking questions in the process. You know, here's a question. Got an answer? No. Okay. Think about this. Wham! And it would be somewhat the equivalent of our kind of using a shotgun a little at a time because they'd have these metal balls at the end of this thing and go wham!

A lot of people didn't survive this beating that he got. They'd ask questions and they'd get no answers and then the guy would die and they'd certainly get no answers, right? So he was headed for a tough time. And of course Paul had had beatings before. That was nothing new. But what did he say here?

They're starting to chain him up, getting ready to give him this Roman royal greeting or beating. And so they're starting this thing and then Paul asks a question. Interesting, he doesn't make a statement, he asks a question. What's his question? Is it legal for you to beat a Roman citizen? Just a question. Well that little simple question put terror through them because It was fairly safe to assume that a Jew wasn't a Roman citizen. That wasn't the case with Paul. We're not sure how he got his Roman citizenship. There are some speculations.

Paul made tents, right? Where do you learn to make tents? Your father made tents, right? Well, it turns out that his father, had he been around Tarsus, Would have been in a place to help the Roman army with tents During the time when they were headed, you know going through that area so so those are Possibilities nonetheless.

Here's Paul a Roman citizen May have gotten that the citizenship his father may have gotten it as compensation for making tents for the military but however it happened Here's Paul, a Roman citizen. He would have had documentation to prove it. And there's also a serious penalty, likely death, if you falsely claim it. So Paul says, you know, is it legal for you to beat a Roman citizen like this?

And at that, you know, here's the centurion, goes back to the commander. And the way this works is you've got a commander is a commander of about a thousand. Usually that would be about 240 cavalry and about 760 infantrymen. So here's the commander, centurion over 100, right? And so the centurion goes to the commander and says, hey, you know this guy's a Roman citizen?

And all of a sudden the terror goes over his face because studying the history, the superior to the commander We're talking head of a legion. The superior to the commander would dictate what the penalty was for the commander having beaten a Roman citizen. But at this time and studying through, probably about a 40% chance, based on this kind of statistical study of what had happened, that the commander was going to die if Paul got beaten. So the commander was terrified.

He was really scared. And so upon questioning, Paul confirms, yes, I am a Roman citizen. They all back off. Everybody starts taking steps backward. They let him out of the chains. The commander goes and gets a process started to get the Jews involved.

Now, it doesn't say this, but I almost wonder, did he do this to sort of get the Jews in the loop on this thing, to make this thing more complicated? Because he was about to beat a Roman citizen and get this thing a little bit more twisted? I don't know. Nonetheless, he did seem to want an answer on this, and so he set out a notice.

The Sanhedrin is not supposed to meet at night, but he had to give them enough notice to gather. He can give them notice at night, but they can't meet at night, not legally. Which, by the way, they did illegally when they met to condemn Jesus. Okay, so here He gives them notice, they meet the next day, and that's when Paul gets to address the Sanhedrin.

Okay. So, let's By the way, I've got a couple of notes in the bottom of page 2 that just kind of match up with some 2nd century thing. We find out that Claudius Lysias was the name of the commander in the next chapter here. And the commander admits, as we read through this chapter, that he was a Roman citizen but he'd bought it. And basically he bought it illegally. You know, kind of black market Roman citizenship. He paid off somebody to get his citizenship.

If it got to court, Paul, who is a valid Roman citizen, and this other fellow who's going to be asked in court, where did you get your citizenship, who's going to get the higher standing? Paul. So that's the other thing that's going to cause this commander to be very afraid. His inquiry in court is not going to hold up. And he bought his citizenship. Paul got his, and it would be in court, considered of a higher standing. So here's Paul, not only with a claim, these guys were about to beat me, but the Roman commander's own standing as a Roman citizen would be considered lower than Paul's, and that would have his testimony, everything else he did and said, discounted. So he's not going to come out well. So you can see how he's horrified. Let's take a look at the questions that pop up here.

Now, did Paul make a mistake in what he said to the crowd of Jews gathered at the temple? Should he have said anything different than what he did? Would you give Paul some guidance here on what he should have said instead to avoid the trouble? Should Paul have not gone to the Gentiles in the first place or just not brought up that point with them? Would you have given Paul any advice on what to say and not to say or how to say it? Does Paul need to have sort of done a little bit of wordsmithing here?

So consider that. Think about that. The commander didn't want to simply let Paul go, the second question, and having ordered that he be examined by flogging often resulted in death, why would the commander not let Paul go and yet order an examination by flogging that resulted in death? Why didn't the commander simply move to have the Sanhedrin interrogate Paul immediately? Think about those questions. Those are tough ones. Do you have any questions? Thoughts? Comments? Jubilations? Anything of the sort?

Okay. Let's see if I've got another slide or two here. Here's the Roman flagram. You've got a picture of it, I think, in your handout. This is kind of a reconstruction based on some that we've seen. They have other variations on it. It's sometimes used like barbs, because that would rip the flesh up worse. So that was typical. Alright, let's pray. Okay.

Lord, as we look at this, we see Paul's getting himself into some deep trouble here, and it's not over. And yet, looking at this, we also see it appears that you indeed drew him to continue his path toward Jerusalem and doing what he was doing. And as we look at these things, we just pray that we would learn as well that indeed troubles and trials may be on our path, not because we've blown it or because we were negligent, but indeed it may be because that's exactly where you want us to be. We just thank you for what you've revealed here and what you've shown us. Thank you for your marvelous grace shown through the life of Paul. In Jesus' name, Amen.