Acts 21:15-40 - Easily Offended and Disguised Blessings

Podcast Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

Hello, and hope you are having a great day today and that you're ready to dive into God's Word here on Tabernacle Talk.

We are in Acts 21 and starting in verse number 15, we are continuing, we have been slowly but surely landing the plane for Paul to arrive in Jerusalem.

And as we heard yesterday, the Holy Spirit told Paul, hey, there's going to be some persecution here. You're going to end up going back into prison there in Jerusalem. But he's encouraging Paul, hey, you're supposed to do this.

This is the plan. And so Paul's following through and we can see this in verse number 15. After this, we got ready and went up to Jerusalem, verse 16.

Some of the disciples from Caesarea also went with us and brought us to Nason of Cyprus, an early disciple with whom we were to stay. When we reached Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters welcomed us warmly.

The following day, Paul went in with us to James and all the elders were present. After greeting them, he reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

When they heard it, they glorified God and said, You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law.

But they have been informed about you that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to abandon Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or to live according to our customs. So what is to be done?

They will certainly hear that you've come. Therefore, do what we tell you. We have four men who have made a vow.

Take these men, purify yourself along with them, and pay for them to get their heads shaved. Then everyone will know that what they were told about you amounts to nothing, but that you yourself are also careful about observing the law.

With regard to the Gentiles who have believed, we have written a letter containing our decision that they should keep themselves from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from what is strangled, and from sexual immorality.

So, here, there's kind of an interesting development that's happening here in Jerusalem. Paul gets there. He says, hey, here's what God has done with the Gentiles.

And here these believers go, that's great.

Everyone thinks that you don't observe the law anymore and that you don't tell all of the other Jewish believers that you're interacting with in the rest of the Roman world, that you're not telling them that they need to continue living by the

ceremonial and civil laws of Moses. So we want you to do this thing so that then everyone will know it's not true and you're just as societally Jewish as anyone. It's definitely an interesting take.

And here, on the good side, it could be, okay, there's no offense that's given. I mentioned several days ago, several episodes ago, Paul's comments in 1 Corinthians that he says to the Jews, I became like a Jew so that I could reach the Jews.

That when he's among those who live by kind of that particular culture, he acts like they do, that there won't be a barrier to them accepting Christ because of his work.

The only thing in here that that kind of gives a little bit of is that here, the response of these particular pastors is there are thousands of Jews who have believed and they are all zealous for the law.

And we're going to see in these upcoming verses, a recurring truth that we've talked about a lot on here, that just because a person is religious, just because a person knows a lot of things about God's Word, does not mean that they're a true

believer. That true believers are proven by their actions, by the fruit of the Spirit, by what James would talk about, that faith without works is dead. You can say that you know God, but in your works, you can deny him.

And here's what happens in verse number 26. So the next day, Paul's going along with it, doesn't voice any objections, he's just trying to minister to people.

The next day, Paul took the men, having purified himself along with them, and entered the temple, announcing the completion of the purification days when the offering would be made for each of them.

When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia, Asia Minor, saw him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd, and seized him, shouting, fellow Israelites, help!

This is the man who teaches everyone, everywhere against our people, our law, in this place. What's more, he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.

For they had previously seen Trophimus, the Ephesian, in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. The whole city was stirred up, and the people rushed together.

They seized Paul, dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. And as they were trying to kill him, word went to the commander of the regiment that all Jerusalem was in chaos.

Taking along soldiers and centurions, he immediately ran down to them. Seeing the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the commander approached, took him into custody, and ordered him to be bound with two chains.

I want to pause real quick here, so all of that's occurring. It was a big no-no. Like nowadays in regular churches, it's completely fine.

If you invite someone to be your guest at church, we want that.

That's the entire point of the Assembly of Believers, is that we would continue to bring in more and more people, that they would hear the gospel, that as they see the life of Christ lived out through the actions of maybe their friend or their family

member that then brought them, and as they see their family member interacting with other people in the church, as they hear the message of the gospel that lines up with the life that their friend lives, all of that would convince the person, yes,

this is real, and it's more than just one person's opinion. Like, here's this group of people that have all come to this realization of Jesus and following God and His Word, and they're doing it together, and I'm called to partake in it. So,

nowadays, we want you to bring in people into the church, that it is a very healthy, good thing to be able to do, that people would see believers acting like believers, that they would act like Jesus, that they would sing the praises of Jesus, that

they would pay attention to and love the Word of God, all of those things. We want people in church. During this time, in the kind of Jewish religion, you did not have...

There was one outer court that was for the women and for the Gentiles, that you could not, if you were a woman or a Gentile, go any further into the court. There was another court for the men.

And so here, there's this upsetting, because they thought that Trophimus from Ephesus had come into the temple with Paul. And I found it interesting here. So Paul is beaten.

He's being beaten by the city, by the giant mob. He keeps stirring up riots wherever he's going. And then the Romans come.

They stop beating Paul when the Romans come. And then Paul is taken into custody and bound with chains.

That just as Agabus, the prophet, in verse number 11, he came to us, took Paul's belt, tied his own feet and hands, and said, this is what the Holy Spirit says.

In this way, the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him over to the Gentiles. So now he's in the Gentiles' possession from the Jews that grabbed him. And then they delivered him to the Gentiles.

But the binding, the taking into custody, him being bound with two chains is actually his kind of saving that we would think, oh man, that's the punishment is that he's bound. No, no, no.

Here, the Romans are saving him by putting him into custody, that he's not going to be stoned like Stephen or, you know, perhaps crucified like Christ or some other method of death.

So continuing in verse number 33, the Roman guard centurion, trying to recall what they called him, the commander of the regiment, asked who Paul was and what he had done. Some in the crowd were shouting one thing and some another.

Since he was not able to get reliable information because of the uproar, he ordered him to be taken into the barracks.

When Paul got to the steps, he had to be carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, for the mass of people followed yelling, Get rid of him.

As he was about to be brought into the barracks, Paul said to the commander, Am I allowed to say something to you? He replied, You know how to speak Greek?

Aren't you the Egyptian who started the revolt some time ago and led four thousand men of the assassins into the wilderness? Paul said, I am a Jewish man from Tarsus of Cilicia, a citizen of an important city.

Now I ask you, let me speak to the people. After he had given permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned with his hand to the people. When there was a great hush, he addressed them in Aramaic, which was kind of the common language of that time.

Tomorrow, we're going to dive into chapter 22 and a little bit of 23 as we see what Paul says to the mob. But I want to notice a couple of things here.

Number one, Paul didn't have to do what he did in bringing those men, paying for their heads to be shaved, all of those extra things that he did that ended up with him getting in trouble with those Jewish people.

He did that out of love for people, out of a desire to not cause a stumbling block to others. Now, here's where the rubber meets the road and here's what I want to talk about. We love to think about that in abstract terms.

We love to think about it as in, you need to do this so that I am not offended. This person needs to do this so that I am not put out or whatever by this.

When we should be thinking, God, for me, not what can I place on someone else, that's the whole point of legalism is that you're not declaring, demanding a specific religious expectation or habit of others, but that for yourself you're saying, okay,

what am I doing? What am I saying? What am I posting? What am I, you know, how am I interacting with others in a way that could turn them off to fellowshipping with me?

Like what in my life is turning people off from being able to see me as a fellow brother or sister in Christ, that they can be encouraged through the Holy Spirit working through me? For my life, what is causing that break?

What is not endearing people to me, but repelling people from me? Not because, you know, if someone rejects God's Word, that you say, hey, I love you so much, but you've really got a problem with lying. And you lied to this person about this thing.

You said this to me, but then later you went, oh, yeah, no, never mind. That wasn't true. There was really this.

I was just scared of what you'd think. I see that you've been lying. And, you know, that's not how God wants us to live.

And if someone is put off by that, that's an entirely different thing than, you know, me constantly being a jerk to someone and then just going, oh, well, they just don't like being, you know, counseled to follow God.

No, no, I'm being a jerk in the way that I'm going about it. I'm not doing it in a spirit of love or wanting them to succeed. Here for Paul, he could have taken the stance that said, no, like, we don't have to observe all of the law.

Like, we went over that in Acts 15. All of us together, we talked, Peter talked. All of us have done this together.

And we said, we can't be saved by the law. So the Gentiles can't be saved by the law. So we're not going to force the Gentiles to try to live by the law or by those customs.

And what matters now is not the difference between Jew and Gentile, but between those that are in Christ and those that are not in Christ. And so I'm not going to tell those that maybe have a Jewish ancestry.

I'm not going to tell them that they need to adopt the law. If I'm not telling the Gentiles that they need to adopt the law, because that difference, the Jew-Gentile difference is fading away. And now it's just one united people of God.

He could have declared that. And in our minds, been completely right in doing so. But he wanted to minister to people.

He wanted to share the gospel with people. That's what he did. Like he's beaten, he's beaten so badly that he can't even get up the stairs.

They carry him up the stairs. And what does he do? He goes to declare the gospel to the people.

His heart was for people. He said, what can I do to not be a stumbling block to others? What can I do to make the path easy for me to declare God's truth to these people?

And I think all of us should look introspectively at that. What am I doing that is prohibiting that from taking place? Not just for the unsaved, but for those that are saved.

In the verses, the Jerusalem elders mention first that there's a bunch of Jews that believe that are zealous for the law. So here, they weren't even concerned about, okay, there's a bunch of unsaved people that have these thoughts.

They said, there's a bunch of saved people. And for his relationship with those believers, he changed his actions. He took a deliberate course that he went down.

And I think that can be our heart as well. God, what can I do to not be a stumbling block to other people? It's not something we put on someone else to say, hey, it would be really great if you didn't do this or you stop doing this.

Like, it's got to be volitional choice on your part. Don't worry about being offended by other people. I think of the verse in Psalms that says, great peace have they which love your law and nothing will offend them.

If you are offended easily, I am very sorry to tell you, you need to love God's Word a little more. You need to love your opinion a little less. I can say this because as I'm recording this, there's a picture of me right in front of this camera.

So I'm not saying this to you to offend you. I'm saying it to Bryon Self.

If I'm offended by people, if I am offended by things, there's a difference, obviously, if I'm grieved over sin, that would be something that God would commend and tell us to have sorrow over sin.

But if I'm being offended by things that are not Bible, if I'm offended by someone else's clothing, if I'm offended by someone else's, you know, whatever it might be, I need to love God's Word more and see things in the way that He does.

And I need to love my opinion a little less. If I see someone in a Las Vegas Raiders hat or jersey, I need to have some love in my heart and not be offended by how terrible of a people or fan base they are. I say that completely tongue in cheek.

Have some wonderful people that I know that are Las Vegas Raiders fans. So that would be the first thing. Number two, that God sometimes saves us through difficulties, that difficulties come into our lives like Paul being gotten by the Romans.

But in that instance, it saved him from being killed, beaten to death by the Jews.

And sometimes in our life, we view hardships as God, like you let me down in this instance when really God might have been saving us from something, that if we had continued down on the exact path we were going, we might have gotten so complacent

that we would have forgotten about God. We might have gotten, you know, continued in a relationship that would not have gone in a good direction. And God, through hardships, saved us from that.

So even in your hardships, think, God, what might you have saved me from in this moment? That's all we have time for for today. And tomorrow diving into Chapter 22, really looking forward to that time with you all.

Thank you for tuning in to Tabernacle Talk.