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In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly. The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul:
“You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”
The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them.
When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.”
(They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple.)
The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut.
Acts 21:17-30
This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
Assumptions are dangerous. They have a tendency to form opinion without the facts being fully known. And on more than one occasion, they have led to false accusations that have needlessly destroyed the reputation (and even the life) of another person.
And yet, I think every person who has ever lived awhile has been guilty of making assumptions, so much so that we have even had sayings created about the matter. Author Miguel Ruiz wrote this:
“If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.”
Anytime there is a quest for ground truth, you will find people asking the right questions to get the right information in order to make the right assessment. Short cuts are not an option because they can instigate assumption.
For believers of the Lord, there is an additional means to make sure we move beyond assumptions to credible, accurate facts and not innuendos. That means is via the Lord Himself. If you want to know the truth, go to the One who is perfect truth. He will validate or invalidate any and all rumors while shining His light on what really is going on, dispelling or authenticating what people think is happening.
In today’s passage, we find Paul, Luke, and their entourage finally arriving in Jerusalem. You’ll recall there were any number of warning signs that this visit might not go well, especially for Paul but he carried on because he was willing to carry out the will of the Lord, no matter what as we covered in yesterday’s message. It didn’t take long for the prophecy of Agabus and the visions of the disciples in Tyre to come to be.
Things started out okay. The brothers and sisters of the Christian church in Jerusalem received Paul, Luke, and their fellow traveling believers warmly before they all got to work in earnest. We read where Paul and the rest of those with him went to see James who had assembled all the elders to listen to Paul and his detailed report of what he had accomplished through God as he ministered to the Gentiles.
Paul’s report was received with praise unto God as the assembly provided Paul the following guidance:
“You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”
In essence, what were the elders telling Paul?
It’s obvious that the elders knew human nature and human nature often would lead to people drawing assumptions. In Paul’s case, the elders were concerned about rumors centered on Paul’s work with the Jews and Gentiles he encountered while on his missionary journey. Those rumors centered on the assertion that Paul told the Jews who were living among the Gentiles that they no longer needed to circumcise their children nor live according to Jewish customs. Essentially, the accusation would be that Paul was teaching other Jews that it was okay to break the Mosaic law of Moses handed down by God to His people and that was a big no-no in the eyes of fervent Jewish believers.
And so the elders recommended that Paul join in purification rites along with four other men and pay their expenses so they might have their heads shaved which was a requirement of the rites. The suggested actions were intended to dispel the mistruths that people may start to spread and show that Paul indeed lived in obedience to God’s law.
The scriptures tell us that Paul complied with the request and not only did for the four men what the elders advised but he even took the additional step to participate in the rites himself, purifying himself with them and then going to the temple in order to “give notice of the date when the days of purification would end”, a time when offerings then would be made on behalf of each man bring purified. We know the prescribed time was seven days.
In other words, everything was done to try and ward off the dangers of assumption and yet, it still happened.
We know this because Paul had not yet even reached the end of the purification period when a group of Jews “from the province of Asia” saw Paul at the temple and proceeded to stir up “the whole crowd” before seizing the apostle and levying the following accusation:
“Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.”
The front end of what the elders said was exactly what the Jerusalem elders had feared. This is why they told Paul to go through the purification rites in the first place, rites that obviously were being completely ignored by the Asian Jews.
Why?
Because they seemed to be just as worked up over an assumption, one that was totally wrong. Yes, Paul had been in the city in the presence of an Ephesian named Trophimus, a Gentile, but he hadn’t taken him into the temple, an action that would have been considered desecration.
What’s of greater interest to me is that the Asian Jews never took time to consult the God they so passionately followed. Not once. Had they done so, they would have received direction from God that Paul had done nothing wrong at all. God would have let the Asian Jews know that everything Paul had done was in accordance with His will. In other words, Paul had carried out what God had called him to do because that’s what God expects from anyone of His people.
That’s what should of happened but as we see at the end of our passage, it didn’t.
For the spark ignited by false accusation started to burn through the entire city, consuming all the people while turning them against Paul. They “came running from all directions” to take Paul into custody and drag him from the temple before closing the gates.
Paul was in a bad place and none of it should have happened but this is what happens when people make assumptions on things without taking the time to know the facts.
Would Paul escape this predicament in Jerusalem?
We’ll see what happens in the messages to come and don’t assume the news will be bad.
Amen.
In Christ,
Mark
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