Paul's Arrest, Part 2
Acts 21:27-40
The text with which we will be dealing really runs from chapter 21, verse 27, through the end of chapter 22. So it's a rather lengthy passage, and we will only begin to really touch on all that is here. And in weeks to come, we will _____ to accomplish it. But I attest that this morning, even though we are going to be talking about very, very simple historical narrative, that the spirit of God will use this to be applied to your heart in a very positive way.
You'll notice that I have given you, inside your bulletin there, a little blue insert, Paul the Prisoner, Ambassador in Chains. Now this is just to be a little help that you can kind of carry along with you and kind of refer to as we go, because this helps you to identify the remainder of the Book of Acts. This puts in perspective Paul's ministry as a prisoner. He has been free since his ministry began in the 9th chapter of Acts. He has roamed and wandered under the spirit's direction without any bonds at all. The closest he has come to being a prisoner for any length of time occurred in Philippi, where he was in jail, and the Lord knew it wasn't time yet for his prison ministry, so he sent an earthquake and the whole jail fell apart, and he walked out.
But up until this time, he has been free. But beginning here in chapter 21, he becomes a prisoner. And as a prisoner, we find that he gives six separate defenses of his actions. And I've noted those for you in the top row of boxes there in that little kind of a diagram. The first defense begins in 21:18; the second in 22:30, etcetera, etcetera.
Now, you'll notice that these six defenses are given before the mob; the first one; before the council the second; the third and fourth before the governors who are Felix and Festus; the fifth one before the king, and the last before the Jews. And you'll notice, also, that there are three cities involved, the first two came in Jerusalem, the next incisory and the final in Rome. And the result of the first accused, the next absolved, and the last awaiting trial.
So there you have basically the defenses that Paul gives in regard to himself, and the things, which he has done, which must be answered in terms of those who would accuse him. And so in each case, he defends himself, and of course, uses it as an opportunity to present again the truth which he has proclaimed so faithfully through the years of his ministry.
Now, in our study of chapter 21 this morning, we come to the first of these defenses. And you can look at your chart at a glance, and you'll find it is given before the mob at Jerusalem, and he is accused. So subtitle Paul's First Defense. We would give it the title, "How to give a positive testimony in a negative situation." And really folks, that could be the title of the whole rest of the Book of Acts, because it continually is a negative situation in which he gives a positive testimony.
I suppose that every Christian is faced at times with the dilemma of how to give a positive testimony in a negative situation. I imagine that all of us are in negative situation. Now, some of us have been in those situations where we have sort of let out a little peep about our faith and the whole world seems to clamber after us and try to shut us up. And then we face the battle about whether we ought to say anything else.
Now, maybe on the job, you have given indication that you're a Christian, and somebody has drained down fire and brimstone, and so every time the opportunity presents itself to open your mouth, you sort of struggle a little bit inside. Or maybe you're out, as I was the other day. I happened to be playing golf with Matt, and there was a guy that was wanting to play golf with us, and he was kind of loud and anti-religious, and used the name of Jesus Christ quite at liberty. And so inside of myself, I'm saying to myself, "I don't want to talk to that guy about Jesus Christ. Since he is so concerned with talking about Jesus Christ, I ought to be at least willing to join his conversation and maybe turn it another direction." And you know, I battled in my own mind that very problem. And I don't think I said anything to him until the fifth hole, when I finally said, "This is ridiculous."
Here I am discussing with myself whether I ought to intrude in his life with Jesus Christ. And so we were walking along and I just said, "You know, I have to talk to you about Jesus Christ." And he said, "Well, you know, that's important to me. We just had a new baby, and we don't have any faith in our family, and we're looking for one." And so away it went. And so he's the newest member of our tape family. He's sending him tapes.
But you know, all of us have those times we struggle, and it isn't necessarily a negative situation, but it can be created into a negative situation when we fear our ego may get stepped on. But there are some really negative situations. Some of us get into situations where great disaster occurs and then the whole world watches to see whether our faith is any good or not.
How do you give a positive testimony in a negative situation? Well, I think a good way to learn how is to watch a man who did it. And rather than just listen to precepts about it, which we could, and we will recite to you from 1 Peter, I want you to see a man who did that very thing with his life. And see if you can't draw some conclusions with me as we go. Now, most Christian's testimonies are given in church, or in a group of Christians where we get up and tell everybody who knows the Lord how wonderful the Lord is. And we all say, "Yes, he's so wonderful." And we sit back and forth saying it to each other, and the minimum amount of testimony goes on before the God-hating, Christ-rejecting world. And really, maybe that's _____ the maximum. And I'm not downing testimony among believers. It's great for exportation and encouragement.
But as we come to the Apostle Paul, we see a man who knew how to take a negative situation and make it into a positive testimony. Now, if we saw in chapter 20 his courage, and in chapter 21 the first 15 verses or so, his humility, and we saw that even through the message last week on later into the chapter. If se saw those things earlier, what we're going to see now is his boldness. I mean there were ingredients, and there are ingredients that make for a great man. One is conviction, and then the courage to hold up to those convictions. Two is humility, and another one is boldness, and we're going to see that one here.
I think, just to add a footnote, as a prisoner from here on out, we ought to get some idea of how Paul viewed his imprisonment. And just to give you a point of reference at which you can make contact, I would call your attention to Ephesians chapter 3, and verse 1. You don't need to look it up. I'll just read it. It's very brief. Paul says, "For this cause, I, Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ, for you Gentiles." Now keep this in the back of your mind: Paul never viewed his situation as anything other than God authored, okay? He never viewed his imprisonment as an imprisonment of men. He doesn't say, "I write unto you, Paul, a prisoner of Rome." He's always a prisoner of whom? Jesus Christ. It was Christ who brought him into such predicaments.
In Philippians he says, "My bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace." He never saw himself as a prisoner of men. He saw himself only as a prisoner of the will of Jesus Christ. And so consequently, his imprisonment represented nothing but a new ministry. It didn't mean the end of anything. It meant the beginning of something. He says to them, "My bonds in Christ are made manifest in all the palace.
And at the end of Philippians, he says, "The saints greet you chiefly that are of Caesar's household." It's just a question of winning people to Christ who were available to be reached through prison. And I love what he says when he says, "I may be bound, but the Gospel is not bound." And so he never says his imprisonment as having anything to do with men, but always with God. And God uses him to give a glorious testimony; positive witness in very one of those trials, even though they were all negative situations.
As we move toward verse 27 of Acts 21, we are reminded that Paul is arrived in Jerusalem. He has tried to conciliate the Jewish Christians. The Jewish Christians there in Jerusalem had heard that he was an arch subversive. That he was anti-Jewish; that he had thrown out all the Jewish customs, and he was against everything that had been the ceremony and tradition of Jewish life, and that wasn't true. Paul was himself still very much Jewish. I mean here he was at the feat of Pentecost. That's observing a feat. He attended the synagogues on the Sabbath. He had taken a Nazarite vow himself in chapter 19, and shaved his own head. He was involved in all of these various things.
The Apostle Paul had not thrown out all of Jewish tradition. He was in transition. It was taking time for those old things to die. They had been engrained so much. But yet, some of the Judaisers that told these Christians he was anti-Judaistic, and so they were a little anti-Paul. And when he arrived in town with all his Gentiles buddies, all of his friends, and he came there with the purpose of bringing the money to the Jerusalem saints because they needed it, and to show love from the Gentiles church, his welcome was good from some, but the others were greatly concerned because the tens of thousands of Jewish Christians thought he was a subversive.
And so in order to kind of change his reputation, they had him go to the temple, fulfill a Nazarite vow with four other guys, pay the bill for the whole thing in hopes that the Jewish Christians would say, "Hey, if he would do that, he's certainly not as anti-Jewish as we've been led to believe." And he did that, and I'm convinced, though the text says nothing about it, that it must've had a positive effect on the Jewish Christians.
Well, it didn't have any effect at all on the Jewish non-Christians. None whatsoever. And we meet them as we're introduced to the mob in verse 27. And like any mob, you know how to describe a mob. A mob is a body of people with no head. And this mob is no different than any other mob. They are a wild, maniacal group of people, who in a frenzy try to murder the Apostle Paul, and they haven't got the foggiest idea what they're doing, or why they're doing it. But that's rather typical of a mob.
Now, our text, which is lengthy, falls into five parts, and it runs all the way through chapter 22, verse 30, just to get the entire first phase of his defense in, that's that full passage. And we're not going to attempt to do that, but just kind of get in on the first couple of things. But it begins with point one, the attack of the mod. The attack of the mob, and we see that beginning in verse 27. "And when the seven days were almost ended." Now you'll recall that we told you last time that the particular Nazarite vow, which was a Jewish way, a Jewish custom way of expressing gratitude to God for a special deliverance; these people who were involved in this vow, who were joined by Paul, needed to finish up a seven-day purification.
At the end of the seven days, they offered sacrifices and it was done. So that is the seven days referred to in verse 27: the seven days of the finishing of the Nazarite vow. "And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews who were of Asia," now that's a reference not to China and but to Asia Minor. And Asia Minor was a Roman province. Asia Minor was a province in which where the City of Ephesus lay Acea, Philadelphia, Thyatyrus, Sardus, Smyrna; those cities referred to in Revelation chapter 2 and 3.
So some Jews who were from Asia, when they say him in the temple, do you think they recognized him? How many years had he spent in Asia in the City of Ephesus? At least three. And in those three years, he had not only a dramatic affect on Ephesus and established a church there, and taught day and night in the school of Tyrannous, but it also created tremendous havoc in the synagogue. So the Jews from Asia may well have met him in the City of Ephesus.
I am convinced in my own mind that they were from Ephesus. The reason is the mention of Asia and the mention of Trophimus in verse 29, who was an Ephesians, and they know him. So the fact that they know Trophimus indicated they must've been somehow connected to Ephesus, and the fact that they were so uptight about Paul indicates they might have been a part of that synagogue in Ephesus that Paul devastated for Christ. He moved into that place, and he wanted even the leader of the synagogue.
So when they saw Paul, these Ephesian or at least these Asia Minor Jews, they really saw their opportunity. Now, there had been a riot back in Ephesus earlier in the Book of Acts, and they tried then to kill Paul, but cooler heads prevailed, and they couldn't accomplish it. But now they really saw their opportunity because there was an entire city of Jews. You see, Gentiles had squashed the riot earlier, but now there weren't any Gentiles to do that in the sense of population. It was just a mass of Jews, so they saw their opportunity.
When they saw him in the temple, they stirred up all the people. The interesting thing: The word stirred up, though there are other English statement stirred in the New Testament, the actual Greek word used here is only used here, and it means confused. "They confused the mob." Mobs are always confused, as I just said, and they confused the mob, and they laid hands on Paul. Here's Paul in there finishing up his Nazarite vows, and a whole bunch of these Jews from Ephesus descend on him, grab him, and they stir up the confusion of the mob, and this crying and yelling, verse 28, "Crying out, men of Israel, help."
So they got Paul, and they stirred up a mob. Now when they had a mob in Jerusalem at feast time, I mean they had a mob. Historians tell us it could be 2 million people there. Two million people milling around that city at feast time. Now the term Pentecost, and it was the feast of Pentecost as we've seen in past study, Paul wanted to get there at Pentecost, and that was a time when people really moved in Jerusalem from everywhere. That's why those Asian Jews were there. It signifies the 50th. Penta means 50. This is 50 days after Passover. And it was the Old Testament feast of harvest sometimes called the Feast of Weeks, and sometimes called the Day of First Fruits.
It celebrates the first fruits of the wheat harvest, does Pentecost. And so it was that celebration. But after the exile, it had become kind of a different celebration. It was said that the Torah, the Law, the Law of Moses, was given 50 days after the Exodus. So the feast of Pentecost then became associated with the celebration of the birthday of the Law. Now, mark that because that's very important, because it helps us to understand the attitude of the people. They were in the midst of a celebration of the Law, which means they were celebrating Jewishness to its nth degree. At this particular celebration, the concentration on the Law leads me to conclude two things: One, the fact that Paul wanted to be there indicates that he does revere the Law. In fact, in Romans 7, he said, "I delight in the Law of God." So he wasn't anti-Jewish Law. He wasn't anti-law. In that sense, he delighted in God's Law. But the fact, also secondly that it was a Jewish celebration of the law, means that the crowd was hyper concerned about the Law and it's sanctity.
And so anybody who stood in blatant opposition would be the most flagrant kind of violator of the very thing they were celebrating, and that tends to create the kind of antagonism that this group uses to really try to kill Paul. So they stir up the crowd and the headless mob, and they start yelling, "Help." And of course, that's just as if some blasphemy has occurred, or some terrible defamation of the character of God, or the character of Moses. This is some slander that has occurred, desecration of the sanctuary, and they cry out, 'Men of Israel, Help." And then they announce the problem. "This is the man," and they've got him by now, "that teaches all men everywhere against the people and the Law and this place."
Well, that's a fairly broad indictment, I'd say. "Teaches all men everywhere." That's rather general, and all-inclusive. And notice the accusation, "against the people." First accusation he is anti-Semitic. Now, that would be a little difficult to really accuse an individual of being anti-Semitic when he's a Jew. I mean even the bible says, "No man ever yet hated his own flag." You say, "Why would they accuse him of being anti-Jewish? That is an accusation that is still going on today." Jewish people have never been able to live with the fact of the conversion of a Jew to Christ. You see, because the Jewish person associates his religion with his race, historically.
Now today it's not so much so, but historically Jews connected their religion to their race in a way that was indivisible. And so when somebody gave up his religion, he gave up his race in their minds. That's why you've heard about Jewish people that have come to Christ and been ostracized from their family. So the Jewish mind is tantamount to absolute rejection of Judaism, when in fact, if they knew anything about the Word of God, it's just complete to Judaism because Jesus is the Messiah.
And the one who would reject the Messiah would be rejecting his own Judaism. If you want to know who the real rebel is against Judaism, it's the unbelieving Jew who will not accept his Messiah, not the Christian. The Christian Jew is the one who has accomplished that which God has designed to be accomplished through Judaism; that has faith in his Messiah who has come and died and risen, living, interceding today.
So they first accused him of anti-Semitism, and this is a common thing. I remember preaching on television, and I preached on Jewish conversion. And I probably was a little strong for a television audience, and I tend sometimes to be that way. And I was talking about the fact that Jewish people who had been responsible for the rejection of their own Messiah needed to come to Jesus Christ. And I went on and on, going. Man alive, we got letters you wouldn't believe. There was character defamation threats and there was threats that they were going to get the FCC to put us off the air, and so forth and so forth and so on. And we were accused of anti-Semitism. And the makeup lady who made me up the time when I would do that was Jewish. And the next week she was going _____. I mean it really created a problem, and she didn't want to do our program anymore and all this, simply because to them, to come to Jesus Christ is to reject everything that Judaism is, when in fact it's the very opposite. To reject Jesus Christ is to reject everything that Judaism is.
So they said, "He's against his people, and against the Law." And man alive, at that time of the year at that feast, that kind of accusation would really flip everybody out because they were celebrating the Law. And then they said he's against the Law, they meant he's anti-God. He's anti-Moses. He's anti-biblical. And then to sum it up, "And against this place that is the temple."
You know, at least the mobs in Jerusalem weren't very inconsistent. They always followed the same pattern. Mobs don't really have a lot of brains, but when in Jerusalem, no matter what the occasion, they came up with the same thing. I'm thinking of Acts 6, verse 9. Do you remember an earlier fellow by the name of Stephen? Stephen was a preacher not unlike Paul, and in verse 9, they arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, the Syrenians and the Alexandrians of them Cilician Asia, arguing with Stephen.
Now, various Jewish groups that came from other countries established their own fellowships, their own synagogues. So Stephen was interestingly enough pretty much a preacher to Hellenist Jews; Jews from outside of Jerusalem. Well, they got into an argument with Stephen, but they couldn't handle him. Verse 10 says, "They weren't able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke." He was too much for them. So when you can't argue with somebody on a logical basis, you revert to violence, right? You just beat them up.
So they got some men, and they said, "We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God." Blaspheming Moses is something, but God also. "And they stirred up the people, and the elders and the scribes, and came on him and caught him, and dragged him into the council, and they paid off false witnesses." It's amazing how religion is so pure in its own worship, and yet so impure in the dealing with other things. They set up false witnesses. They bribed people to give false testimony. This man ceases not to speak blasphemous words against the holy place." So they accused him of blaspheming the Law, blaspheming God, and blaspheming the temple. And we heard him say, "This Jesus of Nazareth would destroy this place and change the custom which Moses delivered us. And all that sat on the council looked steadfastly on him, and they saw his face, as it had been the face of an angel." That was just a divine rebuke. But they said the same thing essentially back in Acts 21, didn't they, against Paul? And if you want to go back to Jesus, basically they accused him of the very same thing: violating the law.
The accusations were general, however, and they really couldn't do much to the guy for that. So they came up with a specific in verse 28. And further, this is really what he's done that's bad: He brought Greeks into the temple and polluted the holy place. Now that's a very strong accusation. You say, "How do they know he did that?" Well, verse 29 says, "They had seen with him in the city Trophimus, an Ephesian who they supposed Paul had brought into the temple." They didn't see him in the temple, they just assumed and supposed that. That was another lie. They had no evidence. You say, "Maybe Paul did bring him in." No, he didn't. You say, "How do you know he didn't?" Because that would really be stupid. You mean Paul just spent seven days going through a Nazarite vow to convince the Jews that he honored their customs, and then he turns right around and hauls a Gentile in there? I mean give him more credit than that; he's not going to undo in one act all he's done in seven days.
I'll tell you something else: If he had dragged Trophimus in there, he would've dragged him in there at the cost of his life, and he wouldn't have done that to his friend. No, of course Paul didn't take Trophimus into the temple; sacred place. They just _____ it out. Trophimus was a Gentile. It says in verse 29, "He was an Ephesian." And for a Gentile to enter the temple was terrible. The Gentiles could only go to the outer court. In fact since that was true, it became known as the Court of the Gentiles. And between that and the inner court, the next court was called the Court of the Women, and it got that name because the women could go into that court. And then further on in the men went, and then of course the priest and the high priest all the way into the holy of holies. But in the outer court, the Gentiles could go.
Now, between the outer court and the inner court, the Court of the Women, the temple treasury, was a barricade. And periodically, along pillars on the barricade were placed signs. And they were written in two languages, Latin and Greek, so that all the pagans could read them. This is what they said, and interestingly enough, we have found two of those from Herod's temple. Archaeologists discovered one in 1871, another one in 1935, and they both said the same thing: "No man of alien race is to enter within the barricade that goes around the temple. And if anyone is taken in the act, let him know that he has himself to blame for the penalty of death that follows."
Now, anybody who went in there as a Gentile died, and the Romans honored that law. They knew how sacred it was to the Jews. And in fact, it was a way of keeping Gentile religion and Gentile gods and idols out of the temple. It was sort of s stopping point for the intrusion of the system of the world. And they didn't let it be violated. Well, when these guys said they took Greeks into the temple, that was just enough to stir up everybody, and give a justification for the murder of Paul.
Now what's interesting in this: Even if Paul had taken Trophimus in there, it would not have been Paul that died, it would've been Trophimus. So it shows that the whole thing was out of whack all the way down the line. Paul couldn't be killed for going in there; he was a Jew. If anybody got killed, it would be the Gentiles who violated it. So the whole thing was a pretense and in all the confusion, the mob had no idea what they were doing, which is like any mob.
Verse 30, "All the city was moved." And of course, if a time of feast, the whole city was outdoors, milling all over, "And they all ran together, took Paul, drew him out of the temple, and at once the doors were shut." They wanted to make sure they got him out of there so they could go on worshipping God, while they killed God's anointed. Amazing how they did this. This is what they did at the trial of Jesus. They wanted to make sure they didn't violate the Sabbath while they executed the Messiah: Made sure they didn't violate any of the things that were going on at that particular time. Didn't want to enter into the house of the Gentiles at all, because they would defile themselves. They stayed outside and screamed for the blood of the Messiah.
Strange confusion of religion. But when you have form without reality, you have absolute chaos. It just can't work. Religious form without reality doesn't make sense. That's what most people's religion is. So we see the attack of the mob. Well, fortunately in the great providence of God, the life of Paul was not yet over, and God had some days yet t