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Reading Acts 21:27-40 where the Apostle Paul is apprehended by the Jews because they claim he has been overthrowing the law, but as he's being beaten he's rescued. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Apostle Paul came to Jerusalem and the entire city was in an uproar. This time it's not because Paul is preaching Christ, it's because he's preaching grace alone through faith alone when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily study in the Word of Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness. Find all our videos and other ministry resources at www .utt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 21 with the Apostle Paul in Jerusalem. Remember that he's come here knowing that the Jews hate him and want to put him to death, but James and the other leaders in the church there at Jerusalem, they have this idea.
They're sending Paul into the temple to pay a vow, and this may look to the people like, he loves the law and is keeping the law, but in fact, Paul will find himself arrested. That's the part of the chapter that we come to today.
I'm going to begin by reading verses 27 to 40. Hear the word of the Lord. Now, when the seven days were almost over, the Jews from Asia, upon noticing him in the temple, began to throw all the crowd into confusion and lay hands on him, crying out, Men of Israel, help.
This is the man who teaches to everyone everywhere against our people and the law and this place. And besides, he has even 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.
Then all the city was stirred, and the people rushed together, and taking hold of Paul, they dragged him out of the temple, and immediately the doors were shut. While they were seeking to kill him, a report came up to the commander of the Roman cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion.
At once, he took along soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the commander came up and took hold of him and ordered him to be bound with two chains.
And he began asking who he was and what he had done. But among the crowd, some were shouting one thing and some another. And when he could not find out the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks.
And when he got to the stairs, he actually was carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd. For the multitude of the people kept following them, shouting away with him. As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, May I say something to you?
And he said, Do you know Greek? Then you are not the Egyptian who some time ago raised a revolt and led the 4 ,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness? But Paul said, I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city.
And I beg you, allow me to speak to the people. And when he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, motioned to the people with his hand. And when there was a great hush, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying.
And that's the way that chapter 21 ends. Then chapter 22 begins with the speech that Paul gives there at Jerusalem. So he has come into the temple. He's done everything that James and the other brothers had told Paul to do.
So going back up to verse 20, it was said to Paul, You see how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law. Now, let me stop there before we jump back into the narrative that we just read, starting at verse 27.
So notice here that James and the brothers, James, who is leading that church there in Jerusalem and the other elders with him, they have said to Paul that there are men here who want to kill you. Paul has known that this was what he would face once he came to Jerusalem.
He had been telling brothers that was what was going to happen to him. We saw it earlier in chapter 21. People even trying to talk him out of going to Jerusalem because the Holy Spirit had revealed to them what was going to happen to Paul.
Paul knew this was what he was facing, but it's not the Pharisees. It's not the Sadducees that are trying to put Paul to death because he is preaching Christ. Do you notice that? Again, what was it that James and the brothers said to him?
There are many thousands here among the Jews who have believed. What did we see at the beginning of the book of Acts with the gospel going throughout Jerusalem and people coming to faith? They were increasing by the thousands.
Now, that was an amazing thing, surely, to see many thousands of Jews, even right there in Jerusalem and in Judea, coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This was meant to be seen as a very positive thing, a rejoicing thing, to see how the gospel was going out.
People were believing in Jesus, that he is the Son of God, that he came and he died on the cross and he rose again from the dead, and whoever believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
The law never had the power to save you. It is Christ who has fulfilled the law and the prophets just as he preached he was going to do. He has done all that needs to be done for you to be made right with God and to have that justification transferred to you, that you would stand justified before God.
You need only to believe in him. That was in Jesus' teaching. That's been in the teaching that we've seen in the book of Acts from the apostles, even Peter, who has testified to the Gentiles coming to faith and the Holy Spirit falling on them because they believe in Jesus.
So, one must believe in Christ to be forgiven their sins and be made right with God, not keep the law, which you were not able to do anyway. So, there are many people who have come to faith in Jesus Christ.
We saw them coming to faith by the thousands at the beginning of the book of Acts. And now, when Paul comes back to Jerusalem, there are many thousands. Now, this isn't the whole church, obviously, because James and the brothers and others who are there with them, they know Paul is a brother.
They know this is not a guy who's trying to overthrow the law, like cut out all the scriptures. All the scriptures came before us. They're now debunked. What was that movement? The New Covenant theology.
Not covenant theology, but New Covenant theology. That was trying to unhitch from the Old Testament. You have Andy Stanley that will say something like that. We must unhitch from the Old Testament. There are people that will believe, even among Christians today.
They may not state it in some theologically deep or explanatory way, but they just have this mindset that the Old Testament doesn't matter to us anymore. I remember during the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement, and you think of the Reformed as being those who are more doctrinally learned, perhaps.
They were the readers, so they would read Puritans and the Reformers and things like this. But even among the Reformed, during that Young, Restless, and Reformed movement, there were those who were saying, do the Ten Commandments still apply?
Like, do we still have to keep the Ten Commandments? Of course you do. Yes, you do. As Paul even says in Romans 13, citing the Ten Commandments, love is the fulfilling of the law. So when we love one another, we are keeping the commandments.
We must keep the commandments. But there's been a mindset even among modern evangelicals that the Old Testament is gone. We've got Jesus now. So what do we need to be doing with the Old Testament? Why do we need to pay attention to that?
And then, of course, there's a certain movement of people today that has been influenced by theonomy or the law-keeping teaching. But you have a certain segment today that even—it's almost like they cut out the New Testament.
We've got to be keeping the Old Testament law. And when they're talking about that, they're referring to the civil law. And there are even those that are claiming we need to keep the ceremonial laws. There's the Torah observant, as they are called.
And it's like they cut out the New Testament. They're holding on to the Old. Anyway, you see these different factions that exist even today, cutting out the parts of the Bible that they don't like, or maybe the parts of the Bible that don't serve their movement or something to that degree.
How did I get on this? I can't remember how I—I can't remember the segue that got me to this point. But anyway, so you have Paul, who's been preaching the gospel and saying you must believe in Jesus to be saved because the law didn't have the power to save you.
And so there are people accusing him of being antinomian. You're cutting out the law altogether. And that's never been his intention. Even when you read his letter to the Romans, which would have been written by this point, by the way, because what's going to happen here is he gets arrested in Jerusalem and then gets shipped to Rome.
He's never been to Rome yet. And he has intention of coming to Rome, to the church there in Rome. But he's written to them by this point. The book of Romans would have been written by the time we're here in Acts 21.
And he says in Romans 3, do we overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Now, in Christ Jesus, we are able to follow the law in a way that is pleasing to God, where previously we could not keep the law in a way that was pleasing unto the Lord.
So Paul is not a lawbreaker or he's not throwing out the law. Even this act of going up to the temple is supposed to be a demonstration that he loves the law and desires to keep the law. But there are certain things about the law that have been fulfilled in Christ.
Jesus fulfilled the law. We don't have to pay sacrifices anymore, praise God. We don't have to raise livestock that we would take into the temple and offer as a sacrifice. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed for us.
There are many Jews that have come to faith in Jesus and have come to know that believing in Jesus is the forgiveness of their sins. But they still think there are things you have to do in the law in order to be saved.
They're adding to the gospel. They fail to see the law gospel distinctions. And so, as we saw back in Acts chapter 15, the Judaizers were saying to people that in order to be saved, you still have to be circumcised.
And even though the text doesn't explicitly give it to us this way, they probably dress it up with something like, Jesus was circumcised. Yes, you have to believe in Jesus. Absolutely. In order to be saved, you must put your faith in Jesus.
But Jesus was circumcised. So, you also have to be circumcised in order to be saved. That's exactly the argument in Acts 15 .1. This is the argument that Paul was contending against when he wrote to the Galatians.
If you have to be circumcised in order to be saved, then Christ is of no advantage to you. Why did Christ die? If it's by these works that you are saved. It is by faith in Jesus that we are saved and not by our works.
Our works would be the demonstration of our faith. They're not the cause of our faith or the cause of our justification. And even then, some of those works are not imposed upon the Gentiles. So, I'm still kind of up here in this upper section where James and the brothers are saying to Paul, they've been told about you that you are teaching all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk according to the customs.
What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. And later on, verse 25, they remind Paul, they're even speaking among themselves about this, the decision that they had come to regarding what needed to be said to the Gentiles.
What do you have to keep in order to do as a Christian is expected to do? And verse 25, but concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should keep from meat, sacrifice to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from sexual immorality.
That was what was said to the Gentiles. So, there was not any requirement upon Gentiles to have to circumcise their children or specifically their sons and then any men who would come to faith and they must be circumcised.
And this is what the Judaizers were imposing upon people. They're imposing law in order to be saved. You have to do this, but it is only by faith that we are saved. So anyway, there were many thousands that came to faith.
They did come to believe that Jesus is the savior, but they're still trying to add to the gospel their law and saying, you have to keep the law in order to be saved. So, of those many thousands that we saw coming to faith at the beginning of the book of Acts, there were many of them who were legit conversions, but there were many who were not.
They may have been enthusiastic for Jesus, but then they just come right back to the law. They came right back to it again. And they're acting as Israel did in the Old Testament, where after being rescued out of Egypt, they're still trying to go back into their slavery.
So these Israelites, these Jews are acting the same way. They've been saved from the requirement of the law, which they could not keep, and therefore the penalty of the law would be upon them. And they've been saved from that, but now they're trying to go right back to it again and putting themselves under the penalty of the law.
This is becoming heretical. When they're adding to the gospel works and saying, you must do this in order to be saved. Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, even Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, all of these false religions do the same thing.
They add works. You must do this in order to be saved. This is the heresy that the people have fallen into because they don't see that Christ is sufficient. They don't see that Jesus is enough. And so they think they've got to help it along a little bit.
It can't be enough that I just believe I got to be able to do something. I have to do something to help the gospel along a little bit. And if that's what you think that you have to do, then the gospel is not good news to you.
It is not good news to hear that Jesus died and by faith in him, his sacrifice is applied to you because you think, oh, well, that's a great story, but I still also have to do this. If you put yourself under the burden of your own works, then the gospel is not good news to you.
But it is good news to know that for our sake, Christ died and rose again from the dead. This sacrifice was not in vain. It was for us. 2 Corinthians 5, 21, for our sake, he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
Know that sacrifice is sufficient. There is nothing more that needs to be added to it. But now in Christ Jesus, we would live lives of holiness until the day of the Lord. So let me come to the narrative, which I haven't even gotten to, but we're still going to get all the way through it today.
Verse 27, when the seven days were almost over. So remember that James and the brothers had sent Paul and some men with him into the temple to offer sacrifices and fulfill a vow. And this would, this would be completed over a period of seven days.
And it seemed like that week was going by without a hitch. But then suddenly when the seven days were almost over, it could have been that he was right there on the sixth or seventh day. The Jews from Asia, upon noticing him in the temple, now they see him, they recognize him and they know that's Paul.
They began to throw all the crowd into confusion and laid hands on him, crying out, men of Israel help. Here we go. This is it. This is what we have been saying was, this was the guy who was causing all the ruckus.
Here he is. And now we need to do something about this. This is the man who teaches to everyone everywhere against our people and the law and this place. He teaches against the law and against the temple as if the temple isn't even important anymore.
And besides, he has even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place. Remember when Jesus drove the temple merchants out, what did he say? The scriptures said about the temple. The scripture said, my house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations.
So the Gentiles should be able to come into the temple. But these people are throwing Paul out because that was what he did. Now, verse 29 says, for they had previously seen Trophimus, the Ephesian in the city with him.
And they suppose that Paul had brought him into the temple. So it appears as if Trophimus did not go into the temple, but the people are assuming that's what it was that Paul did. Regardless, though, the scriptures had said, Jesus has said, my house shall be a house of prayer for all the nations.
So they're going against the scriptures and they're going against Christ in this accusation that they're bringing against Paul. Then all the city was stirred and the people rushed together and taking hold of Paul, they dragged him out of the temple and immediately the doors were shut.
While they were seeking to kill him, a report came up to the commander of the Roman cohorts that all Jerusalem was in confusion. We've seen this before, haven't we? This was what happened in Ephesus when the Ephesians were thrown into confusion.
We're seeing some mirrored language here in Acts 21 with what we saw previously in the chapter right before. Well, no, it wasn't Acts 20. It was Acts 19. The riot that had taken place in Ephesus, that was among Gentiles.
That was among the pagans. And the Jews are doing the same thing. You see this disorderly conduct among unbelievers. And verse 32, at once he took along soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
He was probably going to die right there until the Romans showed up. Then the commander came up and took hold of him and ordered him to be bound with two chains and began asking who he was and what he had done.
So Paul is being accused because of this riot, he must be the cause of it. So he's being arrested, but that arrest ends up saving his life. Among the crowd, some were shouting one thing and some another.
And when he could not find out the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. And when he got to the stairs, he was carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd for the multitude of the people kept following them, shouting away with him.
And as Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he said to the commander, may I say something to you? Now, it's interesting, the commander's response. He says, do you know Greek? So Paul was apparently speaking to the commander in the Greek language.
Then you are not the Egyptian who sometime ago raised a revolt and led the 4 ,000 men of the assassins out into the wilderness. So this commander had an assumption of who he thought Paul was, not knowing who the apostle Paul was.
But Paul said, I am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city. And here we see Paul using his rights as a Roman citizen to accomplish his purpose as an apostle, to spread the gospel.
He's using his rights, his citizenship rights to advance the gospel. Good thing for all of us to remember, using our rights as citizens of the nation that we are a part of for the sake of sharing the gospel with others.
And Paul said, I beg you, let me speak to the people. And the commander gives him permission. He sees that he's an educated, learned man. This is not just some upstart who is trying to cause a riot, trying to stir up the crowd.
The crowd is stirred up because of disorder. Nobody can even figure out what to say. One saying one thing, one saying the other, the commander couldn't come to an understanding of what was going on. Paul just wants to reason.
And the commander recognizes that and so gives him permission. And Paul motions to the people. There's a great hush. And he spoke to them in Hebrew, speaks to them in their own language. And that's where we will pick up next week when we come back to Acts.
We'll be in chapter 22 with Paul's speech in Jerusalem. My brethren, it is so important for us to be reminded that the gospel is enough. Romans 1 16, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek for the Jew and for the Gentile.
The gospel is enough for salvation to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins and be saved. Let us rest in that good news. Rejoice because of what God has done for us, knowing also this is the message that others need to hear.
So they too may believe in Jesus and be saved to rest from our works and rest upon the work of our Savior. Heavenly Father, we thank you for these reminders. I believe it was Martin Luther who said to preach the gospel to yourself every day because you forget it every day.
We can be so weak in our minds to forget sometimes the wonderful gift of your son that was given for us. May our sins be forgiven and we walk in the righteousness of Christ that we have been clothed in.
Help us to be convicted of our sin, to put it all away and desire to be holy and upright looking toward that day that we will be with our Savior forever in glory. There is no way to eternal life but through faith in Jesus.
It's in his name we pray. Amen.