Acts 21:15-25

Well, good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome to Coffee and Devotions. It's so good to have you here today. We are at Acts chapter 21, verses 15 through 25. And if you would like a text message each morning when this goes live, feel free to shoot me an email, brian at or sharon rpc.org, or you can leave a comment on the video and I can send you a text message each time we're about to go live. So good to have you this morning.
This is where every day you and I, we get together, we get into the Lord's word and we grow in our love for the Lord together in this year 2022. We'll go all the way from the book of Acts to the book of Philemon. I'm so glad to get into the Lord's word with you this morning.
Let's have some coffee and we'll pray. Let's pray. Father, we thank You so much for this day. We thank You for the time now that You have given us to be in Your Word, and we pray that we would understand Your Word this morning. We pray that we would follow in Your ways. Love You. In Jesus' name. Amen. Here we go Acts chapter 21 verses 15 through 25. Remember Paul has for chapters and chapters now set his eyes on Jerusalem. He's been bound by the Spirit to go and now he's finally making it there.
So let's go ahead and see what happens in Jerusalem. And after those days we packed and went up to Jerusalem, and some of the disciples from Caesarea went with us and brought with them a certain Manassin of Cyprus, an early disciple, with whom we were to lodge. And when we had come to Jerusalem, the brethren received us gladly. On the following day Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.
When he had greeted them, he told in detail those things which God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry. And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord. And they said to him, You see, brother, how many myriad of Jews there are who have believed? and they are zealous for the law.
But they have been informed about you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, nor to walk according to the customs. What then? The assembly must certainly meet, for they will hear of your coming. Therefore, do what we tell you. For we have four men who have taken a vow, take them and be purified with them, and pay their expenses, so that they may shave their heads, and that all may know that those things of which they were informed concerning you are nothing. but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the law. But concerning the Gentiles who believe, we have written and decided that they should observe no such thing, except that they should keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood and from things strangled, and from sexual immorality.
Well, there's a lot that's changed in Jerusalem between Acts chapter 2 and now in A.D. 58. There's in these couple decades between Pentecost and now the Jews in Jerusalem have become more and more nationalistic. They have entrenched themselves even more in their customs. Xenophobia has grown more and more and the Romans have been clamping down more and more. They've been trying to push the Jews away from their religion and become more and more intolerant towards Jewish nationalism.
And so there's this heightened awareness in Jerusalem. that's different than when Paul had left the last time. Paul's been gone for years. The last time he's been in Jerusalem that we have in the text in the book of Acts is Acts chapter 15, when he left with the decree about how the Gentiles should behave themselves concerning the law.
And I mean, it's so intense at this time that Josephus writes about these assassins, Jewish assassins who will go and kill people, kill Jewish religious leaders and Jewish political leaders who are in cahoots with Gentiles. So I mean, Paul walks into this very hostile, tense, almost to the boiling point type situation. It's not going to be but a few more years and the Jews are going to revolt against Rome and Rome is going to come and crush Jerusalem and tear down the temple. I mean, it's going to be a bloody war.
And here Paul is walking into it as the water's beginning to boil. And so he comes and they rejoice. A few things to point out as we look at this is that it's just James. There's no mention of any of the other apostles. Peter's not there. John's not there.
Because remember, they were sent out. We have from places like Eusebius with his church history telling us that the disciples didn't just stay in Jerusalem, but they also did the work that Jesus had told them to go to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. John himself dies on the island of Patmos. an island that Paul had just sailed past near Ephesus. And so we know that the apostles are going out. And so who's left? It's Jesus' brother, James, and he's kind of the last of those original, but it's him and all the elders. And Paul knew James. James knew Paul.
Again, Acts chapter 15, they had talked before. And they inform him, you know, they're glad. They rejoice about everything that's going on with the Gentiles in Asia and in Achaia and in Macedonia. That's wonderful. But there's a problem. The evangelism there in Jerusalem had been going well also, and there were scores and myriads of Jews coming to Christ.
But they had heard about this Paul, this apostle who was seeming to go against Moses, telling people not to circumcise their children, telling Jewish people not to follow Moses, not to keep the customs. And so they say, what are we going to do about this? How do we prove to them that you're not trying to make Jewish people Gentiles? How do we show that you're okay with Jewish people keeping the law.
See, for Paul, the keeping of the ceremonial laws, all the purifications and the ceremonies and stuff like that, Paul was fine with for Jewish people. He was perfectly fine with that. It was a thing of indifference to him. To Gentiles, he'd become a Gentile. To Jews, he'd become a Jew. If he's eating with Jews, no problem eating kosher, no problem celebrating the feast of Passover or going for Pentecost, no problem. It was a thing of indifference for him. It was adiaphora. And so he's Okay, that's fine.
You know, he doesn't have any problem going into the synagogue and talking to Jews and then going into the marketplace and spending time with Gentiles. And when it came to the law of Moses, specifically the moral law, well, he was a friend of the moral law, right? Even in his letter to the Romans.
Just because we've been justified by faith in Jesus Christ, does that mean that we can sin, that grace might abound? May it never be. Are we against the law? No, we are friends of the law. We want to keep the commandments that God has given, right? There's moral, the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, the moral law.
Yeah, hold to them. And so this is where Paul is going here. And this is where the Jerusalem council, or the elders in Jerusalem say, you know, you're going here in Jerusalem. What's going to happen? The Sanhedrin is going to get called and they're going to deal with you. So we need to figure out how to, you know, silence the rumors or to prove that you're not this troublemaker. You're not changing Jews into Gentiles. Remember the cultural climate he's just walked into. And so they say there's four guys here and they've probably taken Nazirite vows. And so why don't you take these four guys to the temple? You pay for their purification, right? So something involves this costly sacrifice. Again, these are not sacrifices for atonement, but they are Thanksgiving offerings of a sort.
And then you can go through a purification ritual as well. So he's willing to go into the McVote. He's willing to get washed. He's willing to go to the temple and offer a votive offering. And so show that you're willing to walk according to the customs. That when a traveler comes and he's gone through foreign Gentile lands, you're willing to come and be purified from that And so that way, you know, you're able to show that you're not against You're not against the ceremonies. You're not against these things. But as for the Gentiles, we've already talked to them. That's what verse 25 gets at. They're saying the exact same thing they said in Acts chapter 15.
All right, stay away from the idols. Stay away from the pagan temples. Stay away from all the sacrifices that you would make at those temples and the meat that you would buy at those temples and all the sexual immorality, the temple prostitution and all of that that would happen in the temple. Stay away from all that.
And so nothing's changed since Acts chapter 15. They're reiterating what Paul agreed to. And remember, they had given Paul, the elders in Jerusalem had given Paul the letter and he and Barnabas were the ones they entrusted to go and take it to places like Antioch in Syria. And so that's what's going on in this passage.
We're going to see that. how things work out. This is just kind of the introduction to these next couple of chapters as we see how are things going to go for Paul as he's in this hostile environment in Jerusalem. And so we need to ask ourselves, what's the best verse to summarize this, right? This is kind of like historical introduction to what's going to happen in the upcoming chapters. Well, in my Bible, I have I have quite a bit underlined, but specifically verses 24 and 25, I have underlined. I think that's really getting at the heart of what this is saying, right?
Take them and be purified with them and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads and that all may know that these things of which they are informed concerning you are nothing. but that you yourself also walk orderly and keep the law but concerning the gentiles who believe we have written and i have the rest of the verse underlined i think that's really getting at their motivation of what's going on here okay so how does this apply to my life how does this apply to your life well are you a jewish person circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything It's a custom. If you're a Jewish person and you want to keep the custom, that's fine.
But it has zero, no impact on somebody's justification. It is not a soteriological issue. It's not a salvation issue. It is a customary issue. Are you a Jewish person and you want to keep the Passover? Sure. Hey, as long as you remember that that Passover is pointing to Jesus. This is the whole point of why there's an entire group of messianic Christians. Christians who, culturally, they want to remember the Feast of Booths, they want to remember those things, and that's fine. But it's not what's going to save them.
And for you Gentiles, are we those who are actually keeping, myself included, Acts chapter 15? Do we stay away from idolatry? All forms of idolatry. Do we shun it? Do we stay away from it? Do we not go to the altar of humanism? Do we stay away from the idolatry that so often characterizes our culture? And do we bow to Jesus Christ alone? Do you keep yourself unspotted from the world? Are you a friend of the law? No, you're not under the yoke of the law, but we're under the yoke of Christ. But are you a friend of the law? Has your tutor brought you to Christ? Are you free?
Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for giving us real historical information. Father, I thank you that these words are true, that the situations actually happened, that the church actually wrestled with things, and that you have shown them to us, you have taught us, you have been so gracious to us to give us a historical record, and let us know how the church was wrestling through things. We thank you for the consistency that we find, and we thank you that It's no surprise what's going to happen in the next couple of chapters, but that your spirit is working in even all these things that Paul would suffer. And Father, we pray that even though charges of inconsistency might be leveled against us.
We pray that we would walk before you with confidence in Jesus's name. Amen. May the Lord bless you today. May you walk in the joy and peace of Jesus Christ, and I'll see you tomorrow. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.