In Acts 21, Paul arrives in Jerusalem. Some of the Jews had been making false claims about his teaching, but in his attempt to prove them false a riot is started and he is arrested.

Transcript:

Our scripture reading comes from Acts 21:1-6. "After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Kos. The next day we went to Rhodes and from there to Patara. We found a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, went on board and set sail. After sighting Cyprus and passing to the south of it, we sailed on to Syria. We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit, they urged Paul not to go to Jerusalem. When it was time to leave, we left and continued on our way. All of them, including wives and children, accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship and they returned home." Let us pray as we come before God's word. Father, as we hear the testimony of your word here in Acts 21, the record recorded by Luke of Paul and his perseverance, his faithfulness to the call that you placed upon his life, we pray, Father, that you would stir within us, by the work of the person of the Holy Spirit, a desire to walk in his way, to be ready to take on all costs that may appear before us. We ask, ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. You may be seated. Every one of us here, all of us here have gone through some difficult things. I'm sure you probably don't wanna think about those things, but if you take a moment, I'm sure a couple of them come back to mind. The most trying things, perhaps, that you've endured in your life. Now, some of them you saw coming. Others, however, you couldn't have imagined how difficult they would be. In fact, thinking back on certain occasions in your life, thinking about some of the most difficult things you've had to go through, you might confess that if you knew it was going to be so hard, you might have gone a different direction. And yet, standing here today, you might also say that you are glad that you went through the pain and hardship because of where it has brought you today. Now you can see the good that you wouldn't have seen so clearly at that time. Now you know the reality that made it all worth it, the trial you endured. All things being equal, you, you might have preferred that kind of suffering could have been avoided. As much as the good you know now goes hand in hand with the troubles you've overcome, you can now say that it is well, that it is good that your life took that course. That's what we might say about the things that we didn't see coming. But that other trouble, the kind we, we see coming from a mile away, we took that on basically knowing what we were in for. And unless we are sadomasochists, unless we just take some twisted pleasure in our own pain, there must be a good reason for us being prepared to endure. The runner, who desires the glory of running in the Boston Marathon, prepares months on end for that grueling trial; the wife who seeks to be a mother, even while she foresees the pain of the labor that will come; the pioneer who seeks a better land at the cost of all comfort. We shake our heads with pity for the one who suffers for no good reason. But we write headlines, we build statues, and we create holidays for the ones who suffered to gain a great, greater good. Now of course, we don't always know what is our greatest good. We can be ignorant of what we should suffer for, and comparatively, we too often suffer for very, very foolish things. We encounter just this kind of situation, evaluating the prospect of suffering, in Acts 21 as Paul makes his way to the city of Jerusalem. In verses one through six, the Apostle Paul weaves his way southward along the coast of Asia Minor. After his tearful departure from the Ephesian elders in Miletus, having told them that they should never expect to see him again, though he will later write a letter to them, the Epistle to the Ephesians. After leaving them, he lands in Tyre. You can see it circled on the map in a little red dot. Now, in verse four, it says that the disciples there, meaning simply the Christians there, apparently understood by the Holy Spirit that Paul was going to face some hardship in Jerusalem, and they urged him to not go any further, to not proceed with his travel plans. This sets the stage for our full awakening, our full realization of the suffering that Paul is foretold to endure in Jerusalem. Despite the pleas of his fellow disciples here, Paul presses on to Ptolemais and Caesarea. So we continue on in verse seven. Luke tells us, "We continued our voyage from Tyre and landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed with them for a day. Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and stayed at the house of Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven. He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied. After we had been there a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, 'The Holy Spirit says, "In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles."'" One thing we notice as we see Paul arrive in Caesarea, and Caesarea, you should understand, is in Israel. You can see it there on the map, right there. Renamed, of course, after Caesar. It's an, it's impressive to see how there's disciples in these towns that Paul is going to. We can see the spread of the faith. And in Caesarea, Paul has some very interesting company. He's staying with Philip the Evangelist. Now, this is distinct from Philip the Apostle, one of the original 12. Philip the Evangelist is one of the seven original deacons called by the church, you'll recall in Acts six. And you'll remember perhaps that included in that number of seven was also Stephen. Now, imagine this time that Paul and Philip share together. Paul, this man formerly known as Saul, who held the coats of those who were stoning one of Philip's peers, Stephen. Men who, before Christ, would've been utter enemies, but now brought together so that Philip is hosting Paul in his own house. This is the power of the gospel to transform people, to see this sort of reversal and reconciliation. Now, Philip has four daughters. They're unmarried, they're virgins, most likely young, and they possess the gift of prophecy given by the Holy Spirit. And this just recalls to us the new age in which we've entered in, in the age of the church. We are living in the time of the end. We are living in the time in which that which the prophets foretold is being fulfilled. Joel 2:28-29, the Lord promised to his people, he said, "And afterwards I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see, will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days." So these young women, and we've talked to other, about other people who also possess the gift of prophecy, would've been able to foretell events which were to come. Now, there's debate in Christian circles today as to whether those gifts are continuing to be distributed into the present. But what we can say is that if one is a prophet, then that which they foretell actually comes to pass. You can't have a, a 500 record . I mean, you need, you need to have a perfect, you need to have a perfect record when you're giving prophecies. Now, we have these, these women here, and apparently they, it, it seems implied that they probably were telling Paul the same thing, that there's suffering coming for him. Because then after, we have the earlier warning before from those disciples that were in Tyre, and then kinda book-ended after these young women are mentioned, we have the appearance of a fellow we have heard of mentioned before named Agabus. Agabus earlier appeared in Acts 11:27-28 wherein he prophesied that a famine was going to strike the area, and they took up a collection for the saints in Jerusalem to be able to weather that famine. Now, Agabus comes and he gives a very explicit prophecy regarding what Paul is going to suffer in Jerusalem. He does it in a very visual sort of manner. Like, if, if words weren't enough, he actually acts out what's going to happen to Paul. And this is in following in the, in the tradition of, of the prophets, the Jewish prophets. We think about in 1 Samuel 15 when Samuel shows that Saul's torn robe is gonna represent that the kingdom is going to be torn away from him, or rather Samuel's robe's gonna be torn away from him. Saul tore his robe, represented the tearing away of the kingdom. We think about in Jeremiah 27 where the prophet Jeremiah was said that he was going to wear a yoke. In Isaiah 20, we have the prophet Isaiah walking around naked for several years. So the, the prophets, they bring their prophecies in a visual sort of manner. In this case, Agabus takes his belt, ties it, takes Paul's belt rather, ties his own hands and feet, and he says, "The Holy Spirit says, 'In this way the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.'" Now, there's kind of eerie echoes here of what happened to Jesus. There's these parallels of anticipation of, of future suffering. Now, Jesus foretold this about himself, and when Jesus told his disciples that he was going to be crucified, we see...