What you are about to read is a true story about the Apostle Paul. It occurred one time in his life when he tried to please some people so that he would balance grace and the law to gain the acceptance and approval of man. This story is retold Eugene Peterson in the Message Translation of Acts 21:17-40.
I will not provide any personal interpretation but will let the Holy Spirit minister to you personally. Here goes:
17-19 In
Jerusalem, our friends, glad to see us, received us with open arms. The first
thing next morning, we took Paul to see James. All the church leaders were
there. After a time of greeting and small talk, Paul told the story, detail by
detail, of what God had done among the non-Jewish people through his ministry.
They listened with delight and gave God the glory.
20-21 They had
a story to tell, too: “And just look at what’s been happening here—thousands
upon thousands of God-fearing Jews have become believers in Jesus! But there’s
also a problem because they are more zealous than ever in observing the laws of
Moses. They’ve been told that you advise believing Jews who live surrounded by
unbelieving outsiders to go light on Moses, telling them that they don’t need
to circumcise their children or keep up the old traditions. This isn’t sitting
at all well with them.
22-24 “We’re
worried about what will happen when they discover you’re in town. There’s bound
to be trouble. So here is what we want you to do: There are four men from our
company who have taken a vow involving ritual purification, but have no money
to pay the expenses. Join these men in their vows and pay their expenses. Then
it will become obvious to everyone that there is nothing to the rumors going
around about you and that you are in fact scrupulous in your reverence for the
laws of Moses.
25 “In asking you to do this,
we’re not going back on our agreement regarding non-Jews who have become
believers. We continue to hold fast to what we wrote in that letter, namely, to
be careful not to get involved in activities connected with idols; to avoid
serving food offensive to Jewish Christians; to guard the morality of sex and
marriage.”
26 So Paul did it—took the
men, joined them in their vows, and paid their way. The next day he went to the
Temple to make it official and stay there until the proper sacrifices had been
offered and completed for each of them.
27-29 When the
seven days of their purification were nearly up, some Jews from around Ephesus
spotted him in the Temple. At once they turned the place upside-down. They
grabbed Paul and started yelling at the top of their lungs, “Help! You
Israelites, help! This is the man who is going all over the world telling lies
against us and our religion and this place. He’s even brought Greeks in here
and defiled this holy place.” (What had happened was that they had seen Paul
and Trophimus, the Ephesian Greek, walking together in the city and had just
assumed that he had also taken him to the Temple and shown him around.)
30 Soon the whole city was in
an uproar, people running from everywhere to the Temple to get in on the
action. They grabbed Paul, dragged him outside, and locked the Temple gates so
he couldn’t get back in and gain sanctuary.
31-32 As they
were trying to kill him, word came to the captain of the guard, “A riot! The
whole city’s boiling over!” He acted swiftly. His soldiers and centurions ran
to the scene at once. As soon as the mob saw the captain and his soldiers, they
quit beating Paul.
33-36 The
captain came up and put Paul under arrest. He first ordered him handcuffed, and
then asked who he was and what he had done. All he got from the crowd were
shouts, one yelling this, another that. It was impossible to tell one word from
another in the mob hysteria, so the captain ordered Paul taken to the military
barracks. But when they got to the Temple steps, the mob became so violent that
the soldiers had to carry Paul. As they carried him away, the crowd followed,
shouting, “Kill him! Kill him!”
37-38 When they
got to the barracks and were about to go in, Paul said to the captain, “Can I
say something to you?”
He answered, “Oh, I didn’t know you spoke Greek. I thought you
were the Egyptian who not long ago started a riot here, and then hid out in the
desert with his four thousand thugs.”
39 Paul said, “No, I’m a Jew,
born in Tarsus. And I’m a citizen still of that influential city. I have a
simple request: Let me speak to the crowd.”
40 Standing on the barracks
steps, Paul turned and held his arms up. A hush fell over the crowd as Paul
began to speak. He spoke in Hebrew.
