Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

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 on 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.
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.’”
When we heard this, we and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, “Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” When he would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”
After this, we started on our way up to Jerusalem. Some of the disciples from Caesarea accompanied us and brought us to the home of Mnason, where we were to stay. He was a man from Cyprus and one of the early disciples.
When we arrived at Jerusalem, the brothers and sisters received us warmly. The next day Paul and the rest of us went to see James, and all the elders were present. Paul greeted them and reported in detail what God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.
When they heard this, they praised God. Then they said to Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands of Jews have believed, and all of them are zealous for the law. They have been informed that you teach all the Jews who live among the Gentiles to turn away from Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or live according to our customs. What shall we do? They will certainly hear that you have come, so do what we tell you. There are four men with us who have made a vow. Take these men, join in their purification rites and pay their expenses, so that they can have their heads shaved. Then everyone will know there is no truth in these reports about you, but that you yourself are living in obedience to the law. As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”
The next day Paul took the men and purified himself along with them. Then he went to the temple to give notice of the date when the days of purification would end and the offering would be made for each of them.
When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.” (They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple.)
The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut. While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd shouted one thing and some another, and since the commander could not get at the truth because of the uproar, he ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks.  When Paul reached the steps, the violence of the mob was so great he had to be carried by the soldiers. The crowd that followed kept shouting, “Get rid of him!”
As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. “Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”
Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic:

• Acts 21:1-40

“Brothers and fathers, listen now to my defense.”
When they heard him speak to them in Aramaic, they became very quiet.
Then Paul said: “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was thoroughly trained in the law of our ancestors. I was just as zealous for God as any of you are today. I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison, as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.
“About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me. I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, ‘Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?’
“‘Who are you, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,’ he replied. My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.
“‘What shall I do, Lord?’ I asked.
“ ‘Get up,’ the Lord said, ‘and go into Damascus. There you will be told all that you have been assigned to do.’ My companions led me by the hand into Damascus, because the brilliance of the light had blinded me.
“A man named Ananias came to see me. He was a devout observer of the law and highly respected by all the Jews living there. He stood beside me and said, ‘Brother Saul, receive your sight!’ And at that very moment I was able to see him.
“Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’
“When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’
“‘Lord,’ I replied, ‘these people know that I went from one synagogue to another to imprison and beat those who believe in you. And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.’
“Then the Lord said to me, ‘Go; I will send you far away to the Gentiles.’ ”
The crowd listened to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices and shouted, “Rid the earth of him! He’s not fit to live!”
As they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, the commander ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. He directed that he be flogged and interrogated in order to find out why the people were shouting at him like this. As they stretched him out to flog him, Paul said to the centurion standing there, “Is it legal for you to flog a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been found guilty?”
When the centurion heard this, he went to the commander and reported it. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “This man is a Roman citizen.”
The commander went to Paul and asked, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
Then the commander said, “I had to pay a lot of money for my citizenship.”
“But I was born a citizen,” Paul replied.
Those who were about to interrogate him withdrew immediately. The commander himself was alarmed when he realized that he had put Paul, a Roman citizen, in chains.
The commander wanted to find out exactly why Paul was being accused by the Jews. So the next day he released him and ordered the chief priests and all the members of the Sanhedrin to assemble. Then he brought Paul and had him stand before them.

• Acts 22:1-30

Noted Biblical Scholars, Teachers, and Preachers Comments

Acts 21-22 ‘Overview’: “It seems that everywhere Paul goes, there is a riot. That is because he is being loyal to the true, if extraordinary and dangerous, purposes of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the creator God who will one day call the whole world to account. Riots in Antioch, stoning in Lystra, beatings in Philippi, more riots in Thessalonica, run out of town in Berea, court cases and anti-Jewish violence in Corinth, and then that escapade with thousands of chanting pagans in Ephesus. The leaders in Jerusalem, therefore, had a good idea what to expect when Paul visited them.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 21:2 ‘finding a ship … Phoenicia’: “Realizing he would never reach Jerusalem in time for Pentecost if he continued to hug the coast, Paul decided to risk sailing directly across the Mediterranean Sea to Tyre (v. 3). The ship they embarked on would have been considerably larger than the small coastal vessels on which they had been sailing. The ship that later took Paul on his ill-fated voyage to Rome held 276 people (27:37); this one was probably of comparable size.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:4 ‘Purpose over Safety’: “Luke is quite happy to report that the urgings of the disciples for Paul to stay were in the Spirit, without telling us how he reconciles that with the fact that Paul is clear that it is his vocation to go. Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives people enough information to know what is likely to await them but leaves them with the responsibility of deciding whether or not to go anyway.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 21:9 ‘virgin daughters’: “That they were virgins may indicate that they had been called by God for special ministry (cf. 1 Cor. 7:34). The early church regarded these women as important sources of information in the early years of the church. … prophesied. Luke does not reveal the nature of their prophecy. They may have had an ongoing prophetic ministry, or prophesied only once. Since women are not to be preachers or teachers in the church (1 Cor. 14:34-36; 1 Tim. 2:11, 12), they probably ministered to individuals. For an explanation of NT prophets, see … 11:27; 1 Corinthians 12:28; Ephesians 4:11.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics

Acts 21:13 ‘for the name’: “Baptism (see … 2:38; cf. 8:16; 10:48; 19:5), healing (3:6, 16; 4:10), signs and wonders (4:30), and preaching (4:18; 5:40; 8:12), were all done in the name of the Lord Iesus. His name represents all that He is.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:16 ‘Mnason’: “His Greek name may mean he was a Hellenistic Jew. If so, Paul and his Gentile companions may have chosen to stay with him because of his acquaintance with Greek culture. That would have made him more comfortable in housing a party of Gentiles than the Jews would have been. early disciple. Possibly one of those saved on the day of Pentecost. If so, Mnason could have been another source of historical information for Luke.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:18 ‘James’: “The brother of Jesus and head of the Jerusalem church (see … 12:17), not James, the brother of John, who had been executed by Herod (12:2). all the elders. The mention of elders indicates that the apostles, often away on evangelistic work, had turned over rule of the Jerusalem church to them. Some have speculated that there were seventy elders, paralleling the Sanhedrin. Given the large size of the Jerusalem church, there probably were at least that many. God had decreed that after the apostles were gone, the church was to be ruled by elders (cf. 11:30; 14:23; 20:17; 1 Tim. 5:17; Titus 1:5; James 5:14; 1 Pet. 5:1, 5).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:20 ‘zealous for the law’: “Some Jewish believers continued to observe the ceremonial aspects of the Mosaic Law. Unlike the Judaizers (see note on 15:1), they did not view the law as a means of salvation.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:21 ‘courts filled with false accusations’: “The church leaders in Jerusalem described the thousands of new Jewish Christians as ‘zealous for the law.’ Apparently they were righteously indignant for God’s honor, for the eternal and unbreakable law of Moses, for the sanctity of the temple and the land. People also had been spreading rumors that not only had Paul been telling Gentile converts that they don’t need to be circumcised but he had been telling Jews to abandon their ancestral traditions and customs as well (21:21).  That latter is something Paul has neither said nor done. And these are the Christians in Jerusalem! But as far as they are concerned, it’s all or nothing. Either you say that circumcision matters, in which case every Christian has to be circumcised; or you say it doesn’t matter, in which case no Christian—including Jewish Christians—-should be circumcised.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 21:24 ‘be purified’: “Having just returned from an extended stay in Gentile lands, Paul was considered ceremonially unclean. He, therefore, needed to undergo ritual purification before participating (as their sponsor) in the ceremony marking the end of the four men’s vows. pay their expenses. For the temple ceremony in which the four would shave their heads, and the sacrifices associated with the Nazirite vow. Paying those expenses for another was considered an act of piety and, by so doing, Paul would give further proof that he had not forsaken his Jewish heritage. shave their heads. A practice commonly associated with a Nazirite vow (Num. 6:18).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:27-36 ‘A tribune’s miraculous reaction’: “Tribunes in the Roman army were often young men on their way up the ladder politically and perhaps socially.  But nothing in the Roman system could have prepared this tribune for the intricacies of first-century Jewish political and religious life. The tribune would have been in charge of the guard in the fortress Antonia, which the Romans had built overlooking the temple compound precisely so they could keep an eye on this kind of disturbance. It is a miracle that Paul survived. If a crowd is intent on killing someone, they can often succeed before the time it would take for an officer upstairs in the fort to notice, to call reinforcements and to hurry down to intervene. By that time they had dragged Paul out of the temple gate and ‘the gates were shut.’ That was the last time Paul would see the inside of the beautiful temple. In only another fifteen years or so, it would be destroyed, never to be rebuilt.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 21:28 ‘the people, the law, and this place’: “Paul’s enemies leveled three false charges against him. They claimed that he taught Jews to forsake their heritage—the same lie told by the Judaizers (see … v. 21). The second charge, that Paul opposed the law, was a very dangerous one, albeit false, in this setting. Originally, Pentecost was a celebration of the firstfruits of the harvest. But by this time, it had become a celebration of Moses’ receiving the law on Mt. Sinai. Thus, the Jewish people were especially zealous for the law during this feast. The third charge, of blaspheming or defiling the temple, had helped bring about the deaths of Jesus (Mark 14:57, 58) and Stephen (6:13). All three charges were, of course, totally false. brought Greeks into the temple. The Asian Jews accused Paul of having brought Trophimus past the Court of the Gentiles into the part of the temple where Gentiles were forbidden. Such a charge was absurd, for it would have entailed Paul’s risking his friend’s life (the Romans had granted the Jews permission to execute any Gentile who so defiled the temple).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:31 ‘commander’: “The tribune (Claudias Lysias, 23:26) commanding the Roman cohort based in Jerusalem. He was the highest-ranking Roman official in Jerusalem (the governor’s official residence was in Caesarea, see … 8:40). the garrison. The 1,000 man Roman occupation force. Their headquarters was Port Antonia, located on a precipice overlooking the temple complex. From that vantage point, Roman sentries spotted the riot and informed their commander.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 21:38 ‘the Egyptian … stirred up a rebellion’: “Lysias’ question revealed who he (wrongly) assumed Paul was. The Egyptian was a false prophet who, several years earlier, had promised to drive out the Romans. Before he could do so, however, his forces were attacked and routed by Roman troops led by the governor, Felix. Though several hundred of his followers were killed or captured, he managed to escape. Lysias assumed he had returned and been captured by the crowd. assassins. Called “sicarii,” they were a terrorist group whose Jewish nationalism led them to murder Romans and Jews perceived as sympathetic to Rome. Since they often used the cover of a crowd to stab their victims, Lysias assumed the mob had caught one of their leaders in the act.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 22:3 ‘I am indeed a Jew’: “A response to the false charges raised by the Asian Jews (see … 21:21). born in Tarsus. See note on 21:39. Cilicia. See note on 6:9. Tarsus was the chief city of Cilicia. brought up in this city. Paul was born among the Hellenistic Jews of the Diaspora, but had been brought up in Jerusalem. Gamaliel. See … 5:34. That Paul had studied under the most celebrated rabbi of that day was further evidence that the charges against him were absurd. fathers’ law. As a student of Gamaliel, Paul received extensive training both in the OT law, and in the rabbinic traditions. Also, though he did not mention it to the crowd, he also had been a Pharisee. In light of all that, the charge that Paul opposed the law (see … 21:21) was ridiculous.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 22:6-11 ‘from persecutor to preacher’: “People then and now have tried to find any explanation for Paul’s experience other than the one which means that it actually happened, that Jesus really is alive and addresses people and transforms them from persecutors into preachers. Paul is not finished with his story, but he has staked out the ground. He has spoken the Name. Now Jesus has led him to face a mob of people just like the person he himself had been.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 22:16 ‘wash away your sins’: “Grammatically this phrase, ‘calling on the name of the Lord,’ precedes ‘arise and be baptized.’ Salvation comes from calling on the name of the Lord (Rom. 10:9, 10, 13), not from being baptized (see … 2:38).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 22:17 ‘when I returned to Jerusalem’: “After a brief ministry in Damascus (9:20-25) and three years in Nabatean Arabia (Gal. 1:17, 18). a trance. Paul was carried beyond his senses into the supernatural realm to receive revelation from Jesus Christ. The experience was unique to the apostles, since only Peter (10:10; 11:5) and John (Rev. 1:10) had similar revelations. This was the fourth of six visions received by Paul in Acts (cf. 9:3-6; 16:9, 10; 18:9, 10; 23:11; 27:23, 24).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 22:21-22 ‘zeal without enlightenment’: “As Paul wrote in Romans 9-11, written only weeks before this uproar, his fellow Jews have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened (Romans 10:1-3). They are ignorant of God‘s righteousness that is of what God is doing in the world and in their own history, and supremely in Jesus as the revelation in action of his own faithfulness to the covenant. If only they would stop and reflect, for just a moment, that God had promised that through the Messiah the Gentiles would share in their promises, their patriarchs, their covenants. Only a hope like that can explain the apparent folly of Paul’s attempt to communicate to them the new world Jesus had inaugurated.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 22:23-30 ‘Paul – the perfect man for the job’: “Here is a pattern we have seen regularly in Acts. When cooler heads, cooler Roman heads in particular, have a chance to prevail, Paul is vindicated of the charges leveled against him. Paul was well qualified for the work God had for him: a Jew of the strictest pedigree and highest biblical training; a Greek speaker and thinker thoroughly at home with the world of ancient philosophy and rhetoric; and a Roman citizen who knew his rights under the law and was determined to use them as necessary.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 22:23 ‘tore off their clothes’: “They did this, in preparation to stone Paul, in horror at his ‘blasphemy’ (see … 14:14) or in uncontrollable rage—or, most likely, for all three reasons. Their passions inflamed by racial pride, the members of the crowd lost any semblance of self-control. threw dust. A sign of intense emotion (cf. 2 Sam. 16:13; Job 2:12; Rev. 18:19).”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

Acts 22:25-27 ‘Paul’s Roman Citizenship’: “Did Paul have to prove his Roman citizenship? There were severe punishments for anyone claiming untruthfully to be a citizen. Some sources say you could even be put to death for it. But in fact, there was a way of proving it. It may seem unlikely that Paul still had the proof about his person after all he’d just been through, but there was an official badge, a little double-faced tablet, made of bronze most likely, known as a ‘diploma.’ It functioned both as a birth certificate and as a citizenship token. This may be another example of Luke assuming his readers would know what was going on without him being explicit. If I say, ‘I went through customs,’ I may not mention that l showed my passport even though people listening would certainly have known that I did so.
“Speculation abounds about how Paul might have been a citizen since birth. Antony, the famous Roman general and politician, had granted some Jews citizenship after they had helped him in his campaigns in the middle of the first century B.C. Further back, there is evidence for a Jewish presence in Tarsus in the 170s B.C. and for some Jews there becoming Roman citizens at least a hundred years before Paul’s day. So it is perfectly possible that Paul’s citizenship was inherited, not just by him, but by his father and even grandfather before him.”

• N. T. Wright, Acts (from the For Everyone Bible Study Series)

Acts 22:25 ‘bound him’: “This was done in preparation for his examination by scourging. Stretching Paul taut would magnify the effects of the flagellum on his body. centurion. See … 10:1; Matthew 8:5. There would have been ten centurions in the 1,000 man Roman garrison in Jerusalem. who is a Roman. Roman citizens were exempted (by the Valerian and Porcian laws) from such brutal methods of interrogation. Paul now exerted his rights as a Roman citizen. His claim would not have been questioned, because the penalty for falsely claiming Roman citizenship was death.”

• John MacArthur, John MacArthur Commentary (quoted Scripture without bold/italics)

My Thoughts

When Paul arrived in Tyre, the church welcomed him.  They begged him not to go to Jerusalem.  They were speaking through the Spirit.  Paul insisted that it was God’s will that he go.  This may seem a contradiction, but the people were seeing, through the Spirit, what would happen to Paul, yet Paul knew that this was his means to take the gospel to Rome.  The Spirit can inform us of things to come, and then we can have a purely human response (safety to life and limb for those that you love).

From there, Paul reaches Judea, staying with Philip the evangelist.  A prophet, Agabus arrived, took Paul’s belt and bound his hands and feet.  This time, the pronoun is we.  Luke is among those who were trying to discourage Paul from going to Jerusalem, but Paul was undeterred.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, welcomed Paul and the gathering applauded the work Paul had done among the Gentiles, but they reported to Paul the lies that were being told about him.  Paul had never dissuaded the Jews from circumcision.  The plan was to have Paul pay for the purification ceremony (mostly cutting the hair) of four men.  The five of them went through the seven-day process and then when Paul went to pray at the temple, Jews from Asia accused him of the same lies Paul had been warned about.  A riot erupted and Paul was being beaten.  It seemed they were getting ready to stone him as people were tearing their clothes off.

The Scriptures only say that the accusers, spreading lies and gossip, were from Asia, but could they be the Judaizers that wanted the people of Syrian Antioch to be circumcised?  Could they be members of the riotous mobs from Pisidian Antioch or Ephesus?  The only thing we know for sure is that Jews throughout Asia were jealous that Paul was taking the message to the Gentiles and people from Asia created a mob to rid themselves of Paul in Jerusalem.

The only new accusation was that Paul had led Trophimus into the temple.  As Rev. MacArthur states, this is also an absurd accusation in that Paul would be putting Trophimus in danger of being killed.

And Rev. Wright points out that the speed in which the tribune (commander) took action is miraculous.  The tribune thinks this is an Egyptian terrorist, so he puts Paul in chains.  The Roman soldiers protect Paul, now a prisoner.  They get Paul to the edge of the mob, and Paul tells the tribune that he wishes to speak to the crowd.

Paul then gives his testimony of what happened along the road to Damascus.  He spoke about returning to Jerusalem and God telling him to take the message to the Gentiles.  This got the crowd even more angry.

The Jews had been told by God to be the Light that would shine to all nations, but they worshipped false gods instead.  They wanted to not just be God’s Chosen People but to keep God for themselves alone.  Too many of our churches fail to have any evangelism within their church, spreading out into the community.  And many evangelism efforts are inconsistent or ineffective.  Are we too proud to share God with others?  Do we think others to be inferior to ourselves?

With the crowd angry, and the tribune confused as to why, he decides to beat the truth out of Paul.  It is then that Paul states that he is a Roman citizen.  Everyone backs away.  They had placed chains on a Roman citizen, and Paul was a Roman citizen by birth.  I like Rev. Wright’s historical take on possible ways Paul could have been given Roman citizenship from birth.

As the chapter ends, Paul is being taken before the Sanhedrin to decide what to do.

Some Serendipitous Reflections

Acts 21:1-16 On to Jerusalem 1. In your eyes, did Paul make the right decision to go to Jerusalem, even though godly people through the Spirit urged him not to go? Why or why not?
“2. When have you made decisions against the wishes of people you admired and trusted? What happened? In retrospect, were your decisions wise ones? Explain.
Acts 21:17-26 Paul’s Arrival at Jerusalem 1. How do you decide when you should bend for the sake of others, and when you should stand for your principles?”
Acts 21:27-36 Paul Arrested 1. In your opinion, what group is the most critical of the church today? What could be done to lessen this animosity? What can you do to help?
Acts 21:37-22:29 Paul Speaks to the Crowd and Paul the Roman Citizen 1. Paul told his own story instead of preaching a sermon to this crowd. When do you find your story most effective and helpful to others? Option: if you have not already done so, share your story with the small group – in three minutes or less.
“2. How has your faith in Jesus redirected your life in a surprising way? How do you struggle with that redirection? In what ways have you embraced some of these changes for yourself?
“3. What is one of the hardest things you have had to experience because of your faith?
“4. How is your citizenship an asset for spreading the gospel? How can you use this asset better?”

• Lyman Coleman, et al, The NIV Serendipity Bible for Study Groups

There are four sets of questions as shown above for Acts 21-22.

Substitute whatever group for any reference to a small group or ask who could come to your aid.

If you like these Thursday morning Bible studies, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Thursday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.