3 We landed at Tyre, where our ship was to unload its cargo. 4 We sought out the disciples there and stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 5 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. 6 After saying goodbye to each other, we went aboard the ship, and they returned home.
7 We continued our voyage from Tyre and
landed at Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed
with them for a day. 8 Leaving the next day, we reached Caesarea and
stayed at the house of Philip the evangelist, one of the Seven. 9
He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied.
10 After we had been there a number of days, a
prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. 11 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.’”
12 When we heard this, we and the people there
pleaded with Paul not to go up to Jerusalem. 13 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.” 14 When he
would not be dissuaded, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.”
15After this, we started on our way up to
Jerusalem. 16 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.
Acts 21:3-16
Paul is heading from the region of Asia Minor (Philippi,
Troas, Miletus) by ship to Jerusalem, and these verses tell us about things
that happened along the way. It’s a longer passage than I usually take, but I
think it’s worth it, and I’ve left the verse numbers in to make it easier to refer
back to. Please read the passage right through to start with.
Our twenty-first century church is, of course, immensely
different from the sort of thing that is being described here, but there is
still much that we can learn, and much to make us think. I think of it as
“Snapshots of the early church”. Let me pick out one or two, pretty much at
random…
Snapshot one: these verses demonstrate great love and
affection.
Jesus said that “by this everyone will know that you are my
disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35). Paul, of course, had a
special place in God’s purposes but, make no mistake, the love these early
Christians had for him was neither a
distant, formal kind of support, nor a shallow celebrity cult - Paul the super
apostle (in fact there were those in the early church who weren’t too sure
about him at all).
Everywhere he and his party go they are met, or accompanied
by, or given accommodation by, Christian brothers and sisters. Chapter 20
finishes with him in Miletus saying goodbye to Christian leaders from Ephesus –
kneeling, praying, embracing them. According to 21:1 they had to “tear
themselves away from them” (can you see it?).
When they got to Tyre (verses 4-6) they stayed with the
church there, and were pleaded with “through the Spirit” (note those words!) not
to go to Jerusalem for fear of them coming to harm. But Paul had made up his
mind, and there was a touching little farewell procession to the beach where “all
of them, including wives and children” knelt to pray with them. Again, can you picture
it?
The plain fact is that Christlike love – self-giving, sacrificial
love - is the absolute hall-mark of the church in any day and age. Which raises
the question: is it also the hall-mark of our churches? Or do we tend to see
“church” as a building or an organisation rather than a family? Even if some of
us feel we have little to contribute to our local church we can pray to love
others with a truly Christlike love. Not until we get to heaven will we have
the slightest notion of how much we may have contributed.
Snapshot two: the gift of prophecy seems to have figured
strongly in the New Testament church.
In verse 8 we read about “Philip the evangelist” (remember
him from Acts 6:5 and 8:26-40?) who “had four unmarried daughters who
prophesied”, and in verses 10-11 about a man called Agabus, whom we have also
met earlier, in Acts 11:28. How the four daughters of Philip exercised their
prophetic ministries we can only guess (though wouldn’t that have been an
interesting household to spy on!). But Agabus seems to have had an approach to
prophesy akin to that of the Old Testament prophets, including what we might
think of as “visual aids” or something like street theatre (verses 10-11).
If prophesy was indeed a big feature of the early church,
that leaves two questions: first, what exactly was it? and second, should
we today be expecting it to be part of our church life?
It’s impossible to be absolutely precise about the first
question. My own feeling is that as good a definition as we can reach would be:
“prophecy is a spontaneous, Spirit-inspired utterance which may be delivered by
any respected member of a Christian gathering and which speaks directly to an
existing situation or problem”. (Whatever it is, it is not to be identified
with a prepared message or “sermon”.)
So should we, especially if we belong to a tradition that
doesn’t recognise this gift for today, be more open to it?
Some churches think prophesy was needed in the early church
only because at that time there was no such thing as “the Bible”; now that we
have the full scriptures it has ceased to be relevant or necessary.
I doubt very much if that is correct, but I recognise that
an over-emphasis on spontaneous gifts can lead to all sorts of problems. We
know, for example, that while Paul himself highly valued the gift of “speaking
in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:18) he knew only too well the shambolic mess it
had reduced the Corinth church to: “will they [that is, any visitors or
outsiders] not say that you are out of your mind?” (1 Corinthians 14:23).
Beware anything that smacks of hysteria or loss of order!
But equally some churches over the years have got
themselves locked into a cast-iron “liturgy” or other pattern which renders
their worship rigid and formulaic: everything is cut and dried in advance;
anything remotely fresh or “spontaneous” is viewed with fear and suspicion; and
you can’t help wondering if windows need to be thrown open and a breath of
spiritual fresh air allowed to circulate.
Riotous spontaneity on the one hand (that’s Corinth) and
fixed pre-packaged patterns on the other (that may be some of us?) are both to
be avoided. But are there times to avoid being over-cautious and let that fresh
wind of the Holy Spirit blow?
I’ve run out of space, so please join me again next time as
we continue to learn from Paul’s journey to Jerusalem.
Lord of the Church, I realise that the early
church, for all its radiant love and vibrant, risk-taking faith, was far from
perfect. But thank you for the honest portrait we find in the New Testament,
and help me to do all I can to seek to build up that kind of church in my own
locality. Amen.
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