Acts 21:27-36

27 As the seven days were about to end, the Jews from Asia saw him in the temple complex, stirred up the whole crowd, and seized him, 28 shouting, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this place. What’s more, he also brought Greeks into the temple and has profaned this holy place.” 29 For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with him, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple complex.[c]

30 The whole city was stirred up, and the people rushed together. They seized Paul, dragged him out of the temple complex, and at once the gates were shut. 31 As they were trying to kill him, word went up to the commander of the regiment that all Jerusalem was in chaos. 32 Taking along soldiers and centurions, he immediately ran down to them. Seeing the commander and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. 33 Then the commander came up, took him into custody, and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He asked who he was and what he had done. 34 Some in the mob were shouting one thing and some another. Since he was not able to get reliable information because of the uproar, he ordered him to be taken into the barracks. 35 When Paul got to the steps, he had to be carried by the soldiers because of the mob’s violence, 36 for the mass of people followed, yelling, “Take him away!”



Dig Deeper
One of my favorite memories as a child was riding in the car on long trips with my parents and listening to oldies music from the 1950’s and 1960’s and even a few from the 1970’s. There were many songs that I liked and looked forward to hearing but there was one song that always stood out to me that was sung by Jim Croce in 1976. The song was “You don’t mess around with Jim” and It had a line that said something like “you don’t tug on superman’s cape, you don’t spit in the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Jim.” The point was that there were just certain things that you didn’t do because the consequences of doing so were so guaranteed and immediate. In that song, the assumption that messing around and angering Jim was so dangerous that no one did it. That is, until a very unlikely and un-intimidating fellow named Slim showed up and beat Jim up. In the last chorus of the song, the singer changes from warning people not to mess around Jim to a warning to not mess around with Slim.

In the ancient world of the first century the Romans were the big dog on the block. They ruled a large portion of the world and did so unquestionably for the most part. Their power was so complete in the vast Roman Empire that the time came to be known for the Roman peace (Pax Romana) that existed throughout the Roman dominion. The Romans ruled over, conquered, and quelled areas with a great deal of power and force but they also gave a certain amount of leeway to the peoples that they ruled over. For the most part, if you kept your head down and didn’t mess with Rome they didn’t mess with you. Part of that keeping your head down was to pay taxes, not riot against Rome or otherwise cause trouble, and to not violate the right of Roman citizens. Romans citizens were treated differently, and quite frankly, had more rights than did non-Roman citizens.

When it came to the Jews, the Romans allowed them a great deal of freedom as long as certain lines were not crossed. The Romans allowed the Jews and other peoples to continue to worship their God or gods in their own way as long as they didn’t cause trouble. But even the Romans knew that the Jews could be so serious and adamant about certain things that you just didn’t poke that sleeping dog if you didn’t have to. When it came to the people of Judea that had to do with the Temple. Even Rome knew that for the sake of peace and not to create a bigger headache than they wanted that you just didn’t mess with the Temple. They allowed the Jews so much latitude when it came to their views of purity in the Temple that they allowed them to post signs like the one discovered from Herod’s Temple which read in both Latin and Greek: “No foreigner may enter within the barricade which surround the Temple and enclosure. Anyone who is caught doing so will have himself to blame for his ensuing death.” The Romans conceded so much to the Jews on this point that they even allowed them the theoretical freedom of putting Roman citizens to death if they violated the standard that no Gentile could go any further in the Temple complex than the court of the Gentiles. If they crossed the barrier into the court of the women and went into the court of Israel, then they brought their fate onto themselves.

Paul knew all of this well and there was probably no one alive who was more zealous for the Law and the Temple than he had once been. But that was before he had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus Christ, a confrontation that convinced him that he had been all wrong about the Messiah. Jesus really was the promised one from God and the new creation had begun in Christ through that resurrection. The gospel was the stunning message that Jesus was truly the rightful king of the world and that humans could be restored to the family of God by entering into Christ in faith and brining themselves under that rule.

Paul also knew that this had huge implications for the role of the Law. The Law was good and righteous when kept in its proper bounds. It was always meant to show God’s people how to live in response to God’s holiness and grace. Coming to the realization about the truth of Christ enabled Paul to see that he and other zealous Jews had exalted following the Law to the position of determining who was worthy of being in God’s family, something that no one could ever earn. The rightful status of being in God’s family came only through status in Christ not following the Law. But that didn’t mean the Law was bad or even wrong to keep if one so chose. It just could not be required or exalted to being the gate into God’s family, something that only Jesus could accomplish (Jn. 10:7)

Paul clearly understood, though, the controversy that he stirred up within the Jewish community in every town and region to which he traveled. He knew that his people had been willing to die for centuries in order to defend the Law and their way of life. He knew that the zealous among his people, as he had once been, would stop at nothing to defend what they saw as blasphemous attacks on the Law of Moses. As a result, he was extremely careful to define clearly what he meant by saying that Gentiles did not need to follow the Law to share in the inheritance of God’s people and even more careful to note that Jews did not have to follow the Law either, but that the Law was good, it was godly, and there was nothing wrong with those who chose to follow it. In fact he went to great lengths to explain that Christians who felt that the Law was not necessary and those who felt that in their faith that they needed or desired to continue to follow should find a way to be unified around their status in Christ and nothing more or nothing less. Yet and still, the Jews did not care to listen to Paul’s careful points. All they heard was that he was claiming to be connected with Israel’s God and that because of his new Messiah the Law was no longer needed. That’s all many of them had to hear and they quickly showed that perhaps their loyalty lay more with the Law itself and their way of life than with what God might actually be doing to create the family that he had always promised in the Law.

The point is that Paul went to the Temple to demonstrate to Jewish Christians that he loved and supported them and was not against them. He was vehemently against anyone trying to bind the Law onto Gentile believers but he was just as adamant that no one should look down on their brothers if they, in good conscience, felt that they wanted to or should continue to adhere to the Law. So when Paul went into the Temple to take part in the ritual of purification with four Jewish Christians it is highly unlikely that Paul would risk offending Jews or Jewish Christians by having a Gentile accompany him.

But as is so often true in our world, why bother with facts when assumptions about someone you don’t like or agree with will do. It seems probable that a group of Ephesian Jews from Asia had arrived in Jerusalem for the celebration of Pentecost. They had seen Paul with Trophimus, a young Christian from Ephesus, earlier in the week. When they saw Paul in the Temple they immediately jumped to the conclusion that Trophimus would have accompanied Paul into an area of the Temple where Gentiles should not go (they may have mistakenly believed this or just saw this as an opportunity to accuse Paul and finish Paul off in Jerusalem, something that they could not accomplish in Ephesus).

These Ephesian Jews quickly stirred up a massive force of angry Jews against Paul. It was one thing that this man was going around speaking against the Law (the details of his argument against the Law didn’t really matter and they didn’t really care to hear the finer points of his preaching; he was against the Law and that’s all they needed to know), but now he was apparently blatantly violating the Temple. That was enough. The crowds were enraged and more than willing to kill this defector and betrayer of their faith right then and there. The man who had once vowed to wipe out the Christian movement with violence if need be, would now die as a Christian at the hands of that very same type of violence if they had their say.

As the crowds became more intense and violent, the Roman guard stationed nearby the Temple came in to stop things before a major riot broke out. The Romans had a problem with the riot, not with the enforcing of the rule against violating the Temple inner courts. And so, just as had been prophesied (although not quite in the manner that anyone would have guessed beforehand), Paul was taken into the custody of the Romans in chains because of the actions of the Jews.

And that is what is so amazing. Paul knew as he arrived in Jerusalem that he would face persecution. He knew that he would leave Jerusalem in chains and probably take a good beating somewhere in the process. He knew when he walked into the Temple that day that he was doing more than showing love and tolerance towards his Jewish Christian brothers; he knew that he was quite possibly putting his life at risk. That was Paul’s view of the Christian life in a nutshell. Everything that he did, every action that he took, was with the life of Christ in mind. He knew that the life he lived had no other purpose than to be a conduit for Christ to live through him (Gal. 2:20). Every action that he took was about the life of Christ. This is why Paul constantly declared that when he was in chains, he was a prisoner of Christ (Eph. 3:1; 4:1; Philemon 1:1; 9; 23) not of Nero or the Roman Empire. God was in charge of Paul’s life and he would go wherever the Holy Spirit sent him. Whether that meant a beating in the Temple or Roman chains, Paul was prepared to do nothing but the will of God. Could the same be said of you?


Devotional Thought
Do you have the same “life of Christ and nothing else” attitude that Paul had? If not, what keeps you from that. Is it possible that if you don’t have that mindset that you have put something in your life ahead of Christ?