Next Stop, Jerusalem

We’re going to read from the Bible in Acts chapter 21. I encourage you to turn to it. Acts chapter 21, beginning to read at verse 1:

“After we had torn ourselves away from them, we put out to sea and sailed straight to Cos. 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. Finding the disciples there, we stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go … to Jerusalem. But when our time was up, we left and continued on our way. All the disciples and their wives and children accompanied us out of the city, and there on the beach we knelt to pray. After saying good-by 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 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 Jews of 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[’m] 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 got ready and went 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.”

Amen.

Father, we thank you that Jesus is Lord, and we pray that he might reign as Lord over our minds and over my mouth and over our hearts as we look to the Bible together. We’re entirely and desperately in need of your enabling, and we come seeking it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I must confess that when I first read this chapter—and you may have had much the same feeling when I was reading it earlier on—it seemed to be little more than notes from Luke’s diary. It reads, especially in the opening verses, very much simply like a travel itinerary. And earlier in the week, when I returned to this and opened my Bible and read it, and then read it in another translation, and then read it in a paraphrase, I still, having read it about four or five times, I had a large blank sheet of paper on my right-hand side. Having thought of everything I could think of, the paper was confronting me with the inadequacy of any kind of observations.

It’s the work of the Spirit of God to illumine the Bible to us.

Now, what do you do when you’re in that predicament? I mean, Sunday’s coming, and you’ve got your passage, and you’ve got nothing on the passage, and time is ticking. Well, you pray. You ask for God’s help. It’s the work of the Spirit of God to illumine the Bible to us. It’s not the responsibility of the teacher to try and be creative or intriguing.  And at the same time, you ask questions of the passage—the kind of questions that we’ve tried to encourage one another to learn: “What is the text actually saying?” as opposed to “What would I like it to say?” or “What can I make it say?” “Why is it saying it in a way that it’s saying it? Why is this particular passage here and not somewhere else?” And also the question “What is there that is surprising about this passage?”

Now, when I got to that question, I began to get my first little bit of help. Because there is something that is really surprising about this passage, and I wonder if you picked it up. And that is that the promptings of the Holy Spirit appear to be in direct conflict with each other. Did you notice that Paul’s sense of the prompting of the Spirit of God was so clear and so defined that he determined, “I’ve got to go to Jerusalem.” But his friends’ response to the promptings of the Spirit of God was actually the opposite: they determined that he shouldn’t go to Jerusalem. And so, when I found that, I said, “Well, okay, at least I’ve got something that is intriguing enough for me to think about,” and then I went back and tried to find the line that runs through it, and I think I did, and you’ll be able to tell whether you think I did as well as we go forward from here.

There are a couple of important sort of geographical and historical pointers that we need if we’re going to make sense of the chapter. The geographical one takes us back to 20:15, where we discover that Paul was in Miletus. Now, the place Miletus is not in itself significant. What is significant is that Luke is telling us here that according to his record, we’ve reached the end of Paul’s missionary journeys. He doesn’t go any further into any other direction from Miletus. What happens from here is the record of him going to Jerusalem, his arrest, his subsequent imprisonment, his appeal to Caesar, and then, as a result of appealing to Caesar, his final journey to Rome. And so we need to make sure that we have that clearly in our minds. And the decision on Paul’s part to make this journey can be found in 19:21: “After all this had happened, Paul decided to go to Jerusalem, passing through Macedonia and Achaia. ‘After I[’ve] been there,’ he said, ‘I must visit Rome also.’”

Now, that’s an important note in setting the context and finding the line that is running through this chapter. If you look at 20:16, you add a little piece into the puzzle: “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia,” not because he didn’t like the province of Asia or didn’t want to meet anyone there, but, we’re told by Luke, “he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem” and, “if possible,” “to reach Jerusalem … by the day of Pentecost.” And then you can add one final note to that in Acts 20:22, where Paul says, “Compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem.”

Now, keep that in mind as you look at the way in which this chapter begins—indeed, as you look at the way in which the twentieth chapter ends. If you heap up the verbs that are there, you get the picture very quickly. Here are a group of people that are involved—the group is involved—in kneeling, praying, weeping, hugging, kissing, grieving. It’s packed with action. It is full of emotion. It is a compelling scene. And if you look, you will find that all of these verbs are there. And you say to yourself, “Why are the people as distressed as this? What is going on here at the end of chapter 20?” Well, the answer is that Paul is leaving. Okay. Yes, but why can’t he stay? Why is he departing? What is the reason for his departure?

Now, all of these are sensible questions. They are obvious questions that come to mind in reading the Bible, unless, of course, you’re simply reading the Bible waiting for something to hit you in the way that something might fall off the roof and bang you on the head, or reading the Bible waiting and hoping for some kind of blessed idea that might strike you. But if you want to read the Bible as a student of the Bible, then you need to come to the Bible in the way that you come to any other narrative, any other book, and you need to ask of it the important and essential questions.  That way you get answers, and you build an understanding of things, and you’re better able to become a teacher of the Bible yourself.

Well, of course, we know the answer to these questions, don’t we? Back in chapter 19: because he made a decision. When you cross-reference that with what he says in chapter 20, his decision was directly related to the compulsion that he felt from the Spirit of God. So we have this picture, two notions set side by side. One: Paul, if you like, applying himself sensibly to the circumstances of his life, saying to himself one morning, “Okay, that’s it: next stop, Jerusalem.” When someone asks him about the decision that he’d made, he says, “Well, I can’t explain my decision to go to Jerusalem outwith the framework of the work of the Spirit of God.” And from this point, from Miletus all the way through the end of Acts, you have a man with a mission heading for Jerusalem. A man with a mission heading for Jerusalem.

Does that ring any bells for anybody? A man with a mission heading for Jerusalem. Of course, it does! You’re thinking of Jesus, aren’t you? And no surprise. Because Luke is now in his second volume. In his first volume, right around the end of chapter 9, he explained to his readers that Jesus at a certain point said, “Okay, that’s it: next stop, Jerusalem,” essentially.[1] And the balance of Luke’s first book, his Gospel, is then taken up with everything that was involved in that journey to Jerusalem and what took place there. Here we find him doing the very same thing. Here we find Paul in the footsteps of his Master. Here, perhaps, is one of the reasons that Paul was able to say, “Follow me as I follow Christ,”[2] because in a very realistic sense, he was actually doing that as he made his way towards Jerusalem. Now, clearly it wasn’t going to end in the way that it ended for Jesus. He was going on to Rome beyond Jerusalem; we understand that. But there are parallels.

Let me give you one other. I won’t bore you with it or make it tedious for you. But you remember when in Matthew’s Gospel we have the record of Peter’s great affirmation of faith. Remember, Jesus asked the question, “Who do men say that I am?”

And they say, “Well, some say John the Baptist, and some say Elijah. Some people are saying you’re a prophet.”

“Fine,” he said, “but who do you say that I am?”

And after a moment’s silence, our friend Peter puts up his hand, and he says, “I think I know the answer.”

“Go ahead.”

“You are the Christ, you are the Messiah of God, you are the Son of the living God.”

Jesus says, “Excellent, Peter, go to the top of the class.”

So he sits at the top of the class, very happy to be at the top of the class, and Jesus says, “Okay, now that we have established my identity, let me tell you how things are going from here. The Son of Man must go up to Jerusalem and fall into the hands of wicked men and suffer and die and be raised on the third day.” A hand goes up from the back of the class, “Excuse me, Jesus? No, I’m sorry. Never will that happen to you. That will never happen to you. We cannot allow that to happen to you.”

Jesus says, “Okay, Peter, you’ve had five minutes at top of the class. Now come down, sit in the banishing division over here, put the dunce’s hat on your head, because you have once again gone from glory to absolute ignominy in a relatively short period of time.”[3]

“Well,” you say, “surely we can applaud Peter for being so concerned for Jesus’ welfare.” Yes. So Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ announcement of his journey to Jerusalem was at one and the same time admirable and wrong. It was admirable, but it was wrong.

Now, when you come back into chapter 2[1] and look, for example, at verse 4, the disciples “through the Spirit … urged Paul not to go … to Jerusalem.” If you look at verse 12: “We”—Luke included this time—“and the people there pleaded with Paul not to go … to Jerusalem.” Their concern for Paul’s protection was admirable and, as we’ll see, wrong.

Now, there’re all kinds of lessons in this, not least of all that the strength of people’s concerns and affirmations and deductions must always be held in check. Because wisdom from God via his Word, which is divine, is then translated into the minds, which are fallible minds, in each of us. God’s Word is fixed, it is true, it is unassailable. Our deductions from God’s Word are fallible deductions and not necessarily right—and not necessarily right even when twenty of us have agreed on it, when the whole group has agreed on it.

Now, you see, when you ask the question “What’s surprising about this?” you begin to get underneath the surface of it.

Now, as you follow the line all the way through—and we’ll just go as far as verse 16, you’ll be relieved to know, because we’re trying to get to verse 5, as it turns out. I want to show you verse 5, as I had a revelation this week, which is Acts 21:5. I have discovered something that no preacher that I have ever heard has ever discovered, which is the key to it here, verse 5a: “When our time was up, we left and continued on our way.” That is a verse that has been discovered by congregations, undiscovered by preachers. Congregations know when the time is up, ready to leave, on their way. Preachers seldom know when the time is up, myself included. So if you finish your part, which is listening, before I finish my part, which is speaking, then I suppose you’re either going to have to wait quietly for me, or I’ll catch you up out in the parking lot. So we’re trying to get to verse 5. You’ll know: the time will be up, we’ll leave, and we’ll get on our way.

But as you continue through it, you will notice that one of the points of emphasis—and we pick this up simply by its repetition—is that Paul, despite his fixation with getting to Jerusalem, despite the clarity of his focus, despite the immensity of his gifting, he wasn’t a one-man band. And his journey to Jerusalem is punctuated by a series of hellos and goodbyes.

Now, I know you think I’m crazy about this, about my preoccupation with saying hello and saying goodbye. But I think it hits me all the time from the Bible. The importance of the way in which we say hello and the importance of the way in which we say goodbye needs to be taught to our children and needs to be underpinned in our lives, because there will be a last time for every goodbye. There will be a last time when you walk away from someone, someone you love or your boss or your friend. It is important not to walk away wrongly. And it is equally important to greet people properly. Now, you’ll find that this is founded and grounded in the absolute wonder and necessity of Christian fellowship.

Now, let me just show you. For example, the verb in verse 1: “We had torn ourselves away.” We’ll come back to that. Verse 4, “finding the disciples”; 4b, “stay[ing] with them” for “seven days”; verse 5, another emotional farewell scene. He didn’t just say, “Okay, we’re out of here,” and people shut their doors and said, “Okay, I guess that’s Paul, he’s gone.” No, the whole caboodle came down onto the beach. Why? Because of the nature of relationships. “We greeted the brothers,” verse 7, when they “landed at Ptolemais … [we] stayed with them for a day.” Didn’t have to do that, except for the fact that relationships were precious. “We stayed with Philip.”[4] Verse 9: “He had four unmarried daughters.” Verse 16: “Some of the disciples … accompanied” them. Verse 17: “The brothers received [them] warmly.” Verse 1[6]: they went into Mnason’s home, where they stayed, and he was an early disciple.

Now, in all of these expressions of hospitality, Luke is making a point. He doesn’t make it didactically; he doesn’t say, “Now, here is a point about hospitality. Here is a point about the nature of fellowship, the importance of relationships.” It just comes out. You just read it, and you say, “Hey, Paul was really into this stuff! Staying here, going there, in this person’s house, in that person’s house.” If you think about it, it’s true for all of us—if we’re serious about Christian fellowship, if we find Christian fellowship to be vital to us because of what God has done for us in Jesus.

Incidentally, Christian fellowship is something far different from, like, going to a building, attending church, getting your ticket stamped. Christian fellowship is about a relationship with the living God in Jesus. It’s about a complete change of heart and mind and direction. People don’t naturally aspire to know the living God. That is something that God does. And when he puts us in a right relationship with himself, he puts us in a right relationship with other people, and those relationships become the very heartbeat of our lives.  We need them. We depend upon them. When we’re separated from them, we miss them. When we return to them, we’re aware of how thankful we are for them. And when we go to other places…

I’ve met people this morning. Somebody just came to me and said, “Oh, we miss Parkside so much.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re in Indiana.”

“Well, you can always come back.”

“I wish we could.”

“Well, make sure that where you are, you’re involved and committed.”
“Yes, we will.”

I mean, if you took the travelogue of my life in the last little while, it would just read in the same way. I mean, I wrote this down in my notes because I was trying to apply it to myself. If someone had said, “Here’s what happened,” they’d say, “Well, Alistair and Co. landed in Belfast, and they were met by brother Norman, who drove them to the home of the brother Nigel, son of Thomas and Heather. And they committed themselves to the gathering of God’s people in the fellowship Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in the evening and throughout the day as necessary and as opportunity allowed. And when the time was up, they departed, being taken back to the airport by the brothers, and they flew into Glasgow. Upon arrival in Glasgow, they headed for the fellowship of God’s people at St. George’s Tron Parish Church. Thereupon, in the afternoon, they traveled some fourteen miles to Hamilton to the fellowship of God’s people in that town.” Why? ’Cause they’re important. That’s Christian fellowship.

Christian fellowship is about a relationship with the living God in Jesus.

And for those of you who come to Parkside and say to yourself, “Did it!” I mean, I remember when I was playing golf in Ireland with a few of my friends. One fellow went to his church; we went to another church. I met him in the high street down in somewhere like Ballybunion later on. I said, “How was your service?” He said, “Brilliant! He did it in fifteen minutes.” That was his quote: “Brilliant! He did it in fifteen minutes.” I mean, that was his quantifier. That was the nature of success: “Get it over with, get out!”

So someone says, “Well, maybe this afternoon at four o’clock you might want a hamburger, you might want to hang out, press the flesh, meet a few people, encourage somebody…” Listen, if you come to Parkside once on a Sunday and you believe that you just punched your ticket, that you did your business, that you did whatever it was, I got news for you: you have never begun to understand the nature of Christian fellowship. It’s not about rules. It’s not about regulations. It’s not about man’s expectations. It’s not about structure. It’s about none of that. It’s about the importance that we attach to being put together in the company of God’s people, recognizing that when I absent myself from that company, not only do I deprive myself, but I deprive those whom God intends for me to touch by my life, by my love, by my questions, by my prayers.  That’s the nature of Christian fellowship.

Now, in that whole list of meaningful relationships, you know, the one that stands out is Philip the evangelist with his “four unmarried daughters who prophesied.” I mean, this is a verse to get you in deep trouble right here, isn’t it? Either by saying something about it or not saying something about it or… So let me say something about it.

First of all, this is probably the context in which Luke discovered the story that we have in chapter 8, that we imagined in terms of, you know, Dustin Hoffman meeting Morgan Freeman, remember—Morgan Freeman being the large Ethiopian in the chariot and Dustin Hoffman being Philip the evangelist running along beside the chariot. For those of you who are harmed by that, just put it out of your mind, which you’ll never be able to do again in your life. For the rest of us, we’ve just had this picture in our minds. And at the end of that, around 8:40, Luke says, “And they were separated from one another. The Ethiopian got back in his chariot and went to his destination. Philip was caught up from there, went away, preaching the gospel out through Azotus until he ended up in Caesarea.”[5] So you read your Bible and say, “I wonder what happened then.”

You keep reading your Bible. You’re reading, reading, reading. All of a sudden you come to chapter 21. Boom! Philip. Hey, Philip! We know Philip! The evangelist, one of the Seven, friend of Stephen who was martyred.[6] What’s been happening with Philip? Twenty years have passed. He got married, if he wasn’t already married. He’s got “four unmarried daughters who prophes[y].” What’s that about? Don’t know. What were they saying? Fortunately, we’re not told. Where were they doing it? Don’t know. If we’d needed all that information, we would have had it. What it does for us, though, is recognizes the fact that the promise of God through the prophet Joel, given to us in Acts chapter 2, is in operation here in the home of Philip: “[And] your sons and [your] daughters will prophesy.”[7] (Now, for those who use this as a verse for establishing the role of women preachers, you should come and see me afterwards, and we’ll have that discussion in a private and hopefully profitable way.)

The Precious Nature of Christian Fellowship

Now, I’ve already made a point of application, but I’ll come back to it one more time. I just really want to say three things about this, which I hope you will agree emerge from this and I hope are equally helpful.

First of all, to reiterate: number one, the precious nature of Christian fellowship. The precious nature of Christian fellowship. In Acts chapter 2, remember, when the three thousand are converted, they’re baptized,[8] we read immediately, Luke says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer[s]”[9] and so on. It wasn’t something that was arduous for them, it wasn’t some rule that had been established that they needed to obey, but they loved God’s people and they loved the company of God’s people.

Now, it is that that gives insight into the verb here, which is the verb to tear. It’s interestingly the same verb that is used in 20:30: “Even from [among] your own number men will arise … to draw away disciples after them.” The whole idea of pulling and tearing and wrenching is used in that negative way in chapter 20 and then in this more positive light in chapter 21. And what you have here is the heartrending nature of the farewell.

Farewells are hard, aren’t they? Again, in Belfast the other day, as we were fiddling with our baggage and cars were pulling up and people were saying goodbye, all of a sudden we were caught up in a scene. At first we weren’t aware of it. It was just a car pulled up, someone was getting out, a bag was going, and then it’s almost as if it just went into slow motion. And here it was, a mom and dad and their married daughter and the tiny baby coming out of the car seat, and it was goodbye. And it just was… Aw! I stood there and I said, “Oh, look at this!”

Now, we all understand that. On a human level, we understand that. If you ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend and you loved them and you wanted to live with them for the rest of your life, you wrote them songs that were all about this, didn’t you? Well, I don’t know what kids do today. I don’t know, write to me, and I’ll send you a book if you do. (That’s the terrible line from Verwer.) But anyway… You know, in the ’60s, we at least had songs. I don’t know what the songs are today. But tell me you don’t remember these lyrics, old fogies. Here we go:

[Now] the dawn is breaking, it’s early morn,
The taxi’s waiting, he’s blowing his horn.
Already I’m so lonesome I could die.
So kiss me and [cry] for me,
[And] tell me that you’ll wait for me,
[And] hold me like you’ll never let me go.
’Cause I’m leavin’ on a jet plane.
[I] don’t know [if] I’ll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.[10]

All right? Now, I can tell by some of your eyes, I just took you to a place. I’m not sure it was a good place, but I took you to a place. Why? Because you identify with the emotion that’s involved in that. That was my song. It can’t be your song. That was my song. “Tell me that you’ll wait for me”: that was the line. After all, she was only fourteen years old. And then she was seventeen years old, with an ocean between us. “Tell me that you’ll wait for me. Repulse all those American fellows—handsome, with muscles! Drive them from you! Wait for me! Now, hold me like you’ll never let me go!” We understand that on a natural level.

It is impossible to be connected to Christ without being connected to those who love Christ.

Now, if Christian fellowship means anything, it has to take us into this dimension. Now, it may not take us into it with every person that ever identified themselves with our local church. We recognize the nature of personality. Even within family life, not all brothers and sisters, if you come from a big family, have the same sense of connection, even though they love one another and so on. But it ought to be there somewhere and with someone. And I say to you again: if it isn’t, then it may well be that you do not even understand what it means to be connected to Christ, because it is impossible to be connected to Christ without being connected to those who love Christ.  And that’s the importance not only of coming here and sitting in this big room but of going out of here and being involved in a smaller group, involved in praying for one another, involved in caring for one another, and so on. All of these things are simply the mechanisms that are the outflow of relationships because of the precious nature of Christian fellowship.

His pain in parting, not only there but also in the repeat event, as it were, down in verse 5, is more than matched by the warmth of the welcome in verse 17. And when he arrived at Jerusalem, “the brothers received us warmly.” Isn’t it nice to get a warm welcome? You know, you go in a room and it’s like, “Wow, what’s the problem in here?” you know. Whew! You could cut the air with a knife. Everybody’s waiting for everybody else. Love always takes the initiative. If there’s no welcome in the room, you be the welcomer. If there’s no initiative in the room, you take the initiative. If there’s no love in the room, shed a little love.  “Shower the people [with] love [you] love, show them the way that you feel.”[11] Right?

The Practical Nature of Christian Guidance

Now, we have to go, because there’s only three minutes left and two more points of application. The precious nature of Christian fellowship. The practical nature of Christian guidance. Now, I’m just going to tease you with this and move on. But I want you to notice, verse 2: “We found a ship.” Verse 4: “We found the disciples.” There’s no peculiar drama in that verb, is there?

“Where are we going?”

“Well, we’re going across the sea.”

“Okay! This may be a good time for finding a ship!”

“Brilliant, Paul. Why don’t we see if we can find a ship?”

Okay, they found a ship: “We found a ship!”

“Good.”

They land: “Let’s go find the disciples.”

They’re not on some kind of divine Global Positioning System where they land, they go up here, turn here, and boom, they find them. No. They check around, they ask in the thing: “Is there people meet here? Do you know any Christians here?”—whatever it is. They go and they find the people.

Have you used a Global Positioning System in your car? I don’t have one in mine, but I used my brother-in-law’s, and it was fascinating—and a lady in the car but not in the car, talking all the time! But I called her Brenda, ’cause I wanted to talk with her. But I mean, they’re fabulous, and she said: “In two hundred yards, turn left.” And then, “At the next roundabout, take the second exit.” And then the one I love best: “As soon as possible, do a U-turn.” “Oh, sorry, Brenda! Sorry, I was trying my best.” But what I discovered was that as soon as I went on the GPS, I quit thinking. You know, I stopped using my own faculties. I mean, driving down streets I even know, places I know! And I’m letting some voice tell me where to turn. I know you don’t turn there; that’s not the quickest way. But as soon as I went onto GPS mode, then my brain was out of it.

Some people think that’s the nature of Christian guidance. And what they do is they say, “Do not rely on your own insight.” Yes. What’s the verb? “Don’t rely on.” Doesn’t say, “Don’t use.” It says, “Use it, but don’t rely on it.”[12] And when we disengage our brains in trying to think things out about the wheres and whyfores of our own Christian pilgrimage, we put ourselves in real difficulty.

Of course we understand the nature of God’s mysterious interventions. Philip is a classic example, in chapter 8. And the Holy Spirit said, “Go to the road that goes down to Gaza.” How did he say that? I don’t know. And when he was on the road, the Holy Spirit said, “Join yourself to the chariot.”[13] Again, I don’t know how that happened. It happened, and God is able to work as he chooses to work. But we’ll get ourselves in real difficulty if we confuse the divine nature of God’s word to us with the fallible deduction that we make from God’s word. 

Now, that’s the only way that I can understand this apparent contradiction. The Holy Spirit is not contradicting himself. The Holy Spirit cannot contradict himself. So what do we make, then, of this dramatic prophecy in 10 where Agabus takes the belt, ties it round his hands? Notice what he says: “The Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.” That’s the prophetic word. Verse 12: “When we heard this, we … pleaded with Paul not to go … to Jerusalem.” But what was the prophetic word? It was a prediction; it was not a prohibition. And the people deduced from the prediction the necessity of a prohibition: “Don’t go, Paul. It would be wrong for you to go.” Back in verse 4, presumably the same thing is going on: “Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go … to Jerusalem.” They were sensitive to the prompting of the Spirit of God. And so the warning, if you like, was a divine warning; the deduction was human. And they made a deduction which they then tried to hang on Paul.

Incidentally and in passing, this causes us a cautionary note—not one that overturns this principle but causes a cautionary note—when we continue to affirm that the nature of guidance is that there will be a subjective sense of call with the objective ratification on the part of those who know and love us best. The objective ratification on the part of those who knew and loved Paul best did not come. It ran counter to what Paul had decided to do, what Paul felt compelled to do. And what is true in that respect, in terms of Paul’s sense of urgency and their move, may also be reversed in some cases where the mind and understanding of the group is very clear and right and the deduction on the part of the individual is wrong.

Now, that’s why I say to you that the issue of guidance… Whenever you see a book that explains guidance, it will have helpful points in it, but it will not ultimately explain guidance. Because the very nature of the way of God’s unfolding drama is untidy at best.  It’s just untidy. Read missionary biography, and you’ll know how untidy it is. Read the story of local churches, and you’ll know how untidy it is.

Take, for example, Gladys Aylward. She couldn’t get involved with a missionary agency if her life depended on it. All of the group in their wisdom told her, “You’re too small, you’re too uneducated, you’re too physically frail.” And here she was, questioning herself, wondering why it was that she was such a tiny little person, not even five foot tall, smaller than that, and with straight black hair. What could God possibly do with such a tiny little person with straight black hair, especially when she thought that those who had the lovely blond hair and the curls were so far more attractive and perhaps of better use? But you see, God knew exactly what he was doing. And when she got off the ship in mainland China and looked across the quay, she looked into a scene of tiny little women with straight black hair whom God had prepared for her to be an evangelist to. So you see, these guys who were really clear, protecting her and protecting, you know, the agency, may be commended for their desire to protect, but history bears testimony to the fact that they were wrong. Remember that the best of men are men at best.

The Powerful Example of Christian Discipleship

And finally—I’m sorry, finally—notice not only the precious nature of Christian fellowship, the practical nature of Christian guidance, but the powerful example of Christian discipleship, which is provided for us in Paul. “I’m going to Jerusalem,” he says, “and nothing can dissuade me.” “This one thing I do”—remember Philippians 3—“forgetting what is behind, I press on.”[14]

He couldn’t be dissuaded from reaching Jerusalem. It wasn’t that he was unfeeling in pursuit of his goal. In verse 13 he says to the folks, “You’re breaking my heart. You are breaking my heart. Because…” And it’s the sense of tornness that he feels, again, in writing to the Philippians: “I don’t know what to do. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which would be far better, but I actually desire to stay with you, which would be useful for your encouragement.”[15] You’ve got much the same thing in that scene in verse 13: “You’re breaking my heart. ‘Don’t go breaking my heart!’[16] Because I’m going to Jerusalem.”

Neither his sensitivity towards them nor their sympathy and desire for his protection of him was able to divert him from the fulfillment of God’s purpose in his life. In essence, the friends’ response was natural; Paul’s response was supernatural. Do you remember what he said? “I’m prepared not only to be bound, but I’m prepared to die in Jerusalem.” Calvin says, “This is the only way that we can understand the nature of Christian discipleship. The only way that a man or a woman can ultimately sell out as a disciple of Jesus is when they regard death with contempt.”[17] What a challenge there is in that!

I remember I’ve alluded to George Verwer, but I remember him years ago at a missionary conference, pointing out all of these countries where there was no gospel witness. And he said, “And people call these ‘closed countries.’” He said, “There are no closed countries, not on the way in. They may be closed on the way out, but you can definitely go in.”

I found a quote from Oswald Sanders in this respect this week, where he describes a young man who is beginning his work as a coast guard, and one of his first assignments was desperately dangerous. A huge storm has arisen; a ship was signaling its distress. And as this young, fledgling coast guard chap took his place in launching the lifeboat, he was frightened by the fierceness of the storm. And as they’re moving out the lifeboat, he cries to the captain, “We[’ll] never get back!” And above the storm, the captain replied, “We don’t have to come back, but we [do have to] go out.”[18]

And I think that’s what Paul is saying here: “We don’t have to come back.” He wasn’t coming back. That’s the scene at the end of 20: “And they wept, and the thing that moved them most was the fact that he told them, ‘You will never see my face again.’”[19] Why would they care? Because relationships are important. Why would they be exercised? Because God guides his people.

And so we’ve come to verse 5. Our time is up, so we must leave and continue on our way.

Father, I thank you that the Bible is not some meandering, contrived concoction of fabrications, but it is a living, active, sharper-than-two-edged-sword book that understands us.[20] And we pray that we might become students of the Bible, bowing before you and asking for your help; wrestling with its pages and teasing out its implications and being prepared to go where it leads us; being prepared to think about it again and conclude that our deductions were inaccurate, that your truth was unerring but the conclusion we reached was wrong; humble enough to acknowledge it, so that people and preachers alike might know that it is your Word that is fixed in the heavens, not ours.[21]

Father, we pray that you will walk out with us into the remainder of this day. Guard and guide and keep us. Bless us this afternoon as we’re able to meet with one another again. Bless those who by dint of acts of mercy and responsibilities and so on must inevitably be in other places and on their way. Thank you for the time of fellowship with one another in this morning hour.

May the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.

[1] See Luke 9:51.

[2] 1 Corinthians 11:1 (paraphrased).

[3] Matthew 16:13–23 (paraphrased).

[4] Acts 21:8 (paraphrased).

[5] Acts 8:39–40 (paraphrased).

[6] See Acts 6:1–7; 7:54–60.

[7] Acts 2:17 (NIV 1984).

[8] See Acts 2:41.

[9] Acts 2:42 (NIV 1984).

[10] John Denver, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (1966).

[11] James Taylor, “Shower the People” (1976).

[12] Proverbs 3:5 (paraphrased).

[13] Acts 8:26, 29 (paraphrased).

[14] Philippians 3:12–14 (paraphrased).

[15] Philippians 1:23–24 (paraphrased).

[16] Elton John and Bernie Taupin, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (1976).

[17] John Calvin, Commentary on the Psalms (1561), commentary on Psalm 61:10. Paraphrased.

[18] J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership (Chicago: Moody, 1967; repr., 2007), 60.

[19] Acts 20:37–38 (paraphrased).

[20] See Hebrews 4:12.

[21] See Psalm 119:89.