Acts, 20:1-38
Vern Peterman · Jul 10, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 27
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262329103775

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, we will first take a little run through last week's passage here. Last week we talked about Acts 18.23 through 19.41.

That is the first part of the Apostle Paul's third missionary journey. And one of the things to keep in mind, the first two are substantially evangelism. founding of churches and evangelism the third missionary journey, okay, it's different in that evangelism becomes Substantially secondary in support of the existing churches Becomes the issue that should tell us something about you know where we need to be looking at as well some churches even just get to the place where everything is evangelism and And notice that once Paul had established churches, he didn't just drop them, but he continued to feed into those churches and to see that they were provided for spiritually and fed. So he went around the third missionary journey and visited churches almost the entire time. There's some evidence he may have done some evangelism, but it seems to have been a minor element by that point in time. So it's supportive churches is the issue here.

The other thing I just want to kind of click us through here, this is the third missionary journey and he meets with the elders in Miletus. And we'll go through some of the other slides here in a bit. But just to give us some intro. We covered the period he goes from Antioch and then meets him in Miletus, and that's where he's talked to the elders from Ephesus in Miletus on his way to making a beeline back towards Jerusalem. That's the scenario we're looking at here. All right, here are the questions that we left you with last week.

And question number one is, why is it that spirit baptism and the gift of tongues, and I put in parentheses languages, were recorded here in this passage? What are the things that made this event unique in the book of Acts in the New Testament? Why don't we find the gift of tongues more prominent among the writings of Paul and the other apostles? I'm sorry, I grabbed the wrong package here. Okay, excuse me. And we better circulate this one. Here. Yep. All right. I was going to say, I'm looking at it and say, boy, that seems familiar. All right. Question number one here.

Dr. Luke's account of the travels at the end of Paul's third journey is not balanced in the sense of providing detail in proportion to the time spent there. What are we saying here? As Dr. Luke was recording these things, he would say something like, and Paul spent three months in Corinth and yet provide no detail.

In other instances, the place he was just passing through, he would provide some detail. So it's not intended to be an objective recording of things, okay? Luke has not written an objective account, evenly distributed and proportional as to time, though certainly What he has recorded is historically true. What might be the underlying reason Luke wrote the account as he did, with variations of coverage from one event over another?

Why do you think Dr. Luke would write that? Why would he write that way, where all of a sudden something that might otherwise be a minor event, taking a small period of time, gets coverage, and three months in Corinth gets none, other than saying he was there?

Ah, okay. And what was that? What was his purpose? Okay. Okay. Any other thoughts on this? Yes. When I write a letter to somebody, I don't tend to write down my daily activities on a list because not everything there is really necessary for them to know. They already know. I write down the things that are special or different or that have some specific impact. It's not mundane stuff that's fairly routine. It's not anything that's expected. It's a question also of what's the desired impact? That's the word that she touched on, and I think that's key.

If we look at it, Peter would say, people wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit to do so. And part of what's happening is he's not intending to write objective, scholarly, here's this, and proportionate to time, here's a series of events that took place. He's not intending to do that. He's intending to convey to us information that will bring the biggest spiritual impact upon our lives. And so there's selection among the various events in order that we might be impacted maximally. Maximum impact from what is written.

So there's an imbalance there, not because Dr. Luke is imbalanced, but because Dr. Luke is recording by the carrying along, or as Paul wrote it himself, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for maximum impact. And what did Paul say was the purpose? All scripture is profitable for teaching and correction, training and righteousness. All the purposes that the Lord had Dr. Luke write for, this is the best. That's what he's laying out here. It's not to satisfy the secular historian. It's to satisfy the needs of believers. Alright, let's take a look at question two there.

As Paul addresses the elders from Ephesus and Miletus, what concerns does he have for the elders themselves? What impact should those concerns have on the establishment of patterns of church leadership today? That's in Acts 20 right there, right in the middle, and he up until about verse 28 is saying what he does Then he says, I gave you the whole counsel of God. Now what is his concern for the elders themselves?

What do you see there in Acts chapter 20? Shepherd the flock. He underscores that and it's real interesting while in the modern vernacular we're inclined to talk about a pastor and be concerned about the title or the noun. Scripture only uses that of church shepherds, if you will, once.

Ephesians 4.11. For all the emphasis that we put on it culturally. But he tells them, you be shepherding. Yes. He uses the verb. Be shepherding. Good point. What else does he tell them? Be on the alert. First thing, be on your guard. Okay? Does that mean elders are just supposed to be paranoid? What's that talking about? What does he mean by that? Is it Roman soldiers he's concerned about? What's that? Yeah, it's the last thing that he said before he starts telling them, here's your part. He says, I declared to you the whole purpose of God. And then afterwards, he told them, I leave you to the word of God. What else did he say? What else do you see there? What was he concerned about? Persecution? Ah, yeah.

There will be problems both from within and without. Being an elder is a cushy job, right? No. It's hard work. As a matter of fact, he talks about Even from amongst your own selves will come those who will tear the flock in pieces. And he uses the word wolves. So this is a tough calling. What else do you see? What's the character of his expressions of concern for these elders here? Whose flock is it? Pardon? God's flock. Yes. It's an interesting point.

In both Acts 20 and in 1 Peter 5, Paul in Acts 20 and Peter, 1 Peter 5, use the verb shepherd. You've got to be shepherding. And in both places, Paul, Acts 20, Peter in 1 Peter 5, tells them it's God's flock, not yours. We will often times in our modern world talk about, oh, that's so-and-so's church, or so-and-so's church. Hey, get a clue, it's God's church. It's the church that he purchased with his own blood. The elders are overseers, stewards, but the flock is his. Never the elders. Never belongs to them. It's always God's.

So, he makes that real clear. And that is a point of concern. The third letter of John, he warns about one fellow who always wants to be first. And anybody who comes in and tries to have any involvement, he shoves them out. He says, this guy always wants to be first. And that's the opposite end of what Paul lays out here in Acts 20, isn't it? The prominence of a man is not the issue. The prominence of the Lord Jesus Christ is very much the issue. Let's take a look here.

What impact should these concerns have on the establishment of patterns of church leadership today? What does that mean for church leadership today? What conclusions should we draw about how churches should be led from what we see Paul saying? This is his last shot with these elders. It's the longest recorded message to any group of Christians in the Book of Acts. So he's laying this out. What should we be looking for in church leadership today based on what he's laid out for them here?

Yeah, there may in fact be a risk there. The elders need to be looking at that and tracking that. This isn't a place to fall asleep. Just like shepherds in those days would have to have, there'd be somebody on guard all the time. Jesus himself, you know, used the picture, I am the door. They would have like a sheepfold with stone walls. And the shepherd would sleep in the doorway of that sheepfold. There would be a guarding that would be personal, taking it very personally. Okay, what else? What else do you see? What other patterns do you see falling out of this that we need to be looking at today?

Ah, yes, he told them before he even started talking about them, I gave you the whole counsel of God. And then at the end of what he has to say, he says, and I leave you with God's word, God's word of grace. So it starts and ends with God's word. If these guys are not steeped in God's word and do not know how to know what it says, they're not elders. They're not ready.

They must know a wolf when they see one. And it won't be because they study wolves. It's because they know the sheep. They know the truth. It'll be knowing the truth, not studying the error. Doesn't mean that we'd be absolutely ignorant of error, but that's not the focal point. Yes, yeah. There's ultimately a knowing of the shepherd, yes. Thank you. There's a lot to keep your eye on, isn't there?

Biblically. And only the man that is ready to do that is ready to step into being an elder. Tough calling. And it makes no earthly sense at all. Why would you step into this? From an earthly standpoint, it's nuts. But it's because of the spiritual perspective and the heart that the Lord will put into the man that it makes any sense at all. Alright, let's look at question three.

Given the time that Paul spent with the believers in Ephesus, in which he told them that he gave them the whole counsel of God, teaching for three years, day and night, what indications do we have about how long it takes for someone to be fully equipped? What does it take? What is required to be fully equipped?

Pardon Taught the whole council Paul Paul didn't leave them and say boy. I sure wish I'd had time to You know give you some more stuff. He did give him the whole council He was able to do it three years day and night without tears is that standard operating procedure should we figure that that's the usual Should we figure hey, we you know, we're gonna meet here at Holly Hills and forget sleeping From now until you know, July of 2008 We're just gonna stay here. Is that is that what God has in mind?

What does it take to be equipped? Yeah, it takes diligence. The reality is, He told them, here were the conditions under which I gave you the whole counsel of God. And ultimately, it's whatever it takes. But the whole counsel of God is the standard. It's only then that He could say, be on your guard. Because up until that point, you're not ready. Not sure what to be on guard about.

It's whatever it takes. Yeah, Josiah? they couldn't quit their jobs for three years. Most likely it would be working, right, during the day or part of the day. So, three years of day and night, presumably every day. For us, we'd get together on a Sunday morning, study a couple hours, and if I was put in terms of me, we'd study another hour.

And then if we studied on our own, you know, sound, or doctor, it probably This is not something you just go quick and pop and you're done. A weekend retreat isn't going to cut it. You're not done. You're not ready. This is something that requires diligence, perseverance, and time. Plenty of time. And the only reason you give that much time to it is because it's a priority. It matters. You've got to put a focus upon it.

You know, I think what we see here, he told them how much time it took. The reality is, you know, different people in different circumstances could well take longer. Could well take longer. What we've laid out, for example, for these electives, if a person took all the electives that we have planned and did end to end, it would be eight years going through everything that we have laid out for the electives here. The magic number is not the three years. The magic point here is the whole counsel of God and whatever time that takes. But it does take time. It does take an intensity. It does take a focus. And I think that's to be kept in mind. There isn't any, you know, hey, here's your scripture pill. Pop that and you'll have it. No quick shortcuts here. All right. We're going to move into the next one, the one that was handed out here, and this is Acts 21, 1-40. Anybody in need of that still? You got Acts 21, 1-40? Got that?

Okay. Here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take a look through the slide set here because I think that will be helpful to us. There you go. Here's Miletus. We pointed this out. This is the place where Paul met the elders from Ephesus. He basically had them come down from Ephesus to meet him at Miletus, where it's another port city to the south. So this is where they would have come. There's another shot of the marketplace area of Miletus there.

Then did a lot of traveling by ship. This would have been you know, kind of an artist's rendering of a merchant ship. In those days, they didn't have, like we have now, we've got specialized ships, here you've got an oil tanker and you really don't want to put passengers on that. You know, it's funny, you don't have Texaco or, you know, any of the companies like that, you know, offering cruise line packages or anything of that sort. In those days, you had a ship and they would just, you know, whatever you can put on the ship, that's what you did.

So if you had passengers, they went on it. If it was full of grain. There was even a major industry bringing sand from Egypt into the various arenas for sports activities like in Rome. Because the sand got all bloodied. So ships full of sand, you can imagine that. So you would catch whatever ship was going and they'd have mixtures of passengers and all kinds of cargo of any kind.

And they tended not to be specialized in their purpose. And so this would be typical of the kind of thing you would see. If the winds were not favorable, it just took a while. There wasn't any way around it. It just was something that took a while. This was Caesarea where he ended up.

It was built during the time of Herod the Great. This was Herod the Great who wasn't all that great. And Herod the Great who wasn't all that great. This was the one who ordered the babies killed in Bethlehem. But anyway, he had this port constructed, Caesarea. It was a military town as well. It was basically the coastal military base for the Roman Empire. in Israel.

In the temple area, and our account here gets us there, in the temple area, this is the modern view, you have the City of David to the south end there, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is the one you see there that's got a silver dome at the south end, Robinson's Arch, and we took a look at this earlier in Acts, Robinson's Arch was an arch that went across over here, and the Wailing Wall, you see the people gathered together, let me Get the pointer here. You see people gathered together at the Wailing Wall?

This is the one area that's left, that wall, is the one area that's left from Solomon's temple and from the temple area that the Romans pitched everything off of. And so the Jews go there and they put prayers between the rocks. Some of the rocks there are massive, but that's all that's left. The temple itself was scraped off by the Romans. Here's the Muslim Dome of the Rock. That's probably over the place where the Jewish temple was. They call it the Dome of the Rock because there's a rock. The rock has an indentation that seems to fit the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant.

So, very interesting. How that will get resolved during the Tribulation period to build the temple there is going to be a head-scratcher. Anyway, this is the whole Temple Mount area. Okay. Here's an aerial drawing of what it would have been like in New Testament times, where Jesus, for example, came in what is commonly called, and I think it's a misnomer, but the Triumphal Entry. He would have come across here on this path, and there was a bridge. The Romans tore down the bridge, but there was a bridge there in New Testament times.

And this is the Eastern Gate, sometimes called the Golden Gate in here. And they would come in there. Here would be Solomon's portico and then here would be the inner temple area. Why we're bringing this up is because Paul's headed for this temple here. And let's take a look at the details on the next page here.

This is a model, a computer simulation of the inside of these porticos around the perimeter. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this, this is one portico which would be about 45 feet across open on the inside. The whole temple area inside this perimeter portico would be several football fields in size.

So a good-sized temple. Here's another simulation across. This would be called the Court of the Gentiles. It was permitted for the Gentiles to be in this open area. This would be one of those porticoes inside here. Here's the outside view. This would be the area where the money changers were. So you'd go there during any of the the Jewish festival activities, and they'd have the money changers out here.

Here they had a short wall as a warning to the Gentiles, you're getting close. The Jews were allowed to go in closer, but as a warning to the Gentiles, and they would have breaks in that wall, but it was there just so the Gentiles would know, watch out, you're getting close. And then signs Here's that open court that we're looking at a simulation of. Signs here, and here, and here, that would warn them, and I think in your handout you've got a picture of one of those signs.

One of them was found in the 1800s, and a second one was found in 1935. Because remember, the Romans took the whole temple and just scraped it off the top, and just dumped it off the side. In our era, we've picked up the rubble from what they shoved off the edge. And we found anyway two of those signs that they used along each of these openings here.

This would be another picture and so here's the doors of the Corinthian gate and there would be a sign built into the lintel here where they would have the warnings to the Gentiles. Basically it would be something on the order of, you know, Gentiles do not pass this point. If you do, you have yourself to blame if you die or if death follows.

So then here would be the court in here where Jews were allowed to go. It was called the Court of Women. Jewish women could go there and then they would go through this gate in here into the sacrifice area, this being the inner temple, the Naas, they would call it. At intervals throughout the day, Levites who were singing Levites would come and they'd form a choir on this kind of semi-circular set of stairs and they'd come out and sing at intervals throughout the day during the gatherings here.

And there would be upper courts here as well. This would be the place where the woman who gave, you know, who's the widow and gave the widow's mite, this is where she would give her might, if you will, and where Jesus would comment on that. This is where the publican and the Pharisee, where the Pharisee would say, you know, Lord, thank you that I'm so good. And the publican, the tax collector, would say, Lord, have mercy on me. It would be in this area here, where they would stand and do that. And then anyone wanting to be involved in the sacrifices would go in there.

Now, that's it for me. Alright, now, let's proceed through here. The story goes like this. Here's Paul, he is saying goodbye to the elders from Ephesus. And by the way, Luke's description is intense. This is not, it wasn't a, hey, see you guys later, you know, bye bye. It was a tearful goodbye.

And matter of fact, the Greek word that he uses there, to describe it. It was a word used, for example, of the most difficult of separations. The Romans used it for pulling the sword out of its sheath. It was a major extraction. Further, he used a word for the grief, for their parting from Paul, is the same word used for grieving in a Luke passage, it's the word for grieving for those who are experiencing the torments of hell. So these guys were greatly grieved that Paul was leaving. He had poured his heart and his life into them. Notice that as much as Paul taught, this is the truth, day and night, he was not passionless about it. with day and night with tears, and when the parting came, he could just barely tear the Ephesian elders off of him. It was a tough, tough departure, but on his way he went there.

Various ports are described, and it kind of hits him fast, bang, bang, bang, and he goes from one port to the next. The assumption probably from the distances and looking at what would have been the shipping patterns It's kind of one night here, one night there.

It seems to be about the sequence that's laid out there. The other thing interesting that shows up is Dr. Luke is also using, again, this we. We did this. We did that. And his use of we shows up in this passage as well. Here's something else that shows up.

I've got a few quotes, one from Colossians 4.14, 2 Timothy 4.11, and Philemon 24.

This dr. Luke guy keeps showing up and and even one of the things that points out there second timothy 411 that's Paul's last chapter to the last letter that we have from Paul and and Luke is Mentioned there only Luke is with me. This Luke is a faithful guy and And I think that's a neat thing to look at. If you're looking for examples of faithfulness, here's a guy, Paul's in prison. The prisons in those days were nasty places. He says, Luke is with me. Luke is, and he describes him above there, the beloved physician. So Luke is a man who demonstrates faithfulness. We see it in Acts.

And by the way, this is a long book to write. He wrote over a quarter of the New Testament between the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. Indications we have from Colossians chapter 4 is he was a Gentile. Maybe the only Gentile author of the whole Bible. But a very faithful man. A man who was faithful to the end. Paul could count on him under all sorts of circumstances.

And we'll see some of those circumstances get pretty tough. They head for the port of Tyre. Tyre was a place with a long history. As a matter of fact, the place they call the port of Tyre was not the original location, because they moved it. The story, to make a long story short, is this. Tyre was a city that the Phoenicians had, and it was a place that actually the Jews were supposed to have overtaken and didn't. But the Phoenicians had the city of Tyre. It was foretold in advance by the Old Testament prophets that Tyre would be assaulted and relocated and that ultimately the old city of Tyre would not be used as a city again.

So what happened is between the Old and New Testaments, here comes Alexander the Great, and all the people of Tyre go out on this island that's off the shore. And there's Alexander the Great, and he's thinking, you know, what am I going to do? I don't have any ships. So what he does is he takes the city of Tyre, has his soldiers just scrape it off the earth, and build a causeway out to the island, and take over the island that way. And so today that causeway is still there because of Alexander the Great as prophesied by the Old Testament prophets even before, you know, long before Alexander the Great came on the scene.

So here's the account and the city of Tyre that they're describing here is nearby but because the original city of Tyre was literally scraped off the face of the earth in order to build that causeway. They land there and they stay there for about one week, seven days.

It could be because of the shipping schedule. It doesn't always say, here's why we stayed here for the time we did. It could be a shipping schedule. Remember, it's not like the situation we have now where, you know, you have radio in things and you can get weather reports and you can send stuff back and forth.

Sometimes you didn't know, you know, when's a ship coming in, or it's supposed to come in but it's not in yet and we don't know why, and there's no way to communicate until it came in. So you had to just kind of stand by the port and keep asking around.

Hey, you heading to Caesarea? No, no. You heading there? No. You heading there? Yeah, I'll be in a couple hours. So it would be the sort of thing they would have to just ask around, find out. All right, here it is. Jump on it. And you grab the opportunity when you can.

Now, then they head for Caesarea. Caesarea was a place, remember we had Philip the Evangelist had settled there. It was the place where Peter had introduced the centurion and his household to the gospel. And so now they're coming into Caesarea. It was basically a Roman military port. Coming into Caesarea. And then from there, they head in to Jerusalem.

They get to Jerusalem Here's Paul and first thing he does he meets with the leaders there and tells them all the things that the Lord's been doing in the Gentile churches, and they're great. That's fantastic But they also are well aware that there is a very tense environment surrounding the Apostle Paul and the Jews are eager They're jumping at some opportunity to snag him and to stumble him, cause a problem. So the leaders tell him this.

Look, we've got four people here amongst us who have made a vow. There was a vow that was spelled out in the Old Testament called the Nazarite vow. Details of that are given on page three, first paragraph there. They had a vow and the vow was finally fulfilled by going and offering a sacrifice at the temple. Now we know from New Testament records it was common for somebody else who was usually well off financially to pay for the sacrifice, because you've got to get the animal, to pay for the sacrifice of somebody else who had taken the vow.

That was a common and popular thing. So what they devised was this. We've got four guys who have taken the vow. If you go in with them into the temple and show that you're in support of all the things in the temple and the law of Moses, then the Jews will leave you alone. Good plan, right? Doesn't work out so good. But here's why.

Paul goes in. He's in there with these four guys, but the previous day he'd been seen with a fellow who was a non-Jew. So as he goes in with these other guys, it's assumed that he's with an Anju, a Gentile. And he goes into, let's go back into it here. He goes past one of these gates, where the sign is, if you're a Gentile, don't go past here. He goes past there, and the Jews are jubilant?

No. They go bonkers. They go nuts. And this is one thing that would almost be hard for us to comprehend. What would happen in our culture, what would it take for people to get that upset, riled up that quick, that hot that fast? I don't know anything that gets us riled up that fast that much in our culture. These Jews, even the thought that Paul might have taken a Gentile past the door here, bad scene. Now, realize that they were looking for something, and that this thing may have been either a mistake or trumped up, but no matter what, the idea that Paul might have done this just set them off.

So what happens? The Jews are ready. What they do is they take them out the doors. Here's the typical thing. Here's these Corinthian gate doors. You go past here, out here past the bridge, and from there you can go out to the Mount of Olives or just off to the side, and you're out of the temple area, and that's where they would stone people. That's where Stephen was stoned earlier in the book of Acts. They'd take people out. So that's what they're headed to with Paul.

The one thing that stops that from being fulfilled is over here. See this? There's the Antonia Fortress. It was a fortress that was there previously under Pontius Pilate. 26 to 36 AD he was the Roman governor. Under Pontius Pilate he moved a contingent of Roman soldiers there.

They overlooked the temple area. There was two flights of stairs down from there into the court of the Gentiles. And the report comes to the commander, hey, these Jews are just going bonkers. This place is coming unglued. One of the things that the Romans were constantly looking for is, you know, are things getting out of control? They did not want things out of control. And if they found things were getting out of control, they came in with a heavy foot and put it out. That's what they saw here.

They said this thing is you know this thing that's turned into mayhem These Jews are way out of control so they Come running down the two flights of stairs running across this court. Let me back up here Running across this court to to this to the gate It's off to one side there, okay? They come running over to the crowd. They don't know what's going on.

These Jews are just screaming and hollering, and they're ready to haul Paul out. I'm sure, you know, it was hard to figure out what was going on. But they see Paul as the focal point, and the commander says, you know, two chains, chain them up. So you get a chain to two Roman soldiers. So Paul's, you know, got Roman soldiers on each side. And the commander's trying to figure out what's going on.

All the screaming and hollering, mayhem, yelling. It's like beating a chicken coop or something. It's lots of racket and noise. He can't figure out what's going on. And so he just says, get him into the barracks. So they haul Paul into the barracks. They get into the barracks. Here's Paul. He talks to the commander and finally established, you know, okay, we can talk to each other.

The commander is thinking, this might be a fellow who was an Egyptian. And by the way, we have extra biblical record of it. There was an Egyptian, 54 AD, who led a group of people across from the temple on the Mount of Olives. And so it was kind of an insurrection that he was trying to get started. They never did catch him. And so the commander was probably thinking, hey, this is perhaps the Egyptian fellow that got away, and now I've got him.

Paul says no, I'm not him. I'm Paul of Tarsus no small city and He lets them know I'm from Tarsus and Tarsus was a city that had a good relationship with Rome Tarsus was a city that had that was well regarded because it was a university city and So he's saying I'm not that guy and culturally I in both among the Romans and among the Jews, to call somebody an Egyptian was like, that's low life. Okay? So Paul is communicating to them, no, not only I'm not the Egyptian you're looking for, but I'm Paul of Tarsus, a city that has a good relationship with Rome, and it's a university city, a place of learning, and an upstanding city, not the scum of the earth Egyptians, okay? So he's making that clear. So the commander's saying, oh, well, you're not the guy I was looking for. Then Paul asked, can I talk to the people out there?

Which is a little surprising, considering the mayhem that started. It says that they put them on these stairs, and it doesn't say which stairs. It's possible, let me back up here and find it. It's possible that the stairs he was talking about were maybe these, but more likely, in order to keep things where the Romans had good control of it, the stairs, remember there are two flights of stairs coming down from the Fortress Antonio, on those stairs, and they would be right above the courtyard and he could get people where they could see him, they could hear him, But the Romans could keep control of things and pull them back up into the barracks quickly if they needed to.

So that's probably the more likeliest scenario. And it's from there that Paul says, and he begins to speak to them, and that's the end of our passage. So what he says is for next week. Now, one of the things we want to take a look at here, before we run out of time, we have some questions. One of the reasons, if you look on page four, we bring up some issues.

Why is it that the leaders said, hey, we want you to take these four guys in here and you'll pay for their sacrifices and that will just calm the waters with the Jews. Why is it this didn't turn out? Is it because the leaders gave bad advice? Is it because the Lord had something else in mind? So that's a question to take a look at.

Another is that, and I haven't made much point of it up to this point, there were about three different times that Paul was warned about what was going to happen in Jerusalem. He was told in advance, you're headed for trouble. And by people who were reputable, people who were recognized. Agabus was one of them, and this was the second time we see his name recorded in Acts, so he was one who was well regarded. Why is it that Paul would insist upon going, knowing full well he was headed for trouble?

One of the things that we do is we torture you, I mean we tantalize you with these questions, see? So you'll take a minute to think through them. Read through the things that are laid out there on the fourth page on your own time, and it's a way to kind of assess what's the point of tension here? What's the background? One of the things to take note of is that there were actually a number of things lining up indicating to Paul that what he was doing in heading there, even though it was trouble, was still what the Lord had in mind. So, anyway, take a look through that, examine that. We won't have time to look at that this morning. Let's do read over the questions. I've intentionally kept the questions down to two, but give you plenty of room, because there are ones that take a little bit of looking.

The first question, was Paul wrong to insist upon continuing towards Jerusalem in view of all the warnings he received from believers even through the gift of prophecy and even the urgings of Dr. Luke. One of the places where it says we, Dr. Luke writes we. One of his places where he says we is where he says where we urged Paul not to go. So even Dr. Luke was saying Paul don't do this. How about that? The author of the book. including himself among those who were urging Paul not to go there. So, take a look through there.

And then the second question, were the four prophetesses who were the virgin daughters of Philip the evangelist operating outside of Paul's teachings, 1 Corinthians 14.35 and or 1 Timothy 2.11 and 12, why or why not? There are instructions in both of those places about the boundaries, if you will, for the ministry of women within the church, and the use of the gift of prophecy as well, just for everybody. Were they, in their capacity, operating outside of that? Think about that, okay?

Alright, well, we've plumbed out of time. Brian's buzzing us, so... Let's pray. Lord, thank you that as we look at these, certainly though we have questions, yet it reveals that in the midst of what are tumultuous and even disturbing events, that we can look upon them and know that you are sovereign and know that nothing is outside of your hand and nothing is outside of your control. And we thank you that we can take comfort in that in our own lives. Thank you for your marvelous love for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.