Acts 21:1-26
Agabus, the prophet in today’s reading who prophesied about Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 21:10-11) – if that name seems familiar to you, we’ve seen him before, back in chapter 11: Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. (Acts 11:27-30) This little tidbit is about more than just relating back to Agabus. From the chapter 11 verses noted above we see a donation being sent from Christians in (Syrian) Antioch to Christians in Jerusalem, carried by Barnabas and Saul.
Now Paul, on his third missionary journey has collected funds and with eight brothers is bringing those funds with him for the relief of the Christian brothers in Jerusalem. As he began this collection, no doubt Paul remembered this donation from years before and was following up from that memory. Interesting. But then again we have Paul in his letter to the Galatians noting that a request had been made by the Jewish elders for Paul and Barnabas … to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (Galatians 2:10) So it seems that collections for the saints in Jerusalem was an ongoing thing. And this collection from two millenia ago is now carried out every month at St. Andrew’s when we send our tithe check to ADOTS for their continuing work in our Diocese and for their own support for ACNA in the whole USA and around the world. We support our ADOTS and ACNA leadership every Sunday, whenever we make our own donations to St. Andrew’s. Awesome!
See also: July 16 / Acts 21:1-16; July 17 / Acts 21:17-25
I was struck by the parallel between Acts 21:10-13 and Matthew 16:21-23 (and Mark 8:31-33). That is, here we have a prophesy through Agabus about Paul’s impending ill treatment in Jerusalem followed by pleas by his friends to avoid suffering, and in the gospels we have Jesus’ prophesy of his own crucifixion with Peter’s rebuke, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord!” In both cases, we have clear indications directly from God as to what His will is, and a reaction against that will from His followers.
How often do we let our own emotions cloud our interpretation of what is right? How often do we think that comfort, pleasantness, happiness, wealth, success, etc. “must” be God’s will and that discomfort, unpleasantness, suffering, poverty, failure, etc. must therefore not be God’s will? How often do we actually pray directly against God’s will?
Just asking. Food for thought…
Very interesting, John. Like a lot of people, I suspect, I tend to recognize and acknowledge God’s will easily when it corresponds to my own earthly idea of what is best – based on rational thought, experience and sensory perceptions. It is a great struggle when the possibility of God’s will conflicts with my own earthly ideas of what is best. This seems to be a matter of allocation of trust/faith. By that I mean that I often tend to trust my own earthly analysis more than I trust a possible spiritually revealed truth when they conflict.
In Matthew 16:13-18, Peter is the first to confess that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus says that Peter is blessed because he does not know this through his own earthly analysis, but by revelation to him by the Father. Perhaps easy for Peter to see the revealed truth there when there is no conflict. But when Jesus prophesies His own crucifixion and death, there is a conflict within Peter where he chooses his own earthly idea of what is best over the revealed truth of the prophesy (and is rebuked by Jesus).
So, I think it is easy to recognize and acknowledge a revealed truth about God’s will when it corresponds to our own ideas of the best earthly outcome. When these are in conflict, it is not so easy (not even for Peter).
Love these comments, Fred, John, Lou. So hard to believe that God’s plans include difficult directions.