Paul Sets His Face Steadfastly Toward Jerusalem

“While we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.  And coming to us, he took Paul’s belt and bound his own feet and hands and said, ‘Thus says the Holy Spirit, This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles’.  When we heard this, we and the people there urged him not to go up to Jerusalem.  Then Paul answered, ‘What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.’ And since he would not be persuaded, we ceased and said, ‘Let the will of the Lord be done.’”-Acts 21:10-14 (ESV.  Read Acts 21:1-17).

In Acts 21:1-17 we have recorded Luke’s summary of Paul’s last lap of his third missionary journey.  Leaving Miletus and the Ephesian elders who had traveled there to bid him farewell and hear his last instructions, Paul (with Luke, and possibly others, for the first person pronoun “we” is used) boarded a coastal sailing vessel.  The places mentioned were a day’s journey by ship where they stopped for the night:  from Miletus to Cos, from Cos to Rhodes (island ports).  And then at the port of Patara (in Lycia) they found a larger sailing vessel and took passage for the 400-mile open sea journey to Phoenecia.  They landed at Tyre on the coast of Syria where they had a seven-day layover, for the ship unloaded its cargo there.  In Tyre they gathered disciples and had a time of fellowship. Everywhere Paul stopped on the third mission journey, he found Christians to greet and encourage. The believers warned Paul not to go to Jerusalem, but he could not be dissuaded.  The Tyrian Christians, with wives and children, accompanied the mission team to the beach to bid them fond farewells when they set sail.  The next stop was Ptolemais for a day, again with a brief reunion with believers there.  The next day they arrived at Caesarea, in the province of Palestine.  The journey to Jerusalem would be by land from this port.  Paul and his team entered the house of Philip, one of the seven original deacons who himself had become an evangelist.  It is interesting to note Luke’s comment on Philip’s family:  “He had four unmarried daughters who prophesied” (v. 9). Agabus, a prophet from Judea, came, and under the Holy Spirit’s prompting, he took Paul’s belt, binding his own hands and feet as an object lesson. This indicated that if Paul went on to Jerusalem he would be arrested (bound) and delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.  But Paul could not be dissuaded.  Like Jesus prior to His arrest and crucifixion, Paul set his face toward Jerusalem.  Those trying to dissuade Paul resigned themselves and said, “Let the will of the Lord be done” (v. 14).  Arriving in Jerusalem, a three-day journey by foot from Caesarea, they lodged in the house of Mnason of Cyprus, “an early disciple.”  Once in Jerusalem “the brothers received us gladly.”  Luke does not give details about Paul’s delivery of the love gift of money made by the Gentile churches to the believers at Jerusalem.  Was this part of their “receiving gladly,” or was the gift not mentioned because the legalists would be suspicious of any gift borne by Paul and coming from Gentiles?

With great determination, Paul went to Jerusalem, knowing in his own heart and being warned by others that danger awaited him there.  Why did he feel compelled to go?  The division between the legalistic believers and the Gentile believers had continued to grow, even after the Jerusalem Conference some twenty years previously.  Paul was part of the answer—and part of the problem.  He could not address the problem if he stayed away from Jerusalem.  He had a God-given assignment to go, regardless of what might happen to him.  And go he must, and did!