Tuesday, May 12th

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Tuesday, May 12

Acts 21: 27-36

When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, seeing him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd and laid hands on him, crying out, "Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching everyone everywhere against the people and the law and this place. Moreover, he even brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place." For they had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian with him in the city, and they supposed that Paul had brought him into the temple. Then all the city was stirred up, and the people ran together. They seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple, and at once the gates were shut. And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. Then the tribune came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. He inquired who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. And when he came to the steps, he was actually carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd, for the mob of the people followed, crying out, "Away with him!"

Years ago a concerned member of FBCG approached me on a Sunday morning. She said that when she parked her car in the church parking lot that morning she noticed that the area where she parked was littered with cigarette butts. I explained that we had hosted an outreach event for high school students the night before and that some of them had evidently hung around the parking lot long after the event was over.

She said something like, “Young people today are just so disrespectful; I’d like to give them a piece of my mind!”

I said something like, “Well, actually, those are the kids that we are trying to reach. I want them to keep coming!”

She seemed slightly offended and said, “But they’re filling our parking lot with cigarette butts!”

I said, “I know but I think we should be happy that they are smoking in our parking lot and not somewhere else!”

I remembered that little story when I read through this story in Acts 21. Paul has returned to Jerusalem against the advice of his friends. Within a few days after arriving he goes to visit the great temple and the result is an uproar. He is accused of bringing Gentiles into the temple, which would have been an egregious offense in the eyes of the Jews. But, the truth is, Paul has done no such thing! Yet because of his reputation of having Gentile friends which, of course, he did, the crowds just assumed he was taking them into the temple.

What seems to have driven their rage against Paul was his insistence, through the gospel, that God’s grace was as available to the Gentile as it was to the Jew. In their minds religion was all about “us” and “them.” There were insiders and outsiders.

But the gospel confronts that kind of thinking. The gospel tells us God loves the outsider as much as he loves the insider; the Gentile as much as the Jew; the cigarette smoking teenager as much as the church lady.

The gospel destroyed their self-righteous assumptions and that’s why they wanted to destroy Paul.

Here’s the question: Are we more concerned that the kids are leaving cigarette butts in the parking lot, or that they know how much Jesus loves them?

Pastor Brian Coffey