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We all make mistaks
We live in a fallen world in which people are prone to make mistakes.
For example, I remember riding in the back of our family car as a child, when my mom, who was driving, asked me to hand her a tissue.
“Kevin,” she said, “Will you please hand me a tissue?”
She often elongated the ‘a’ sound, and I misheard her, thinking she said “eight.”
Since that was also about how many years I had been alive, and common sense wasn’t my strong suit at the time, I proceeded to happily pull out eight tissues for her.
Her response was not the appreciation I expected for having so carefully followed her instructions but rather one of frustration for bungling the request.
Throughout history, misunderstandings have led to disastrous consequences, many of them becoming international incidents.
We know that World War I began with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife.
The initial attempt was botched, and the archduke traveled away from the scene.
His driver misunderstood the roads, made a wrong turn, and stopped on the side of the road to ask for directions.
The man he sought help from was the earlier assassin, who made use of his second chance.
Another issue occurred after the Second Balkan War ended, but tensions still simmered between Greece and Bulgaria.
All it took was a soldier’s dog to cross over the border to start what was called “The War of the Stray Dog.”
The owner ran over to rescue his dog, which proved to be a fatal mistake, and Greece used it as a pretext for invasion.
Remember to keep your pets on a leash.
Finally, a near miss occurred during the high tensions of the Cold War, when Communist leader Nikita Krushev was giving a speech in the Polish Embassy in Moscow.
What he said was a common Russian idiom, which could be translated, “I feel badly about your ignorance, but it’s your funeral, not mine.”
This was mistranslated to quote Krushev, who had the authority to unleash the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, as saying, “We will bury you.”
It’s not hard to imagine the panic that came from having misunderstood this quote.(1)
Today, one of my goals is to not provoke any major misunderstandings - remember to think before you tweet, folks.
More importantly, we will look at one major event in Paul’s ministry in which he was misunderstood, and we will look at the implications that come from it.
There is more to misunderstandings than initially meets the eye.
Like the misunderstanding Paul faced, many of ours relate to how we live out our faith.
The faithful Christian responds to misunderstandings by standing firm in faith.
How exactly can we stand firm like this?
Overcoming mis-understanding is found in its opposite, understanding.
Understanding important principles helps us faithfully stand firm, even in a world that seems driven by misunderstanding.
Our text today is lengthy, covering Acts 21 and most of Acts 22. Please turn there in your copy of Scripture.
Before I read a portion, I’d like to summarize these two chapters.
Paul and his companions are returning from their third missionary journey that Pastor Mark covered last week.
He had already left the region of Macedonia further west, which is where modern-day Greece and Bulgaria are.
I’ll just mention that Philippi was near the border of these two countries, and when Paul wrote to the Philippian church, he clearly said to “look out for dogs.”
If they heeded his words, maybe that War of the Stray Dog could have been avoided!
Anyway, Paul sailed across the northeastern Mediterranean, made landfall, and traveled southward toward Jerusalem.
Along the way, people were given prophetic words by the Holy Spirit to warn of the dangers Paul would encounter in Jerusalem.
Knowing this, Paul nevertheless continued, and when he arrived at Jerusalem, he followed the advice of the church leaders there.
The accusation against Paul by many Jews was that he encouraged converted Jews to forsake their former Jewish customs.
This wasn’t true.
Paul and the early church ensured converted Gentiles understood they were not bound to follow such laws, but they did not try to sway their own Jewish people away from them.
To prove this, Paul agreed to participate in a purification vow with some others as a public show that he had not abandoned the tradition.
Before he could complete this, he was spotted in the temple courtyard, and an uproar ensued.
Jews who opposed Paul claimed he had brought Gentiles into the inner court of the Temple, which would have been a no-no, but Paul hadn’t done this.
The scene turned so chaotic that Roman soldiers became involved.
The cohort tribune had Paul arrested.
Before leaving the scene, Paul convinced the tribune to let him speak and bring calm to the situation.
He told his story, which went well until Paul mentioned God eventually sent him to share the gospel with the Gentiles.
To this Jewish crowd, this was an abomination, which is a bit ironic, since they wanted no part of Paul’s message anyway.
To learn more, the tribune resorted to standard Roman soldier protocol, which was to have Paul flogged in order to get answers out of him (waterboarding had yet to be discovered).
Before this could take place, Paul informed the tribune that he was a Roman citizen, and our passage ends with the tribune fearful for having mistreated Paul, the Roman citizen.
How to respond to being misunderstood
As you can see, there were several moments where Paul was misunderstood, some of them willful and even malicious.
With this big picture in mind, I’d like to zoom in on one passage during Paul’s journey to Jerusalem.
At this point he was free, but he was continually told his voyage to Jerusalem would lead to his imprisonment and worse.
Stand with me, please, and follow along as I read Acts 21:7-14
And this is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Please be seated.
I mentioned earlier that the key to overcoming misunderstanding is found in understanding.
These two chapters reveal three main areas to understand.
The first is to
Understand the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit can and does guide us.
Acts is the perfect place to consider the Spirit’s ministry.
Spirit is mentioned in nearly every New Testament book, but Acts has far more references than any of them.
Spirit is mentioned seventy times compared to 1 Corinthians, which is the next closest at forty.
Paul’s return trip to Jerusalem contains five references to the work of the Holy Spirit.
What does the Spirit do in these passages?
Acts 20:23 says He testifies, as in providing prophetic speech.
This prophecy speech is repeated in Acts 21:4
and Acts 21:11
In that one, the Holy Spirit used a prophet named Agabus to remove Paul’s belt and then tie himself up in front of everyone present.
Given the prophecy, it would have been a great time to declare Agabus the new owner of the belt!
The Holy Spirit also exercises authority and carries out God’s will.
Paul shared with the Ephesian leaders that the Holy Spirit had made them overseers of the church in Ephesus.
Acts 20:28
You might wonder then why Paul continued to Jerusalem even though, in his words, “the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.”
Did Paul ignore the Holy Spirit’s words and commands?
He didn’t.
Paul explains this in Acts 20:22, saying,
So under the obedience of the Holy Spirit Paul was traveling to a place where, the repeated warnings would show, imprisonment and afflictions awaited him.
God told Paul to do something, and then God warned Paul to prepare himself for the trouble that would come.
In our world, in Christian circles, there are many who subscribe to a prosperity theology and treat the Holy Spirit like a magical guide who leads us toward greater happiness, success, and wealth.
Ironically, they’re almost right.
They just apply that prosperity to this life rather than the next, and so they miss the boat entirely.
We rightly repudiate that, but how many of us, given the warning of coming affliction, wouldn’t take that automatically as a call to take steps to avoid what’s coming?
We live in a culture that puts risk mitigation at the top of the list.
We have made personal safety our top-tier goal at the expense sometimes of accomplishing the mission.
But what if God is leading us toward something dangerous?
I’ll confess it grates under my skin when I hear phrases like “safety first.”
If priority number one can be accomplished in a recliner, something’s wrong.
Have you ever been on a plan and heard, “Your safety is our top priority”?
Weren’t we trying to go to Denver?
I guess we’re never getting of the ground.
If you are about to ride a metal tube with wings over five hundred miles an hour at thirty thousand feet above the earth’s surface, safety by definition cannot be the highest priority.
Our objective is not safety.
Our objective is to accomplish God’s mission and to do so safely if we can.
There were plenty of times when Paul did flee an area because of danger, sometimes through prophetic warning, but this time was different.
This time the Spirit led him toward the danger.
God leads us through his Spirit toward God’s plan.
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