Acts 21.1-17

Paul's final journey to Jerusalem (21.1-17)

This section completes Paul’s third missionary journey and records his final voyage to Jerusalem. At the beginning of Paul’s service, the Lord told him to flee Jerusalem, ‘for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me’ (22.17, 18). As he now made his way to the city, he was cautioned repeatedly about the dangers he would face there (20.22, 23; 21.4, 11). If these alerts were prohibitions, he was wrong to go. If they were simply warnings, Paul’s determination mirrored Christ’s resolve ‘to go to Jerusalem’, despite the suffering which awaited Him (Lk 9.51). Yearning after his Jewish brothers, keen to keep the Feast of Tabernacles, and determined to bring a gift to the Christians at Jerusalem, Paul felt ‘bound in the spirit’ to go (20.16, 22; 24.17; Rom 9.2, 3, 15.25-31; 1 Cor 16.1-6).

Paul and his companions were so fond of the Ephesian elders, they had to tear themselves away from them (v1)[1]. From Miletus, they sailed to Koos, ‘the day following to Rhodes, and from thence to Patara’ (v1). Leaving Patara, they sailed to Tyre, ‘for there the ship was to unlaid her burden’ (v2, 3). In Tyre, Paul and his friends sought fellow believers, some of whom may have escaped there ‘upon the persecution that arose about Stephen’ (11.19). After only seven days, during which ‘they said to Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem’ (v4), they felt a strong connection with each other. Luke recorded that when the apostolic party left, ‘they all brought us on our way, with wives and children, till we were out of the city: and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed.’ (v5). During a stop off at Ptolemais, the missionary group ‘saluted the brethren, and abode with them one day’ (v7).

The next day Paul travelled to Caesarea, where he stayed with Philip the evangelist. After reaching out to the Ethiopian eunuch and evangelising Azotus, Philip had ‘preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea’ (8.40). That was twenty years earlier. Having settled in the city, he raised a family for God. All four of his daughters were saved, morally pure and spiritually gifted (v9). But God brought Agabus – who had previously foreseen the Jerusalem famine (11.28) – from Judaea to predict Paul’s imprisonment. ‘He took Paul's girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, Thus saith the Holy Ghost, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles’ (v11). Genuinely concerned for Paul’s well-being, everyone ‘besought him not to go up to Jerusalem’ (v12). But he would have none of it. ‘What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart?’, he asked, ‘for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done’ (vv13, 14). Accompanied by some Caesarean disciples and Mnason, a mature Cypriot believer with whom they should lodge, they went up to Jerusalem (vv15, 16).

[1] WUEST’S EXPANDED TRANSLATION OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT.