Acts 21:1-4 - Sailing trips

21:1-3

We now get something of a travelogue!  The long and short of it is that they sailed and eventually arrived at Tyre. Sections like this serve to emphasise that the events in Acts, like the gospels, are clearly located in reality with geographic details being given.

21:4

Having landed they sought out disciples. In Christ, God is making a kingdom, making a people. We are the people of God, and we are connected with anyone who belongs to Christ. Our most fundamental identity is that we belong to Christ, we are in Christ. So we are united with anyone else who is in Christ. Most of us have experienced the joy of this on numerous occasions. We go some place where we don’t know anyone, but when we meet people who belong to Christ there is an instant bond of connection. Any teaching that seeks to make anything else of greater importance than our identity in Christ (eg racial or ethnic background) is deeply flawed and completely unbiblical.

“Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go to Jerusalem”. Now this is an interesting and in some ways puzzling verse. We know from what has gone before that in going to Jerusalem Paul was led by the Spirit, yet here we have disciples “through the Spirit” urging Paul not to go to Jerusalem. So how do we reconcile the two? Well maybe the Spirit was just making Paul more aware of the dangers, and more aware of how much fellow disciples cared for him. It is perhaps a caution against trying to fit everything into a nice neat box. We think if the Spirit leads us to do something, then everyone else will see the wisdom of it, and if anyone doesn’t then they must be acting in rebellion to the Spirit. Things don’t always work like that! We should also note that there was no disunity here.