Scripture Daily

Context No. 3028 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 21:35-40: in context

35When he came to the stairs, he was carried by the soldiers because of the violence of the crowd; 36for the multitude of the people followed after, crying out, “Away with him!” 37As Paul was about to be brought into the barracks, he asked the commanding officer, “May I speak to you?” He said, “Do you know Greek? 38Aren’t you then the Egyptian who before these days stirred up to sedition and led out into the wilderness the four thousand men of the Assassins?” 39But Paul said, “I am a Jew from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city. I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.” 40When he had given him permission, Paul, standing on the stairs, beckoned with his hand to the people. When there was a great silence, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying,

A mob is trying to kill Paul, and the soldiers have to carry him up the barracks stairs as the crowd screams, Away with him! Battered and about to be taken inside to safety, Paul turns to the commander and asks, may I speak to you? The officer, surprised he knows Greek, had assumed he was some Egyptian rebel. Paul identifies himself and asks one thing: let me speak to the people. Given leave, he raises his hand, and in the sudden silence begins to address the very crowd that wanted him dead.

In the middle of a riot, dragged and beaten, Paul's first concern is not his own safety but the chance to bear witness. Given a moment, he does not flee into the barracks for protection; he asks to speak to the mob that was trying to kill him. He seizes the opening to tell them about Christ. Paul saw even his arrest and near-lynching as an opportunity for the gospel, a platform God had handed him. Wherever he landed, before mobs, in chains, before governors, his instinct was to testify.

Do I see the hard and even dangerous places I land in as closed doors, or, like Paul, as openings God has given me to bear witness?

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