Paul receives warnings in every town that he will be imprisoned and possibly killed. The people do not want Paul to go because of the danger. Verse 14 concludes with the main understanding, “The will of the Lord be done”. The will of God is the best place we can be. The will of God may not always be the safest but it is where we should be. This is a hard concept for us to digest mentally. We always think the best place is where we are safe, where we can make the most money, where our family is, or some other reason. But the best place is where God wants you. God has a will for your life to bring many to Christ and to bring Him much glory, live in His will.
There is another topic brought up from this chapter and that is Phillip’s daughters who prophesied. Many want to make this into some super verse that cancels out what women are allowed to do and not to do in other parts of scripture. We do not know anything else other than they were virgins who seemed to be set apart for a special ministry. Note that in the very next verse Agabus comes down and prophesies of Paul’s imprisonment. We first saw this prophet in Acts 11:28. Why did this male prophet come in even when there were 4 other prophets? There are more questions than answers about these daughters of Philip.
What do we do with the rest of this chapter? There are Christian Jews still holding to the Law of Moses? Now the interesting fact to remember is the Church decided that the Gentiles did not have to follow the Jewish tradition. Second, that the Jewish traditions where allowed because it was ordered by God. There were more OT scriptures than the NT, for it was still being written. Every transition takes time and there where thousands of Jews coming to Christ that still wanted to keep the law and festivals. The early church, which slowly moved away from these, fulfilled events in Christ. However as long as it were a celebration of the Old Testament and not a requirement of salvation the early church allowed it. Much of this will be done away with when God allows the taking of Jerusalem in a few years.
Reading scripture is the most important daily exercise we can do. Remembering to connect scripture with other portions of scripture is extremely important as well. Sometimes God just speaks facts and events for the purpose of us knowing what happened. Strive to daily keep all scripture in context. Thanks for reading along!
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