We have been reading about the vehement opposition to Paul on the part of the Jews in Jerusalem. To the Jewish people at the time, Paul and the Christians represented the antithesis of all that they were fighting for. The Jews wanted to drive the Gentiles out of the kingdom while the Christians were inviting them in (they had very different notions of what ‘the Kingdom of God’ was). In his speech to the hostile Jews in Jerusalem, Paul assures them that he gets their perspective. He tells them that he was once even more zealous than they were for this agenda. But something had happened to him that changed everything. Paul’s personal testimony is a compelling defence at this stage because they would have all known of Saul of Tarsus and how zealously he persecuted the Christians. Paul was blindly galloping towards the same doomed goals as they were until God literally knocked him off his horse. And Paul knows at this time that the same sovereign act of God will be needed to stop these people. Jesus had predicted the downfall of the Jewish people due to their revolutionary aspirations. About a decade after Paul’s time in Jerusalem, the city would fall in what would be the most disastrous event in Jewish history up to that date. Sometimes, when we get so off track and we are galloping in the wrong direction, the best thing that God can do is ‘knock us off our horse’. It may be painful but if it gets us back on track, we are better off for it.
Ask God to do whatever it takes to keep you on track.
Read Acts 21:37 – 22:21
