Acts 21:37

Acts 21:37 says, And as Paul was to be led into the castle, he said unto the chief captain, May I speak unto thee? Who said, Canst thou speak Greek?  As Paul was being led away, he asked the chief captain if he could speak with him, to which the chief captain replied by asking Paul if he could speak Greek.  Evidently, he had understood Paul, but he may have been looking for an excuse not to talk to him.  Whether this was the case or not, as Christians, we shouldn’t be surprised if people look for excuses not to talk to us. Verse thirty-eight adds, Art not thou that Egyptian, which before these days madest an uproar, and leddest out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers?  The chief captain had assumed that Paul was an Egyptian who had led an uprising of four thousand men who were called murderers who had fled to the wilderness.  People may still make faulty assumptions about who Christians are and what we stand for.  Verse thirty-nine continues, But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.  When Paul answered him, telling him he was a Jew of Tarsus, he asked permission to speak to the people.  The chief captain really had a problem because he had treated Paul the way he did without all the facts, and people who mistreat Christians today with or without all the facts will one day have a problem with God. Verse forty concludes, And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying,  After Paul was given permission to speak to the crowd, he stood on the stairs and called the people to him.  When there was a great silence, Paul began to speak to them in Hebrew.  If we want to reach people with the gospel, we must call them to us and speak so that they can understand what we are saying. 

Paul agreed to the purification ritual.  He took the men the next day and purifying himself with them entered the temple, signifying the days of purification until an offering could be giving for each of them.  We must realize that we cannot purify ourselves before God.  The only purification of sin is faith in Christ.  Neither can we buy purification from sin, for ourselves or for others.  Then, when the seven days were nearly ended, the Jews saw Paul in the temple and laid hands on him.  The plan of the elders was to make Paul more acceptable to the Jewish Christians.  How they figured this would make him acceptable to the non Christian Jews is hard to understand.  In Acts 21:28, they cried out, "Men of Israel, help: This man that teaches all men everywhere against the people, and the Law, and this place: and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath polluted this holy place." (KJV)  They said he brought Greeks into the temple because they had seen him in the company of Trophimus, an Ephesian.  It does not say they saw them in the temple, but they supposed Paul had brought him in.  Paul found himself where the Holy Spirit had warned him he would be.  The plan the elders made to have Paul accepted by following teachings other than the gospel failed.  The same will be true anytime we attempt to keep the world happy by changing the gospel.  The failure may not be immediate, but it will be certain.  The city was moved and the people ran together and grabbed Paul and brought him out of the temple and closed the doors.  If they couldn't keep the undesirables out, they would just keep everybody out.  May we never feel so threatened by anyone or any group that we close the doors of the church to keep anyone from getting in.  Evidently, the Jews felt that Paul, or what he was teaching, was more powerful than God.  Otherwise, they would have known that if he were teaching lies, they would pass and Paul would be forgotten.