March 17, 2011

Reading for March 14-18
Acts 21:1-26
Thursday

Watch Out for “God Told Me”

“Agabus, who had the gift of prophecy, . . took Paul’s belt, and bound his own feet and hands with it. Then he said, “The Holy Spirit declares, ‘So shall the owner of this belt be bound by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and turned over to the Gentiles.’” 12 When we heard this, we and the local believers all begged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. 13 But he said, “Why all this weeping? You are breaking my heart! I am ready not only to be jailed at Jerusalem but even to die for the sake of the Lord Jesus.” 14 When it was clear that we couldn’t persuade him, we gave up and said, “The Lord’s will be done.” Acts 21:10-14

Never give advice with Divine Authority unless it is the plain teaching of Scripture

Pastor’s Reflection

Agabus and others (see verse 21:4) had prophesied that Paul would find trouble in Jerusalem and therefore should not go. Paul went anyway. Did he disobey the Holy Spirit? Or did the prophets communicate more than was revealed to them. In other words may it have been that the Holy Spirit revealed to them that Paul would meet trouble and then they added the “do not go”. The latter must certainly have been the case, since it just doesn’t fit that Paul hear God’s word and then ignored it.

Beware of prophecies that begin with “God told me”. In areas where the direct teaching of the Bible is not perfectly clear, any direction we give to another person must be offered with humility and be open to contradiction and discussion. We can never say for example, “God told me you should ____________ and instead __________, there’s no doubt about it”. However, we could say, “I’ve felt a burden to speak to you about this and I could be wrong. Nevertheless here what I’ve been sensing.”

Verse 21:4 tells us we can have real spiritual insight from God at times about another person’s situation and still misunderstand how to apply it.