DEPART…I WILL SEND THEE

To witness in Jerusalem had, indeed, been in Paul’s own thoughts, though the words of the risen Lord through Ananias had implied a far wider field, ‘unto all men’, v. 15. However, Paul had been educated at Jerusalem, had brought Christians bound to it, had returned to it after his conversion, and had been performing his devotions in the temple when the Lord had appeared to him in a vision. He had gone like any devout Jew to the temple to pray for guidance. He had received guidance in one of the temple courts which they claimed he had defiled. There it was in the temple that he had received the command to go to the Gentiles, vv. 17-21; cf. 9. 26; Gal. 1. 17, 18. What else could he, a devout Jew, have done? He tells of the vision because he was most anxious to make it clear that his own inclination and prayer had been to preach the gospel to his own people and that it had only been at the urgent command of God that he had gone to the Gentiles. What a testimony he thought he might have been in the city of Jerusalem when people saw his changed life, vv. 19, 20. He would be a witness where before he had been a persecutor. But the Lord had other plans for him: ‘Depart: for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles’. The Lord Himself had called him to go to the Gentiles. What was more, the Lord had told him that in Jerusalem his testimony would not be accepted by the people, vv. 17,18. That had been proved true in the recent attempt to take his life, and would be again in the plot of the forty assassins, 23. 12,13. He submitted to the Lord’s command. What else could he do when he had asked ‘Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?’ 9. 6. He will write of the grace given to him that he ‘should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ’, Eph. 3. 8; cf. 1 Tim. 2. 7; 2 Tim. 1. 11. Yet his heart’s desire and prayer for Israel was that they might be saved, Rom. 10. 1. There was the evidence of divine love in the heart of the apostle, that whatever his fellow countrymen did to him, he still only desired their supreme good. His defence from the steps to the citadel in Jerusalem was just one more attempt to win them for Christ. Was he successful? Note the Lord’s words in chapter 23 verse 11!