Acts 21:18

‘And the day following Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.'

On the next day the Gentile representatives arranged to meet James, along with all the elders. Paul also went with them. The fact that all the Jerusalem church elders also made themselves present meant that it was an official meeting. But the non-mention of the Apostles suggests that they were elsewhere obeying Jesus' command to take the Good News to the whole world.

This majoring on ‘us' confirms that the question of handing over the Collection was to be dealt with. Note that Paul went ‘with them'. He was not to be seen as the man in charge. These men came as individual and official representatives of their churches to fellowship with their brethren in the Jerusalem church. Yet both here and from this point on, as he has earlier, Luke still ignores the Collection, skipping over anything to do with that and moving on to Paul's description of his Gentile mission (although he undoubtedly knew about it - Acts 24:17). He is more concerned to bring out the wonderful unity and love in the church.

For important though the Collection was it was not important to what Luke was trying to get over. Indeed it might have distracted attention from it. (We modern commentators equally ensure that it does obtain major attention and thus distract attention from Luke's main purpose). He wanted the attention to be concentrated on what really matters, the success of the word around the world, the wonderful unity of the people of God, and the resulting arrest of Paul with its indication of Jerusalem's rejection of the Good News.