Our text this morning comes from Acts chapter 20, as we are making our way through the book of Acts, or in Acts chapter 20, we'll look at the verse first, 16 verses of that chapter, Acts 20, verses one through 16 acts is followed right after the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and you have acts, if you remember too, it's, we call it the Acts of the Apostles. But maybe a better name might be the continuing acts of Jesus, by the power of his Spirit through His apostles. A longer title, but I think appropriate before we read, let's go to the Lord in prayer again, asking for the Lord's blessing. Remember, keep in mind, unless a Spirit opens up our eyes and our hearts now, we are wasting our times. We aren't a social gathering. We aren't a theology club. We have gathered together to worship God, and it is God himself who must enliven our hearts to hear and receive His Word. So let us pray for that now.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are not silent, but that you speak. The heavens are declaring your glory. But Lord, as we come to your word, it tells us of Jesus, and it tells us how we might be made right with you. It tells us how we might be cleansed from all of our unrighteousness, that we might have the righteousness of Christ, Lord, I pray that now you would open up our blind eyes to see and behold by faith the glory and the power of our Lord, Jesus Christ, unstop our deaf ears, soften our heart and hearts to receive the gospel.
Lord, help us to be attentive now to Your Word, to be able to put distractions aside and have a singular focus on what you will say to us as we begin as the psalmist said, Let us open up our mouths wide, ready now to receive your word with every expectation you will speak, Lord, bless your people, comfort your people, and be merciful to us now. And it's in Jesus's name we pray, Amen Acts chapter 20, beginning in verse one,[1] After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia. [2] When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. [3] There he spent three months, and when a plot was made against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. [4] Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus. [5] These went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, [6] but we sailed away from Philippi after the Days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we came to them at Troas, where we stayed for seven days.
[7] On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. [8] There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. [9] And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at a window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. [10] But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said,"Do not be alarmed, for his life is in Him." [11] And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them for a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. [12] And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted.
[13] But going ahead to the ship, we set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul aboard there, for so he had arranged, intending himself to go by land.
[14] And when he met us at Assos, we took him on board and went to Mitylene. [15] And sailing from there we came from the following day opposite Chios; the next day we touched at Samos; and the day after that we went to Miletus. [16] For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.
He who has ears let him hear the Word of God. Please be seated.
So Paul goes to some difficult places, hard to pronounce, and he hangs out with people who have difficult names sometimes.
But I wanted to begin by asking you, too, if you've ever had a Sunday where you start to look down at the clock and you're wondering, how much longer is this guy going to talk for it keeps going and going. He said, finally now five times.
When is the final? Final? Is he going to stop? When is the service going to be over? I'm hungry, I'm tired. Got other places to be.
I remember when I was younger, I grew up in the church, and our service would typically end at the top of an hour, and I had a watch that would do that little beep whenever it hit the hour, and I would just sometimes happen to have a timely yawn at the top of the hour and go and my clock would beep, and I just wanted to make sure that the Minister knew it was the top of the hour, beep, beep. It's time to wrap it up.
And some Sundays even now being up here, I feel that pressure of trying to finish in a timely way, Sunday some Sundays that are very full for us. Some Sundays, we have both baptisms and people joining the church and new members, and I don't get up to actually preach, and till maybe quarter till 11, and I feel like I got to rush through this, or rush to the Lord's Supper. And you know, are people just going to walk out at some point, right at some point, if I started preaching maybe past an hour and a half or get to a two hour point, you might start to feel a little uncomfortable, maybe even a little irritated.
Is he going to keep going? When is he going to stop now the lesson in our text is not an insensitivity of Paul.
The lesson here is not for ministers to shorten up their sermon so people in their congregation don't die. That's not the point of the sermon.
Neither is it to bludgeon us in a sense that if you're tired this morning, straighten up and listen now.
Should? Should we listen? Yes, but sometimes we can't help it. If you happen to have a brand new baby little boy and You named him, maybe Timothy James, you might understand why that couple might be tired this morning, right?
There are things in life that are out of your control that just happen to make you tired at night. There are some things that are in your control that we ought to do not stay up so late watching TV or playing video games on a Saturday night to prepare ourselves so we're not tired on Sunday mornings. But the concern here is Paul's encouragement in strengthening the saints through all the different things that we see in his traveling. What happens here in Troas. But how does he do all of this? And the emphasis here is not so much stay awake or short sermons, but the emphasis of the word, the importance of the Word of God in all things, the priority of God's Word in our lives, is that our priority.
So verse one begins reminding us what happened in chapter 19, when Paul was in Ephesus. It says, After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples. If you remember, Paul was preaching the gospel in Ephesus, and Ephesus was a city ruled by idolatry, the worship of wealth and Artemis. Great is Artemis of the Ephesians. You remember they they were they would chant that for two hours because Paul is preaching the gospel. The gospel is changing people's lives, and it's affecting the economy.
People aren't worshiping Artemis anymore. People aren't buying the little trinkets and and idols that many people made money off of, and they have a riot, and they go into this town square, into this theater, and for two hours, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, Paul's friends keep Paul from entering the theater. They're holding them back. They called me back. You can imagine Paul, but they keep them out because they don't want Paul to die. So that's kind of verse one is reminding us of what was happening in Ephesus, where they have just left and but actually, Paul hasn't just left yet, because after the riot, he encourages the disciples there in Ephesus, encouraging them he and he said farewell and departed for Matt.
Sidonia.
Before he leaves, he encourages the people there in Ephesus. And what would that encouragement look like? It's looked like what he's done before, where he's open up the word and he says, persevere. Do not give up.
Preach Christ. Preach Christ.
Preach Christ. More of Jesus.
He's encouraging them there in Ephesus to not give up. Through many trials, we must enter the kingdom of God. And he sets out again. And Paul is, in a sense, retracing his steps of various places he has now visited for the most part. Now on Paul's travel, he's not pioneering anywhere different for pretty much, as far as we know, everywhere that is recorded now that Paul goes to he's already been there at least once before, but he's revisiting places like Macedonia, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, and places too, where there have been oppositions and riots. And he's going back anyway, because Paul also, not only has this evangelistic outward mentality, but he also has a very, very much of a shepherding heart to encourage those Christians, to encourage the Christians who are in the midst of a dark and evil world, to press on to not forget Christ, to remember the word of God. He returns to strengthen them, to remind them of Christ.
And here it tells us, how does he encourage them? Luke tells us repeatedly, much words, much words, much words. What does that mean? Some people are a talker. You can, you know some people, you might even hesitate to pick up a phone and give them a call rather than a text, because you know, as soon as you talk to them, you're in for a ride, right? You're going to be talking for a long time. Or at least, they're going to be talking for a long time. Paul might have been a talker in that sense, but that's not what this is driving at. This is much Scripture. Much of the word not just Paul talking because he just is a talker, but he is opening up the Scriptures with them. This is what Paul would do, open up the Scriptures. And what does Paul do when he opens up the Scriptures? He reasons with you. He points you in in the Old Testament, how the Messiah must die, how the Messiah must rise again, and how the Messiah is Jesus. He He is giving them the whole counsel of God, from beginning to end with much words. He is speaking with much of the Scripture he is giving to them.
You know, often in the church we want something else. We want more experiences. We want more atmosphere. But here in this text, reminds us again, and I think we've seen this time and time again in the book of Acts, that the Spirit's ordinary ministry is through steady, faithful, persistent preaching of the word. This is what the saints would come to do, study the Word, study the Word in the word, submitting to the apostles, teaching and preaching, they would gather for prayer and study the Word together. Now, what's interesting, we're all the way here in chapter 20 of the book of Acts, and where has, where have we had a discussion about, you know, the fantastic music ministry of the first church there throughout when Paul he's making sure they got great music. Now, I think they did say they sang. I think in in chapter two, we see that they're praising. I think that looks like hymns and Psalms and spiritual songs they would sing together, and music is fine and good, and it's in people we should sing. But the emphasis is not on the music ministry of the church. The emphasis of the church is on the ministry of the word being proclaimed.
Now we're told that he spends three months in Greece. This is most likely Corinth that he goes back to. And much happens there.
He plans to sail for Syria. He learns of another plot people are trying to take his life.
There's a coordinated effort, and many, pretty much, wherever Paul goes to take his life. At one point we're told, he decides to go by land, not by sea, because the thought was, there is conspiracy to just throw Paul into the into the water. We're going to get him on a boat, throw him into the water, just like Jonah, and he's going to sink down. That's going to be the end of Paul. End of Paul.
Wherever Paul is going. People are out for his life.
And also, if we skip down to verses 13 to 16, we're also told he wants to get to Jerusalem.
Why does he want to get to Jerusalem during the days of Passover?
Because there's going to be a lot of people there. There's going to be a lot of opportunity to share the gospel there.
There's going to be a lot of opportunity to reason from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. So Paul is out and he's traveling, but Paul is not alone. We are told. Luke gives us a list of names men all over the region. These are fruits of Paul's ministry from different cities. And if you notice too, the text shifted at one point and started to mention we. And that is to indicate that Paul is or that Luke is now with Paul.
Paul picked Luke up in Philippi when he stopped at Philippi, that's where Luke was ministering. Luke is now with Paul traveling. So you have this language of we this isn't a one man show. This isn't all about Paul. Paul is discipling these leaders so that the work continues after he's gone.
Essentially, what Paul has is these different ministers from all over these different cities that he has visited, and they're traveling with him, almost like Paul is doing a traveling pastors conference, and there's like, I, you know, I'm going to continue to preach and share the gospel, but you guys are going to come with me. I'm going to disciple you and teach you on the way, and then I'm going to send you back to your churches.
Because it isn't about me. I don't have to do the ministry.
You're going to have to keep up the ministry. You're going to have to open up the Word of God to the churches that God has put you in. And that's what these men will do. They will return.
They will build the church in that way through the Word. And Paul is discipling these men and then sending them back. Now they came to Troas, and Paul is only going to be on Troas, we're told, about a week. And if you look there in verse seven, on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day.
I just want to note here when the people of God are gathering on the first day of the week.
They are gathering to hear the word, to have the Lord's Supper, the breaking of bread and fellowship.
They gather on Sunday, the first day of the week, because that's the day Jesus rose from the dead. Sunday is the day of resurrection. It is the dawn of the new creation, the old Sabbath was the celebration of of God resting from his work of creation. That the new Sabbath, or the new Lord's day, is a celebration of the resting of God from the new creation, that redemption is accomplished. Not only creation is accomplished, but that redemption is accomplished through Christ and John himself, the apostle, will write in Revelation chapter one, this is the Lord's Day. It is, this is the day that belongs to the Lord, the first day of the week. It is not our day. John tells us, it's this day. The Sundays are the Lord's Day. This is the Christian Sabbath. And even the Old Testament foreshadowed the Christians gathering on the first day of the week in the year of Jubilee.
Every seventh day, as you know, was the Sabbath in the Old Testament, and also in the Old Testament, every seventh year was a Sabbath for the land where they didn't plant and the land rested and you didn't harvest the land it rested. But after seven Sabbath years, that is, after 49, years on that then next year, the first day after the Sabbath, a new cycle. The 50th year was the year of Jubilee. And what would happen on that first day of the new cycle?
Debts would be forgiven, captives would be set free. And there, all the way back in the Old Testament, is a foreshadowing of what Christ would do, and that Christians would be celebrating, in a sense, the jubilee of the Lord's day, captives being set free, debts being forgiven, is that not what we do each Lord's Day celebrate those truths.
Each Lord's Day is a foretaste of of heaven, and even as I wrestle with sometimes, what should we do on the Lord's day, what we do in the Lord's day, in many ways, should reflect what we'll be doing in heaven. What will the people of God do in heaven? Well, heaven is a place of worship, so what's appropriate for us to do on the Lord's day, that worship Heaven is a place where the family of God gathers together. So what should we do on the Lord's day, gather together as a people of God, it's a family of God, and have fellowship together. This is the day for us.
That the Lord has given to us that we might worship and celebrate and come together as God's people, and in true as they are ready, and they are prepared to worship on the first day of the of the week. Now Paul begins preaching, and he keeps preaching, preaching and preaching and preaching. And we're told in our text, it is now Midnight. Midnight. It's midnight.
Paul is still preaching.
How long would it take for you to leave? Right? But they haven't left.
They're in a they're in the third story of this building.
It's packed, and they are eager to hear the word. They don't care about the time they long to hear the word preached and presented to them, and it's midnight, they are willing to lose sleep. How precious is sleep? More sleep.
Let me sleep in but they're kind of loose sleep so they can hear the word.
And I think that's one thing for us to wrestle with, and even maybe a point of conviction here is, do we care more about the time, or do we care more about hearing the Word of God preached?
Do we desire more preaching or less preaching? I think that's a good question for us to wrestle with. Do I want those sermons often to be longer or shorter, and not because maybe the sermons are bad or because they're disorganized or unhelpful, but just, do I desire the Word of God more or less?
Now, there's a lot of things in our life we want more of, and they're usually shiny things, gold, silver, we want more of those things. But remember how David says the Word of God, it is to be desired more than much fine gold, sweeter than honey from the honeycomb, is that our hearts remember, like the baby bird with mouths open, ready, more and more, more more, that's what the little birds are saying, right? More and more is that us more word more, and they're up as Psalm 122, says, I was glad when they said, let us come to the house of the Lord.
Now, why is Paul preaching till midnight? This isn't very sensitive of Paul, is it? I mean, people have bed times and kids have to go to sleep. We have to eat too, right? Why is he doing this? Well, keep in mind, Paul's only here for a week in Troas, and the people of God have gathered together on this one day, on the Lord's Day.
So in a sense, Paul is trying to download to them the whole counsel of God in a singular sermon. But the people are willing to endure it and sit through it even past midnight that they might hear it. This is Paul's one shot, essentially, with the with the church to give them a seminary education in one gathering. So it is a longer meeting, but that's why Paul's doing it. I wouldn't say this was, this was Paul's regular preaching schedule or length of time, and I'm going to try to mimic it now, and I'm going to start till midnight or keep going. So no, but it's late now, and unlike today in Tampa, it's very hot there. You know what it's like sometimes when it's hot and you're in close quarters, there's a lot of people, it's stuffy. They don't have air conditioning. It's dark there. They don't have electricity. They have oil lit candles. They've opened up the windows on this third story building because it's stuffy and it's hot, and they're trying to listen to what Paul's saying.
And you've been there where you get you just get sleepy, and maybe that's you now, and you're getting a little sleepy, and you're fighting off sleep, and sometimes you feel like you lose the battle. Well, here we come to this young man, Eutychus. He was probably between the ages of eight to 14, which makes sense, because it's around that age where you think that you can sit in an open window and be okay.
That's Eutychus. He's sitting in this open window of this third story where they're meeting. The other interesting thing about Eutychus is his name means lucky, and he's fighting sleep, but he loses the battle. Sleep overtakes him, and he falls out the window and he dies.
Days.
Now, it's kind of a comical historical account, isn't it, because we know how it ends. But if you put yourself in the place of that church, it would not have been very funny at the time, everyone, all of a sudden, is startled awake because they hear the thud of a child's body hitting the ground.
That's not funny, that's serious.
And Paul pauses for a moment.
Everyone runs down and Eutychus says he's dead. He was dead. Luke is a physician.
Dr Luke tells us he's dead.
Paul, though, runs over, comes down to Eutychus and says, Do not be alarmed, as life is in him. It wasn't that he fainted or that he wasn't dead, that a miracle had occurred. He was brought back to life. He was raised back from the dead, and this is only one of five instances recorded in the New Testament of someone coming back from the dead. It's a wonderful miracle.
It's a wonderful providence and love of the Lord to bring Eutychus back to life. But the interesting thing about this text is, what happens next?
You think about that, that you know that would have happened, and I think what I probably would have said myself is like, you know what? I'm sorry, guys, I I went too long.
Let's wrap this up now. Let's, let's call it a night.
Everyone's tired. We just kind of had this incident. Praise the Lord. Thank This is wonderful.
God brought you to get us back to life. Let's go on our way now.
What does Paul do? He goes right the whole church. They go right back to worshiping. Paul continues his sermon where he stopped it. They go right back to the main thing, the word of God. You know, imagine a miracle happened, and you would think that the church would be like, okay, Paul, like, that's what we need. That's what the church needs. Paul, teach us. How do we do this? You know, if we can raise people from the dead and do all these miracles, Paul, people will believe us.
Then Paul teaches this, stop with the word stuff we didn't just did. Let's do that. Do to do that. Do that. Do the miracle stuff, and people will hear and believe that. And bell that, if you want people to believe Jesus, you got to do these miracles.
But no, what do they go they go back to the main thing. They go back to where real power is found, in the Word of God.
Why the Word of God?
Why such an emphasis on the word of God?
Because the word directs us to Jesus, and that is where true power lies, not with us, but in the Lord Jesus Christ, because Jesus himself is called the very Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. It's about Jesus. The Word of God is directing us to Jesus. The word gives life. Jesus gives life.
Eutychus, again, like all the other resurrections except Christ Himself, they die again. Lazarus rises from the dead. He's dead again.
Eutychus grows up, probably later, but he's dead.
But it's all pointing us to eternal life, everlasting life found in the Lord Jesus Christ.
These saints wanted the word, and hopefully, by God's grace, we want the word, not because we want word. We want Jesus, not just give me more word, much, much word. Give me much Jesus. Much Jesus, much Jesus, because that is where life is found. Not even a death and resurrection are distracting the church from their focus on the word that is Christ.
And as we look to Jesus in the Word, we remember his promises.
We remember that He will gather us from the nations right, that He will cleanse us from all our uncleannesses, that he will give us a new heart.
He will take our stone, the heart of stone, out of us, and give us a new heart and give us His Spirit. Remember Jesus and I.
As we looked at Jesus, we see all of our filth, but that he's washed away in Christ that's cast as far as the east is from the west.
You know, the death of Eutychus probably provided Paul a wonderful sermon illustration to end his sermon on, and also a good transition to the Lord's Supper, you know, we are spiritually sluggish and sleepish. Sleepish.
That's not a word, I don't think, but I'm making it up. Okay, we get sleepy, not only physically, but spiritually. We're kind of sluggish. We get sleepy. The world distracts us to death.
There's a book that I really enjoy. It's called amusing ourselves to death. The world does that to us, and we get involved with that. We just kind of move along in life, and we're spiritually sluggish and sleepy.
We are dead in our sin, in our trespasses and what we once walked but God brings us back to life in Christ by the Word of His power. The Word of God awakens us now from our slumber to remember that we are like grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades away, but the word of the Lord stands forever. Where will you be in 50 to 6070, 100 years from now? RC sproll, that theologian, Pastor, would say, in 500 years, you will be somewhere, and you will be conscious.
Where will it be? You will either be in heaven with all the glories and riches and then with Christ, or in hell and all of your sin and all of your misery. Where will you be awakened now, as the psalmist told us, awaken, there is a holy God in whom we will all stand before, but it's Jesus, the Word, who gives us life. Give us more of Jesus, give us more.
And so now maybe, as we're looking down at the clock, I don't even know what time it is, thankfully, you guys haven't thought too much to put a clock at the back. I don't know what time it is. What time it is.
Sometimes I have a clock. I don't have one now. But rather than looking down at the clock and saying, When is this sermon going to be done? When is this sermon going to wrap up? I think maybe what we could do is, in a sense, be looking down as we pray, or even lifting up our eyes to heaven and crying out to the Lord, when will we get more Jesus?
When do I get more? Do I have to wait till next Sunday?
More now, and even saints, as you know, who we have sighs and tears, and we live in this fallen world. And in a sense, we look down in our clocks and we say, when, Lord Jesus Come, come now, not when? When is this sermon going to be done, but when are you going to come and deliver us finally and freely and bring us to our heavenly home, where you will wipe every tear away, where there will be no more sighs, where there will be no more death but life and life everlasting, and it is found only, only in the word That is the Lord Jesus Christ. So put your faith in Christ and live.
Let's pray, Father, we pray that You would give us, give us more of Christ, Lord, I pray that You would help us to allow the things of this world to grow strangely dim to us, that we might have more clarity on who Christ is, that our eyes might be fixed heavenward Lord as a little ship it feels here in this world being tossed about and the cares and worries and circumstances of this life, let us cast our anchor heavenward and be fixed in the rock that is the Lord.
Lord, I pray that you will forgive us for our sluggish and sleepy hearts. We get lulled to death by the things of this world, by the cares of our.
Hearts, but let us look to you to remember that we are Miss, we are fleeting, we are passing away, and eternity awaits. Then remember that what does it profit a man to gain the entire world but lose his soul? Let us be wise and let us be warned.
Let us kiss the sun, lest we he be angry and we perish in the way. But blessed are all who take refuge in Him.
Lord, we thank you for giving us your word, for not leaving us in our sin and misery, for giving us our Lord, Jesus, Christ, the very revelation.
Lord. Bless your people, we pray, and it's in Jesus's name, Amen.