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Acts 20:17-35
17 Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. 18 And when they came to him, he said to them:
“You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; 20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, 21 testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.1 22 And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by2 the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, 23 except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. 24 But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. 25 And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. 26 Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. 28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God,3 which he obtained with his own blood.4 29 I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. 31 Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one with tears. 32 And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. 34 You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. 35 In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
[1] 20:21
[2] 20:22
[3] 20:28
[4] 20:28
(ESV)
Redeemer exists to celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
If you would, open in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20, or I believe we have the text here in your worship guide. Today's actually the the 4 year, I guess, anniversary of this church. It's kind of hard to know exactly when we started, but it was 4 years ago today that we, at least a group of us began meeting weekly in my home. And, and I just wanna publicly thank the Lord for his faithfulness to us during these past 4 years. This is a sermon I think that's appropriate for thinking of an anniversary like this.
Jeffrey Heine:This is certainly something that I I hope for us, that we can like Paul say this towards the end of his life. These are the last words of Paul to the church at Ephesus. We tend to remember last words, whether it's in fiction. You know things like, Braveheart's freedom or, real last words like Martin Luther's is my favorites favorites. He says, We are beggars.
Jeffrey Heine:This is true. And tonight this is Paul's last words to the church at Ephesus, and this is actually the only recorded sermon we have of Paul to believers right here. We'll begin reading in verse 13, and I'm not gonna read the entire text before you, but we'll read a lot of it. But going ahead to the ship, we set sail for Asses, intending to take Paul aboard there for so he had arranged, intending himself to go by land. And when he met us at Assos, we took him on board and went to Mytilene.
Jeffrey Heine:And sailing from there, we came the following day opposite Caios. The next day, we touched at Samos. And the next day after that, we went to Miletus. For Paul had decided to set sail for 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.
Jeffrey Heine:Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them, you yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the 1st day that I set foot in Asia. Serving the Lord with all humility, and with tears, and with trials. And and that happened to me through plots of the Jews. How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public, and from house to house, testifying to both Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jeffrey Heine:And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you.
Jeffrey Heine:For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pray with me. Lord, I seriously doubt that there's gonna be many things I say tonight that we haven't heard. And so there can be this tendency for us to to not listen or not think these things are important. Not think that your Word is life changing.
Jeffrey Heine:And so, God, through your Spirit, I ask that you would meet here with us in this moment. And may your word go forth like a hammer shattering a rock. May you shake the foundations of our life. God, in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But lord, may your words remain, and may they change us.
Jeffrey Heine:We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I've read the books a number of times, and I really like the movies as well. But there's something that a movie can never do.
Jeffrey Heine:It can never capture from a book, and that's the sense of time that's there. And and Jeff talked about this last week. In Acts, there has been a whole lot of time. You know, you saw that in the Lord of Rings movies. They were long, but but the journey that those people went on, I mean it lasted forever in the books.
Jeffrey Heine:Well the journeys that Paul has been on have lasted a really long time, and yet you can read through all of Acts in just a couple of hours. And so, you know, you read little things like, he stayed here for a year, he stayed there for 3 years, he stayed here for 2 years. That that is is a long time, and those start adding up. This is where we are, when we come to acts 20. This is where we are in Paul's life.
Jeffrey Heine:It has been 30 years since Jesus last walked on the earth. 30 years. 30 years, you know, since, tongues of fire came on those apostles at Pentecost. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus happened 24 years earlier. So, we're 24 years into his journey.
Jeffrey Heine:And so Paul is not the same man that he was when he first came to know the Lord. He's changed. But you just kind of lose this when you have to summarize a person's life in a couple of hours. I look at President Obama now or, former President Bush. You you look at all, like, them before they took their oath, and them now, and they have aged poorly.
Jeffrey Heine:I mean, with with all of the lack of sleep, all of the responsibility, the constant travel, the constant worrying, it ages you tremendously. Alright. Paul's had 24 years of this. Immediately after Paul was converted, the Jews from Damascus tried to kill him. If you remember the story, he had to be lowered out of a basket outside of the outside the city walls, and then he had to run.
Jeffrey Heine:And that just began a lifetime of being on the run for Paul. He was driven out of Pisidia. He was almost stoned in Iconium. He fled to Lystra. In Lystra, he was stoned.
Jeffrey Heine:He was dragged out of the city because they thought he was dead. He was thrown into prison while he was in Macedonia. He was beaten. A mob attacked him in Thesalonica. He flees to Berea, but the Thessalonians even come to Berea, and they they make him leave that city.
Jeffrey Heine:In Corinth, he's attacked by the Jews. He's brought before a tribunal. In Ephesus, right before this, he he causes a huge riot, and he and his friends are beaten up. I mean, it just goes on and on, and then you come here to chapter 20. And so by this point in Paul's life, he has been, he has received the lashes 5 times for a total of a 195 lashes.
Jeffrey Heine:Three times he has been beaten with batons or with rods. He was stoned. This guy has never known a time of peace since he was converted. Never. Often he has been on the move, or he has been on the run.
Jeffrey Heine:Often he would go without food or without sleep. And above all this, he was always burdened for the churches and everything that was going on with them. And even on top of that, he had to make a living. He was a tent maker. And so when you when you picture Paul here, I hope I You don't picture somebody like me or like any other pastor you have seen.
Jeffrey Heine:I want you to picture a walking scar because that's what Paul would have been. He's an old man at this point. I mean, he's got to be either bald or gray. Picture a man whose back muscles have been torn to shreds so many times. I I've had, I can't remember, 6 or 7 shoulder surgeries, and, I can tell what the weather is going to be.
Jeffrey Heine:I used to make fun of people when they would say, Oh, big storm's coming. I can tell you when storms are coming. You know, my my shoulders just began hurting and locking up. Picture Paul. A 195 lashes.
Jeffrey Heine:All the beatings. I mean, it would have He would had so much scar tissue in his back. It would hurt to sit. It would hurt to lie down. It would hurt to stand or to walk.
Jeffrey Heine:The guy had to be in constant pain, and he had to have many facial scars, probably missing a lot of teeth. You you you don't get beaten with rods 3 times or get stoned and not have your teeth knocked out, Not get scars. Not have broken bones. He's been at war. Think of when God called him.
Jeffrey Heine:God never said this said this to any other person. This is how God called him. He said, I will show you how much you must suffer for my name's sake. I mean, how would how many of y'all would like that as your calling? God's calling.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm just gonna show you how much you have got to suffer. And Paul suffered unlike any Christian in history. He suffered so much he told the Corinthians that there were times he despaired of his life. He he told the Philippians, he said, you know what? It'd be better if I just died.
Jeffrey Heine:It would be. Dying would be gain at this point in my life. He told them, for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. And then he said, I count all things as loss. All things as loss, and view the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things.
Jeffrey Heine:He has suffered the loss of all things, at this point. And he says he counts it but rubbish, Because he's gaining Christ. And so, I want you to picture this scene here. Paul doesn't have much time. He's meeting these these Ephesian elders and it's just a little bit of time.
Jeffrey Heine:He just stealing some moments away with them and he kind of pulls on shore. He gathers them them together, and I want you to picture the scene of this bruised, beaten, walking scar. Old man looking these men in the eyes, and then saying these words, my life is worth nothing to me. It is not worth anything to me. If only I may finish the race and complete the task that the Lord's given me.
Jeffrey Heine:Man, I I tell you what, I bet those words hit like a baseball bat to their chest. I mean, I bet it took their breath away when they heard this coming from this man. And I mean I could tell you when when I read these words, something has stirred me. I I want to live a radically different life than the one I'm living now. I just, you know, I just want to sell everything.
Jeffrey Heine:I just I just wanna go off and serve the Lord however I can. I I just wanna do something. I just know my life needs to be a little different, In both the small areas and the large. As I begin to look at my life, I I look back at things like my passion, and I I begin to weep for my lack of passion. And I really think the Spirit of God is stirring up these things saying, Yes, that's right.
Jeffrey Heine:Yes, that's right. Listen to this. Listen to this man. Now there's a lot of people in Paul's day who would have thought he wasted his life. I'm sure there are a lot of peers who who who said, Paul, I mean, what Look at yourself.
Jeffrey Heine:What happened? You you had a great education, the best money could buy. You had all the respect of your peers. You you were rising up in the ranks. And look at you.
Jeffrey Heine:What a waste. Let me tell you, if that is a wasted life, hear me clearly. I'm asking you to waste your life. Waste your life. Throw your life at the feet of Jesus and say you're his, with no reservation.
Jeffrey Heine:Feel the weight of Paul's words, I consider my life worth nothing to me. Don't just passively read over them. Now, what brought Paul to this place in his life where he could say these things? How how did he find himself here? You you gotta ask, was it was it the promise of heaven?
Jeffrey Heine:Was it the promise of all these rewards in heaven that brought him here? The answer is no because before conversion, Paul had still thought he was going to heaven. Paul thought there was a lot of rewards waiting for him in heaven. So that's not why he's saying this. Maybe it's because he no longer cared about life.
Jeffrey Heine:He he, you know, I've met people like that, and they're like, what do you want to do with your life? They're like, I don't know. I don't care, and they've already just kinda given up. It's not Paul here. He's not a guy says, no it doesn't matter.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't really care. He's not one who says, well just, you know, forget this world. Let me leave it and all of its problems and just go to the sweet bye and bye. There's something else that's driving him, and it's simple. It's just this one fact.
Jeffrey Heine:Paul had seen the risen Lord. It's that one simple fact. And when he met the Lord on the road to Damascus, it changed everything for him. Even the most secular historians will tell you that something Paul had some kind of experience. Something happened to him.
Jeffrey Heine:And what happened to him was he read the met the risen Lord. And as I kept thinking about this statement that Paul was making here, my mind went back to our earlier part of Acts that we had studied in Acts 4 when Peter and John had just been persecuted. And they were brought before the officials and they said, Alright. If you don't want to be persecuted anymore, you just got to quit telling people about Jesus. And I love their line.
Jeffrey Heine:They said, you know what? It's impossible. Because we can't stop speaking about what we have seen and what we have heard. Or in other words, when you see Jesus and when you hear Jesus, you cannot stop telling people about Jesus. No matter what you do to me.
Jeffrey Heine:And that's what happens to Paul here. He can't stop speaking about the person whom he has experienced. Nobody can stop speaking if they have seen and they have heard Jesus. And it's Jesus, and it just made me think about me. You know what?
Jeffrey Heine:When I open up the word, I I have my quiet time in the morning. How often is my quiet time a quiet time? It's literally, I just don't hear anything. I read the Bible like I would a magazine or a blog or something like that. Not with this heartfelt desire.
Jeffrey Heine:God speak. Or when we come together to worship, do we just sing? Or we do we sing to Jesus? Have we seen him? Have we heard him?
Jeffrey Heine:When the when the reality of the resurrection hits us like it did Paul, like it did Peter, like it did John, when it hits us, everything changes. My home group this past week, we talked some about this. It's kind of hard to explain, but we we all tried. How there are times in our lives when the Holy Spirit in an unusual way, I think, presses in on us certain truths. Certain truths, and he just really presses them on us, and just gives us, an understanding or a reality, a sense of reality we didn't have before.
Jeffrey Heine:Things like eternity. That's one of the things we talked about. God might, for a moment, press in on you. You will live forever. And it just kind of hits you.
Jeffrey Heine:You know you've always known that, but then it just kind of hits you and you're like, my life is like a little grain of sand on an endless beach. And the reality of that sets in. Or perhaps it's Jesus really affirms you, I am your king. I am your living king. And it hits you in this unusual powerful way and it's it's more real to you.
Jeffrey Heine:And when those things, when those times happen, and I don't know if there's they happen to you. Everybody in our group said, there's moments when when they feel this at times. Don't run from it. I feel like, you know, when those moments happen, the first thing we want to do is kind of medicate ourselves. Somehow numb ourselves.
Jeffrey Heine:Somebody, you know, open up my computer, see what I have to respond to, so I don't have to respond to that. So I don't have to just live with that. Because I realize if I sit here and I really have those things pressed in on me, everything changes. The way I view money changes. The way I view relationships change.
Jeffrey Heine:The jobs I have. My my dreams, all of it changes, and you kind of become aware of that, and so you you you just want to distract yourself. Don't. Paul didn't let anything distract him when Christ was speaking these deep truths in his heart. Let me tell you what, there is incredible liberty in this.
Jeffrey Heine:It's also frightening, but there's liberty. I mean, when you look at verse 22 and he says, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the spirit, not knowing what's gonna happen to me there. I love that line. It's such liberty when you live this way. It's like, you know what?
Jeffrey Heine:I have no idea what's gonna happen to me, But but I'm going with God, so none of that matters. I I I don't know what job I'm gonna have. I don't know what I'm gonna say. I don't know what friends I'm gonna find here. I don't know how badly I'm gonna be persecuted.
Jeffrey Heine:I know nothing about my future here, but it doesn't matter. That is liberating. But it's frightening, because everything has to change. The way you view all of your life has to change in light of the reality of Jesus. So don't distract yourself when God presses in.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, what exactly does Paul mean when he says I consider my life worth nothing to me? Verse 22 again. It says, now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the spirit. Constrained, some of your versions might say, bound to the spirit. It's first time we have this.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, we've been going through Acts for a year. I remember when we started this study last Easter, and I said, you know, it's gonna be like 15 weeks. Alright. We're a year into this. So so you're gonna have to think way through way back.
Jeffrey Heine:But if you remember back in Acts 9, we see Paul being filled with the Spirit when he was converted. Then he was sent out by the Spirit during a time of fasting in Acts 13. He was then filled and empowered by the spirit as he began doing miracles. Things like, you know, confronting Elymas the magician and striking him blind. It says, he was empowered by the spirit.
Jeffrey Heine:Then, you have him being led by the spirit in Acts 16 when the Spirit says, don't go that way. No. Don't go that way. Don't go okay. Go this way, Paul.
Jeffrey Heine:And and the Spirit is leading him. And so up to this point in Paul's life, we see him filled with the Spirit, sent by the Spirit, led by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, but now we see him bound to the spirit. Constrained. Do you do you see that progression in Paul's life? I see so many Christians regress.
Jeffrey Heine:They're like, oh, if I just wish things could go back when I first knew Jesus. Paul doesn't wish that. He has progressed. The spirit is getting more and more control of him, to where he describes as I am bound to the spirit. To bind yourself to someone means that you lose your will or you have joined their wills.
Jeffrey Heine:You know, my wife and I, when we became married, we bound ourselves to one another In which Lauren's joys are my joys, her sorrows are my sorrows, her people are my people, you know, and and vice versa. We we're joyfully bound together. I don't regret it for a moment. Paul is bound to the spirit. Verse 23 describes what this looks like.
Jeffrey Heine:It says, the the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonments and afflictions await me. To be bound in the spirit means that you say yes to the Lord, no matter what. Even when you don't know what's coming or even when you know what's coming is bad. You say, it's not my will, but it's yours be done. You bind yourself to him.
Jeffrey Heine:When you say yes without ever hearing the question. To be bound for us, to be bound to the spirit of God means that you have to let go of any shred of the American dream that you hold on to. You can either live the American dream, or you can wake up to the reality of Christ. But you cannot have both. And so I I am asking you to begin dreaming of things like dreaming of more than, you know, that that large house with a white picket fence.
Jeffrey Heine:Dreaming of more than the next promotion. Dreaming more than, than being married. Make your dreams bigger. Wake up to the reality of Christ. I mean, Paul had all of those dreams too at one point in his in of his life.
Jeffrey Heine:He dreamed about being a good, respectable Pharisee. The Jewish dream. And he let it all go. Called it rubbish. So my invitation to you, my invitation to myself, y'all just hearing me preach to myself.
Jeffrey Heine:These are my thoughts to myself. It's to join Paul in madness that when you're persecuted, it's to count it joy. When you're thrown in a dungeon, you sing. When you're stoned, you just rise up, dust yourself off, and you go right back in the city and preach Jesus. I want you to come and listen to this old bruised, beaten man telling you to waste your life.
Jeffrey Heine:And I pray that at at the end of our lives, we can say what Paul said. He says this 8 years later to Timothy right before he is to be executed. Says, Timothy, the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race.
Jeffrey Heine:Henceforth, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day. And not to me only, but to all who have loved his appearing. Pray with me. God, may we love Jesus? May we love your appearing.
Jeffrey Heine:Lord, we confess right now that our senses are dull to you. That we look at the things that are right in front of us, things, the American dream, things like our homes and our jobs, and those things become so real and pressing to us. God, I pray that you would push into us the reality of Jesus, our king. The reality that someday, everyone here will stand before him, and then life begins forever. God, press these things into us in a way that we just can't force.
Jeffrey Heine:We need your spirit to make these things reality to us. And I pray that you would do that for the glory of Jesus. Amen.