Acts 20:1-6
When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece.
Sermon Transcript:
Invite you to take your Bibles to Acts chapter 20. Uh, acts chapter 20. We’re gonna be looking at verses one through six. So we return to our series in the book of Acts, the Spirit at work to the ends of the Earth. Excited about this message because it is a unique and a short passage, but the more I dove into it, the more I got excited about what I think is really portrayed here.
We’re gonna look at verses one through six. Let me read aloud to you in Acts chapter 20. After the uproar cease, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia. When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece.
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 pass through and return through Macedonia Sour. The Buran son of PRUs accompanied him and of the Thessalonians. Arista and NDA and Gais of Derby and Timothy and the Asians cus and Trois.
These went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread and in five days we came to Troas where we stayed for seven days. Let’s pray,
Lord, this morning. First of all, I just want to thank you for your word. I thank you Lord, that we are not left to the voices of culture. Most of all, we’re not left to the voices in our own head. We can hear the voice of God and Lord, we want to approach your word that way. This morning we ask you to teach us to, uh, as people.
Here in this room, there’s people here in Collingswood. There’s people here in the prayer garden. Really need to hear the scriptures speak into their lives this morning as you make yourself known to where they are. So God, do that. Enable us to hear, to respond in Jesus’ name. Amen.
It was April 23rd, 1909. Teddy Roosevelt, now out of the presidency, was going through a European tour. He had just finished a big African safari with his son and he’d been invited to speak at Paris at the University of Paris. And while there he spoke to the large theater that was at the University of Paris, the large lecture hall.
And he presented what has been become known as Tr R’s greatest speech. Although he didn’t entitle this, it has been given the title, the Man in the Arena. Here’s one of the statements he made. It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. Who strives valiantly, who airs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows? The great enthusiasms, the great devotions who spends time, spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement.
And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Spoken by tr these sentiments of being in the arena, of, of being an engaged player in the theater of life that is going on was very much at the heart and the passion of the Apostle Paul.
For him to be a man in the arena and to passionately follow his calling to be a representative of Jesus Christ in his life and in his generation, it is his passion to call others to do the same. And in this pivotal moment in Paul’s life, we find that we are seeing an apostle. Who is finishing 10 year, a 10 year missionary journey?
Actually three of them. He has spent the majority of that time in the last three years in Ephesus, a the largest and most prominent city in the Roman Empire other than Rome itself. And as he is there, his eyes are now opening to a return to Jerusalem and he hopes then to a whole new mission to Rome and then to Spain.
He writes around this time of his sense that his work is in a transition season. He says it this way in Romans 1519, written around this time. He said, from Jerusalem and all the way around to Lyric, I have fulfilled the ministry of the Gospel of Christ. And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation.
This is a map that I’m gonna bring up here that just portrays the area where Paul has been ministering on this last missionary journey. And if you see the red portion over there where the, the red line comes across and goes up, you see the city of Ephesus and the city of Ephesus is where he has spent the last three years.
He’s going to have a short joint and we’re gonna talk about that joint. But actually, when he leaves Ephesus, he is in his mind, done. He is now just going to do a couple of things we’re gonna talk about because they’re really interesting to understand. But he’s now saying, I’m, I’m finishing and I’m just going to visit the churches that I’ve already started in Greece and in in Macedonia.
But basically, I. I am completing my role to this point. Now, it’s a striking statement. If you notice verse chapter 20 verse one. It says, after the uproar, uproar, Paul leaves. Well, this wasn’t uproar. If you remember last week we were talking about the idle makers of the city after three years have had it with Paul and the Christians, and they, they’re, they’re, they’re causing the demise, at least the lessening, the diminishing of their idle ministry, their work, their, their livelihood.
They’ve got the people of the city all worked up that their glory, which was the temple of Artemis, the largest physical structure and the entire Roman Empire, is now gonna lose its prestige. And so they’ve dragged the, the followers of Christ into a theater, the 25,000 seat theater. They’ve had this crazy protest that’s going on, and it’s taken the township manager, basically the pro council of the town to calm everybody down.
And then we say after this uproar, And you think after this uproar where now the Christians have been front page headlines, I mean, they’re the lead in story for every network after this uproar, Paul determines to leave. And you wanna say, Paul, what in the world you thinking? I mean, this is your moment, man.
This is when, when there’s never been more opportunity. Yeah, sure. It’s a little hot. But I mean, what what’s going on, Paul, is, is this, uh, speak the truth and leave immediately afterwards type of thing. You know, you can say what you want as long as you can get out of town. Well, we find as we look at the context in Acts 19, verse 21, Paul had already decided to go back to Macedonia and he’s already sent two of his partners ahead of him.
Paul is wrapping up his three missionary journeys. In, in that passage I read a moment ago, Paul said, I have preached the gospel from Jerusalem. That’s way over here in the yellow. And he said all the way to a lyric. If you look way up on the top in the orange part, AUM is just outside of the map. He says, this entire map, I’ve done my job.
I’ve spent 10 years planting the gospel. Now I’m going back to be sent hopefully to Rome and then to Spain. So at this moment, Paul is particularly concerned about his final messaging to his churches and we find as we study this passage and, and some other things that will play in that Paul is particularly burdened about the people that are in the churches that are not in the arena, that they’re not wholehearted.
That they’re playing it safe, comfortable with the talk, but not the walk. For Paul, you are all in or you are living like you are all out. You can’t really straddle the line as a Jesus follower and also try to be a world pursuer. And Paul is now passionate about this and I’d like to demonstrate in this passage, Paul’s passion for those that are, are sort of in the balance as he presents two things he’s passionate about.
First of those, he is passionate about stoking the flame of Christ-centered living. You see what he did in verse one and two. Luke describes his role first in Ephesus, and then when he travels up to Macedonia, where Philippi and Thessalonica were, it says this in verse one and two. After the uproar ceased in Acts 20, Paul sent for the disciples that’s from Ephesus.
And after encouraging them, He said farewell and departed from Macedonia. Verse two. When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. His ministry at this time in Paul’s life is defined by Luke as centered on the role of an encourager. Now the word encouragement, parlo and the original is a verb that actually is translated, encourage exhort, comfort, uh, plead with, it carries the idea of of urging people, particularly when it is related to public ministry or public preaching.
The word carries more of an exhortative statement. Um, we actually do this as well. We even use the word encourage. This way we, we think of encouragement. Meanwhile, it’s giving a pat on the back. It’s supporting people. It certainly does involve that, but we also use the term in this way. I really encourage you to go and see her.
I encourage you to, to leave this job and, and go find something else. Well, we’re not then giving ’em a pat on the back. We’re saying, go for it. I mean, go talk to her. Go, go pursue, get the resume out. Get it out there. It’s, it’s a motivational sense. This is the sense in which Paul is going to these churches.
He’s speaking to those that need incentive, urging, exhorting, the word exert. We don’t, none of us use that. I, I exhort you to do this, but we urge people. We might even say, man, I, I plead with you to go and talk to her. That’s the sense here that Paul is going around when he has this last swing with Christians.
It is though, in these churches, it is that what is in involved, his ministry in this season is more motivating. Than teaching. He is spending his time with believers here primarily, and some of them now have been Christians for a while. Some of them are starting the next gen. Some of them are the next gen coming up, and Paul is here pleading with them to be all in.
And this really is Paul’s focus. Let me demonstrate this, bring the map up again if we could. And this time I’ve added two stars. The blue star is Ephesus, where Paul starts. Then it says he goes to Macedonia. And while he is in Ephesus, Paul wrote the letter to the Corinthians, first Corinthians. He also wrote them a letter that we don’t have called the, the, the lost letter in which he just, he really laid into him because of what he saw in the city.
But in the third letter, which is in Philippi in green. He wrote two Corinthians when Paul wrote his letters. He uses the word encourage, exhort, plead with urge, challenge people to move forward no more than nine times in any of his letters. When he wrote Second Corinthians to the Corinthian church from, from Philippi, he used the word 27 times the whole letter.
This time of Paul’s life, Luke is getting it right. This is what Paul is about. He’s, he’s urging those that are sort of playing on the sidelines that, that, you know, aren’t quite really in. And yeah, I’m not, you know, am I a Christian? Yeah, yeah. But am I living like, well, you know, no, he’s saying, come on, he’s urging, he’s challenging.
This season, Paul, as he goes back through, is challenging Christians who have known him for a little while, who know the jargon, who know the language, who have maybe tasted. Some of it reminds me of the danger that is creeping in for them and for us. Chad Walsh describes it in his intriguing book called Early Christians.
In the 21st century, millions of Christians live in a sentimental haze of vague piety with Christian music playing in the background. Their religion is a pleasant thing of emotional quivers. Divorced from the will, divorced from the intellect, and demanding little except lift service to a few harmless platitudes.
I suspect that Satan has called off as attempt to convert people to agnosticism. After all, if a person travels far enough away from Christianity, he’s liable to see it in perspective and decide that it’s real. It’s much safer from Satan’s point of view to vaccinate a person with a mild case of Christianity so as to protect him from the real disease.
I think that’s what Paul was feeling. It’s those people. He says, I, I, I, I wanna touch them when I get to their churches. It’s who I wanna wanna, I wanna write about to second Corinthians. He says, it’s the people that have sort of become inoculated against the real disease because they, they know the jargon, they, he’s passionate for these people.
Why was it necessary? Well, Corinth was a classic example of a church that had lost a passion for godliness and for them like us, it was slow, it was insidious. But as you look at the Church of Corinth, from through the eyes of Paul’s letters, You find that it was a church that was in conflict. Uh, pride was there, sensuality was so overlooked in people’s lives.
That, that, Paul has to write about this. A guy that evidently has some degree of prominence in the church and he’s sleeping with his stepmother. Well, the father is still alive, and he says, what are you thinking to the church? He says, even, even people in secular life don’t look at this as appropriate, but he says, get some fire in your lives.
You look no different from the world.
They had slid into a godless life, and I’m sure as and, and the joyful thing. We’ll see in a moment. The Corinthians did repent and turned to the Lord, but I’m sure if you interviewed a lot of those people, it would’ve been this kind of a moment for me. They would’ve just said, I. I, I just don’t know how I got here.
I just don’t know what happened. All of a sudden, I was doing things, I was gone places. I was immersed in practices. I can’t believe how I got there. I can’t believe the things I was choosing.
I had this con, I’ve actually had this conversation a few times in the last few weeks. I really believe in our day, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, and if you’re saying, I, I’m, I’m trying to straddle, you know, which actually means you’re really stepping back in or for the first time into a lifestyle, you know, is not ultimately honoring to Christ in days past.
I think you can step out of Christian life and you can sort of go to here. And you, you know, and, and it’s not that different. You can’t do that in our culture anymore. You step out of a Christ-centered lifestyle and you’re stepping here, you will find yourself being drawn into the, I cannot tell you the number of conversations I have had in the last couple of years of people saying to me, I just have no idea how I got from here to here.
I’m not talking just about young people. I’m not just talking about young adults. Paul is passionate for people like you, and he’s saying, rekindle the fire, embrace Christ wholeheartedly. And he’s saying, I exhort you. I urge you, I plead with you. He’s doing it by letter. He’s doing it by personal conversations.
So what was needed to get the flame rekindled? Well, we see two quick things, obvious things that the New Testament talks about. Obviously, you have to be with God. You have to know God wants you to be with him. And you remember the book of Micah where God says this to a people that were, were it replete with sins in their life.
He said, remember this, God delights to show mercy. God delights to show mercy
being in the presence of the Lord, allowing the Lord to meet the very needs that we thought that had to be met in this way or this way, or this way, or this way. But ultimately, we find that God meets and satisfies. The other way that we rekindle the fire is you’ve gotta be with God’s people. You got to.
Hebrews chapter three says that th th in verse 13 talks about exhorting. Here’s what he says, but exhort one another day every day, as long as it’s called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. He says it this way in Hebrews 10 25, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.
Not neglecting meeting together is the habit of some, but exhorting one another in all the more, as you see the day of approaching, there’s not one person here that is in this room, in the Collingswood building, that is in prayer garden, or that is in your own home or your beach home this week that was wired as a Christian to do a solo flight.
You’re not wired that way. You’re not made that way. You’re not created that way. God designed you to do life with other people, and the people that you are with and living with are shaping the direction of your life.
Paul was consumed with wanting to rekindle this fire within these people’s lives. The second thing Paul is focused on, not only stoking the flame, was to strengthen the bonds of Christ-centered unity. If you look at verse three and following, you see Paul, let me jump down to verse what happens in verse 20, verses one and two.
He leaves, he makes the trip, he’s gone. As I’ve mentioned to these various places, and as he goes, we see some interesting things. As you put together the epistles of Paul and you put together the timeline, the chronology, and the maps and everything, what you find out is Paul is now traveling with a big picture vision.
He has a specific practical reason. He is revisiting the churches at this time before he goes back to Jerusalem again. He’s actually picking something up from them. He’s not only giving, he’s receiving, he is in intentionally using a plan that he has to try to unite the Jewish and gentile arms of the church in oneness.
He’s regularly taught about unity and now he’s doing something practical to try to aid it. At this time, Jerusalem believers were in extreme poverty. There had been a drought in the land they have also received, uh, so that already affected things financially, but also they have been ostracized and there are tremendous financial crises.
The, the followers of Jesus were experiencing Jerusalem. What Paul is now doing, Is he is going back. He’s already seated it through some of his letters. He’s going back through some of the churches. He started in these gentile regions and he’s doing collections. He’s gathering money. He’s going to have a lot of money with him as he’s traveling now, because he is going to take it back.
It is his plan to try to bring unity of the churches. I think that’s one of the reasons he has eight companions as he is traveling with him. Luke and seven other guys that are mentioned here in verse four.
But it’s striking as you see where those guys are from. If we can just bring up this map. This is my last map by the way. Um, these areas in red, Yes, they represent where these ambassadors, these these guys with him are from. Basically, he got representatives from everywhere he had been involved that are gonna assist him and go with him as they bring the gift to the Jerusalem Church.
He says, all the Gentile churches, all the people that have come out of Paganism and received our Messiah, our Christ, the Christ they’ve all participated in this offering for you guys, was Paul’s way of emphasizing the unity of the body. These companions, however, not only represent geographic and ethnic diversity, which they did by these various reasons, they also represented social and economic diversity.
Let me give you an example. If you look in verse four, there’s two guys that says, that came from the city of Thessalonica, the Thessalonica Church. The first guy’s name is Aris Starke. The word Arista from which we get an aristocrat actually means born. Well, it actually, it, it carries the idea of, of a person, of nobility, of wealth.
I mean, slaves didn’t, didn’t name their kids aristo. If they did, they would’ve been quickly required to change it. It was a name that was a home born, uh, name given to homes that only had the right to be associated with the aristocracy. There’s another guy from the church in Thessalonica. His name is Es.
The word Es means second. In homes that had slaves, often slaves were born. Yes, and were considered enough of second class citizens that they were not allowed to be named. They were given numbers by their owners. That’s slave one, that’s slave two, that’s slave three. You have a man in Paul’s traveling companions from the same church that is at the height of the social class.
You have one that is at the bottom of the social class, and I just think Paul is intentionally designing this group to say the church is different from anywhere else. It’s not a homogeneous group, which simply means same genus, same kind like genus is as dogs or genus. And then you have a bunch of different kind of dogs.
It can be a hyena as well as a dashen. There, there’s a genus of cats. You can be a, a kitten, uh, in your household, or you can be a a a, a cheetah. You can be a horse. I mean, you can be a stallion. You can be an a Arabian horse, and those are the horse. I’m gonna screw this up if I’m not careful. You can be a, uh, you can be a zebra.
I mean, I, I think that can be a horse, right? Somebody’s gonna correct me. I absolutely know I’m over my head already. But you the, but what, what Paul’s saying is, no, no, we don’t just keep the dogs together. We got cats, we got horses, we got everybody. Every part of the social structure, every part of the cultural divide, every part of ethnic diversity.
He says the church is not to be a homogeneous group. It is to reflect the diversity of culture. Where else do people do life together like that? Except in Christ. Paul was passionate about seeing this in the big picture, continually fostered. It also was his own personal passion to have unity with others.
My last background insight from this passage is this. As Paul made this journey and he left Ephesus, Paul’s, Paul was actually in a great deal of pain. Paul had just sent his, his second letter, the one we don’t have to the Corinthian church, and as he sent that letter to them, he had Al, he had been actually rejected with his authority.
They were, they were saying, well, some of us of are of Paul, but others were saying we’re of Peter, we’re of Apol. And some of the spiritual ones said, well, no, no, no, we’re of Jesus. And he had four different groups. And, and as he had tried to talk to them with First Corinthians letter, he’s basically been rebuffed.
And that’s the word he’s gotten. He’s heartbroken. He writes a second scorching letter, which God did not preserve for us to see, but Paul acknowledges it was a heavy note. He was burdened, but he doesn’t know how they’re responding. So when he leaves Ephesus, we’re told in second Corinthians two, Paul went to Troas, Troy before he went over into Macedonia, where Thes, where Tessalon, Ike and Philippi are.
And he went to Troy for one reason, he says it in second Corinthians two. I went to, I, I went to Troy because I thought I could meet Titus there who had just been in Corinth, and he could give me an eyewitness account. How, how are they doing? How did they respond to my letter? Is there any signs of repentance?
Is where are things? And he says, I got to to Troas in two Corinthians two. He says to him, I was bitterly disappointed cuz he wasn’t there. So then he got over to Philippi and that’s when he wrote the second Corinthians letter. And he said, I was overwhelmed with joy when Titus told me that we had been reunited in our spirits because you had taken my letter and, and you dealt with the situation.
The guy who has involved the stepmother repented. And, and, and you have, you have honored Christ and, and you are welcoming me back into your hearts.
Paul had a big picture, longing for unity, right?
But it was born out of a deep seated personal longing for unity in his own life. I don’t know what’s going on in your life right now. No. Sometimes there are conflicts with people that cannot be restored, but every relationship we have, we are called to seek to have resolution and reconciliation that from our part at least, there has been a humility to take ownership of our own sins, to try to make things right.
We can talk about big picture unity if we don’t have small picture longing within our own lives. This is Paul. At this point, let me just show a coup, throw a couple of final thoughts. The enemy’s out to stop both of these things, rekindling the fire in Christians’ lives, and also to bring about oneness among God’s peoples.
A striking thing that happens here in verse three. Let me read it for you in Ephesians 20. There in Corinth. Paul 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. This little footnote statement is fascinating.
Paul was ready. It says he was ready to leave Corinth, that part of Greece and go directly across to Syria, which is where Jerusalem and Antioch, where he started were from. But he doesn’t, and if you remember the map, which I don’t know if you will or not, but basically he went back up through the area.
The reason he went back up is because he found out, and most believe what it’s saying is that this plot, which you in the Book of Acts all four times is used, always referred to a plot to kill somebody. That there was a plot on the ship to kill Paul and throw him overboard. Paul got word of it and went a different way before he went back to where he was actually destined and desirous to go, which was Jerusalem and Antioch.
The devil’s always at work, and it’s striking in the midst of all this, this that’s going on, you have this sort of shocking thought. Oh, by the way, there’s guys planning to kill you on the ship, and Paul has to reroute. The enemy is out to stop us from living out the passion for Christ. The other thing is the believers gotta pursue both.
There has to be time with God, just has to be. You are listening to voices all day long, every day. Voices around you, voices in your own head. If you’re not processing that with the Lord, if you’re not processing that with God’s people, you’re coming to conclusions that are not going to deepen you in your walk with Jesus.
But here’s the reality. God wants you, he wants you. He’s extending an invitation to say, how about today we, we start to rekindle the fire. For me,
this is the invitation. This is the admonition I think Paul would have to us if he visited our church and he says, yo, this, this believer’s there you got a lot of people that have embraced Jesus as their savior. So I wanna speak to those that are sort of riding the fence or maybe are in a place where they say, mark, you’ve just described me.
You have no idea where I am today. You have no idea what I’m really into, and you just look out at me and I’m a church person and there I am. You have no idea the choices I’ve lived out.
Well, I know I don’t care, and I know a hundred times more. The Lord doesn’t care. He doesn’t say to you, okay, now we’re gonna start from here. And if you start moving back, moving back, moving back, moving back, moving back. You get about here, I’ll be there for you. It’s not what he says. He says, wherever you are, he delights to show mercy.
You may not know it. It may hard be hard for you to wrap your arms around this, but God is crazy about you. He wants you. Let him. Amen. Lord,
we come to you as our Father. We come to you as the one who delights to extend mercy. Lord, as we close our service this morning, you’re the one that looks into every heart and knows exactly where people are. You’re the one that knows who you specifically chose this message to share with which individuals, Lord, it’s for them that I plead right now, that your spirit would give them eyes to hear, eyes to see our heart to respond, ears to listen, that they might run to their Father this morning.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.