Sermon Transcript:
Acts chapter 20, like to read verses 17 and following to you. Now from my elitist, he, Paul 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 first day that I set forth foot in Asia serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, and with trials that happened to me through the 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 both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
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 affliction await me. But I do not account my life of any value, nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course in the ministry that I receive 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 space again. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God 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, which he obtained with his own blood.
I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise. Men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not see S night or day to admonish at admonish everyone with tears.
And now I commend you to God into the word of the grace, which is able to build you up. And to give you the inheritance among all of those who are sanctified. I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who are with me in all things.
I have shown you that by working hard and the 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. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. There was much weeping on the part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him being sorrowful, most of all because of the word He had spoken that they would not see his face again and they accompanied him to the ship.
We come to this passage this morning, we’ve been looking at the Book of Acts, and as we’ve been looking at it, we are looking at the, not only the earliest record of the early church, but actually the most authentic portrayal of Christianity in life. We have this picture here that has been personified for us in the life of Paul and those that he has discipled and mentored.
And we see a church, particularly here in Ephesus, that has received the prominent in investment of Paul into their lives. He spent three years here and now he’s on his way back. He’s heading back to Jerusalem. And on his way back on the third missionary journey, he asked to meet with the, the leaders, the elders, the pastors, and the lay overseers, the lay the lay leaders of the congregation.
And he’s meeting with them in this emotional meeting. And as he does so, he gives what many have recognized as a classic challenge to leaders in the church of their role and, and the heart they should have. But it also is a passage and we could, we could focus it that, that way we could focus on the, the responsibilities of church leaders.
It’s certainly here, but this is the only sermon in the book of Acts where Paul or Peter is actually directing just believers. He has been using many messages to present the claims of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ. But here he is focusing a messaging to Christians, to a church that he has invested more of his life in than any other church.
And so the where I’m going this morning is to focus on what the church, what we should expect the church to be about. And there are three things that I think we need to know about the church. There are three words. First of all, we need to know about tears. Second of all, we need to know that the church will be not only a place of tears, but a place of terrorist attacks.
And most prominently, it is a place for truth. The church is a place of tears. There’s tears from pain. As you look at this passage and as you, if you spent time just meditating and reflecting on it, you would find out that this passage is all about tears. Three times. Paul talks about crying in verse 19.
He says, I came to you with tears in verse 31. For three years I did not cease day or night to adminis admonish you with tears. In a later verse, in another verse, he will talk about tears, and we’ll look at that in a moment. Three times. This most powerful representative in the history of the church is associating.
Himself and the church with tears. He says in verse 18, you know how I lived among you from the first day I got to Ephesus? I came with humility, tears, trials. The word humility. Here is a term that was a, a word. It was a derisive word to the Romans. They never talked about humility in positive terminology.
To them, they were the the people to be mocked. They were people that were the lowly, the weak, the despised people. Christianity transformed the word into a term of glory. Christians can embrace their flaws, their brokenness are willing to say, I see the seed of every known sin in my own heart. I need God.
I need forgiveness. I don’t have to hide my addictive behavior, my fears, my anxieties. As our Celebrate Recovery Ministry highlights, it’s a place to say, I have hurts and hangups and habits. It’s a slogan they use at CR and is beautifully in, in this beautifully welcoming community for people that identify with it.
But it’s actually the message of the church. It’s for people with hurts and habits and hangups because we all have them. The beautiful thing about the church, it is a place for tears and sorrows. It is a place of vulnerability and weakness and brokenness. Now, maybe you’re here and, and your wife or your significant other got you to come to church and you’re not a church person, and you’re sitting there about this point and saying, what the heck?
This is a place for losers. This is a place for, for, for the, the defeatist. A bunch of mopey people walking around.
Do you agree? That’s true. The church is a place where people come and don’t have it all together. But I want you to understand the power of that. Every person here in Mount Laurel, every person here in Collingswood or watching online, is a person that has fear, that has pain. That has stuff that weighs on them at times hard.
Our culture says this, ignore it. Get through it. Work harder. Drive yourself more. Put your head down and run faster. Fill your life with something that will silence that stuff, that will bury the tears, that will bury the weaknesses, that will bury the struggles,
whether it’s work or substances or pornography or a thousand other things. And the church says, no,
this is a place for tears. This is a place for vulnerable people. This is a place for people who are recognizing there’s rejection. They feel weak, they feel alone or are just coming to realize how selfish. And difficult, the person, they are a, they are to live with. This is a place for tears. Maybe you’re also out there thinking, well, you know, mark, I I, I know that, I mean, I am that person and, and, and, and I’m aware of my stuff and I’m aware of, of, of the stuff than in my life.
But I come to church and I, I came to church today to, to leave that stuff and, and, and to not think about it. Well, and, and, and basically the way I do church is, is my idea is I’m gonna leave all that emotional stuff and all that struggle in the parking lot, and I’m gonna come in and for an hour I’m gonna get a chance to just forget it all.
And then you’ll go out in the parking lot and you’ll pick it back up and you’ll get in your car. That’s not what the church is. Here’s what this worship service is for. This worship service is to be a place where you don’t have to leave that stuff in the parking lot. You bring it in and you are introduced to one who can shoulder those burdens, who can carry those struggles?
Who says, I embrace the tears. I embrace the vulnerabilities and the weaknesses and the needs. This is what the church is
so that when you leave this service this morning, you don’t have to pick up your stuff that you left out there because you brought it in and you’re leaving with one who is carrying it for you. The church is a place for tears. The church is a place. For people that don’t have everything together and never will this side of glory.
And quite honestly, some of the highest and holiest moments that will take place in this building in the Collingswood building this morning will come where a couple of believers get together and somebody just says, well, you come alongside. I am so weary. I am so struggling with stuff, and somebody just puts their arm around their shoulder and prays for them and helps them bring their tears to the throne of God.
This is the church. This is why we’re here. This is what it is. The church is a place for tears and the greatest representative of it since Jesus Christ. Paul had no problem saying. I embrace the tears. I, I am helping create something that is a place for tears. Secondly, the church is a place of terrorist assault.
I mean, is this a positive sermon or what? Here’s what he says in verse 29. He says, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among their own selves will arise. Men speaking, twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. A contrary to ambush predators, that’s an actual term of things like, you know, the cat, lions, tigers, other ambush predators that, that tend to use the element of surprise and then just quickly bolt and take you out as a predator.
Wolves are different. Wolves are what is called endurance predators. What that means is they chase you down. They have a long, they have a, it’s called a lop. The way they run, they lop along and they’ll run for miles even, and they’ll go as a pack, even after a group of animals, or in some cases even people, uh, their goal is to separate the week and to get somebody to bolt from the safety of the group.
And eventually when they sense someone is vulnerable, they will go in after it. It’s a horrible portrayal when Paul talks about wolves are coming. He said, my job here, when I’ve been here these three years, I, I’m, I’m, I’m the face of trying to protect this thing from wolves. God, the spirit has gotta do it, but I’m gonna be gone and I know the wolves are coming.
The wolves are those, I believe in the church at large and in individual churches are the ones that come to try to, to separate, to try to divide out, because there’s. Strength in unity. Right? And there’s weakness in separateness.
I’ve been doing this for a long time and I know a lot of pastors that have done it for a long time. There is no church on planet earth that is not subject to the devil’s influence to try to bring disunity in the body. It just is impossible. It will happen. There are no harder people to deal with in any church than the contentious people, the people that you don’t really have a sin.
You can say, you know, well, you’re involved in immorality, you’re involved in stealing, you’re in, you’re involved in this. It, it’s more just a spirit of, of criticism and, and looking for the latest hot button issue to push and, and be agitated about and, and, The striking thing with the devil, I think with the wolves environment is
the devil has a way of pulling people and have no relationship necessarily with each other. And all of a sudden you find that there this pack of of contentiousness and you find out that these people have nothing in common except what they’re upset about. And you think, how did these people even find each other?
They have no connection, and I believe the devil just works. We have been protected from this in an amazing way by God’s grace for years, and I really believe that the unity of our body is an absolute gift of God. But there is no church that does not struggle. Labor to keep unity. And Paul is saying there’s constant terrorist attacks that come.
It happens in the most healthy of bodies. It is one of the preeminent roles of leadership to recognize it, pray against it, work against it. All right, I want to get the third one. The church is a place of truth. Five different words are used for Paul as he talks about his ministry in these three years in Ephesus.
They’re all words describing his work of teaching. He talks in these terms about declaring teaching, testifying, proclaiming, admonishing. I’m gonna share some uh, things about that, that the teaching he did was profitable but painful. I’m gonna spend more time in this than the other ones. He says this in verse 20.
I didn’t shirk from declaring to you anything that was profitable. The word profitable is actually a monetary term. It’s a, you get a good return on the investment of this teaching. He says it’s also translated beneficial for that way. For that reason, he’s talking about, this is stuff that what I’ve been teaching you will help you grow.
It has benefit to your life. In one and second Timothy, he talks about sound or health teaching it it, it helps you prosper in your spiritual lives. The proclamation of truth is beneficial for the listeners. He says, now here’s Paul preaching. For three years in this city, whose chief Glory was the temple of Artemis or Diana, her likeness was carved into thousands of idols, which were in every home and every business establishment.
Paul had to teach about God. He had to make known the truth about God, and in order for them to profit spiritually, they needed a right view of God, right? I mean, you can’t really know somebody or do relationship with somebody without really knowing who they are. You know, I might have somebody come to me sometime and say, well, mark, when I think of you, I think of an atal.
I think of my visual of you is like a, an Italian truck mechanic that lives in South Philly. You don’t know me at all. If you want to know why, talk to Doug Lindo. Who annually as I would show up at the nativity work days with my tool belt on, would point out that there was not. There was not, there was no wear on that belt.
There were no stains on that belt. The only time I ever wore a work belt was to the nativity workday once a year. I don’t do truck mechanics, I don’t do car mechanics. I don’t do lawnmower mechanics, and quite honestly, my wife Marianne would be more effective as a truck mechanic than I am. So we can’t do life together if we don’t know who we’re dealing with.
Right? Well, Paul is talking about who God is. He’s presenting the character of God, and as he does so he presents the majesty of what it is to live with God. But he also talks about ourselves. The two go together. I’ve said this before without question. The greatest doctrine that is being assaulted in our generation is the doctrine of anthropology, the doctrine of man, or the doctrine of humans.
How to look at humans, how to understand humans. It’s why the creatorship of God and our human understanding of ourselves follow parallel tracks. Paul was teaching this stuff in the city of Ephesus, whose concept of God and humans was so different from the biblical concept. The Bible says you’re created as such.
There is a designer of your life. You’re not just here by random chance and climbed out of some primeval swamp millions of years ago and eventually accidentally turned into you. You’re here for a reason. Your life is a purpose. You don’t have to create purpose for your life. Or decide on a gender or create a moral code that works best for you.
God has provided those things for you. You’re created to know him and to make him the central reality of your life. And as you do so, life will make sense and have order and purpose such teaching is beneficial for people. It’s interesting, in one Corinthians seven, Paul uses this word beneficial. And there he is talking to, uh, guys that were struggling because they weren’t married.
And he says, guys, I wanna explain to you God’s purpose for those that are married and God’s purpose, for those that are unmarried. And here’s what he then says in verse 35. He says, I say this for your benefit. I, I’m explaining to you God’s perspective on your humanness and your human estate. As I was reflecting recently on this, this whole thought of.
Of God’s truth about himself and, and ourselves being beneficial and profitable for our lives. I came across an interview on npr, national Public Radio, and it was an interview done by, uh, Rachel Martin with Ray Wilson, who has written a book called Soul Boom, if we can put that up there. Um, and the book, uh, soul Boom.
Oh sir. And you may not know Rain Wilson, but you know Rain Wilson because this is Rain Wilson,
and he gave a clear statement in the interview. Rain Wilson is on a journey towards God. He is not a believer as portrayed in the book, but he is on a journey by God’s grace towards God, I believe. And in the book, he is talking about his coming to, uh, renounce atheism in his twenties on his own search, his own emotional journey, his own struggle in life, even in the height of success in the world.
He came to the conclusion that God was the creator. And as such, life is not random and without purpose. I’d like to just read you a quick answer from the interview. Rachel Martin from NPR said this after he’s made some clear declarations about God as creator and life than having purpose. She says, I stand in awe of your assuredness as someone who myself is seeking some kind of intention in the randomness of life.
But how do you know it’s not all just random rain Wilson? How do I know? I guess the best analogy I can give is that I know that I love, I know that I love my wife. I know that I love my son. I know that I love my father who passed away a few years back. But how do I know that if I went to a scientist and said, prove to me that I love, and they say, well, we’re going to do some brain scans and look at what parts of your brain light, light up and, but that’s not love.
Love is not simply a chemical, neurological response. My experience of love is far deeper and more profound than that. So the first step in knowing there is a creative force in the universe. I know there’s love. I also know there’s beauty. I also know that there is art and there is music, and all of these things that are ineffable and a transcendent transport.
My spirit are footprints. There are handholds on the path to finding God. Interestingly, his statement is very similar to what CS Lewis says in some of his books of how God uses those very things to to be a witness for himself. The striking part of the interview was not only listening to Reign Wilson, but it was then when you went to the, the woman that was doing the interview and she was then actually being interviewed by another person from npr, Sarah McKibbon, who is the one many of you may have heard, she does a podcast called All Things Considered, and basically Sarah says, what was it that drew you to this interview with Ray Wilson?
And Rachel said this. To be honest, these are some of my own personal preoccupations. You know, I’m thinking through the same things. What is our purpose here in this world and how do we create meaning in our lives? So I’m doing this series to explore these questions in a new series called Enlighten Me.
Sarah then responded, Rachel, I’m so excited for this new series, selfishly, because I think about this stuff all the time. I can’t wait to see what you discovered. People are looking for purpose and meaning, and Paul says, I’m presenting to you what is profitable in your humanness. What is beneficial, what is healthy to realize you are not here randomly.
You are created by God. You are designed by God. This is the messaging that Paul is presented under the shadow of the most famous religious figure, uh, in in Artemis, in the entire eastern part of the rest, Eastern ur, the European Empire. And he’s saying that doesn’t speak to the human longing for meaning and purpose.
What does. What I’m telling you about God and how God wants to be the center of your life, how God has come to offer you life. Paul says, I’m teaching stuff that is beneficial. It’s profitable, P people, and he poured into these Ephesians truth about God and about themselves. But Paul acknowledges in this statement, and I should have read the verse.
This is the verse. I’m basing all this on where Paul says, teaching is profitable but painful. He says this in verse 20, I did not shrink about declaring to you anything that was profitable. Paul is acknowledging in that statement that what is profitable is often painful. He said, I didn’t shrink from it.
Why does he say that? Because he wanted to shrink from it. Because he said there were times I didn’t wanna say the hard stuff. There was times because I recognized there were going to be things that were rejected. The Bible is going to be offensive to everyone. At some point in time, there’s going to be stuff there that is going to be offensive and hard to put our arms around.
There is no culture that will always agree. It is Sora cultural. It is beyond human culture. In the Middle East. When you talk about forgiving people, unless they have totally owned what they’ve done and, and even then there’s questions. If you leave off vengeance with forgiveness, when you talk about forgiving people before they’ve repent, repented, it’s considered ridiculous.
Vengeance is appropriate and assumed. In our culture, forgiveness is admired, not practiced so well, but it’s a, we admire people that forgive others. But when you talk about sexual boundaries in our culture, That the Bible declare man, everybody’s hackles will go up. Cultures have different perspectives, will consider things in the Bible, outrageous.
Even in the church, our conviction biblically is all the pastors are men will believe in the sovereignty of God in salvation. It’s so hard to swallow for some people understand there are things in the Bible that are tough to put your arms around at times. But one of the arguments for the Bible being true is that is not culturally dictated.
There’s no culture in the world that is going to listen to the Bible and say, yeah, everything there just naturally. It’s exactly how we all live.
But it is one of the great arguments for the truth of the Bible that it takes us beyond our culture, beyond our background to truth that we. Come to see the value of as we embrace the God behind them, find out which part of the Bible’s teaching you’re most offended by, and see that as the place where God wants to work in your heart.
I hate that. I don’t understand that my God’s not like that. Maybe not,
but maybe your God is a God who is not enough beyond your understanding to be a God that can stretch your faith and really be a God that will grow you. Just because he isn’t comprehensible in this thought, in this teaching doesn’t mean that we say, well, you know, I, I, so Paul says, I was willing to tell you the stuff that you didn’t want to hear.
I was willing to not shirk. Which literally means to pull back. We all understand that, right? You know it. It’s the old, I’m really willing to speak the truth as long as I can leave immediately afterwards. Paul says, I was stuck with you guys, but I didn’t shirk because I believe the truth is profitable.
It’s healthy, it’s beneficial, but all of us will have parts and pieces that we have to wrestle through. Paul says, I preached truth that was profitable, but there was pain. I’m gonna be fast on the last ones. It was practical. Look at verse 20, and teaching you in public and for house to house. Paul preached in public meetings, but he also had discussions in homes.
The Bible’s truth is not a theological creed to just memorize, but life-giving, life-changing truth to apply. There’s a verse in Deuteronomy 29 29. Here’s what it says. The secret things belong to the Lord are God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
What God is saying, there’s a lot of things about you that, about me that I haven’t made known in the Bible. You know, I I, but I’m telling you, everything that’s there
is for you to go by. It’s all practical. It’s all valuable. It’s all there because these are things that will bless you and your children forever. The Bible is astonishingly practical and relevant.
Paul taught with pulls and pushes, verse 21, testifying both to the Jews and the Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The word repentance is metanoia. In the Greek, it’s from two words. Meta means change. Noia is from noose. The word from mind, it’s changing your mind. It’s repositioning your thinking.
It’s allowing God to speak a different perspective of not only him, but of you. It’s coming to say, you know, I always saw my life as decent guy, not the best. I mean, mother Teresa and I don’t run the same circles, but, but uh, neither do I run without all Hitler or Rasputin, but I’ve changed my mind as I’ve come to hear from God.
That my sin is deep, that I’m separated from God because of sin, and I’ve come to change my mind and, and see that God says my sin is serious enough to separate me eternally from him. And Paul says, once you’ve grasped that and you’ve accepted that, that’s the, that’s the pull. I’m pulling you away from that thinking.
What is he pushing you towards? Not despondency when you see what’s true, but he says, I’m pushing you towards faith in Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ has come to this as a substitute for us. Which leads to the last thing under truth. Paul was passionate about grace. Verse 24, he says this, 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. Paul’s whole message, he says in verse 32, is summarized in the word of his grace. The message of grace is the message of the scriptures. It tells you a message that tells you the worst and tells you the best.
No one understands grace without first understanding the worst, that you are more evil, more wicked, more self-centered than you would ever have dared believe, but you are more accepted, cherished, and loved than you would ever have dared hope so much so that God sent his son to this world to not only reveal his father, but to redeem you.
To make a way that you could be brought into a personal relationship with God forever. He came not for the righteous. Jesus said he came for sinners. He came for people that recognize their need of grace and forgiveness. He came for people that are broken and struggling, which is true of all of us. But he came for those that are willing to, to embrace it and accept it.
He came to offer grace. He tells us the worst, that we can understand, the best, that there is a way out, and our lives can be transformed by the power of the gospel. And Paul says, this is what the church is, right? The church is a place for people that are struggling, that are hurting, that are fearful, that are people of tears.
It’s a place that is gonna be assaulted by the enemy. Do you know right now this morning? The devil is way more concerned about what’s going on in this room than what’s taking place on the battlefield. In Ukraine and Russia, we’re not making the headlines, which is fine with us,
but there is nothing the devil wants to do more than to assault the place where healing is offered, where the message of grace is declared. Maybe you’re here today or you’re watching online, or you’re here in Collingswood and you’ve come in this morning. There’s just so much going on. I mean, life is just, there’s all these gnats swinging around your head, and life is just outta control, and you’re not really even sure why you’re at church.
Here you are.
You are here. That God could say to you. He is a God of grace, and he is a God that doesn’t want you to leave your problems in the parking lot and use church as an escape for an hour. It’s a place to come and embrace grace. It’s a place to share your burdens with God and then receive from him his grace, his forgiveness, his strength to carry you
wherever you are today. If you haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as your savior, our hearts longing for you is that you know the Savior that many of us have come to love. We’ve all come as broken people. We’ve all come as sinners who needed a God that is a forgiving God, that is a God that calls himself a friend of sinners, A God that the prophet Micah beautifully describes one of my favorite expressions in the Bible.
It says this about God. He delights to show mercy. We need a God like that, right? Let’s pray. Lord, we delight in you today. What we want to do when we gather together, what we want our church to be is a place where people are stunned with God.
Lord, we come with all of our tears. We come with all our vulnerabilities to the enemy we come with, with all of our faults and prideful held presuppositions of how life should be our own clamoring to be greater than, to be strong, to be put together.
And then, Lord, you allow those seasons in our life where the the rug is pulled out and we left and confronted with our weakness. We sort of crawl back to you and are just stunned to see again the time, after time after time. You welcome us because you delight to show mercy. Lord, we worship you. We love you.
We’re stunned by you. Lord, I pray even what we would take from this room this morning is a desire to live with you more passionately, love you more deeply, and to serve you more faithfully. In Jesus’ name, amen.