Colossians 4:7-8 - The Journey of Tychicus, Pt. 1

Ron greeted me a while ago. He said, he said, my wife woke me up and said, I must have been dreaming about you because I was praying for you as I woke up. And I said, see, it worked. I felt better than ever this morning.

So I'm counting on you now. Because it's 71. You need a little extra prayer, little extra prayer just to get the whole day behind you. You know what I mean? So good to see all of you though. It's a great day in the Lord and you can be turning to Colossians chapter four, verses seven and eight, where we've made our way verse by verse through the book of Colossians and we're almost done.

Tychicus and the End of Colossians

And you know, it's interesting. It's such a magnificent doctrinal book and you get towards this last little part and all of a sudden I ran in like two Sundays ago, one talk about slavery and I'm going, oh, that'll be awesome.

Lord, could we skip that?

No, David, we shall not skip that.

So we had to preach on slavery. Not your favorite doctrinal topic, but there's some important things there. And I forgot to mention this when I talked about it and I don't know why and Dave Senior naturally reminded me after the sermon.

He said, I thought you were gonna talk about blah, blah, blah but anyway, I did mean to make an application of that to the workplace because even though it's not slavery, a lot of the principles that deal with like a boss and a worker can apply.

You could apply it to that sort of as a secondary stretch, but it could apply. But it's an important passage and we talked about that and then I thought, okay, now what's next? And we look and here it starts just like from verse seven all the way at the end of the chapter, it just starts listing these names, which were helpers of Paul.

And I'm going, now that's gonna be fascinating. You know, should I skip that? And the Lord says, no, we're not gonna skip that. So we started out, let's look at chapter four of Colossians verses seven and eight, read along to yourselves as I read it here and this is where we are.

It says, all my state shall Tychicus declare unto you who is a beloved brother and a faithful minister and a fellow servant in the Lord, whom I have sent to you for the same purpose that he might know your estate and comfort your heart.

So he sends Tychicus to share with them Paul's estate. In other words, how's Paul doing? He's gonna tell them how Paul is doing and then gather information about them and bring it back and tell Paul how they're doing.

And this was his specific mission. And so it's interesting, but I got to thinking about that. I said, wouldn't it be interesting just to take a trip with Tychicus and see what he might have learned from Paul.

And so that's what we did. You know what, I'm gonna, let me do this right quick. So you can kind of see the scope of this trip because this was part of Paul's third missionary trip. And when you can actually see the scope of it, it kind of helps you relate to the amazing work that the apostle Paul did.

Let's see here, I've got to minimize a whole bunch of stuff here and pray that you don't get to see my desktop. Is this like my real desk? But I know where everything is, except for this PowerPoint. Where is it?

Colossians chapter four, maybe that's it, let me see. Ah, yes, that's it. Okay, let's see if we can get this thing to join us. So it means a little more to you when you can sort of see some of this. That'll pop down there in a second, Lord willing, anyway.

How fast I did that? Without Dave even up here. Sorry, Dave, you're fired. I don't need your help anymore, look at that, it's perfect. Watch it go out now, definitely gonna go out.

Dave, help me.

Okay, so to find, I want us just to pretend you are Tychicus and you're gonna meet up with Paul and you're gonna see some amazing things. And, ah, perfect, I was wanting that last time. The professor strikes again.

Also, if your children need any help, let me know.

During the service.

Because we preached on that, by the way, about three Sundays ago. There's two Sundays, I mean, it came right from Colossians. Verse by verse, right? And we hit this thing about your father's, you know, well, children obey your parents in the Lord, but this is right.

And then the next one, for the father is not to... Provoke is the word I looked for. Not to provoke your children to wrath. So we talked about that. So there's two sermons on child-rearing. You should check that out.

It's life-changing, especially for the child. Okay, where are we?

Let's see.

Okay, so let's go into the book of Acts chapter 19 and we'll pick this up about where Tychicus met Paul. And notice it says in Acts 19, one, and it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth. Okay, let's look up here.

This is, Apollos was over here. Now this is the known world in that day. The Roman empire, Apollos was here. And now look where it says Paul was. It says, Apollos was at Corinth. Paul, having passed through the upper coasts of Ephesus and finding certain disciples.

So Paul had traveled from Antioch up through the upper part of what they called Ephesus, but it's just an area here. This is Asia minor. And he had traveled up through here and landed here. So he's here and Apollos, one of the other great preachers was over there.

Now they had two ways they could travel, basically three really on a camel's back or in a ship or walking. And Paul, I don't think liked camels very much because he was either on a ship or walking most of his time.

So let's review just a little bit and we'll get into something new that Tychicus is gonna learn about the apostle Paul or by watching him and traveling with him. So as they began to talk to people, Paul was an evangelist and he wore a lot of hats.

He was an apostle first of all, but also an evangelist and eventually did the work of mostly of an evangelist. And an evangelist is not someone who comes into a church and preaches for two weeks necessarily.

And that would be a revivalist. A true evangelist is someone that's doing what Paul is doing here exactly, where they just go off into areas where no one has preached the gospel before and they preach the gospel and they see souls saved and then they disciple them for a short amount of time, sometimes up to a couple of years, but not forever.

And then they move on to the next new area. And this was the apostles Paul's great ministry other than being an apostle by office. So he runs into certain disciples and we know from last Sunday, if you were here, that these were disciples of John the Baptist.

And John the Baptist preached a slightly part of the gospel, but we call it the gospel of repentance. And he was the forerunner of Jesus. So it was a little bit, it wasn't the whole gospel, but he did tell people that he that's coming after me is greater than me.

And he said, hear him. So he pointed people to Jesus Christ and he called him the Lamb of God. And any Jew would know what that meant. Any Jew who had ever heard anything from the Old Testament would know that meant all of the Old Testament sacrifices, animal sacrifices were a picture of the true Messiah who would be the Lamb of God.

And that's all he had to say for them to know who he's talking about. And he said, this is him right here. So these were John the Baptist disciples who heard him say that and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Messiah.

And now Paul runs into them. So let's see what happens. He said unto them, have you received the Holy Ghost since you believe? Now you have to remember, and this is what we talked about last Sunday, maybe the most important thing we said last Sunday was that the book of Acts is a transitional book.

It is probably the worst book you could pick in the whole Bible to base your doctrine and your practice of a New Testament church upon because if you don't understand that it's a transitional book, you'll get it wrong.

And if you don't know the 10 rules of proper Bible interpretation, which you can grab that out on our website if you don't have it. And if you don't know those and use them and not cheat, but be true to those rules, you'll get it wrong in the book of Acts.

And the whole Pentecostal movement, by the way, and we have many friends, especially in Tradeway who are Pentecostal and charismatic, and where they get it wrong is they will, sometimes they'll use the phrase, we're full gospel.

What that means, it's kind of like a rebuke to us because what they mean by that is that we don't believe the whole Bible because certain of these parts in Acts, we don't practice. And they think that means we don't believe it, but actually we do believe it.

And we study it as much as they do, maybe more. It's just that we apply the proper rules of Bible interpretation to these passages. And so what we learn when we do that is this is a transitional book going from Old Testament to New Testament, going from Judaism to Christianity, and then going from a predominantly Jewish church.

Most of the first people saved, the first probably 8 ,000 people that were saved were Jews and came from Judaism and were born again. And then after that, as you progress through the book of Acts by the time you get to about chapter 10, it's very quickly becoming a predominantly Gentile church because God said through the Apostle Paul that God had blinded the Jews so that the age of the Gentiles could come in.

And so they're partially blinded. And there's some Jewish people, my mentor was a Jewish believer with four earned doctorates in theology, two of them in counseling actually and two in theology. But that was unusual.

He was one of only three Jewish believers who were preachers at the time, back in the, what, I guess, 60s, 70s, only into the 80s, Dr. Rocky Freeman. His sermons are on our website, you should hear them.

They're fantastic. But anyway, that's unusual. It's a predominantly Gentile church. So you've got all these transitions from Jew to Gentile, from Old Testament to New Testament, in other words, law to grace, and then from, what'd I say?

I said Judaism to Christianity, that's the other one. So it's a transitional book. So you don't wanna try to hit part of that and say, well, we can apply that today. So we'll just apply all of this work today in the mature church age.

It doesn't all work today. And my new book got postponed again. Already told you about it last Sunday. It was supposed to go live on Amazon Tuesday, wasn't it? And all of a sudden, my main man with the publishing company and his wife went for a baby checkup and they had an emergency.

And so now he's home for paternity leave. But he said, I'm gonna get with you in seven days and we'll get it live because he wants me to be with him when he does it. But anyway, that's coming out. There is a lot in that book about this transitional period.

In fact, there were about 400 pages just on that. And I got rid of 200 just because it was too long. So there's still 200 pages on that in the book. And it's so important. And we talked about some of this last Sunday.

But look at this. Don't you think it would be odd nowadays if you walked up to a group of believers in the modern church, the mature church age, and you were convinced they were believers and you said, but have you received the Holy Ghost?

Now, the reason that would be odd is because by the time you get to Acts chapter 10, when Gentiles heard the word of God preached, when they heard it, if they believed, they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit right there.

No one laid hands on them. They just were indwelt the moment they were saved. And that has become the modus operandi all through the entire mature church age. That's how it works now. Everyone in here is a testimony to that.

When you were born again, the Holy Spirit came to dwell in your body and was sealed there by God himself the moment you were saved. And that is how it works. However, here it didn't work that way. Can you see how that could be confusing to a person who goes to a church where they don't understand that it's transitional?

They say, well, we have to do everything that we read here in the book of Acts. And so now they have people saved and maybe they forget the verses in Ephesians and all through the epistles of Paul in particular.

And even when Jesus talked about, I will send the comforter. And at the day of Pentecost, he has been with you, but he shall be in you. Remember that? That's the indwelling. And they forget that. And so now they tell these people, well, you need a second blessing.

You need to have a time later when you get the Holy Ghost. Well, they already have the Holy Ghost. So it's bad doctrine and it's bad practice. It doesn't even work that way. And so guess who would come in and counterfeit and pretend he's the Holy Spirit in these events?

That would be Satan and his demons. And it happens all the time all around us. Now, don't get me wrong. I got some great friends in those denominations and they're always sweet people. We have some in this group right here that grew up that way and they don't believe that way anymore, but they grew up that way.

And they can testify to how they do strange things like try to teach you how to do a spiritual gift. They're not teachable. You either get it from God or you don't have it. But they'll teach you to speak in tongues, for example.

You can't teach that. I mean, they do, but they're not teaching the real thing. They're teaching gibberish. And the true tongues were languages. We know that because the scripture says so. So all of that is counterfeit.

I call it the counterfeit modern tongues and faith healing movement. It started in 1901. And the history of that's in the book too, although I took out 200 pages of this stuff. I'm gonna write a book that's only about that whole thing eventually and put that in it.

But there's enough in there for you to see the history. Now, here's why it happens. They get into these transitional passages and they don't understand they're transitional. And really it's your job to give them some help in that area if the Holy Spirit leads you to do it.

If he doesn't, don't do it. Don't ever get into a Bible debate unless the Holy Spirit leads you to do it. But if he does, don't be afraid. Okay, so here, what we learned last Sunday is that these people were John the Baptist disciples and they didn't know about Pentecost.

They didn't know that had happened. And also they're Jews. They wouldn't be following John the Baptist if they weren't Jewish. They were Jews. And what you'll find in this transitional period is that the Jews brought a practice from the Old Testament of laying on of hands, such as the prophets and the sons of the prophets did when they were gonna have a new prophet like Elisha and Elijah, then the older prophet would lay hands on the new and impart that unction from God so that they had the ability to prophesy and so forth.

They brought that into the New Testament during the early portions of the church when it was Jewish. And then by chapter 10, when it was predominantly Gentiles being saved, you see that when Gentiles got saved, they did not lay hands on them.

And even after chapter 10, there's a place somewhere around, well, here's an example in chapter 19 where Jews were saved and they did lay hands on them, right? But this goes, they were Jewish and Jews require a sign.

The apostle Paul taught us that too. So we see all these transitional things. And another thing we discussed here is that after he told them about the Holy Spirit, he said, well, how were you baptized?

And they said, we were baptized by John's baptism. And so Paul re-baptized them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Isn't that interesting?

And that's the proper way. That is not a sign from heaven. It might be, let us know if it is. All right, so we talked about that a little bit last time. And so then the Holy Ghost came upon them and they spoke in tongues and they prophesied.

Now, at the moment that the Holy Spirit indwelt them, they spoke in tongues. These are called sign gifts. They passed away as the apostle Paul said they would. He said they would cease and they did. So this doesn't happen anymore, but I will tell you this.

It is gonna start again, the second three and a half years of the tribulation period because the Bible says it will. So it can't start again if it didn't stop. Does that make sense logically? It had to cease in order to be re-established.

So all of this is clear. It's just, if you go to a church with a creature that gets it wrong, maybe on purpose, maybe because he doesn't know better, then you get taught the wrong way. And then it's hard for you to see the scriptures pretty clear on all this.

So anyway, you don't want that to happen in your family, if possible. So here we see now they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, but the sign of the indwelling was that they spoke in tongues at that time.

And so that came with the indwelling. So this idea of a second blessing where they get saved and then three years later, someone teaches them, oh, well, you need to learn to speak in tongues. And then they try to get them to do that.

And they say, now you've got the Holy Spirit. Well, they've had the Holy Spirit since the day they were saved. It's just bad doctrine. And so Satan knows that. And anytime you delve outside the truth in spiritual matters and you try to do it the humanistic way, in other words, the way men make it up and figure it out, rather than the way the Bible says to do it, demons have permission somehow to come in and get involved and begin to deceive people and to mimic the Holy Spirit.

And that's what's happening in these churches. It's very frightening. It gets people off of the real mission. What is the real mission, by the way? Is it for us to come in here together and speak in tongues and act spiritual and just have a high?

What is the real mission of the church right now? It's to take the gospel, to be salt and light, to go out there and witness. Now I'm gonna tell you, even Paul says this. If a stranger were to come in today, and we don't have any strangers today.

Everybody's home folks. You've all been here before, some of you forever. All right, but so if someone came in off the street new and Sharon stood up and started speaking in tongues, that person would think that either Sharon was crazy or all of us were crazy.

And the apostle Paul says that in scripture. He said, they will think that you've gone nuts. So the first thing that happens when churches practice this is it runs people away from the gospel. They don't wanna come in there.

I think, you know, we've had some examples of folks in this congregation that went into a church like that and that stuff started happening and they ran out the back as quick as they could. So Paul says that.

So it's very important to get this right. It is hugely important. It's one of the greatest heresies in my lifetime. And what preachers will do, if you go back and study preachers for the last thousand years at least, whatever the big heresy is, they'll preach a lot about that.

So I've written extensively on this subject for 45 years now and it's a major problem. Well, let's keep going. Look at verse 10. And this continued for the space of two years so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.

So Paul did a good work, didn't he? Everyone, Jew and Gentile had access to the gospel in this area where Paul was. And then look at verse 11. Now here's some of this transitional material. And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul and they took handkerchiefs and aprons or anything that had touched Paul and they would give it to people and all of a sudden they'd be healed.

Now you've seen TV evangelists fake that and for money though. Paul didn't ask for money, but they always asked for money for the handkerchief. Send me 250 bucks, I'll send you a prayer cloth, right? It's mimicry, it's fakery.

But in this case, the scripture makes it clear because look at the word special, special miracles. If you, and I'm not gonna do it again because we did it last Sunday, but if you look at the Greek on that, it means a miracle that other men couldn't do, just Paul could do it.

So obviously that's not one we're supposed to copy and make it part of our church method. And yet people do it in the charismatic movement all the time because they don't look at the word special or they don't care about what the word says.

They wanna do it anyway. All right, and then it goes on down. Let's go into verse 24. And this is sort of new material at this point. So now Paul in verse 24, he runs into this particular problem. You have a silversmith named Demetrius, which made silver shrines for a false goddess, Diana, and brought no small gain unto craftsmen.

In other words, not only was he wealthy, but he was making craftsmen wealthy too. So he gathers together all of these craftsmen. I mean, this is almost like the Teamsters mob in the United States, right?

The Teamsters, often the leaders of those things are almost like mafia. My dad was in the FBI for 17 years and he had to deal with that. And he told me stories about it, how the leaders of the union sometimes would be mafia people.

Really tough, like people would die around them and stuff like that. Sometimes they would be killed. If they didn't do what everybody wanted, they'd kill the leader. Remember Jimmy Hoffa? Remember that name?

If you're my age, you'll know it. My dad said the FBI looked for his body and never found it. Then he thinks it's inside some cement under a freeway is what the theory was that they had. Well, look at this guy.

Here's the leader of this mob of people who make money off of making silver objects to worship Diana with. And here the apostle Paul is preaching about the true God, the one true God and his son, Jesus Christ, and saying that the others are false gods.

Now look what kind of trouble this could have gotten Paul into. Although in this case, it didn't yet. Anyway, so Demetrius calls all these people together in verse 25 with the workmen of like occupation and said, sirs, you know that by this craft, we have our wealth.

So now we see the love of money, which the Lord taught is the root of all evil. So you can have a problem at this point. Moreover, you see in here that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all of Asia, this man Demetrius says that this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people saying that they are not true gods, that Diana is not a true God, which anything you make with hands are not true gods.

And he's blaming Paul for ruining their business and their religion. And the business end is the more important to this guy,.

You can be sure.

So Paul is attacking two things, their money, their wealth, and their gods, their false gods. So when you do that, you will be attacked by them because they are servants of Satan and Satan hates all of God's children and certainly anyone that speaks out for the Lord.

And so here they come, here they come now. They've risen up, they're angry. And verse 27, so that not only this, our craft is in danger to be set at naught, but also the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised by the people because of apostle Paul and her magnificence should be destroyed whom all Asia and the world worship.

And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath and cried out. Can you imagine a mob? We've seen a few mobs in our country in this last year, haven't we? Last year and a half from Antifa to everything else, defund the police, yeah, that's a brilliant idea straight from Satan.

And all of this stuff is going on and they're full of wrath and they cried out saying, greatest Diana of the Ephesians and the whole city was filled with confusion. Now there's a sign of Satan right there.

He is the author of confusion and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus who were some of Paul's friends that were with him and they were from Macedonia, which is basically right above where modern day Greece is.

And they were Paul's companions in travel and they grabbed these two and they rushed with one accord into the theater, dragging these men and probably pretty brutally with them. And Paul wanted to go in there because those were his men.

He wanted to go in there and the other disciples held him back and would not allow Paul to go in there. And some therefore cried one thing and some,.

This is the mob,.

Some another for the assembly was confused. There is a sign of Satan, right? And more part knew the huge part of these people did not even know why they had come together. They just knew they were a mad angry mob, didn't even know what they were angry at yet.

Isn't that like what's going on in our country nowadays? And they drew Alexander out of the multitude and the Jews putting him forward and Alexander beckoned with the hand and would have made his defense into the people.

So he was gonna say, look, you got it wrong. You know, I'm not trying to just ruin your religion. I'm just talking about the true religion. And he put his hand up and tried to give his own defense. But when they knew that he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours shouted greatest Diana of the Ephesians.

Now, how many of you have seen on TV, these Trump haters start shouting these little slogans and they'll go down that street for hours, shouting three or four words again and again. Same thing, nothing's changed.

It's the same enemy. We battle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places. And it's the same. Now here, their hatred was not based on any fact at all.

That's because they were confused. They didn't even know why they were there, but it was based on rumor and propaganda and emotion. And it's the same today. But then it ends with something that has risen up in the last year and a half, more than I've seen it in my lifetime in this country ever, and it's antisemitism.

So now they find out one of them's a Jew, and now for two hours, they chant these words over and over again because they want to kill the Jew. But unfortunately, we see here in verse 35, the town clerk shows up and you can be sure he's got a bunch of men with swords and spears with him.

The town clerk, it's like the mayor, shows up and he appeased the people. And he said a few words to appease the people. And he says, for you have brought hither these men, which are neither robbers of churches, that means the false church of Diana.

You know, some people would go in there and steal the silver. They're not robbers of the silver and they're not blasphemers of your goddess. And so he dismissed the assembly and forced them to leave lest he start harming some of them.

So they left. And that's kind of what you have to do with an angry mob. Is you gotta let them know you mean business, which we're not that good at anymore. Our government's not, but Nixon was pretty good at it.

All right, so now that mob disassembles and no one was, I think the two they drug in there were probably beaten up pretty badly, but not killed. So now all the disciples are back together. So look at Acts 21, it's just the same story continuing.

And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples and embraced them and departed for to go to Macedonia. So now he's going to move. Did I get that wrong? Chapter 20, verse one. Oh, did I say chapter 21?

Ah, going too fast. We have so little time, which will be funny when you read this part with me. So Acts chapter 20, verse one.

Thank you, Ms. Mitchell.

And after the uproar ceased, he called them together and he embraced them and he departed. So they got all beaten up and Paul leaves. Says, y 'all, you know, you're speaking the truth, so watch your back.

And he leaves. And so Tychicus is one of the people that goes with him into Macedonia, which is back up north, or over, well, back up north. No, I'm sorry. They were in Ephesus, weren't they? So they head east across toward, no, I'm wrong.

Yeah, I got it right in the first place. They go northwest. In fact, I wanna change this to the next one so you can see better. Oops, it didn't change it up there, did it? Okay, this is the third missionary journey.

So they had come across this way and they were in Ephesus and now they're gonna head over that way above Greece. So that's a long way. And you can see here, it takes some time. And when Paul had gone over those parts, now, am I still in chapter 20, verse two, right?

Does that look right? When they had gone over those parts and had given them much exhortation, so everywhere he went, he preached the gospel and preached doctrine to the new believers. He came to Greece.

So he's gone from here up this way and around this way and over to Greece and Tychicus is with him at this point. And there they abode for three months. So Paul didn't just lead people to Christ, he would disciple them for a while, anywhere from three months to a couple of years and then he would go to the next place.

And when the Jews laid wait for him, so he was supposed to take a ship, but he found out that they were gonna try to kill him. And so he was about to sail to Syria, but he purposed to return through Macedonia.

So rather than sailing, he went up north and went back. Can you see that arrow at the top that heads back up, like number seven and heads back down this way? So instead of sailing straight across, which would have been faster, he goes by land to avoid being killed by these guys that were waiting for him at the shipyard.

And someone warned him about it because the Lord told them to probably. And so there he heads up in a different direction. So there came in verse four and there accompanied him into Asia, a sopator of Berea and of Thessalonians, Aristarchus, he was one of the ones dragged into the mob, I think, and Secundus and Gaius of Derbe, Timotheus, who Ben's been teaching about in Sunday school, Timothy of Asia, and here's our friend Tychicus who we're following along on this trip, and Tophemus.

So these all went with him towards Macedonia. And we kind of know that Tychicus was from Asia and he met Paul in Macedonia and traveled with him back towards Asia. Now these going before, so some disciples did go on the ship, went ahead of them, but then Paul went by land.

The ones that went before went up to Troas and you can follow it on that map up there. And they sailed away from Philippi. And you see all of these Bible locations that you read about on this map. After the days of unleavened bread, now that's the week of Passover, right?

Very special time for these Jewish believers. And came unto them, and they weren't all Jewish, Timothy was with them, so he was Gentile, and came unto them to Troas in five days and then they stayed there seven days probably to rest.

That was a long trip. And upon, now look at this, upon the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread. There is a lot out there today. Judaism always tries to rise up in legalism and there's a lot out there about you should worship on Saturday because that's the true Sabbath.

It is true that the old test, the Sabbath in 10 Commandments was Saturday, not Sunday. But when do we see that the early church met? It says very clearly here that they met on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, and they met to break bread, that is to have fellowship like we will after this message, and Paul preached.

So they met together for fellowship and other places, for prayer, for preaching, and for doctrine. So they met on the first day of the week, not on Saturday. Now, if you look at history, you'll find that some of the Jewish believers met on Saturday and Sunday.

But there is no precedence for us to have church on Saturday but there's a lot of false teaching about that out there. You'll hear it on YouTube. People say, well, why we should be meeting on Saturday?

Well, you can listen to it if you want to but you need to read the scripture. They met on the Lord's Day, which is Sunday, and this is the method for the church right here in the scripture. So they met on the first day of the week and Paul began to preach.

Now look at this, I love this part. Paul preaching to them, ready to depart the next day. So he's gonna head out on a long trip the next day. So you'd think he would get to bed around eight o 'clock and get a good night's sleep, but it says he continued his speech until midnight.

So I think we should use Bible methodology. What'd y 'all bring for supper, ladies? I love this part. People have accused me of preaching too long and I just think, well, I think biblically I preach too short, actually.

And it goes on, it said in verse eight, and there were many lights in the upper chamber. Why does the Bible say that? Well, let me ask you what. If you're in an enclosed room with quite a few people, congregated, you didn't have electricity, and you had candles and oil lamps, what does that do to the oxygen in the room?