A Word in Season: A Lord's day in Troas (Acts 20:7)

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It is the first day of the week and the place is Troas. The Apostle Paul has been in this place for about seven days and he's due to leave on the next day.

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And so the disciples gather together in Acts chapter 20 in verse 7. They want to break bread together and Paul begins to preach the word of God to them.

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And at midnight he is still going and there's a young man there called Eutychus and Eutychus is getting sleepy.

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He's in a window, he falls out and the disciples bring him up dead but Paul, by the power of God, is able, in God's mercy, to make him alive again.

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It's an occasion that brings forth many wry comments and snide remarks about long -winded preachers and sleepy hearers.

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But I would suggest to you that the lessons to be learned from Paul's ministry in Troas and even

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Eutychus' weariness are not to do with the length of sermons or the attention of hearers.

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Bear in mind it's the first day of the week. It's the day of resurrection, the day on which our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

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And these disciples in Troas have the Apostle Paul with them. They have an opportunity to come together as a congregation to break bread and that's often, typically in fact, a reference to the

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Lord's table. And the Apostle Paul takes the opportunity to preach to them.

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Now, is this an example of a preacher who doesn't know when to stop? Does Paul get his second wind, as it were, sometime about 11 o 'clock and having begun at a good hour for worship, maybe 6 or 5 .30

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or around that time, he's still going four hours later. And then there's

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Eutychus, this sleepy lad, another example of a young person perhaps who can't quite keep his eyes open during the service.

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I would suggest to you that what's going on is far more precious than that. This first day of the week is the day when typically the

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Church of Jesus Christ would gather together. It was the day of resurrection, the day in which

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Christ had made it his habit in his risen glory to meet with and to teach and to strengthen his disciples.

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And so you've got this group of men and women in Troas and their priority is to gather together.

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But they're a mixed bunch. They come from all kinds of different backgrounds and circumstances. And it's at least possible that given all those different pressures, they cannot gather together on the first day of the week until later in the day.

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That's a mark of their appetite. And Eutychus is there. Now, there's at least again a suggestion that Eutychus might have been a slave, in which case

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Eutychus has been hard at work probably the whole day through for a master who may well not be a

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Christian. But the believers have found an environment and an opportunity for them to come together in order to worship

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God and to hear his word as part of that worship alongside of the breaking of the bread.

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And Eutychus is there. I don't think it's so much surprising that Eutychus falls asleep.

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I think it's wonderful that Eutychus bothered turning up. I think he's probably sitting in the window because it's the coolest place in an otherwise hot and perhaps airless room.

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And he's trying to stay awake so that he can feed upon the word of God and come by faith to feed upon Christ at the

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Lord's Supper. And it's there and then as Paul takes the opportunity that he has been willing to seize, to preach at the very end of the

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Lord's Day, to just before he's due to depart. And Eutychus and these other brothers and sisters have gathered together.

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What you have here is a demonstration of the value that God's people put upon meeting together for worship of God on the first day of the week.

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And we may be deprived of that. We may have that opportunity. I hope you treat it the same way that Paul did and the way that Eutychus did and the rest of the disciples in Troas.

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I hope especially perhaps when the season that many of us are now in of being deprived of the opportunities to gather together with the saints, we are going to be in our place, even if it's on a windowsill, late at night on the first day of the week, gathering together because there

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God meets with His people, His word is preached, the bread is broken, there is fellowship with Him and with one another and for God's people there is nothing more precious or more desirable than that.