Acts 20:1-16 Serious Ministry of Encouragement

I heard an amen there, thank you. Might be the only one I get all day. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered, and a young man named

Eutychus sitting on the window sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer.

And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him and taking him in his arms said, "'Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.'

And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while until daybreak, and so departed, and they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted.

But going ahead to the ship, we set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul aboard there, for so he had arranged, intending himself to go by land.

And when he met us at Assos, we took him on board and went to Mytilene. And sailing from there, we came the following day opposite Chios, and the next day we touched at Samos.

And the day after that, we went to Miletus." They're just bouncing all over the place. For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he might not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hastening to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

Let's pray. Father, as we come to your word, as we get an opportunity to just read and to take it in, we hear details, we hear history, we hear circumstances of the life of Paul, and sometimes it can be hard to discern exactly what you're trying to communicate to us, but I ask that over the next hour, we would get an opportunity to worship you, to recognize that you are a

God of encouragement, and then to see, as we break down this text and understand it and apply it, to understand your call on our lives to encourage one another, to build up the church, to strengthen one another.

And we are the church. The church is not this building or this place. It is the people.

It is us. And so, Father, I ask that we would encourage one another, strengthen one another in this world where we live, where we walk as strangers and aliens and people who are, in essence, countercultural.

I ask that you would provide strength, kind of strengthen numbers, strength with one another.

And Father, as we get an opportunity to worship and as the band leads us, I ask that you would even give them hearts of encouragement, encouragement that they would worship and that we would see their hearts as well and that that would rub off on us.

So Father, I pray that we would worship you in truth as we sing these songs, that these words would become our words as we sing them to you.

I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. I wanna encourage you to, encourage you, to get up and get some coffee, get some donuts at any time during the message.

We want you to just be able to keep your focus on God's word. Yeah, Dave, go right back there. There's some donuts for you, too. Awesome. Hopefully, you were encouraged in worship, too, that you were built up and strengthened.

And the interesting thing is I looked up in, how many of you ever have, when's the last time you looked something up in the dictionary?

People still use dictionaries? A handful of you? I'm gonna use an extremely important resource called dictionary .com.

I'd encourage those of you who just raised your hand to check that out, too. The word encouragement in the

English language, this is what dictionary .com says. It says, to give support, confidence, or hope to someone.

Think about those three words, support, confidence, or hope. Good things for us to be sharing with one another in the body of Christ.

Good things for you to come together on Sunday morning and to offer to each other. Would you agree that those are things that we need to go and step out of these doors and go out through our weak, confidence, support, and hope?

I think we all would agree that those are things that we need to be offering to one another, that we need to receive from one another, as well.

But if you think about the root of the word encouragement, it's kind of like, if you break that word down, it's kind of like a compound word, n, meaning to put in, and courage, meaning courage.

So to encourage somebody is, in essence, to infuse them with courage, to help them to walk with courage through their week.

Think about it that way. Have you ever thought about that word, encourage? It has the word courage right in it, to help somebody to be courageous throughout their week.

There are many reasons that we need courage in life, and I think we're gonna walk through some of those later on in the message by the end.

So that's kind of the point. If we're honest, we've all faced circumstances in life where we needed someone to come alongside of us and to infuse us with hope, to carry on with confidence and support.

Our setting is still in the book of Ephesians. I mentioned, as I was reading through it, that there was a riot. That's the last thing that we encountered.

A big riot was going on there. The culture was shifting away from idolatry in that town in Asia Minor.

Paul had come in and company, and they had shared the gospel and proclaimed it. Some drastic, dramatic things had happened where literally the production of idols,

I can give you a picture, there being like an idol factory there in the town, and the union gathered together and said, we're losing jobs, and things are going downhill fast because people aren't buying idols anymore, and this is literally what was going on.

The silversmiths' guild was up in arms and started a riot because people were no longer buying idols.

That's the dramatic impact that Christ was having in the culture in Ephesus, and we talked last time we were together, two weeks ago, about how when

Christ comes into a culture, he transforms it one life at a time, that it wasn't through lobbying, it wasn't through political activism, it wasn't through those kinds of things that the culture changed.

It was as Christ, through the gospel, grabbed one life at a time, the culture began to shift away from idolatry, and that was what was going on.

But we see right off the bat in our text, right from verse one, after the uproar had ceased, so that's done away with.

That riot has gone. Paul met with the believers in the text, it says. After the uproar ceased,

Paul sent for the disciples, and he encouraged them. He brought encouragement.

Now, the fact of the matter is, he'd been planning on going to Greece, leaving Ephesus long before. If you were to look back in Acts chapter 19, and verse 22, he had sent two guys,

Timothy and Erastus, ahead of him, into Macedonia, into Greece, to basically pave the way.

He was planning on going back to churches that he had already started, and with the intention of encouraging them, the text says.

So he was planning on going back there anyways. It wasn't like the riot shook him up, and he's like, I gotta get out of Ephesus, because they're rioting against me.

No, he had already made plans before that ever occurred. But there's a word about encouragement in Paul here. Because how many of you feel like you start, as we're going through the book of Acts, maybe some of you have read some, some of you went to Sunday school when you were a kid.

How many of you feel like you have a handle on who Paul was, a little bit? Like you just have some notions, or some preconceived biases, about who the apostle

Paul was. What was his character, what was his personality? I think we can get that wrong a little bit. We can get in our mind that Paul was a driven man without much concern for people.

Have you ever heard that before? Or have you ever thought that in your mind, as you see the way that he moves in and out of the churches, and the way that he deals with people?

You can actually kind of start to see him as a little bit harsh, any of you admit to that? And I think Paul was not a people person, or something like that.

As if he was someone who preached the gospel, he was a hard -nosed man, ran roughshod over everyone that he encountered.

I believe it is true that he was a driven man. I think that that's accurate. I think that that's the nature of who he was.

He was a man who preached the forgiveness of Christ, found in the cross of Christ, and that drove him to proclaim the gospel of Christ.

He was driven, he was focused. The gospel was the center, and everywhere that he goes, what's he doing? Preaching the good news, telling people about Jesus.

But I do not believe that Paul was unconcerned for people. Listen to what he wrote to the church in Thessalonica.

Now he's gonna go there here in a minute. We're gonna see him go to Macedonia. That's a church that he started.

He founded the church in Thessalonica several years before. He's traveled around, he's gone back to Jerusalem, he's gone full circle, and he's gonna go back to them and encourage them.

But while he was in Ephesus, here this time, around the time of this very riot, he writes a couple letters back to the church, and they're called

First and Second Thessalonians. We can read those. We can see what he wrote from Ephesus to Thessalonica in preparation for his return visit to them to encourage them.

But in his absence, and in one of those letters, this is what he says. But we were, speaking of his first visit with them, but we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

Wow, does that sound hard -nosed? Does that sound like he was running roughshod over the Thessalonians? Sounds like he was a man of compassion and deep, deep sense of care for people and concern for them.

He says, when we first came among you, we were gentle about the way that we presented the gospel.

He's about to go back and visit these people a second time, and he declares that he was very concerned for them in his presentation.

So I would say Paul was passionate about the gospel and compassionate towards people.

He was loving and concerned about them. I think that we know intellectually that those two should go together, right?

Compassion for people and passion for the gospel. Don't those seem like a good pair? But I think if we're honest, sometimes we can tend to think in our minds or buy into the lie that those who are most passionate about the gospel are those less concerned about people.

You hear, you understand what I'm saying? Does that make sense? Let me illustrate that. Like we can tend to think that the guy with the megaphone down, and I use that as an illustration a lot, forgive me, but it's just such an extreme example of somebody who is almost like extreme counter -culturalism.

Would you agree with that? Megaphone up by the flags at Western Michigan University. Have you ever seen this guy? He travels around to different universities in Western Michigan.

He goes up to Grand Valley State. I think somebody told me, somebody knew his name. Tom, Tom the

Preacher. Preacher Tom or something like that. Tom the Evangelist. And he goes and he has a megaphone and it's hellfire and brimstone.

You're all going to hell unless you change your ways on and on and on. And he'll just shout down the crowd, hecklers and all that business.

And wow, was that fun. But some people might have the error in their mind that that defines passion for the gospel.

That man, that guy is passionate for the gospel. And that's the definition of it. Did you see what I'm saying?

So could you see how maybe we might get a little askew in our thoughts that not keeping in balance compassion towards people and passion for the gospel, and those two can get a little out of whack.

Now I'm not judging that man, by the way. I don't know. Maybe the guy's got a strong passion for people and compassion for people and he's driven out of that.

I don't really know what motivates him to do what he does. So please don't hear me judging that. But if we love the gospel and we love people both, then we will diligently seek ways to communicate the gospel in ways that our culture understands.

You agree with that? Do you understand what I'm saying? So we will be looking for ways and methods to show them the love of Christ, even in the methods that we use to present the gospel.

On the other hand, I don't think that I'm necessarily preaching to anybody here who's ready to pick up a megaphone so what

I've done is I've just made you feel less guilty for not doing that, but the fact of the matter is maybe what I need to be encouraging you to is out of your compassion for people and passion for the gospel to actually go say something.

Maybe that's probably, is that probably more likely where we all fall and the error is on the other side? Does anybody have a megaphone ready to go?

Okay, so, but as we see, there's gotta be this balance in understanding our own passion and our compassion for people.

So Paul encourages the believers in Ephesus. They had been through a lot together, so just think back through. I mean, we're talking about history here, real events, real stuff going down.

They saw what the text, what Luke wrote earlier was extraordinary miracles. Now I mentioned in that message that to put the word extraordinary in front of miracles is like redundant a little bit.

Like you have extraordinary miracles, not just your run -of -the -mill miracles happen in Ephesus, but extraordinary ones.

Many of these people had burned their books of incantations. We saw that Ephesus was a place that was steeped in dark religious practices.

This was like Hogwarts on steroids. It was like, okay, a lot of black dark arts and things going on there, literally, literally, okay?

And I wanna make sure that you understand that the scripture is clear. Now we might have all kinds of westernization in our mind about whether there's really witches, whether there's really black magic, whether that's the, scripture takes for granted that it is, that there are real demons.

There is a real possibility that people will go out and worship the demonic. And so there are dark powers that exist in reality in this world.

Do you guys believe that? Sometimes it can be hard for us in our western mind to actually think that way, right?

But there is an actual spiritual battle that's going on behind the scenes and Ephesus was a center place for that and they had burned 50 ,000 drachmas worth.

We talked about that being about $9 million worth of books and scrolls and spells and incantations and they brought them all together and somebody was sitting there tallying it up.

Lots of money worth of books that they burned.

So a lot going on. They had endured a citywide riot in their honor, okay? The Christians there had endured a lot.

And so what we have is Paul getting ready to leave them and he's like a coach at halftime and he leaves them with words of support, confidence and hope.

I'm taking off, I hope to get back to you sometime but in my absence be encouraged.

You have my support, there is hope and move forward in confidence. He departs from Macedonia in northern

Greece. So if we can, awesome, that worked. So he's there in Ephesus and he's gonna head up to Macedonia.

So hopefully, I'm gonna leave that up there for a while and maybe it'll snap to and you'll be able to see that we got Turkey down there on the right, the

Black Sea up there and then modern day Greece over there and he heads up to Macedonia. Now many scholars have sought to reconstruct the life of Paul, try to put all the pieces back together and figure out exactly where he was and you can get a pretty good handle on that from the book of Acts.

But one thing that scholars have to take into account is that they see him in Macedonia for about one to two years so we have how much written in scripture about this trip to Macedonia?

One verse, we have a verse. But the reason that scholars see that is around this time, Paul speaks in the book of Romans in 1518, he says that he went to an area called

Illyricum that's north of Macedonia, up into what would even be like modern day

Yugoslavia. Of course, Yugoslavia is not there anymore but those broken up countries up there.

So he heads up to Illyricum, he was there, he says so in Romans, this is the time that most scholars put in the life of Paul that he went up there.

So we have, when you think about this, he's in Ephesus, he's gonna do all these travels and our text is gonna cover a short amount of time in the text but it's quite a long duration and that's the only reason

I'm bringing that up to your attention is to help you be able to visualize what's going on here. He hangs around and encourages the churches in Macedonia, heads up into Illyricum, all with the purpose of what does the text say?

What's he gonna do? Encourage them. That is the primary ministry that he is setting about, encouraging people.

The last time Paul was in Macedonia, he was chased by mobs of Jews from town to town does that sound like fun?

Anybody ready to sign up for that ministry? People threatening your life, we're gonna see him get threatened again.

How many texts have we encountered where Paul wasn't threatened that he was going to die? Very few in the book of Acts so we just kind of grow to expect that sermon after sermon, week after week,

Paul's going to get a threat on his life. He does again in this text here in a moment but he was chased from town to town but even in that hostile environment, the church had taken root.

Kind of amazing, isn't it? I mean people are being hostile towards him, they're threatening him, he's running from town to town, even has to go down to Athens all by himself, leave

Silas and Timothy up there the first time through and they're helping to encourage and strengthen and build people up and the church is planted.

What do you think it would have been like to be a believer in Macedonia during this time? What would that have been like? Any thoughts?

A little bit what? Difficult, yeah and difficult in what ways? Difficult like how many of you enjoy just, like you would just stand up, stand up in your office place,

I don't know, some of you work in cubicles, some of you have your own office, just step outside your office door, stand up in your cubicle and shout Jesus Christ is

Lord. How many of you think that would go well in your business? You excited about that? Now let's, okay.

Carissa would because her office is right there and I'm the same, I'm fine with that. I will just step right outside of my office door and proclaim that anytime.

That's good, I really appreciate that, Carissa. Now let's take that to Macedonia in this time where a whisper on the street that you're a follower of Jesus Christ could get you lynched.

You could be killed for that. How many of you, that's just push down your desire to evangelize a little bit?

Do you know what I'm saying? I mean literally a knife in the back in the middle of the night because you're a follower of Jesus Christ.

That's the kind of context that this is. That's what Macedonia is like during this time. Jews roving the place looking for Christians to kill.

Not pleasant, not a happy place and the church is thriving there, it's growing. We often see that throughout the world where persecution is the highest, the church grows the fastest because there's a,

I think it's because there's a deeper dependency upon God and that's one thing that is convicting to me here in America.

I have a hard time relating to persecution and yet the majority of Christians throughout history and even present day right now, the majority of Christians in the world are under persecution.

Did you know that? The majority of Christians. Like if you take the sum total number of Christians and then say who is under duress, the majority of Christians in the world are under some sort of social duress.

Where does that put us? We are at the pinnacle of, I don't like to put it at the pinnacle but we are the small portion, like just the tip of the iceberg and if you broaden that out to history, we are such a privileged people with the gospel, with the freedom to own

Christian literature. You can have it, you can carry it, you can disseminate it, you can give it out.

Has anybody ever been afraid that somebody's gonna take your Bible? You've had to hide your Bible because somebody might steal it?

No, we've got 20 of them. Most of us, right? We don't even know where, I mean, I bet there's people,

I couldn't, I'd be hard -pressed to put my hand on every Bible that I own. If you gave me 10 minutes, 15 minutes and said put your hand on every

Bible that you own, could you do it? Probably most of us couldn't. We probably have

Bibles we don't even know we own. Boy, I'm being kind of stern here and this is coming towards me too but I'm just looking at the broad scope of the world and where do we stand and where is our boldness and our zeal and our desire to see the kingdom of God expand and grow?

Man, it's convicting to me to think that through. I don't know what persecution means. I don't even know that.

Maybe that's why encouragement is not a primary ministry in the church in America. Maybe that's why we don't have ministries of encouragement.

Have you ever thought about that? We have ministries of all different kinds of things going on but encouragement, I've never been to a church that had a formal ministry of encouragement.

Maybe that's not necessarily the way that it happens anyways and we'll get there here in a second because I think the ministry of encouragement is something that's more focused one -on -one, right?

Encouragement doesn't happen necessarily best in a group but one -on -one but at the same time, taking it seriously and being intentional about it is

I think the point that I'm trying to get across here. It's easier to think that we can go it alone without as much need for others when there's not persecution, when there's not difficulty but by the end of this message,

I would like to bring this around to show our intense need for giving and receiving encouragement even where we live right now.

There's some significant reasons why we need encouragement and we need to be giving it out. By the end of verse two, regardless of how much time has passed, by the way, that's all in verse one so we're on verse two now.

We'll move through this. By the end of verse two, regardless of how much time has passed, Paul has moved on to Achaia so we get him down in where currently is

Corinth. The word that you see in the English Standard Version there is Greece. He came to Greece.

Well, wasn't he in Greece when he was in Macedonia? Technically, yes according to our current political, geopolitical climate.

Greece is the whole ball of wax that you see there from Macedonia all the way down to Corinth but not in those days. Greece was a designation of strictly the district of Achaia.

That's what they called Greece so if you were to say to someone in that era, I'm going to Greece, you would have to go down by Corinth and Athens down in the south.

So that's what's going on there in the text. When I first read it, I was like, well, isn't he already in Greece? Why is he?

But some of you weren't necessarily seeing that. He spends three months there and what was common for traveling during that time is to winter someplace.

So we see a couple of times Paul talking about wintering in a location, wintering in Rome, wintering, and that's what he's gonna do here.

We have pretty clearly where he is at, what the time frame is. AD 57, that's the winter that he's here and we have that just so well defined according to the history and who was in rule at certain times and throughout the book of Acts that we can really designate that for the winter of 57

AD, we know where Paul was. He was down there in Corinth hanging out. Now this all occurs from here forward.

We're gonna get a snapshot of a couple of weeks. The rest of the text takes place in about two weeks time. In the springtime of 57, when the

Feast of Unleavened Bread is. We see that in verse six. Well, how do we know that's springtime? The Feast of Unleavened Bread takes place in the springtime.

It's the run -up celebration for the Jews up till Passover. So kind of around Lent time for us.

So when many of the churches in our community will be practicing Lent leading up to Easter, the

Jews are practicing the Feast of Unleavened Bread running up to Passover. What day was

Jesus crucified on? Passover. So if you think Easter in your mind, that's the timeframe of when this is occurring.

Right around Easter time. It's springtime. So you can get the, and the interesting thing is, the shipping lanes all open around that time according to history.

So travel becomes more easy. That's why they wintered. Traveling was more dangerous during that time and difficult.

I wonder if you'd like to sleep in a tent in the middle of winter. Like that's the only options they had for traveling often.

So if they're going through some of these places, they're gonna be in tents. So obviously you kind of wanna hunker down for the winter.

That's what they did. Paul makes his plans to go back to his home church in Antioch after stopping at Jerusalem.

He says, I wanna be there for Pentecost. We'll see that at the end. But there's a plot that comes out to kill him. Surprise, surprise.

A plot to kill Paul. Can you imagine? And something about this plot is interesting because the way that he averts the plot is to not jump on the ship that he's planning on going to Troas.

So he's made plans. He's getting ready to get on a ship. He catches wind of a plot and he doesn't get on the ship. Why do you suppose that was?

I think it just seems to be logical in the flow of the text that somebody was gonna kill him on the ship, right?

The Jews had planted somebody on there, an assassin, and they're gonna take him out on this trip to Troas, just a couple day journey.

And so he doesn't jump on the ship and his life is spared. But the remainder of his posse, his troop, can you get that?

Go ahead and advance that one. Go ahead and advance it one more. There you go. So the posse is gonna go from Corinth to Troas, and they go ahead and get on the ship.

The assassin wants Paul, not his people. So him not getting on the ship somehow is gonna divert that.

And he instead goes back to Macedonia. And it says in the text he went up to Philippi. And what's gonna be interesting is that once he gets to Philippi there, we see the verbs,

I mean, the pronouns begin to change in the text to us and we. Why would that be?

Why would the author begin to use us and we in the text? Because he joins the team.

So now we actually have the author of the book, Luke, who Paul left in Philippi, we were told back in earlier in the book of Acts, he went through and left

Luke in Philippi. Now he joins back up with Luke in Philippi, and we begin to see us and we.

Not only that, but we see some significant character traits of Luke. Because as we, from what's written, the remainder of our text that we're gonna be looking at is very specific in its detail.

Luke loved detail. He was right down to how many days they spent someplace, on the first day we did this, on the, we stopped at this port, then this port, then this port.

Travel in those days meant that you stopped at a lot of ports, like a Greyhound bus. Anybody ever rode the Greyhound bus?

Oh, that is a brutal way to travel. That is brutal. I used to go back and forth to South Carolina on the Greyhound bus when

I was in college. Oh, man, I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. Just stop every little podunk town between here and there, 24 hours sometimes to get between there and here, just nuts.

That's the way that travel was in Roman times. Stop at every little port along the way, try to stay close to the shoreline.

You don't know what's out there in the middle of that Mediterranean Sea, so you want to stay close to the shore. All kinds of rumors about what exists out there.

So you stop at port to port to port, and Luke is the only one. When Luke is with them, you find out every port that they stopped at.

So we see a little bit about his character there. So he joins up with a trip, and they arrive in Troas.

We see, by the way, in verse four, that Paul travels with a huge entourage. There's a big group of people in his posse here.

And funny names, they're fun to say. I'd encourage you to try those sometime. Sopater, I don't even know if I'm even close on that one.

These are Greek men from all over, that are identified in verse four. They are a great representative group of new believers, and we find this out in 1

Corinthians 16, three through four. If you're taking notes, you can jot that down just to verify this. In 1 Corinthians 16, three through four, it indicates that Paul is carrying a large sum of money with him during this entire trip.

So whether the assassin was going to take the money, whether the assassin was there just for religious reasons, probably maybe a little bit of both, but all the churches throughout the

Greek world had taken up an offering to help the poor Christians back in Jerusalem. Historically, we know that there were a couple of serious and significant famines that struck in Judea during this time, and so a lot of the believers are going without food in Jerusalem, and they take up a huge offering.

And some people see this as a delegation, because the men are from all over where Paul has planted churches, all the way from over in Asia to Galatia to Macedonia, all over the place, and there's representatives from all of these districts and areas.

So it's quite possible that this is a delegation heading back to Jerusalem, but regardless of their official position, this is a testimony of God's work through the apostle

Paul, that he has the opportunity to travel with those believers that he's had a direct impact in their lives.

These are people who had not known the good news of Jesus Christ before Paul and company came to town.

And so they're all, they all jump on the ship and head to Troas, and then we see that after Paul hooks up with Luke, they head down to Troas and join him there.

So they all arrive at Troas, get together with the church there on the first day of the week, and it says that they got together to break bread.

What do you suppose breaking bread meant? They have a meal together, but also something maybe

I think a little bit more, when we talk of breaking bread in the church, what do we tend to think of?

Communion. They got together and they remembered the body of Christ that was crushed for them.

They remembered the, they took wine to remember the blood that had been shed for them. And this is a significant time of gathering of God's people.

How many of you would think it would be kind of cool to get the chance to take communion with Paul like that? That's kind of awesome.

Not that he had any special blessing or anything like that, but just, man, this guy was significantly used of God.

And just to think that when we take communion, we are part of something that's so much bigger than what we are just even in our gathering here, right?

We're part of the church all the way down through the ages, and we're remembering that it is the blood of Christ and the broken body of Christ that seals us into the church of God that is far beyond what

God is doing here at Recast, and that's a cool thing. So they get together, they break bread, and then they have dinner, and then they break bread afterwards and have communion.

And it says, from dinnertime to midnight, Paul and the church talked about stuff, okay?

So they're just kind of hashing through things, talking it through, he's encouraging them. It's likely that this dialogue goes deeper than just how the

Lions are doing. You know, how your favorite football team is doing, who's gonna win the

World Series, I'm guessing. I think I'm on firm, I think this is a pretty likely guess, but that they talk about more than that.

Now, that's not to say that we can't have spiritual conversations that involve our real, genuine daily lives, right?

Like, I mean, I like to connect with people on that level, you know, and talk about the football game and things like that, but if we never go deeper than that, is that really fellowship, is that really communion, is that really what it means to live in community as the body of Christ together?

No, if we just scratch the surface of each other's lives and the only association I ever have with you is because you're a

Michigan fan and I'm a Michigan fan, that's pretty chintzy and shallow, wouldn't you say? But we go much deeper, every one of us in this room are in Christ, go much deeper than that together, don't we?

We've got some significant things to talk about, some opportunities to encourage one another in our walk, because we know what it means to be

Christians in a culture that is not Christian, and that puts us on ground to be able to assist and help each other in various ways, and it's a two -way street, so there's this encouragement that's going on, and although the word is dialogue, it's implied that Paul is really directing the discussion, he's guiding it because it says he prolonged his speech until midnight, and you thought my sermons were long.

He's prolonging the speech until midnight. Luke gets a little crazy, by the way, we're gonna see him here in a minute just get nutty about going over the top.

I get the impression that Luke is looking at his watch during this discussion because he's gonna go over the top to overemphasize that Paul went over in this talk.

He's talking over, he's prolonging his speech, he's doing this and he's doing this, and he gets kind of crazy about it.

Verse eight, Luke records that there were a lot of lamps in the third story room. Maybe he was counting them, getting a little bored.

Some of you might know how many ceiling tiles there are in here, I don't know, I'm not really watching any one person at any given time, but you might know how many chairs, you might know the ceiling tiles.

I remember doing that as a kid. I remember counting the light fixtures, the fans, all that stuff, whatever.

I mean, if some of this gets in, awesome, okay? But what I don't want to have happen is for you to get so comfortable that you fall asleep and fall out a window.

But I'm not that worried about it here. But that's what's gonna happen. A dude named Lucky, that's the guy's name,

Lucky, or fortunate, the word eutychus in Greek, Lucky. What's gonna happen does not seem lucky to me.

His parents missed one on that. Well, I guess, maybe if he could get brought back from the dead, I don't know.

That's kind of cool. He sits on the windowsill. I think that, honestly, Luke records that there's a lot of lamps in the room just to kind of set the atmosphere for us more.

I don't think he was really counting them. I think he was probably paying attention. But think about what it would have been like, oil -based lamps, a third story room, you've worked all day, and then you come together and you find out

Paul's in town, you're gonna go to this talk, you show up at dinner, eat a nice meal, what's gonna happen?

It's kind of misty. You're having a hard time with ventilation anyways, right? So the young man sits by the window.

Why do you think he's sitting on the windowsill? Ventilation, fresh air, right? There's all these oil lamps going in the room, and he's looking for some air.

The kid, by the way, the word that's used there is a pretty definitive age range, about eight to 14.

We're not talking about a 25 -year -old, we're not talking in his 30s, we're talking about eight to 14 years old. Eutychus is a young man, he's young.

Maybe the word man doesn't quite apply yet. And Paul puts him to sleep.

That makes me feel better. When I look around and every once in a while I see some eyes closing and stuff,

I'm like, well, if it worked for Paul, I guess it works for me. I love the phrase, though, in the middle of verse nine.

Look at verse nine. Eutychus sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked longer still.

Luke is putting a jab in here on Paul. I think they just kind of roughed each other up a little bit on this one.

He's like, yup, yup, Eutychus is over there snoring on the windowsill, and Paul resolves in his heart to just kind of talk a little longer.

It's kind of funny. I'm thinking that Paul should be the patron saint of long -winded preachers. Luke records this in a funny way, but things turn serious quickly.

We know how the story ends, and so it doesn't seem as serious, but put yourself in the situation. Paul has come to Troas and the church there for what intention?

What is his goal while he's there? Encourage. Is what happens next going to promote encouragement?

It doesn't seem like it. He sinks into a deep sleep. The man falls three stories.

The young man, the boy falls three stories to his death. Luke is present.

It's important that Luke is present because we see this can get confusing. Paul's going to run down and say, no, his life is still in him, and we're going to be confused because we're not present there to actually see what actually happened.

Luke, who is declared to be a physician, a medical doctor in Colossians 4 .14.

You can look that up yourself to see proof that Luke was a medical doctor. He's on the scene, and he declares in his text that the boy was nekros, is the

Greek word. Nekros, that doesn't mean mostly dead, partly dead. It means he has no life in him.

So that when Paul declares his life is in him, something has changed. There's been a dramatic change in this child.

He was taken up dead, according to the text. Does anybody want to question Luke's judgment? He's present on the scene.

Was the boy dead? Text says the boy was dead. Paul's come to Troas to encourage, and I don't think we would be encouraged at this point in the story.

If we were present, there would be instant fear, shock, concern.

Eutychus was a real kid, real parents. The assumption's going to be that his parents are there.

His parents are on the scene. We're talking about late at night. And the fact of the matter is nobody wants to do a funeral, but especially for a child.

You know what I'm talking about? Some of us here have been at a funeral for a child. Just a hard thing.

In these circumstances, it couldn't get much worse. And to put it in the terms of Luke, because Luke knows how the story ends,

Paul preached the kid to death. How does he feel?

Oh my goodness. Paul goes down, he laid over the body, he picks him up, and the boy is restored.

He is restored. Now you might question my interpretation of these events. Maybe he's just, his life is still in him, and Luke had it wrong, and he wasn't quite dead, and he comes down, and he puts his ear up to him, and there's still some raspy breath there, and he's like, okay, we're good.

See, see the emergency vehicle going right now. That was not appropriate.

The types of injuries, put yourself there. The types of injuries that you would die from in a three -story fall are not the kind that evoke encouragement if you survive.

Think about that. Do you think that's reasonable to say? Okay, if you had died from these injuries, and then

Paul comes down and does CPR on this kid, as some scholars say, he knew

CPR before the Red Cross came around, and he leans over him, and the pressure moves the blood through, and puts his mouth on the boy's mouth, and the boy is restored, and it's a natural explanation.

How many of you think that you would walk away from that scenario encouraged? Yeah, he's got a broken neck, but he's alive.

Would you be like, woo? How many of that would provide encouragement for you? Probably not so much, right?

You'd probably walk away still a little discouraged. We're gonna see the church take significant encouragement in what they see, and so what

I'm posing to you is although the text is not explicit, I believe it's significantly implied that Eutychus is restored.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna see his parents stay now. They've been kind of dialoguing back and forth. We're gonna see

Paul after this. He's on fire, and he's gonna go back up in the upper room. They have a midnight snack, the text tells us, and then he goes on to preach until sunrise, and then the kid's parents take him home.

How many of you, if your kid has a broken neck, you're not gonna stay for the sermon, right? Do you see what

I'm saying? I mean, there's a restoration that's in view here. There is significant encouragement. What we're looking at is a miracle of encouragement in the text.

Paul goes down and picks him up, and he is restored. Everybody, as I said, goes back up into the upper room.

They have a snack, and then he preaches until daybreak, and then they're dismissed, and then Lucky is taken home.

Paul's entourage then, from this point on, the next morning, takes a ship around Ossos, and we'll see that here.

So they're gonna take a ship around, and Paul himself alone, and whenever we see Paul alone, don't think he's alone.

There's probably somebody with him, okay? It's very unlikely that he's traveling with a large sum of money out in the wilderness by himself.

I mean, he's gonna have a couple people, but the majority of them are gonna take the ship, and scholars get crazy about this kind of stuff.

The text doesn't tell us why they split up at this point. 30 miles between Troas and Ossos, they're gonna take the ship, he's gonna take the, can your minds generate some possible reasons why

Paul might do this? I think all of our minds can generate some reason why. Maybe Paul, one scholar is definitive, he wanted to be alone.

Paul just needed some alone time, so he's gonna just walk across the mountains, okay? Or he wanted to throw people off of his trail because he knew he was carrying all this money, so they expected him to take the ship, so he's not gonna take the ship, or something like that.

I'm a dude, and so I think I know what happened here, okay? I'm gonna just throw, I like to throw my ideas in the mix, and just let the scholars wrestle with this.

So I'm gonna write my book on this. Paul's a dude, he's traveling with dudes. He's like, why are we gonna get on a ship?

Dude, we can just walk. It's faster, it's gonna be faster this way. They're like, no, no, no, the ship's faster. He's like,

I'll prove it to you. First one there wins. You see what I'm saying? The guys get this.

The guys know what happened here. Now you know what occurred in this situation, and I challenge any scholar to disagree with me on that.

But that's what I see happening here. And I don't know who won. It doesn't tell us who won, so it probably wasn't

Paul. I don't know. But they get there, and they meet up, and Paul gets on the ship when he gets down to Assos.

Don't really know why. My reason is just as plausible as anyone's. The rest is gonna be best conveyed on the map.

We're just gonna fly through this. Paul boards the ship. They make more stops than a Greyhound bus. They're gonna go to Matilene, Chios, and that is, you're supposed to pronounce that soft like that,

Samos, Miletus, or Miletus, and that makes me hungry for salad for lunch.

So that's where they're gonna end up. And it says in the text, notice in verse 16, we see that Paul was in a hurry to get to Jerusalem before Pentecost.

Now we put this all in time frame. Two weeks he's knocked off. Seven weeks between the Feast of Unleavened Bread that he celebrated, and all the way to seven weeks till Pentecost.

So he's got seven weeks to get to Jerusalem. He's eaten up two by the time he gets to Miletus. So now he needs to hightail it to Jerusalem if he's gonna get there before Pentecost.

So he says, I didn't stop at Ephesus. He's gonna stop about 30 miles south of Ephesus, and we're gonna see next text, the elders, the leaders of the church of Ephesus are gonna come to him so that he doesn't get caught up in the ministry.

He knows it's gonna be in jeopardy for me to get to Jerusalem. If I stop in Ephesus, I'm gonna end up getting just inundated with ministry, and I'll end up not getting there before Pentecost.

So we can see that there's some logic. We see that there's some planning and some plotting and some strategy on Paul's part to do ministry, and I think we're free to do the same, to have some strategy and some planning in ministry.

So we've walked with Paul through a season of encouraging believers, and although we can't relate to the persecution that they're going through at the time,

I wanna give you five reasons why we need to encourage and receive encouragement here at Recast in 2011.

We're gonna fly through these. I'm not gonna take a lot of your time, but if you're taking notes, even if you're not taking notes, I'd encourage you to write these down.

If you're not a note taker, go ahead and get out on the back, on the flip side of your worship folder, and there should be a pen in the front.

But I think these are valuable things to think about, because what I'm gonna tell you is about the Christian life. Really, I'm giving you five things that are true about the

Christian life that are reasons why we need encouragement. This is true of everybody who is a follower of Christ.

The first one is we need encouragement because we are strangers in this world. Any of you have experienced that?

What it means to be a stranger in this world? I'll help you out with that.

It doesn't take a long time after giving your life to Christ to realize that we live in a society that has a different set of values than this.

Would you agree with that? We live under a different set of values. Most of us face the challenge, the enticement to compromise on a daily basis.

On a daily basis, something in the world, some kind of system, some kind of plan, some kind of plot, some kind of just nature, what it means to live in American culture.

It could be the commercials that bombard us with the primary notion in our culture that your significance is based on what you consume.

Do you realize that that's underwriting? That rides under the surface of every American interaction.

You are what you consume. From driving the right car to wearing the right clothes to using the right soap or deodorant or drinking the right beer or doing this

All of these things define you in American culture, right? And you are only as valuable as the products you consume.

We encounter that, right? What if you know that to live counter -culturally to that can be offensive to some?

It's swimming upstream to not live your life according to placing the value on yourself according to what you consume.

But there's other types of things. So it's not just the materialism of our culture or the consumerism, but it can be the culture of your business.

Some of you work at a place where your boss would literally ask you to fudge numbers. Some of them don't ask you because that might be recorded, so they just imply that that's what's expected of you.

The world's culture and whereas Christians, think about how crazy it would be to give up your job in this current economy based on your ethics, based on Christ told me not to do that and to honor him,

I will not do that. Does the world think we're crazy when we do something like that? Absolutely.

America would think we were just nutty to do something like that. Well, just fudge the number, my goodness.

How are you gonna find a job, right? We swim upstream in this culture.

Another cultural norm I encountered, probably a handful of you have read my blog. I encourage you to read my blog.

I wrote about a Katy Perry song. I don't listen to Katy Perry. I was at the coffee shop and I heard this song and I was like, what in the world are these lyrics?

As a matter of fact, I was actually humming along. It was really catchy. I was like, this Friday night. Oh my goodness,

I just sang. Anybody know that song? Anybody listen to the lyrics of that song?

Oh my goodness. To listen to the lyrics of that song are overwhelming. It is so, you gotta read my blog.

I can't preach on this right now. The Friday culture that says we go and get plastered because that's what

Fridays are for. Some of your workplaces are that way. Hey, it's Friday, man. We're going to the, we're going out.

Everybody's gonna party until we pass out. Let's go. Let's have fun. Is that part of the culture that we live in?

What are you doing on Friday? What are most Christians doing on Friday? You don't have to bet at 8 .30,

I don't know. No, you don't have to be that way either, but I'm just saying, you know what I'm saying. We need encouragement.

We need to give encouragement and receive encouragement because how many of you know that when you're out there alone and you're the only

Christian at your workplace, it's swimming upstream and it is hard to not just give in and let those fins relax and just flow.

We gather together with God's people and we gather together and there's, I said it in my prayer, like strengthen numbers.

Just to know that where you work and where you work, you're battling the same battle and you can share ideas and thoughts and encouragement to one another.

Now, I'm not that good at that because I work right back there, okay? So I don't live where you live, but man, to get some associations and some connections here in this body where you're saying,

I'm struggling with this at work and it's hard to share my faith and it's hard to do this and it's hard to swim upstream and we rub off on each other and get these ideas flowing and encourage one another.

Are you getting this? That's just number one. The second thing is we need encouragement because our flesh seeks, our sinfulness, our sinful nature seeks to drown us in a cesspool of sin.

You get that? Do you feel that? It's not just the world outside of us that can be discouraging, but there is a genuine, real war within us.

We fight against old habits and sins that battle us and in the process of that battle, sometimes we feel ground down to a nub.

We just can't press on anymore and probably nobody understands where I'm at. And I guarantee that for every one of you that's struggling with a sin, there's somebody across the way that is struggling there too.

Encouraging, entering into each other's lives and being honest. We need others to come along and encourage us to stay in the battle.

We need to hear the encouragement of the truth of the word of God telling us that we are a lot more than just the war inside of us.

That doesn't define us. We are declared to be more than conquerors through him who loved us and we need to be sharing that with one another regularly.

We are more than conquerors. That our sins are crucified with Christ and we are forgiven and we can walk forward in newness of life and hope.

Not in perfection, but in forgiveness. Awesome. The third thing, we need encouragement because there is an enemy who prowls about like a roaring lion.

That's what Peter says. Satan is real and demons are real. And although I do not believe we can ever honestly say these words, the devil made me do it, because I'm gonna be know that every time we sin, our will has engaged in some way in that sin.

There is an enemy of our souls who desires to see us trample the grace of God and defame the name of Christ in our community.

We need to encourage one another to submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee.

That's what James says in James 4 .7. The fourth thing we need to encourage, we need encouragement because we experience the reality of the fall in our lives.

Real, just authentic, daily life fall in things. We live in a broken world. And I'm not talking about sin on this.

We've covered sin in the last two. But we're talking about the fact that people die.

We get sick. Cars break down. I would love it if the moment that we gave our lives to Christ, we were raised up out of the fray.

How many of you would sign up for that? Wouldn't that be awesome? If just the moment that you gave your life to Christ, it was like no harm ever came to you.

You never experienced any death of any loved one. Everything just went peachy. Is that the way that it works? No. And so we need encouragement, don't we?

We need to encourage each other because we live in a broken and fallen world and there's real pain and heartache.

We remain in a broken existence and life is hard. We never know when we're going to need a shoulder to lean on and we never know when we're gonna be called on to be the shoulder to lean on.

You need to be ready to encourage others. And the last thing, we need encouragement because we have a supernatural calling.

How many of you feel equal to the task that you've been called to in life? Man, if you do,

I want to talk with you. Tell me your secrets. I am not equal to this task that's on my shoulders and none of us are.

None of us are equal to our calling. We can't accomplish it on our own.

Think about some of these things. Saying no to sin, that's a supernatural calling in and of itself.

That could be a full -time job. Trusting in riches in heaven that I cannot see and hold in my hand in exchange for illicit wealth that I can buy stuff with, that I can hold in my hand, that I can look at the balance sheet and tabulate it and count it and count my pennies again.

That's a supernatural calling, isn't it? How many of you have ever just come up against that from time to time?

There's this eternal promise, I can't see it, but it's there, storing up riches in heaven, doing good out of the kindness of the

Spirit of God that resides in me, trying to please Him, trying to bring honor to Him, glorifying

God above all things. But then there's this opportunity to serve stuff here on this earth that constantly battles back and forth with that.

Are you getting what I'm saying on that? That's a supernatural calling to accept the treasures in heaven over and above the treasures of this life.

How about proclaiming the message of the gospel to those who may think that I'm a loon? That's a supernatural calling.

Forgiving someone who has wronged me. Anybody here ever been wronged? Anybody here ever been really, seriously, significantly wronged?

Yes, that is a supernatural calling to forgive.

Being the husband, father, employee, wife, mother, whatever that God has called you to be, supernatural calling.

You can't do that in your strength. We need others, other believers, and I want the grace.

How many of you would raise your hand and say, I want whatever grace God has for me to walk with Him in this life. I'll sign up for anything.

Whatever grace you would give me, I want that God. If it's from you, and did you know that others in this room are the grace of God to you?

If you'd just open your heart to it. If you would take the mask off for a second and let them see who you are and let grace flow from them.

But we're afraid, aren't we? Because I've gotta talk to both sides of the equation. How many of you ever had somebody take the mask off and say, oh, put that back on?

Do you know what I'm saying? I'm just being honest and authentic with you. You feel that. So it's gotta be both, doesn't it?

Both a willingness to give grace and a willingness to receive grace. That's what it means to be church.

That's what it means to be in Christ. A willingness to admit my failures and trust that you're not going to abuse me with it.

And that can be so hard. One of the hardest supernatural calling. That's what we're called to in the church.

That's what this ministry of encouragement is. We need the encouragement of others. And some of you here are really bad at receiving encouragement.

And you know you are. That means that your tendency is to act like you have it all together. You like to wear your mask.

And when asked anything about your life, everything is all good, right?

Never gonna let anybody in. Barriers and walls, everything's good. But you know better.

You and God know better. You know that things are a mess under the surface. Why not choose to be honest with someone who can help you grow along the way?

But some of you here on the flip side struggle with offering encouragement to others. You tend to be judgmental of those who are struggling.

But you know, you know that you're struggling too. And so what this all boils down to is authenticity and this reality that we ought not to think more highly of ourselves than we do.

We tend to boost ourselves and elevate ourselves. And it's ironic that both sides of the equation end up thinking more highly of ourself than we should.

Whether it's the person who will not receive encouragement because I have it all together, thank you very much. Or the person who won't offer it because I'm so much better than you.

Either way, it's arrogance and pride, isn't it? If we continue to grow at Recast as a culture that actively seeks opportunities to encourage one another, we will be a place that offers the definition that we talked about earlier of encouragement, support, confidence, and hope.

As we seek to shine the love of Christ in this broken world. Swimming upstream together, working together.

That's what I'm talking about. And so let's take encouragement together as we remember the remedy for our sins.

There is a remedy, there is a solution. Jesus Christ is the one who paid the price for our sins. We take the juice to remember the blood of Christ that was shed for us.

We take the cracker to remember that his body was crushed for us. He stood in our place.

And if you're here this morning and you are all in with Christ and you've asked him to rescue you from your sins, then

I encourage you to come to the table at any time while the song is playing. There's two lines up here and one line in the back.

You can come at any time. Think about the words of the song. But if you're not all in with Christ, I'd ask you,

I'd implore you to consider the love that he has for you.

And that he showed by providing a way for all of us to be reconciled with God. That is the deepest encouragement.

The greatest encouragement that we can receive is to remember that Jesus paid the price for us.

Let's pray. Father, I pray that as we've taken this on, we've listened to this, discussion about encouragement from your word.

Father, I pray that you would make us a people willing to receive encouragement, willing to give encouragement.

Even more importantly, eager to encourage, looking for opportunities, more mindful that as we walk through this week, we would be looking for chances to encourage and build others up and strengthen them.

I pray that we would be a church that balances both sides of that equation, where we recognize in humility that it is only because of Christ, only because of what he has done.

And now as we come to communion, I ask that you would help us to reflect on the reality of the cross, that our sins were paid for there, and that atonement comes only through Jesus.

If there's any here who have not embraced that, who have not given their lives to Christ, that maybe today would be the day where they would say,

Jesus, I have made a mess of my life, and I need your help. I need your forgiveness.

I need your sacrifice on my behalf. Pray that you would do business with us as we go throughout this week, in Jesus' name.