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Reading Acts 20:18-21 where the Apostle Paul calls the elders of Ephesus to join him in Miletus, and give them a final address to shepherd the flock of God in the gospel of Christ. Visit wwutt.com for all our videos!
The Apostle Paul made a stop in Miletus, and there he called to him the elders of Ephesus. And we have the First Pastors Conference, where Paul is encouraging those pastors to preach and walk in the truth when we understand the text.
This is When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of Christ. That we may humble ourselves before the Lord, and at the proper time, He may exalt us. Tell your friends about our ministry at www .wutt .com.
Here once again is Pastor Gabe.
Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Book of Acts, we catch up with the Apostle Paul at Miletus for what I've called the First Pastors Conference. He has called the elders of Ephesus to join him there and delivers this impassioned speech.
I'm going to read the entire message again, verses 18 to 35. Here, the Word of the Lord. You yourselves know from the first day that I set foot in Asia how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that chains and afflictions await me.
But I do not make my life of any account nor dear to myself, so that I may finish my course in the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.
And now, behold, I know that all of you among whom I went about preaching the kingdom will no longer see my face. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.
Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.
And from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be watchful, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.
And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who have been sanctified. I coveted no one's silver or gold or clothes.
You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to those who were with me. In everything I showed you that by laboring in this manner, you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.
And then at the very end of this, we are told that when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they began to weep aloud and falling on Paul's neck, they were kissing him, being in agony, especially over the word, which he had spoken that they would not see his face again.
And they accompanied him to his ship. Now this message, it's a sermon of sorts that he is giving to these pastors. As I said, it's like having a pastor's conference. We think of the Shepherds Conference that is held annually at Grace Community Church in Los Angeles.
This would have been like the first Shepherds Conference. There's nothing wrong with conferences. I've heard some people like speak against conferences, so on and so forth. I think that the conference circuit can get to be kind of a racket.
There are celebrity preachers that end up rising up as a result of the whole conference movement. It can be done in a good way. And there are ways that it becomes very heavily abused, especially in our commercialized culture to this day.
But there's nothing inherently wrong with conferences. We also saw a gathering of pastors and other believers, the church at Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15. That was the first council. So we have councils and we have conferences, even that are demonstrated for us here in the book of Acts.
A good conference to have is something for all pastors where they can gather, pastors can encourage one another, they can receive instruction about how to shepherd their churches. It gets them outside of what might end up being an echo chamber of sorts or even something myopic where you can't really see beyond your own church or community.
Talking with other pastors and seeing what they experience and being encouraged by these brothers, staying laser focused on the gospel in Christ. These kinds of things can be very, very helpful. And this is what Paul wants to instruct the elders in Ephesus in as well, that they would stay focused on Christ and on his word, saying to them, I taught you the whole counsel of God.
I am innocent of the blood of all of you, because if any of you goes astray, it is not because of what I taught you. Now, as Paul delivers this message, it's really broken up into two parts. You have something of an autobiography that he gives about himself in verses 18 to 24, the first half of the message.
And then he puts it on them and the responsibility that they have in the second half of the message. And that's in verses 25 to 35. Now, in all of this, he comes back to himself, the witness of himself, even in the portion where he charges them with the responsibility that they have to shepherd the flock of God, still using himself as an example.
But ultimately, through that example, saying in verse 32, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who have been sanctified.
So the reason why Paul uses himself as an example is to point them to God and to the word of his grace. What is most important for them to continue in as shepherds over the flock is the word of God. I commend you to God and to the word of his grace.
You must be committed to his word. This is first and foremost, the responsibility of an elder when it comes to shepherding the flock of God, an elder, by the way, being a shepherd, pastor, overseer, bishop, any of these words would be synonyms of one another.
And Paul saying to these elders, you are shepherds of the flock of God. And here's what you must do. Hold fast to the word of God and teach that to your people. It is going to be the thing that keeps you on the path that is most honoring and pleasing to God.
And it is going to be the thing that sanctifies this people. You'll receive your reward through your shepherding of them. And may we be able to present these people before God and say to them on that day of judgment, I took care of that, which you gave to me to take care of.
Very important message, very important sermon for any pastor to listen to. But we all must heed the instructions here because we are all kept by God's word. It is by his word that we have come into the faith and become followers of Jesus Christ.
It is by this word that we are being sanctified. Jesus said as much in John 17, 17. And it is by this word that we understand what our reward will be in Christ, the eternity that is awaiting us. Even beyond this world, something greater than anything in the world that you could be given.
Christ. We receive Christ now and in glory. So let me come back up to the beginning of this message. This is what we are looking at this week. This sermon that Paul gives to these elders in Acts chapter 20, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, we're looking at this passage.
So Paul says to them, you yourselves know from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time. Now again, he's addressing the elders of Ephesus. It could be that there are other elders that are not just from Ephesus, but this is primarily who he's speaking to.
Verse 17 again. Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church. And when they had come to him, he said to them, he chose not to go back to Ephesus himself for a couple of reasons, as I had mentioned to you, because he did not want to stir up the crowd again.
There was a riot there. They wanted to put Paul to death. He didn't want to potentially stir that back up again by coming into Ephesus. It's not like they forgot who he was. But then the other thing being that he knew he was going to spend a lot of time with them.
The people loved him there. He would have spent more time in Asia and did not want to miss being able to get to Jerusalem by a certain time. So he opted not to go through Asia again. He's deciding to sail around it.
But when he lands at Miletus, not too far away from Ephesus, he sends for the elders to come join him there. This also means to us that Paul's stops in these various cities, like when he stops in these port cities, it wasn't like a quick stop for 12 hours.
We get refreshed. We get to nap. We hop back on the boat. We go on again. It was several days. He would have been several days in Miletus so the elders from Ephesus could come to him and probably elders of churches that may have been around Ephesus too.
Luke just does us the service of saying the elders of Ephesus. But any other churches that may have been planted because of what Paul preached in Asia for so long, they too may have come. And listen to this from Paul.
We don't know how many men would have been there exactly, but it is a gathering of pastors as Paul addresses them, talking about the responsibility that they have to continue and labor in the word of God, giving that to the people of God.
So Paul, again, using himself as an example at the beginning of this message. You know how I was with you the whole time. You saw my conduct. You saw the way that I behave. Paul setting himself as an example for them to follow.
This is like saying in 1 Corinthians 11, 1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. There's an interesting movement going about right now. I mean, this movement pops up every once in a while. It's been going on in the church for 2000 years.
But there's a stirring I'm seeing among certain content creators online to say that the apostle Paul was actually a false apostle. And they use evidence from the New Testament even to show how Paul was a false apostle who preached a false gospel.
And one of the distinctions that they make, something that I've noticed that's very similar in all these videos that want to expose the apostle Paul and discount anything that he wrote as being inspired by the Holy Spirit.
But one of the things that they all seem to have in common when they discount Paul is they say people who accept Paul's letters, who consider Paul's letters in the New Testament to be Holy Spirit inspired canon, they will proclaim Paul instead of Christ.
And they will say that Paul is Jesus or something like that, like something interchangeable. I watched one person who had said that, you know, you'll witness Freudian slips among the Paulanist Christians who will accidentally say that he's Jesus.
And you know, that's what they think of Paul being. They think he's God. So they're actually worshiping Paul instead of Christ, which all that is just absolutely absurd. I know that there have been sermons where I've accidentally said Paul instead of Jesus or Jesus instead of Paul.
I know it's happened on this on this podcast. I've said John instead of Jesus. I've accidentally called Jesus Judas before. It's just slips of the tongue. It's because all of these names can be very, very similar.
And in the context in which you're speaking, it's easy to jump from one or the other. I do it with my kids. It is a common problem among humanity that we might call the wrong person the wrong name or something like that.
Anyway, it happens, but it is not some sign that I actually worship Paul instead of Jesus. I don't worship the apostle Paul, but Paul presented himself as an example. We see it even in the book of Hebrews, where it is said, look to those examples of those who taught you the word of life and imitate their faith.
That's Hebrews 13, 7, also verse 17 that talks about this following those who had taught you the word of God. God gives us human examples in order to follow. We're supposed to imitate even those in the Old Testament.
You have Hebrews chapter 11, the hall of faith, the heroes of the faith from the past going back even into the Old Testament, those Old Testament saints and the faith that they had. We are supposed to imitate.
Paul would present himself as an example. It is not a replacement. He never once says anything like follow me instead of Christ, nothing like that. He points to Christ, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.
All the other apostles as well, looking to Peter, John, any other apostles that are presented to us in the New Testament. We see the examples that they were, the words that they spoke. Nobody is contradicting one another here in the New Testament.
We understand the word of God is given to his apostles and even becoming imitators of their conduct. And this is how Paul presents himself to these elders. Are you looking for Christ-like examples? Look at me.
And it is humbling. He says that with humility as he presents that. So verse 19, I served the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials, which came upon me through the plots of the Jews. That's the trials that he endured.
The trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews. You witnessed this. You saw how I was being persecuted for what it was that I was preaching. And why would the Jews hate him so? Well, because he was proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ and the Jews did not believe that.
They did not believe that Jesus was the one whom God had sent to fulfill the law and the prophets. And so they're putting Paul to death for that reason. The anti-Paulanists out there right now, they say the reason why Paul is a false disciple or a false apostle is because he preached things that were contrary to Christ.
And they'll even point out examples of like the Jews hating Paul in the New Testament. Well, yeah, the reason they hated him wasn't because he was throwing out the law. They hated him because he was proclaiming Christ as the Messiah.
That's what it was that they hated. They did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. And so they're persecuting Paul for preaching this, the plot of the Jews that came upon him. And yet he received that persecution and he continued to persevere in the midst of that persecution.
That's the example that Paul is setting before these elders. And that's humble. Paul is not trying to make something great of himself. He is not using this platform to make money and make a name for himself.
That's been presented to us right here in chapter 20, in fact, chapters 19 and 20. That Paul, when he was in Ephesus, was preaching many great things. And through Paul, God was doing extraordinary miracles.
There were others that tried to use Paul's name to make themselves great, but Paul continued to labor with his own hands. He was not using the gospel to make himself rich. And so he is saying the same thing to these elders.
You witnessed the humility by which I operated. You must do the same. You're not using the gospel to make a name for yourself. You are preaching the gospel to point people to Christ. And we must endure many things in this life before we come into the kingdom.
Paul saying in verse 20, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
And as I've mentioned to you before about repentance and faith, these are two sides of the same coin. If you believe in Jesus, you're going to turn from that which is contrary to Christ. So before we come to Jesus, we are in a spirit of unbelief.
We are in the passions of our flesh. We are going after the ways of the world. And in order to come to Christ, you actually have to turn away from that. It's not to say that you will perfectly repent of every sin, but your orientation is different.
You are not going after the ways of your flesh and the world any longer. You are certainly not continuing in unbelief, but you are turning to Christ. And in this pattern of turning to, you're also turning away from.
Turning away from those things that we were wandering in before that were leading in the direction of hell, and now turning to Christ, we are turning to those things that are of God and in the direction of heaven, eternal life.
So faith will require a turning from and a turning to. We repent, turning away from those things that were leading to destruction, and we're turning toward those things that lead to life, namely our Lord Jesus Christ.
This was what Paul's commitment was to, the gospel of our Lord Christ. And it must be our commitment as well. We are committed to the gospel. We are committed to Christ and the proclamation of his gospel.
The transformation that comes about as a result of the gospel, the godliness that we should be walking in, because we have set our faith on Jesus and our hope in him. It is his word that transforms. You heard the gospel and it brought you from death to life.
James saying in James 1 .18, of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. We've been brought forth by the hearing of the gospel.
Now go forth and serve your king. If I may borrow the line from Todd Friel. We will continue to listen to this message that Paul gives to those elders of Ephesus when we come back to this text again tomorrow.
Heavenly Father, I pray that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ would be our great joy. We rejoice to hear that by faith in Jesus, we have been saved. Not by our works. It's not by anything that we did that we earned the favor of God, but because of what Christ did for us and by faith in him, we've been turned from darkness to light.
We've been brought from death to life. And now teach us to walk in that way, which is honoring and pleasing of God. No longer going back to our former ways and the lusts and passions of our flesh, but walking in the righteousness of Christ that we have been clothed in.
Teach us all the more from this text today to be godly, to love the gospel, and be godly as our Lord Christ has called us to. It's in Jesus' name that we pray, amen.
Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.
Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.