WWUTT 1128 How These Hands Ministered?

If we become lazy, then it's really easy for us to give in to temptation or even be led astray by false teaching. So we must be diligent in the word of Christ that we may persevere when we understand the text.

This is when we understand the text, studying God's word to reach all the riches of full assurance in Christ. Thank you for subscribing. And if this has ministered to you, please let others know about our program.

Here once again is Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky.

Diligence in the Word and Perseverance Against False Teaching

We come back to our study of the book of Acts. We've been in chapter 20, where the apostle Paul is addressing the Ephesian elders before his departure to Jerusalem. Picking up where we left off yesterday, I will reread verse 32 and go to the end of the chapter.

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 are sanctified. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel.

You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things, I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of our Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. And there was much weeping on the part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.

And they accompanied him to the ship. So yesterday we were looking at Paul's warning to the Ephesian elders regarding the potential for false teachers to come into their midst and said, some of these false teachers will come even from among you.

Back in verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. And really that verse right there is at the heart of this entire address.

These are men who have been entrusted with tending the sheep. So you must keep watch on yourselves. Do not disqualify yourselves and your ministry for it will have massive ramifications on the entire church that you have been entrusted to shepherd.

I have never seen anything harm a church more than when a pastor either falls into grave disqualifying sin or has started to adopt and teach something false or even heretical. There's nothing more damaging to a church than these things.

Divisive pastors, sinful pastors, heretical pastors. And so right here at the very heart of this address, he says, pay careful attention to yourselves. Do not think that just because you're a pastor, you are above any kind of temptation.

There are men that I thought I would never see stumble in the way that they have. But one of the things that has demonstrated to me is that I'm not invincible. I can just as easily fall into temptation.

And if it were not for the grace of God, I would have fallen into worse things than I've ever done or committed. If it were not for the grace of God, sustaining my faith, preserving me in Christ, I would deny Christ just as surely and as readily as Peter did.

And so we must understand the words of James. James 4, 6, he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but it gives grace to the humble. Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. We draw near to God through the reading of his word. And it is his word that is also gonna protect us from any kind of false teaching or the temptations of this world or any other scheme that the devil might use to try to lead us astray.

Hence why Paul gives this instruction, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock. Don't let yourself be disqualified. Look out for one another. You see somebody stumbling towards sin or beginning to adopt some kind of false teaching, get out there and defend the sheep.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his blood. And then once again, Paul saying that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. In 2 Peter 3, Peter said that there are some difficult things that Paul wrote in his letters with which the unstable will twist to their own destruction as they do the rest of the scriptures, which we go back to the reference that I made yesterday in 2 Timothy 2 .15, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

So therefore Paul says in verse 31, be alert, remembering that for three years, I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And making a reference to his tears, Paul is showing how much he has personally cared for these persons.

He's not reciting a script. He's not standing up, giving canned responses, same sort of a thing that he said the rest of the time. And so now he's bored and tired with saying these same things over and over again.

The passion, the heart, the emotion that is behind what it is that he says has been demonstrated to them, an example for them to follow. This is not merely some profession. Paul cared for the people that he spoke to.

And so likewise, these overseers needed to do the same in their ministry. And now Paul says, the verse that I started with, 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 are sanctified.

Jesus said in John 17, as he prayed to the father, sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth. So there, he says that here. I commend you to God and to the word of his grace. Draw near to God, draw near through his word.

It is able to build you up. It is by faith in his word that you gain the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Paul had instructed Timothy to pursue righteousness, love and peace along with those of a pure heart.

So with other brothers and sisters in the Lord, build each other up together. And he says the same thing to these elders as well, that you may gain an inheritance among those who are sanctified. As I've heard Tim Challey say, I've repeated it here many times before, sanctification is a community project.

So this is something that we do with one another. As Jesus has instructed us to love each other, you can't do that without one another. So we have to have each other to grow and mature in love. We need the church.

You have to go to church. You cannot grow in love with your brothers and sisters in Christ if you are not meeting regularly, knowing each other personally, challenging one another, knowing one another's lives, letting others in.

Church is not just kind of an extra thing that you do with everything else you've got going on in your life. You actually need to be more personally acquainted with people in your church than you are even at your own place of employment.

Though you will probably spend more time at your job than you will spend at your church. These are your brothers and sisters in Christ whom you will spend eternity with. And so in preparation for that, that we look out for one another, looking toward eternity.

Don't you want that person that you're attending church with to make it to the very end? As Paul had said earlier, that I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

So we share the gospel with unbelievers, but we also look out for our fellow believers that they would remain on the way of righteousness to the place of deliverance and the glory of God. So Paul instructing these overseers to remain in that as well.

You are sanctified by the word. Stay away from false teaching, keep a watch on yourselves. You do that by holding fast to the word of Christ. Verse 33, I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. So I read verse 32 again today, even though that kind of went with the section that we looked at yesterday, but Paul saying, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among those who are sanctified.

He's pointing them toward eternal things here. Be focused on the eternal. Do not believe that you can find satisfaction or sufficiency in things that are of this world. The sufficiency is in the word of Christ, not in material possessions.

So therefore, as we're focusing on those things that are eternal, Paul says, I had no longing for the things of this world. I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. This also speaks to the genuineness of his ministry.

He was not doing it to gain any sort of material or earthly reward. Now, fame and popularity can go right along with that. I know that fame is not necessarily tangible. It seems like a lot of us have social media accounts and we cling to those likes.

We love those retweets, right? We love it when somebody screenshots something that we said and shares it with everybody else. We feel like we've accomplished something. Kind of sit back in our chair and like, hey, I'm popular today.

You didn't gain anything by that materially. Like your life is not somehow better just because someone clicked the little heart on Facebook or Twitter. Is it a heart on Facebook? I think it's just a like, thumbs up, right?

I'm very seldom on Facebook, so I don't know. Anyway, but that's like social media currency. If we can get those likes or those retweets or those shares or the comments or whatnot, we feel like we're getting something, we're earning something from that, even though you've really just benefited Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or YouTube, you've really not materially benefited yourself in that way.

It's even sillier to be clinging to the likes than it is that maybe you can make a profession out of it. I mean, if you're gonna spend that much time on something, at least have something to be able to show for it.

But even that, even desiring the fame and the popularity is coveting things that are earthly. It's coveting something that man can give you that has no lasting or eternal value. You're stuck on your phone screen all the time.

You're just sitting on your couch with your head down. It doesn't really accomplish anything. The world is passing you by. Time with your family and your kids, all of that is being lost in the attention that you're giving your phone or your computer.

So there are ways that we can covet things that even aren't material, that are not silver or gold or apparel. But Paul here is saying that his ministry is qualified in the sense that he did not covet anything in order to gain from what it was that he was doing in sharing the gospel.

You yourselves know, he says, verse 34, that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. So going back to the point that I made before about being too stuck in our electronics and longing for that popularity that we can find on social media, keep yourself busy in other ways, not with the thumbs or the index finger on your phone screen, but apply yourself to spending time with your family or building meaningful relationships with people in your life.

There's nothing inherently wrong with social media. I spend a lot of time on it. Obviously, I make videos that post on YouTube and YouTube is considered social media. So there are ways in which it's beneficial.

We can use it as a medium to share the gospel, to stay connected with other people, to inform persons, keep our church in touch with one another even. Social media can be useful for that. But more often than not, we're getting really addicted to it.

We're spending way more time on it than we should. How can we counter that? Well, we need to have a mind that is more focused on Christ than on ourselves because a lot of times, that social media is just an ego feed, but especially being in the word of Christ and apply your hands to things, do things that involve cooperation with other people or spending time with someone that you may through these things that you're doing that you're actively and deliberately intentionally participating in.

You're building a relationship through this by doing it with somebody else. So Paul is saying here, these hands ministered to my necessities. He used his own hands to provide for himself, to set an example for those Ephesian elders, just as Paul had talked about setting an example for the Thessalonians as well.

This is probably most commonly cited here in 2 Thessalonians where Paul said that, hey, I had the right to take from you. I was an apostle. I could have said, hey, here I am to preach to you so you have to provide for my way of living.

But he says, 2 Thessalonians 3, 7, and you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor, we worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you.

It was not because we do not have the right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

So working, laboring, making a living, building, constructing, being productive, these things are command. They are a command from God that we are to work. We can get into slothfulness, sin, wasting a lot of time when we are so involved in social media and staring at a screen for a long time.

And hey, I can just as easily fall into that as anybody else. Remember the words that Paul wrote to the Ephesians. This is a letter that's gonna come later. Of course, after Paul is in prison in Rome, he writes a letter to the Ephesian church.

In Ephesians 5, 15, he says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

And how do you know what the will of the Lord is? You know by reading the Bible. This is the revealed will of God. Paul goes on in Ephesians 5, verse 18 to say, do not get drunk with wine for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit.

And once again, he says here, don't be satisfied with earthly things that dull your mind, that titillate the flesh for a little while, but eventually that feeling's gonna wear off and you're gonna need more of it.

Don't be dependent upon those earthly things, but focus on eternal things. Be filled with the spirit, which is always satisfying. And not just for the moment, but even for eternity. So we come back to the address that he makes here in Acts chapter 20, verse 34, you yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.

In all things, I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. The principle there, of course, being that we receive more eternally from God if we give to others, rather than what we receive on this earth, which eternally is not going to amount to much.

So it is better to give than to receive. Also to the Ephesians, in Paul's letter to them, Ephesians chapter four, verse 28, he says, let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.

We must consider the needs of others and give of ourselves to them as we encourage and strengthen one another and build each other up in the Lord. I have shown you that by working hard, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus.

And so having concluded with this, as Paul is talking to these elders, we have these last three verses here, verses 36 through 38. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all.

And there was much weeping on the part of all, and they embraced Paul and they kissed him, being sorrowful most of all, because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship.

This side of heaven, he would not come back to be in the presence of these Ephesian elders again, but they would certainly hear from him again with the letter that he would write to them. This, that of course, being the letter to the Ephesians that we have in scripture.

One of the most encouraging letters that we have, probably second only to Philippians, which is very full of all kinds of joy and rejoicing and praise. But the letter to the Ephesians is definitely very encouraging as well.

And the mention of the Ephesian church comes up again as well in the book of Revelation. We see how quickly a church can backslide or fall into unbiblical and careless practices based on the rebuke that's given to the Ephesian church in Revelation chapter two.

It's in fact, the first church that's addressed in the seven churches, the letters to the seven churches in Revelation two and three. Jesus said to them, I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false.

You might think, hey, they consider the words of Paul about wolves, false teachers coming in, not sparing the flock. And so they tested those false teachers and found them to be false. And Jesus says, I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you.

You have abandoned the love you had at first. Now, many have tried to speculate what this love is that Jesus is talking about. But I think that Phil Johnson had it right on a couple of years ago at the Shepherds Conference when he says, the love that they must have at first is the love for Christ, pure and simple.

Yes, we must love one another, certainly, but the love for Christ must be there. And it is possible even to hate false teachers and endure patiently, bearing up for the name of Christ, not growing weary in the faith, and yet not have love for Christ.

It's just doing religion, but not having that close relationship with Christ in all these religious things that you do, all the Christianese that you can say and the facade that you can put on. But if the love for Christ is not there, then Jesus would say even of you, I have this against you.

Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Even though you love true teaching, even though you are patiently enduring, awaiting the day of Christ, yet you could have your lampstand removed for a church that does not have a true love of Christ in their midst, in their hearts.

Yet this you have, Jesus goes on to say, verse six, you hate the work of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

So may we also remember that statement made to the Ephesian church, that we would continue to hold fast and cling to Christ until that day when we enter into his presence and hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant.

Now great is your reward. Pray for one another. And Paul said also to the Ephesians in Ephesians six, pray at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

And also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

And may we look out for one another, praying for each other as we continue this walk of faith in this life. Lord Jesus, come quickly. In his name we pray, amen.

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.