Be Faithful to Your Calling - Pastor Tom Loghry Rockland Community Church Download

In Acts 20:13-38, Paul begins his journey to Jerusalem. Knowing that he will not return to the area, he calls the Ephesian elders to meet him along the way and exhorts them to remain faithful to God.

Transcript:

We went on ahead to, to the ship and sailed for Assos, where we were going to take Paul aboard. He had made his arrangements because he was going there on foot. When he had met us at Assos, we took him aboard and went on to Mitylene. The next day we set sail from there and we arrived at Chios. The day after that we crossed over to Samos, and on the following day arrived at Miletus. Paul had decided to set, to sail past Ephesus and avoid spending the time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost. From Miletus, Paul went to Ephesus for the elders of the church.

Let's pray. Dear Father, as we come before your word this morning, we pray that as we hear the words of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders, that you would impress upon us the utter gravity of the ministry which you have given the church and the responsibility that you've placed into the care of elders, and the standard to which you've called your people to expect of those that would shepherd your flock in Christ.

And Father, we just pray that you would inspire us by the Holy Spirit to seek to glorify you and honor you in these things. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. You may be seated.

So, we are approaching the season of graduation, and one might say that among all the graduations that take place, none are probably more pivotal than a student's graduation from high school. And while not all students will go to college or move away from home to go to college, that will be the case for a number of students. That was the case for me when I graduated from high school. My, my first year of college I moved a couple hours away to the Berkshires, and then the year after that I moved down to Georgia to finish my Bible college studies. Now, at the time, I don't think I thought too much about how difficult it must have been for my parents to send me away after having raised me for the previous 18 years. Now that I'm a parent myself, I can say that I do not relish the day when my son, in one way or another, will move on from our home. I'm sure I'll be glad in some certain senses, but it'll be tough for me and Sara. On that occasion, any good set of parents likely wonders to themselves if they've done enough to prepare their son or daughter for the life ahead of them. Of, of course, parents do continue to give us wisdom even into adulthood, and so it's not an absolute end.

But there are times in our lives in which we do come against an ultimate end. Sometimes death approaches us slowly and those preparing to enter their rest undergo a similar but more absolute experience of knowing that they won't be around anymore to be able to give the counsel that they may wish to their loved ones, the counsel that they may need. There can be a grace in a slow approach to death. I, I know many of us might hope for a death in which we suddenly pass away. But there's a real grace and gift in being able to spend time with our loved ones, to say what we need to say. I remember as Sarah's grandfather was approaching his end that he called us to his bedside, and he had something he wanted to say to us. He admonished us to persevere together in our marriage, to persevere together as husband and wife, to remain faithful to each other even through the hard times. He knew from experience that marriage isn't always easy. But his parting wisdom, born of love for us, was that we should stick together and press on, and I will gladly do so to the day I die.

As we close out Chapter 20 here in the book of Acts, Paul is not about to die. But he is reckoning with his mortality and God's plan for him, which will take him away from those in whom he has invested so much love. And so we continue in verses 13 through 17.

As Ernie has read for us this morning, we have a bit of the itinerary here of of Paul's journey. Some of these details to, you know, we're not so familiar with the Mediterranean, so sometimes it can be lost on us. But it's important to remember that, especially to Luke's original audience, these details would've been of great interest to them. And so, as you'll recall, Paul is departing from Troas after having something absolutely spectacular happen there. He had preached long into the night and a young man named Eutychus fell out of the window, and he raised him from the dead. But his ultimate end is he's striving to get to Jerusalem, and then from Jerusalem, he's intending to go to Rome. And so the course that he takes is they're going to Assos from Troas

Now, the rest get on the boat. But Paul walks to asos. Now, we don't know why, it may have been that it was going to be faster for him to go on foot. Sometimes, while a ship would certainly save you the energy, it's not always the most, it's not the most fast way to get to some place. And then the, he joins them on the boat and they head to Mitylene. And they go from there and go from Chios. So they're just kind of working their way down the coast here. Again, they're ultimately trying to get to Jerusalem, but they bypass Ephesus.

And the reason why is 'cause he didn't wanna spend too much time there 'cause he, he was hoping to reach Jerusalem by the day of Pentecost, which was a Jewish feast, and it was gonna be a great opportunity in which there was gonna be many Jews gathered there in the city of Jerusalem, and as a Jew himself, a significant day, significant, significant feast that Paul did not wish to miss. And so the reason why he skips Ephesus thinking that it might take a little bit too much time there is because, well, for one, he spent a couple years there, and so the people might wanna offer him a great deal of hospitality. And in that culture, especially at that time, hospitality was a big deal, and so we can imagine they wouldn't have just allowed him to stop in very briefly and move on. It also could have been the case that the ship that they were on didn't have that as their direct course, and so it just would've complicated the itinerary to have a special boat there and then get on another boat. It, it just could have taken a little bit too much time. And so he goes to Miletus, you can see the red dot there where Miletus is, and he sends for the elders in Ephesus, because he doesn't want to depart from them without being able to give them a parting word.

Now this is a little snapshot of Miletus, rather large city, major port. Had a population about a hundred thousand. But again, his purpose there is just kind, kind of to just stay there for a moment in order that he can have this opportunity to meet with the elders from Ephesus. And so what follows is both a touching and a stirring farewell speech, and it's the only address that has been recorded thus far of Paul exclusively addressing Christians. And as we read it, it brings to mind both Paul's manner and speech that is found in his New Testament letters. So continuing on in verse 18, we read, when they arrived, the Ephesian elders, he said to them: you know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. I served the Lord with great humility and with tears in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God and repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.

So Paul begins his speech to them by recalling his sufferings. That he served, not in a manner of one who expected great acclaim, but one who was prepared to work with his own hands, and he's going to talk about this later on, and with great suffering in doing so, because of the opposition that he had faced from the Jewish population in Ephesus that was opposing his teaching that Christ Jesus was not only the Messiah for the Jews, but the Messiah for all people.

And so he's laying out this, he's laying out this recollection of how he served among them in order to try to inspire them to follow in his footsteps, that they would adopt for themselves the same sort of humility and be prepared to serve and persevere in the face of suffering. Paul is not having to make a defense of his ministry, they know him well, but he is giving them an account here to basically say, my work is done. I've, I've done everything that I'm supposed to do here. Paul tells them that he didn't hesitate to preach anything that would be helpful to them. He held nothing back and he wasn't trying to hide anything, he preac...