I have four Sundays left with you before we head up north, so I have to decide what message I would like to leave you with as the time comes to move on. If you've been with us for any length of time, hopefully you have by now observed that as I prepare for a Sunday morning, I don't sit down and say, "What would I like to say on Sunday?" nor even, "Here's the Bible reading that will be read during the service—what would I like to say based on that reading?"
Instead, I say, "Here's the Bible that's going to be read on Sunday—what does it say?" And then my aim, as far as I am able, is to deliver a talk that says what that Bible passage says, as transparently as possible. I would like the Bible to speak for itself, so that if in a particular week your reaction to the talk is, "I liked that," hopefully what that actually means is, "That particular Bible passage resonated with me in some way." And if your reaction to a talk one week is, "I really didn't like what he said," hopefully it's not because you didn't like what I said, but actually because there was something in that portion of the Bible, the Word of God, with which you do not agree or which you do not find easy to listen to.
There's a label, in fact, for this approach to preaching—where we just want the Bible to speak for itself as transparently as possible. We call it expository preaching, where we just expose or expound what is there, rather than delivering my agenda or whoever it is who is preaching, their agenda. Which means, actually, I don't need to decide at all what message I want to leave you with—I have to instead decide which part of the Bible I want to leave you with. Which bit of the Bible do I want to leave in your thoughts and your consciousness after I've gone?
And that passage of the Bible is Acts chapter 20. Over the next four weeks, we're going to work our way through Acts 20:13–38, and here is why we're going to do that. The Book of Acts tells the story of how Peter and then Paul took the good news of Jesus from where it began in Jerusalem, out into successively wider circles, until they reached the great city of Rome. It tells how new churches were started and how the various issues and problems that were raised as the gospel broached new cultures and new territory were tackled.
Speeches in Acts
Luke, who wrote Acts, records many speeches within the book of Acts, but he tends to record only one speech of each kind. Let me explain what I mean. So, for example, take Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13 is Paul's sermon in the Jewish synagogue in the town of Pisidian Antioch. Luke records that speech in quite a lot of detail. Luke doesn't record the content of any other speech that Paul made in a Jewish synagogue. He doesn't need to. He would just say, "If you want to know what Paul said when he went into a Jewish synagogue, see Acts 13." That was his synagogue talk. In fact, Paul—every town he went to—would always go to the synagogue first. He would tell the Jews the good news about Jesus, their Messiah, and only if they weren't interested would he go further afield to tell other people. But he preached in lots and lots and lots of synagogues, and Luke records it just once for us.
Or Acts chapter 17. In Acts chapter 17, Paul addresses the intellectuals of Athens. It was his trip to a university town—it was the university mission—and in Acts 17 we discover what it was that Paul said every time he was addressing people without a Jewish background. When he couldn't assume the story of the Old Testament, couldn't assume the worldview that comes from that, he has to build it up from further back. Acts 17 will tell you what he said on many occasions in similar settings.
Or there's Acts chapters 22, 24, and 26, in which Paul is recorded giving the legal defence speeches he made as he was being accused of various different things in slightly different legal settings. So if you want to know what Paul would say whenever he was accused of breaking the law or being otherwise undesirable, you only have to read Acts 22, 24, and 26 as a sequence. It's there. He had to do that on many occasions—Luke records it once.
And so with Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20 is the only speech in the Book of Acts in which Paul addresses Christians. Isn't that a surprise? There's only one speech in the whole of Acts where the target audience was Christian. Now, obviously there were many occasions when Paul addressed groups of Christians, but Luke only needs to record it once.
Farewell speech
In fact, this speech is a little more precise than that, because whenever Paul travelled around starting new churches, it was his custom to visit each town twice. He would make a first visit to establish a new church. He'd then go elsewhere and do other things, but he would always circle around and come back for a second visit to see how they're getting on. It's a little bit like when I was learning to drive—where the nearer you got to a driving test, the fewer the lessons I needed. I didn't need a driving instructor to take me out just to get half an hour's practice on a country lane—my parents did that—but you do still need those lessons just to check: are there bad habits being picked up? Are there problems that just need addressing? Let's get the driving instructor back in the car and check how it's going.
And Paul is like the driving instructor—he goes back to the town for a second visit just to see if they're picking up bad habits or some problems that need to be sorted out. And then he would say goodbye and leave them to their own devices and go on somewhere else. This is his second visit to Ephesus, so this is what he would say to a church on those second visits.
Actually, if you read or listened attentively to the reading, you would realise he didn't actually go to Ephesus. Ephesus was up a little estuary inland from the Mediterranean. It's in modern-day Turkey—there's nothing there today, but where it was is in modern-day Turkey, up an estuary. He was in a bit of a hurry to get to Jerusalem for Pentecost, which was a great feast and festival, and if he had got the kind of stopping-service boat—the ancient equivalent of the one that would have stopped at Kemsing station—it would have chug-chug-chugged up the estuary, dropped him off at Ephesus, and chug-chug-chugged down. Probably would have chugged into every little port—they wouldn't have got to Pentecost next year, never mind this year. So that wasn't a goer.
Instead, he gets the express boat that just goes down the coast of the Mediterranean, calling at the more major ports. Miletus is close enough that, while the boat's reloading itself with cargo, he's got time to send a runner overland to call the elders of the church from Ephesus to come to him. They didn't actually quite get to Ephesus, but this is still his second visit to Ephesus.
In Acts 19, he's there for about two years, establishing a thriving, growing, healthy, large church—vibrant. And then he goes to other places, and here he gets his second chance to talk to them, and he knows as he speaks that he's never going to see these folk again. This is his goodbye speech. This is what he says to them before he leaves them as a church to conduct their own affairs, without him dropping in to check how they're doing. This is as they prepare to be a church without his input and guidance. Here's what Paul wants to say to them at that moment. And because Luke records each kind of speech only once, this is what Paul would say as he said goodbye to any church—to leave it to sail under its own steam.
And so I thought it would be rather a good chapter for us to spend some time with over the next few weeks. What we had this morning was the opening portion of the speech in which Paul reminds them of the time he spent with them in Ephesus—which is useful for them and for us for a couple of reasons.
If you're someone who's still looking into the claims of the Christian faith—you're not there, you're not a Christian yet, you're still thinking about it—welcome! We have people like that here every week. And what this will do for you is, if you're trying to work out, "Is this Christian message something that's trustworthy, that I should trust myself with?"—well, you get to see what Paul himself, the original Christian messenger, what message he took as he travelled, and his motives for doing so. This will be a great help for you as you try to decide: is this a man whose message you're going to trust?
But the reason he does this for the Ephesian church is because he's self-consciously a model. He describes his ministry amongst them because he's deliberately wanting them to model their church life and its priorities on what he was like when he was there. And what we've got in this reading is three pairs of contrasts: his ministry was marked not by this but by that.
1. Not by popularity, but by suffering
So here's contrast number one: his ministry was marked not by popularity but by suffering — not by popularity but by suffering.
Verse 18: 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, and in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents.
If you read Acts 19 — Paul and Ephesus — the impression you would get is that his ministry there was a triumphant success. Read this, and you get a slightly different picture. The curtain’s pulled back, his heart’s on his sleeve. You discover what it was really like for Paul in Ephesus — what it cost to achieve that success — and we discover a world of organised and orchestrated opposition against him: people meeting and conspiring together to plot, to undermine everything he was trying to do at every turn.
And we discover Paul was frequently reduced to tears. And this was not a one-off in Ephesus either — it was a consistent pattern.
Verse 22: Now, compelled by the Spirit, I’m going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.
So, can you trust Paul’s gospel? Well, he didn’t tailor it according to what people wanted to hear. Instead, he suffered greatly to faithfully pass on the message of Jesus.
And for this church, for our own Christian lives — it’s easy to chase popularity. It’s easy for a church to tailor its message according to what we think people out there will like. It’s easy for us, individually, to keep our Christian views to ourselves as we rub shoulders with friends, with families, who spend time at work. It’s easy not to let on what we really think about Jesus and other things discussed in the Bible, because we suspect if we are honest, people may not like it — and they may not like us. So we just keep it quietly to ourselves.
Well, Paul was willing to be reduced to tears. Paul was willing to be plotted against. Paul was willing to be thrown into prison. Paul willingly walked straight into trouble — marked not by popularity, but by suffering.
2. Not by comfort, but by finishing the work
Secondly: marked not by comfort, but finishing the work — not by comfort, but finishing the work.
Verse 24: However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me — the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.
Paul was not motivated by self-preservation. Instead, we have two pictures of his life. The picture of the runner — familiar to us perhaps from the marathon, the London Marathon, or the Great North Run, or the 400 metres of the Olympics, or whatever it is. The runner who’s got a race to run, and they're determined to finish the course.
His second picture is a picture of a workman who’s been given a job to do. Paul is the workman. Jesus has asked him to do a job, and Paul is going to finish the job.
What is that job? To testify to the good news of God’s grace.
There’s the Christian message in a nutshell. It’s a message of God’s grace. It’s a message that God wants to be kind to you in ways you don’t deserve, in ways you could never earn — and that is good news. And delivering that good news was Paul’s business.
We’ll see later why it made him unpopular. But how easy, instead, to aim for comfort, to aim for the easy option.
Essentially, you see — you read books on churches, and why they grow and why they decline, and people study these things and study examples and case studies to try to spot the patterns — the moment a church decides, makes a decision in the life of the church, to go the easy route rather than to go the route of maximally reaching as many as possible with the good news of Jesus — that’s the moment the church turns the corner from growth to decline.
And unless they reverse that habit they’ve just picked up, they will eventually die.
Beware choosing ease over running the race — over finishing the job.
Not popularity, but suffering.
Not comfort, but finish the job.
3. Not selectivity, but the whole word of God
Third: not selectivity, but the whole word of God — not selectivity, but the whole word of God.
Verse 20: You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you.
He says something very similar in the passage we will look at next week.
Verse 27: For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.
We’ll say more on that next week when we get to that verse. But for today — do you want to know if you can trust Paul? Well, his message is actually his message. He didn’t cherry-pick the bits he wanted to give you.
It’s back to expository preaching again — he simply set out everything that God has to say to you. It’s the unedited, uncut version.
The one that, if it was the film of The Hobbit, would run for about 18 and a half hours, with nothing on the cutting-room floor — the whole lot.
And for us, as a church, for us as Christians — Paul’s example says that we don’t just live by the bits of the Bible we like. We don’t just teach the bits of the Bible we like. We go for all of it.
So everyone can find bits of the Bible that you like — it’s not hard. Most Christians have a favourite verse. Even people who never put their foot inside a church may have bits of the Bible, little individual sayings or verses that have brought them some comfort and help from time to time, and they’re happy to stick them up on a calendar in the kitchen or whatever.
But no — the question to ask is not “Which bit of the Bible do you like?” Are there bits of the Bible that you leave out?
So as you read the Bible yourself, day by day — let me encourage that practice if it’s not yours — spend a little time each day reading a bit of the Bible. A great, life-sustaining habit to develop.
But as you do that, are there bits of the Bible that you always seem to skip over and never get to?
In the church’s preaching programme, are there bits of the Bible we just never seem to cover? Interesting — look, I haven’t done it — look back over the last 12 years I’ve been here. Obviously, I’ve not covered every bit of the Bible — it’s a huge book — but are there patterns of things, types of bits of the Bible that are missing? Because there really shouldn’t be.
Or if you’re looking for a new minister for this church — which some of you will find yourselves doing at some point — do, by the way, if you’re ever doing that, find online the sermons that they’ve preached in other churches that they’ve been in recently and have a listen. That’s always a good thing to do.
But you see — don’t ask the question “When they preach, do they quote the Bible?” And if they don’t at all, that is a pretty big red flag. But it’s such an obvious red flag, it’s not likely to be the one you’re looking for when you’re interviewing someone.
Don’t ask “Do they quote the Bible?” — because again, that’s just taken as read.
Ask “What’s missing?” Are there things that they don’t talk about — bits they deliberately seem to be skating around?
Not selectivity, but the whole word of God.
A thorough ministry
So there’s Paul’s time in Ephesus. Two whole years he spent with them: not courting popularity, but willing to suffer; not aiming for comfort, but to finish his task; and not being selective, but teaching the whole word of God.
And so his ministry was thorough, whichever way you look at it.
Verse 20: I’ve not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you, but have taught you publicly and from house to house. I’ve declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
So you see — he was thorough in his method. He both lectured in public and spent time in people’s homes, teaching them one-to-one.
Thorough in his audience — Jews and Greeks.
And thorough in his message. Here is his message: that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
Here is the heart of what Paul taught in every place he went. And you can see why it may have made him unpopular with some people.
Two sides of the coin: turn to God in repentance — not just be sorry, not just say you’re sorry. It’s easy to say you’re sorry. It’s fashionable these days to say sorry for something that happened 200 years ago that was nothing to do with you — that’s easy.
No — not just say to God you’re sorry, but to turn to God. To turn your life around so it’s going his way. That kind of deep change isn’t always welcome. That’s what God calls us to.
And then the flip side of the coin — to have faith in our Lord Jesus. Not faith in your ability to improve yourself. Not faith in a religion of your choice. Faith in the Lord Jesus. Put all your trust in him — all your eggs in that basket. Lean all your weight on him.
Conclusion
Not a popular message. But this is the path to God’s limitless kindness — to his grace. The kindness you don’t deserve.
This was worth Paul’s sweat and tears — to tell people about this kindness of God. And it’s worth our sweat and tears to take this same message to as many people as we possibly can.