Author: missionspaul

The final call
Acts 20:17 “From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church.”
So instead of going to Ephesus, he called the elders of Ephesus to come to him.
This talk to the leaders of the Ephesian church that we are going to read over the next few days is very different to the other messages Paul has given. Firstly it is a Christian audience all the other messages were evangelistic in nature. It is as if he is speaking one of his letters because of the tone of the content. He is describing to them what it looks like to follow Jesus. This group of leaders he had given 18 months of his life, the longest he had stayed in one place on his travels. He loves them intensely. He has served them vigorously. He intends to leave this area permanently and after Rome move into Spain, taking the gospel into other parts of the world and he knows that he will never see these friends again. This is an intense moving moment.
If today was the last day you were going to see someone, what would you tell them?
So go ahead, tell them, for this is the day that you have.

Desiring Pentecost
Acts 20: 16 “Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia, for he was in a hurry to reach Jerusalem, if possible, by the day of Pentecost.”
Paul didn’t want to offend the Ephesians. This was not a slight against them. But he knew that if he stayed they would want him more than a few days. He had been with them for around 3 years, there were many connections and they would want his wisdom and his teaching. Jerusalem was calling in his heart. This was his desire, his team were carrying the offering he had collected and he wanted to give it to the church there. But there is one fact Luke points out that maybe indicates Pauls desire to be in Jerusalem, “if possible, by the day of Pentecost.”
It would have been 25 years since that Pentecost outpouring. It was still fresh in the minds of that generation. Many eye-witnesses were still alive. This event was continually referred to. Maybe they longed for another Pentecost. Probably they prayed for further outpourings.
How about you?
Do you want to be in that place for Pentecost? Do you want more Pentecosts?

The places that need the gospel
Acts 20: 15 “The next day we set sail from there and arrived off Chios. The day after that we crossed over to Samos, and on the following day arrived at Miletus.”
Paul’s third missionary journey meant he visited these places that we can often just read over very quickly but at the time were known as important places.
Assos is known today as Behram and is a small coastal city in Turkey. Its history is that of philosophy. Aristotle, after he left Athens, came to the city and opened a school of philosophy in 348 B.C. Paul wanted to stay and teach as much as he could in this city.
Mitylene is the capital city of a well-known island for us because of the intake of refugees, Lesbos, a Greek island in the northern Aegean Sea. It is the birthplace of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, she was born in 650BC and wrote about love and women. Mitylene became the home for many architects, poets, and philosophers of Rome.
Chios claims to be the birthplace of Homer. It was certainly the birthplace of eminent Greek politicians and writers.
Samos is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, separated from Turkey by the mile-wide Mycale Strait. It was the birthplace of mathematician Pythagoras and philosopher Epicurus.
Miletus before 500 BC was the greatest Greek city in the east having great commercial importance and yet having a history known only for war.
Philosophy, poetry, politics, knowledge, study and learning, commerce and war. Paul journeyed through them all. He stood in each place with the gospel in his heart ready to engage with whatever world he faced. The gospel is not soft nor is it weak. The gospel can stand against the most challenging and questioning of the pillars of society. In fact these pillars can speak of and herald the gospel. On their own through their wisdom they express their frustration at finding answers, the answer. The gospel heals their pain, the gospel satisfies the equation and the gospel brings the meaning of this life.
As gospel-carriers, missionaries in our world, let us study and then engage with these same pillars and more and not be afraid to speak the gospel to them.

The journey
Acts 20: 14 “When he met us at Assos, we took him aboard and went on to Mitylene.”
Most people spend their whole lives in the same area, street or even house than those like me who have lived away from home for nearly 10 years.
One of my favourite places in the world is a small island of 25 square miles with approximately 65,000 people living there, the island of Guernsey. For someone like me who has moved geographically so much in life that I could do a PhD in moving, the fact that some people on that island have not visited other areas of the 25 square miles is a fact that I cannot grasp!

Yet everyone understands that though we may or may not be a nomad all of us know the phrases, “this is where I’ve come from” and “where I’m heading next” as speaking of a journey of life that we are on. If the journey was described as a book it would contain many chapters with a variety of activity of twists and turns.

And so, we move into verses that will speak of Assos and Mitylene and in the next few days will include Chios, Samos and Miletus.
It would be easy to skip these verses and possibly miss the reason why they are written and something very helpful to the first century and 21st century reader.
To the Jewish mind as they read of Pauls travels and the journey of the Gospel they would also be thinking of another journey parallel to this: the travel story of the Israelites coming out of Egypt into the Promised Land.
To those from a Gentile life they would know all too well of the 2 great travel stories of the ancient world, “The Odyssey” and the “Ilyiad”. Homer wrote a story of Odysseus who returned home from the Trojan war travelling from one place to the next with all of lifes ups and downs. The other, Ilyiad, is a similar war journey of personal battle and struggle.
Here is Paul, the new hero, on a journey.
And the story connects with the reader, with you and me, who even 2 centuries later are on a similar journey of life.
Let us not hold back, but let us explore. Don’t wait for confirmation to move, just move. Why not? You have more than 25 square miles to explore. There is a whole world out there. Does God want me to go on a mission trip? Read the Bible … YES! Does God want me to cross the boundaries of where you live, to meet new people, to experience new things? Read the Bible … YES!
One day this journey will end on earth so live that journey today!

Walk alone
Acts 20:13 “We went on ahead to the ship and sailed for Assos, where we were going to take Paul aboard. He had made this arrangement because he was going there on foot.”
Paul decides to walk alone. He made arrangements … to be alone.
Luke had written in his first book, the gospel, how Jesus ‘often’ made sure he was alone (5:16).
Paul needed time to think and pray perhaps or to be away from the voices of people for many reasons. Whatever the reason, he arranged that he would walk on his own.
Where do you go to be alone?
Maybe for you being alone is easier than for others because you live alone. But it is quite amazing how we manage to fill our lives with noise and with the help of social media it can be that we find ourselves never truly alone.
But Paul walking alone is also a picture of his journey of life and all of our journeys. Yes we take people with us and we should but our walk is one of faith and we walk it alone. The resolve to keep going and to live unselfishly comes from the mining of our own hearts each day. Thankful for the encouragement that is shown towards us and yet our paths are unique to us and one day we will stand before our Saviour alone and He will reward us for the journey we took.

― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”
Friends, your long walk has not ended and today you walk on foot alone and you do it because you love God and you love others and you want to make a difference.
In order for you to continue there are times when being with people is not helpful to the cause. So come away, be alone, gather your thoughts, plot your cause and listen to Him who never leaves you.

The Church service
Acts 20:12 “The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”
The congregation is dismissed and Paul also leaves. In some kind of procession Eutychus is paraded home alive. Onlookers would have wondered what the fuss was about, after all Eutychus had gone to the church service alive in the first place, so coming home alive was to be expected!
The church people were greatly comforted and encouraged. Paul had poured himself into them teaching them many things, telling them stories of what God had done and they had witnessed an amazing miracle with Eutychus.
The power of a church service can cause an effect upon people for years.
Think for a moment of that one church service that gave you the inspiration and influence and tracing back you can say it was those few hours that changed your life forever.
Church services can take us to the footstool of the throne of God. They can open our hearts to the intimacy of worship and the joy of praise.
Church services can take us on a journey into the Bible with such revelation that we experience the still small voice speaking into our minds and hearts. A new understanding, a refreshing challenge and a desire to read more leaves us strengthened within our circumstances.
Church services are unpredictable. My close friend received his home-call in a church service, just the way he wanted it. Others receive their miracles. Still others receive life in all its fullness.
The people went home with all this in their hearts only because they had been. The church service is waiting for you. Will you go?

Acts 20:11 “Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left.”

Normal service resumes.
Paul had talked till midnight then leaves the building to pray for Eutychus and see him rise from death. Then he returns to continue talking till early morning.
But not before he ‘breaks bread’, the phrase for what we perhaps know as communion was laid out already in verse 7. Now he leads the partaking of it.
Paul got their attention back through the remembrance of the broken body of Jesus. He brought them back to the cross. He needed to say so much more to them but they needed to look again at the crux of the faith.
When it all goes wrong go to the cross.
When you may want to seek blame or look for justice, go to the cross.
When you want to continue but need to recalibrate your position, go to the cross.
The cross centralises our world and then launches us back into mission.
The cross makes sense of our confusion.
The cross enables us to continue.
Normal service resumes.

Sometimes it is right to close the church service down.

Acts 20: 10 “Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms round him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘He’s alive!’”

Sometimes we need to know when to stop preaching and when to stop having church services and get out of our buildings and go down to where the need is.

With an approach very similar to Elisha bringing back to life the Shunammite woman’s son, Paul throws himself onto the dead young man. I’m not too sure what to make of that except what I do know is that young people need fathers who will pour everything within them, all of their life, their energy, their God DNA, wisdom and power into the young generation. They need the fathers embrace.

Young people may have fallen out of the church and we need to realise that they are not going to come back in on their own accord. Churches today have lost a generation because they waited for the prodigals to return and they are still waiting. Prayer meetings and preaching and church services will not attract them back. They are deadened to those things. They fell asleep and fell out. They need an awakening.

Let us come out from our comfort zones of blessing and throw ourselves on to and in to young people’s lives. We all know of a young person who used to be in church but who fell asleep whilst the church was being blessed. Let us care enough to go to them. May God grant us the opportunity to shout, ‘They are alive again!’

 

Falling out of the Church

Acts 20:9 “Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third storey and was picked up dead.”

No one noticed, if they did it was too late.

A young man seated in a window falling asleep, drifting away from the message and the church.

You see he was still there in body. The others around him were not concerned whether he was still engaged, whether he was still enjoying church, he was there and that was the most important thing.

The next moment everyone is looking round asking where is the young man? Where are the youth in the Church? Why has this Church not got any young people anymore? Sadly you may know of churches in your nation and neighbourhood that simply have no young people. Where have they gone? They were there one moment but gone the next. Actually the truth is even when they were there they were drifting. At some point when the Church were not paying attention they left the Church. They ended up spiritually dead.

Thankfully many leaders are addressing this problem and there is a revitalisation of youth work taking place here in the UK. But many have left the Church, they dropped off listening to God, they still have faith but they are dead to the Church. What will we do? Does anyone care?

Risk assessment

Acts 20: 6 “There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting.”

Luke is trying to give the context for why a young man whilst listening to Paul’s preaching fell asleep.

There were many lamps. This meant that it was light enough as the darkness came but also these lamps were producing the heat and the comfort that would spell disaster for this young man.

What may look positive at first glance may in the developing of a circumstance prove deadly.

No one would have thought Paul would have continued preaching for so long when they brought and set out the lamps.

No one would have thought that given the length of the message that people may fall asleep under the atmosphere of the heat and the comfort from the lamps.

But these lamps contributed to the accident.

What in your life may look positive but could be dangerous in a different circumstance?

The truth is difficult to know. Often as in this case it is hindsight that tells us and it is always too late.

But we can do more risk assessments on what we do. Take a risk assessment on the places where you go and the people you spend time with and how you use your money. Take a risk assessment on what you spend time thinking about, what you watch and who you listen to. Take a risk assessment on what you eat and drink and the exercise that you take.

Perhaps the risk assessment may point out the dangers of having what looks like such positive elements in your life. Maybe you can avoid the dangers.