Easter at Troas

Paul in the same fashion as Elijah, the Old Testament prophet of power and signs and wonders. This apostle now representing this new dispensation to a new church, went down and he embraced this boy, this young man. They had already begun the Middle Eastern wail over the dead and Paul said, stop!

He's alive. What a demonstration of the life-giving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ who represents power over death. God can heal people, but healing can also be staged by false teachers. God can perform miracles and signs and wonders can also be counterfeited. In fact, you've probably seen videos of false teachers performing false miracles in our day.

So, what's the definitive proof that Jesus is the Son of God? Well, it's the resurrection. In Acts 20, that reality was dramatically illustrated as Paul was preaching in the city of Troas. Keep listening to learn how.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. Stephen takes you to Acts 20 in this message called Easter at Troas. Nearly 2,000 years ago, a man stepped onto the scene of Jewish history and proclaimed himself to be the Messiah. Jerusalem, for a moment, sang his praises and they believed that he was the one. In 135 AD, this Messiah wannabe mounted an insurrection against Rome and actually won Jerusalem for a brief period of time. But then, in another battle, this man named Simon, son of Cossiva, was beaten on the battlefield, executed, and buried. A thousand years later, another man stepped onto the scene and declared that he was the Messiah and many believed.

They sang his praises. In the year 1666 of all years, Zevi was his name, was captured and imprisoned by the sultan of modern-day Turkey, which is just northwest of Israel today. But while he was imprisoned, he did the unthinkable. He changed sides and became a Muslim. 300 years after that, another man, this time in our generation, stepped onto the scene and declared he was the Messiah. His name was Rabbi Menachem Schneerson and he was followed, the Friends of Israel organization calculated, by more than 300,000 Jews. He lived in Brooklyn but had a house built in Israel by his followers. They were convinced he was the Messiah they had long waited for, even as he lay in a hospital in New York dying, paralyzed by a series of strokes, unable to speak. One of the leaders within his movement interviewed with reporters and said, we believe that he will recover, lead us back to Israel and rebuild the temple.

This one died and was buried. These men were not the long-awaited Messiah. They either abandoned their mission or they failed to defeat the one enemy that King David said the true Messiah would defeat, the enemy called death.

They all failed. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the defining, authenticating demonstration that he himself is the Messiah. Healings could be staged. Supernatural phenomena could be faked.

Genealogies could be forged. But coming back from the dead would be the thing that would undeniably, irrefutably mark him as the Messiah. And what's more, according to Ephesians chapter 2, the church that Jesus Christ founded would be a church made up of people who, like Christ, were dead in sin and trespasses, but who were made alive in Christ. Now, Jesus Christ, as you know, stands alone. He is the only one who ever declared in that long line of Messiahs and Messiahs yet to have come to have ever boldly stated, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. That's quite a claim. He backed it up by living beyond the grave.

He validated that claim. And he will validate it again at the second trumpet when the graves will empty the remains of those who have already died in Christ to be reunited with their spirits that have already been enjoying heaven with Christ. But between that first resurrection of our Lord and this coming resurrection at the rapture, did you know that Jesus Christ illustrated his power over death again?

He chose to illustrate it in a little town named Troas. I invite your attention to the book of Acts and to the place where we left off in our study through this book of action. Now, at chapter 20 verse 1. Acts chapter 20 verse 1. If you were with us in our last discussion, there was a riot in Ephesus. This picks up by saying after the riot had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and when he had exhorted them and taken his leave of them, he departed to go to Macedonia. When he had gone through those districts and had given them much exhortation, he came to Greece and there he spent three months and when a plot was formed against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, evidently they planned to assassinate him on that boat, he determined to return through Macedonia. Now verse 4.

And he was accompanied by Sopater of Berea, the son of Pyrrhus and by Aristarchus and Secundus of the Thessalonians and Gaius of Derbe and Timothy and Tychicus and Trophimus of Asia. But these had gone on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas and I'll stop for a moment. Sometimes Luke shows you the videotape in slow motion where you can see every possible detail. At other times, it's like he puts the tape in, pushes play and then pushes fast forward and you sit there and you watch the events fly by. Sometimes so fast as you're reading Luke that you want to say, now wait a second Luke, stop there, whoa, we want some more information. We don't have much here and for reasons known only to the inspiring spirit of God, Luke just raced through some very fruitful months of Paul and Greece, so fruitful that by the time he left, he had penned his masterpiece we know as the book of Romans and also a second letter to the Corinthian church. But for whatever reason and we'll discover why in a moment, Luke is sort of racing toward an event because that's where he's focused.

He wants us to see this and it's like he can barely wait till we get there. Look at verse six. And we sailed from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread and came to them at Troas within five days and there we stayed seven days and on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to depart the next day and he prolonged his message until midnight enough. You were reading, if you circled every time Luke referred to some chronological clue, you could circle the word days five times in two verses. Notice verse six, the days of unleavened bread. Five days, seven days, the first day of the week, latter part of verse seven. The next day, what did Luke get a new day timer here?

He's keeping everything carefully. Why the almost obsession with timing? Well, there are a couple of reasons. These reasons would be entirely lost upon the Bible student who didn't stop to ask some critical questions. We usually pick up our Bible and unfortunately in an undisciplined way we open and we say, okay, now what does this mean to me? Without first asking the question, what did it mean then? When did it take place? Where did it take place?

Sometimes by asking the questions where and when, great significance can be gained to the student the word. For instance, when Jesus Christ stood and he said, I am the light of the world. That's an incredible statement and yet it explodes with even deeper meaning as you recognize the context is the festival of booths. It was a period in Israel's history where they celebrated in the beginning of the celebration. At the beginning there was a ceremony called the illumination of the temple and inside the treasury there were four gigantic candelabra and they would be lit in this ceremony. Josephus says that the light from those candelabra was so brilliant that every courtyard in Jerusalem was bathed with light. Jesus said, I am the light of the world.

John tells us he said that in the treasury. Interestingly enough, he said it the day after the festival ended, which means now is his backdrop. He has these large candelabra that had been snuffed out and the temple has once darkened. He with these in the background said to his audience, I am the light of the world.

You who follow me will never walk in darkness. As if to say the light of Judaism would last only days, but his light was eternal. Well, when you come to Acts chapter 20, if you ask the question that Luke evidently wants us to ask, okay, Luke, say again, when did this happen before we get to what happened?

Notice verse six again. After the days of unleavened bread, what was this period of time known as? The Passover, a time when Israel remembered its escape from from Egypt, a time when God commanded through Moses for every Israelite family to take a little lamb and kill it, roast and eat it, but take some of the blood of that lamb and put it on the doorpost of their little slave shacks because a death angel was coming into the land and those who had blood on their doorposts would be saved. The angel would pass over them. That's where they got the word Passover from. Those that didn't have the blood on the doorposts, the death angel would take the firstborn of every family in death and so they obeyed as far as we can tell and the death angel came sweeping into the land and just as God promised, he passed over the homes where the blood was applied. It was during this particular time when Jesus Christ, the lamb of God, was crucified while the Israelites were eating their lambs that they had killed and roasted. The lamb of God hung on the cross who'd come to rescue people from eternal death. Now, this text tells us it was after that, that is after the crucifixion, after the time when the lamb was slain. So what are we waiting for next?

What comes next? Easter. A time when we remember, as it were, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That was the time when this was going to occur. And notice again verse 7, on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break bread, there's another important piece to understand. This is the very first time in the New Testament where we read that the church met collectively on Sunday. It would become known by the time you get to Revelation chapter 1 verse 10 as the Lord's day. It was a day in which Jesus Christ arose from the dead and it became a significant day that the church selected to worship the resurrected Lord. So by the time you get to Revelation chapter 20, they are celebrating, they are breaking the bread, definite article indicating communion. They are remembering his death, his burial, and his resurrection on the Lord's day because that was the day when Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Now, with that as introduction, let's find out what happened now that we know when it happened, verse 8. And there were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered together. Now, notice Luke uses the word we.

He's an eyewitness to this account of what's about to happen, verse 9. And there was a certain young man named Eutychus sitting on the windowsill, sinking into a deep sleep. And as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep.

Stop here. I find it incredibly encouraging that somebody fell asleep even when Paul was preaching. I just wanted to say that you can go back to sleep now.

By the way here, better to fall asleep in church than come to church and never be awake. It says here that Eutychus was overcome by sleep. The tense of the verb indicates that he was fighting it. His eyes were just kind of drooping and his head was going down.

And I better not say too much because you might start doing what I'm doing. But he was fighting it while Paul just preached on and on and on and on until midnight. And finally, he was overcome by sleep.

And now it isn't funny. He fell down from the third floor or literally the third loft and was picked up dead. Was he really dead here? Well, Luke, the physician, says that he was picked up necros. That is, he was picked up a corpse. In fact, Luke, the doctor, may have been the one who pronounced him dead. But verse 10, but Paul went down and fell upon him and after embracing him said, do not be troubled for life is in him.

Paul in the same fashion as Elijah, the Old Testament prophet of power and signs and wonders. This apostle now representing this new dispensation to a new church went down and he embraced this boy, this young man, wrapped his arms around him, put his body on top of his. And then you can just sort of imagine him getting up and brushing himself off and saying, stop the commotion. The tense of the verb indicates that the rioting or the confusion had already begun. In fact, it's the same word translated riot that you read earlier when the Ephesians rioted.

They had already begun the Middle Eastern wail over the dead and Paul said, stop. He's alive. And when he had gone back up verse 11 and had broken the bread and eaten, he talked with them a long while until daybreak and so departed. And they took away the boy alive and were greatly comforted. What an illustration of resurrection power. What a demonstration of the life giving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ who represents power over death. Now, are all these things coincidental to the text? Did these things just kind of happen in a happenstance way or are they significant to the event that occurred?

They are significant. Passover has just ended. The lamb has been slain. Christ had been crucified.

Now Easter is in the air. This event occurred on the first day of the week, the day when Jesus Christ came back to life, the day here in Acts chapter 20, we find the church perhaps for the first time or at least recorded in the first time as having met together corporately to worship the resurrected Lord. And you remember the primary theme of Paul's preaching was what? The resurrection. And in this long sermon, no doubt, he's somewhere in there talked about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine this for a sermon illustration? Imagine following the preaching of the resurrection, we will have a live demonstration. And that's exactly what happened.

There are even more analogies that can be drawn here. For instance, all mankind is in a fallen state for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Paul writes, we were all dead in sin and trespasses, but by means of God's rich mercy, he made us alive. You know, I thought about the fact that Eutychus could do nothing, absolutely nothing for Paul in order to live.

You know that? He couldn't give any money to Paul. He couldn't promise to be a more obedient young man. He couldn't turn over a new leaf. He couldn't promise to never sleep in church again. He couldn't get baptized. He could only be the recipient of this gift of grace, the gift of life.

Eutychus could never go around Troas saying, you won't believe what Paul and I did. Paul wrote in Colossians chapter two, when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven all of your transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. In other words, the work of salvation is the work belonging to Christ alone. And none of us will ever take the credit for sewing one stitch into our garments of righteousness that we will one day wear.

Another interesting thing to me here is that Eutychus's name means fortunate. You ought to write that in the margin of your Bible, fortunate. So is every person here who's alive in Jesus Christ. Paul said, you've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Ephesians chapter one, verse three.

You could rename all of us who've come to faith in Christ. Fortunate. Fortunate. Well, one more thing and I'm finished. How old was Eutychus? Well, in verse nine, we're told that he was a young man.

The Greek word is nanias. Linguists tell us that that would mean a man from the age of 24 to 40. And yet in verse 12, it's a different word, the word paida, which is usually rendered as it is in my text, young boy or little boy.

Is there some seemingly trivial contradiction? Perhaps unless you translate the word in verse 12 paida differently, you see the word paida can be translated slave, servant. Here's a man who'd worked all day and was overcome by exhaustion. If there was ever a wonderful picture of humanity, it was Eutychus. Enslaved. Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, the one who sins is enslaved to sin. But if the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. John 8 verse 32 says, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

But Eutychus represents all of us in here at one point in time, enslaved, fallen, dead. But then we are embraced by grace and death turns into life. And all of this happened around Easter time, the anniversary of the resurrection of Christ and the birth of the church, a church built upon the truth of this true Messiah who declared that he was the one and only true one who said and then validated and then demonstrated the truth of that claim when he said, I am the resurrection and the life, the one who believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Father, we thank you for the truth of your word and this incredible statement by your son that was proven in this little town proof to us that life is indeed found in the saving gospel of Christ. Lord, if there are any here today who have been working hard, who've been attempting to find their way into your family, may they become truly fortunate today by realizing they can do nothing at all. Your grace has done it all and simply receive what has been done in their stead.

We pray it in Jesus name. Amen. I'm so glad you were able to be with us for this time in God's word.

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