The Sad Farewell

Being abandoned to the Spirit doesn't mean, well, okay, I just said God's in charge, He can have His way and I'll take a spiritual nap. The warning of Paul needs to ring in the ears of the church leaders then and the church leaders in the body at large today.

You remember, wake up, watch out, be careful. Why? Because the enemy of your soul roams about seeking whom He may devour. You can't have your soul as a believer, but He will devour your testimony.

He will take your integrity. He will rip that from the fabric of this church if He could. Have you ever had a beloved pastor, teacher or mentor that you needed to say goodbye to?

Perhaps he needed to move on to a new location or you relocated your family. Imagine what it must have been like when the Apostle Paul left the early Christians for the last time. Their ministry had been established by Paul's constant prayers, challenges and visits, but it was time for Paul to go. Like Paul, anyone who lives for Christ and serves others will leave so much behind. Today on Wisdom for the Heart, Stephen teaches from Acts 20 in a message he's calling the Sad Farewell. I invite you back to Acts chapter 20. Our series thus far has attempted to uncover the depth and meaning of Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders.

Maybe the title in your study notes is significant. Maybe you've been wondering how long this farewell would be. We're going to finish it this morning. We have listened in as Paul summarized his past work in verses 17 to 21. He told the elders that his ministry had been one of humility, that is, he knew he was weak and totally dependent upon the strength of the Lord. It was also a ministry of tears and trials, tears that they perhaps had seen, tears that perhaps they had not seen, trials that he had endeavored to be strong under but depended upon the power of God. He went on to talk about his future in verses 22 to 24 of being one of ongoing chains and bonds coupled with uncertainty.

You could underline in your Bibles then you get to the present warning as we studied in verse 28, the warning that the destroyers would come from without the church and deceivers would come from within. And you could underline sort of the outline of his farewell speech by noting the three times that Paul said, at least translated in my text, and now, verse 22. He introduces this thought, and now, verse 25. He says, and now, and he goes to another thought, and then finally in verse 32, and now. And this, and now, introduces his final words to the elders and to us.

And now, verse 32, 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. He says, I commend you to God. After all that Paul has said to them, after all that he's done, after the hours of training, after all the tears, he sounds sort of like a parent at graduation, where they watch their daughter or son go down the aisle to receive a diploma knowing that it is the doorway to perhaps a farewell. Or maybe it's the altar in a church where they hear their son or daughter repeat some vows.

Maybe the farewell takes place at a terminal in an airport or at the dock of a naval base. You are saying farewell to someone that you prayed with to receive Jesus Christ as personal Savior. You are saying farewell to someone that you have spent countless hours training and discipling and discussing issues of theological importance and personal need together with them. You have done all that you can do in their lives. You have given them spiritual roots, and now you are giving them away. And I couldn't help but think, what more could you say than I commend you to God? By the way, the only people, the only parents, the only friends who can tell somebody I commend you to God are people who have commended themselves to God first.

Because it takes a lot of courage and commitment to be able to say that. You'll never find the strength or the courage to commit your children or your spouse or your close friend to that work of God that's happening in their lives. You want to keep them nearby.

You want to clutch and cling. You cannot say to them, I commend you to God wherever God will take you. If you first are not abandoned to his sovereign will. Think of Paul's abandoned for a moment. You remember, Paul, where are you going next? Jerusalem. What will happen to you there? I don't know. I only know that the Spirit of God is compelling me to go to Jerusalem.

That is abandoned. Is Paul reckless in his faith? Is he foolish in his abandon to God?

Like some parachutist or some bungee jumper who leaps headlong toward the earth and hopefully that thing has been tested or at least measured properly. To the believer who is commended to God, there is no reckless leap. Spurgeon said it the best, as I have often thought of this quote and I repeat it again to you, that we are at our spiritual best when we are shipwrecked on the island of God's sovereignty.

Have you ever been shipwrecked like that? So Paul here with personal experience and total assurance could hand these elders and this flock in Ephesus over to God. He'd given them roots and in fact now he will give them wings. He not only commended them to God, secondly he committed them to grace. Did you notice in verse 32, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace. That expression, the word of his grace, you could write into the margin of your Bible a simple word, gospel. It's a synonymous phrase or idiom for gospel in Paul's thinking. In verse 24 he talked about the ministry of testifying boldly to the gospel of the grace of God. In Acts chapter 13 verse 3 he talked about the gospel of God's grace, the message of God's grace. He didn't tell them now, look, I've been teaching you for three years, I commit you to all those study notes. Or I want you to hash over everything you've ever heard for those four and five hours a day that I taught you, he could say.

Try to remember all of that. No, he says, I want you to simply commit yourselves to the grace of the gospel of God and that will keep you on track. This is a favorite theme of his, we have sung about it this morning, we've heard about it. But to Paul, the word grace was precious, he used it more than a hundred times in his letters to the Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy and to Titus he began his letters to them by saying, I commit you that is grace be to you. It's interesting to me that Paul combined the idea of grace and he used that word to talk about the gospel. He used the word gospel to relate to grace, he considered those synonyms and aren't they? For grace is simply unmerited, undeserved, unchanging favor from God. Isn't that the gospel, unmerited, unchanging, undeserved?

Nothing is free and it is in the gospel that we have placed our hope. What are you hoping in today for your eternal security? Someone clipped for me an article a few months ago from the Wall Street Journal about what an entire nation is placing their hope in and it will sound very silly to you but yet it's something they believe in. It talks about Taiwan and its recent reception. Of course this is a Buddhist country for the most part. The island gave a hero's welcome, the Wall Street Journal article read, Thursday to surely the oddest guest ever to be granted a state visit, a 2,400-year-old tooth said to have come from the Buddha himself. Flown in on a specially chartered plane, it touched down to cheering thousands and the Taiwan's premier led the way, radio stations devoted up to the minute reports of its progress. The premier Vincent Slough said, quote, let us have peace and harmony now in our society, offering a prayer to the tooth in an airplane hangar that had been converted into a makeshift shrine and under a red and gold banner proclaiming ceremony to welcome the Buddha's tooth.

The object of attention rested after its trip in a miniature gold-plated pagoda wrapped in clouds of incense. Taiwan, the article goes on to say, has high hopes. Believers say it can end a recent string of mishaps from plane crashes to corruption scandals. But fierce squabbling has already created problems.

Opponents say the government should solve problems, not fan superstition. And some have asked why Taiwan's president, a supposed Christian, will preside over a mass prayer to the tooth this weekend. True believers remain serene, says Yu Kun Song, a food company executive who waited at the sweltering airport to catch a glimpse. He said, quote, once the tooth has arrived, our troubles will be over.

Can you imagine? Paul commends these men to the gospel and he says, as he writes to them later, in fact, in the Ephesian church, listen to these words, he says, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us and the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.

And by the way, this does nothing more than prove that when you do not believe in Christ, you can believe in anything. So they are commended to God and they are committed to the ministry of grace. Now third, these men are challenged to give. Look at verse 33.

I have coveted no one's silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands minister to my own needs and to the men who are with me. In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said, it is more blessed to give than to receive. Paul's last recorded words to the presbuteroi were a quote by Jesus Christ and it may surprise you to discover that this quote is nowhere found in the Gospels. It's a statement that Jesus Christ had evidently given to the church, but it had never been written down under inspiration until now. And so the phrase that we would assume that he said as he walked planet earth had never been recorded in his biographies, but it's given to us here. And this phrase, by the way, sort of summarizes all that Paul has been for them and all that they needed in the future. Their ministry as elders, their ministry as presbuteroi, as leaders in the church was to be a ministry of self-denial.

It would be a ministry of giving. He said, I have coveted no one's silver. I have not wanted anyone's gold.

I have not coveted any man's apparel or clothing. And the love of money, you remember, has been one of the chief characteristics of the false prophets. Micah, all the way back in the Old Testament, denounced the false leaders of Israel by saying the leaders pronounced judgment for a bribe. The priests teach for a price and the prophets design only if they're given money. Isaiah talked about the shepherds of the people who like hungry dogs were never satisfied but continued to bribe and cajole and extort the people's money. And Paul warned Titus that they should never teach for the sake of sordid gain.

While he will go on to explain the fact that they can be supported by the ministry, he said you don't do it to be paid. Paul wanted to make dead sure that the gospel was offered without charge, as he put it in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 18. A true shepherd, ladies and gentlemen, does not fleece the flock, he feeds the flock. And Paul had been an example for these elders.

He had given himself to God, he had given himself to the flock, he had given himself to the ministry of the word, and he had given himself with such intensity that for a period of three years, night and day, for hours upon hours, he devoted himself to them. And he now concludes, it is far better or blessed to give than to receive. Now I want you to note here, he's not talking about giving away money. The first part of the statement can offer the misinterpretation that he's talking about money.

He isn't. Paul is not saying to us it's better to give your money away than it is to receive it. And there are a lot of people who think that the best thing that you can do is give your money.

And every Sunday on Sunday morning, and maybe it even happened in here, as the offering plate was passed by, people thought that they could buy their way out of the Great Commission by putting in some money. He's not talking now about giving away money, he's talking about giving away your life. It is better to serve than to be served.

The most fulfilling lifestyle is not in people lining up to serve you, it is in you lining up to serve them. And specifically to these elders, he is saying, be ready to give your life away. Now notice, he finishes his speech in verse 36, and when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all, and they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken that they should see his face no more, and they were accompanying him to the ship.

Throughout this whole paragraph, you have picked up the dominant feeling of an affection, haven't you, between them. A few years earlier, he had come to them as a total stranger. In fact, when he came, he created a riot, and he so incensed the inhabitants of this city that they filled the arena, and they began screaming, and they screamed and chanted, for two hours, great is Diana of the Ephesians. And they would have killed Paul if they had been able to lay their hands on him. But he had slipped away, he had created a riot, he had created great turmoil, he had turned their lives upside down as a stranger, but now he had brought some of them from darkness into light, he had liberated them by means of the gospel.

Now, three years later, he leaves as a friend. And so these men are not only committed to God and committed to grace and challenge to give, they are consigned to grief. Notice again in verse 38, we're told that they were grieving, especially over the word which he had spoken. That word grieving is the same word used by Luke.

He uses it several times. One of those occasions is when he records the story of Joseph and Mary, and Jesus is missing. You remember, they couldn't find them? And so they went back to Jerusalem where they had been, and they discovered that Jesus was in the process of teaching, describes a few things they didn't know. And Mary told Jesus, and I can only imagine that conversation and how it went between the mother and the 12-year-old boy, but she used this word and she said, your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.

That's an understatement. You ever lost sight of your child at the mall or in the neighborhood or at the fair? They turn a corner and you don't know which corner and you're sort of at that moment. We were at the park yesterday. We'd been invited to go with the family to listen to, if you can believe this, some blue grass music.

Can you see me out there? It was great, I'm afraid to say, but at any rate, we lost sight of Charity. Where's Charity, a little four-year-old? And you get that little feeling, you know, a lot of people around and somebody spotted her about, it was about four acres away with a little boy and he was leading him astray. But you know that panic? So to use the word anxiously, but it's the same word here. It's the same word Luke uses to talk about the rich man who is tormented in hell or Hades.

And he speaks to Abraham asking for a drop of water and he says, I am tormented in this flame. Tormented, same word. So you combine the panic with the grief with the anxiety and the fear and you put it all together and you get a little bit of a glimpse at what these men were feeling. A little panic, the leader of our church is leaving. A little fear, we're alone, we won't have him with us.

Anxiety, emotional torment and all of those as they express their sorrow and their grief. And in an effort perhaps to calm their terror and to quiet their tears, Paul says evidently, men, what do you say we pray? And so right there on the dock in the open with people bustling about and the ship's dock crowded with supplies and right there, Paul just sort of calls a prayer meeting and the Greek says they placed their knee, which is interesting to me because the common posture and at least the synagogue and first century praying was to stand with eyes open, lifted upward. It was a symbol of their respect and honor of the person whose presence they were entering and so they did that standing.

That sort of worked its way even into our culture where we have forgotten that practice for the most part when you stood when someone entered a room. But here they placed their knee, kneeling in prayer expressed deep feelings of an utter helplessness and dependency and need. Jesus Christ, you remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, knelt when he prayed deeply needing the resources and strength of the Father. Sometimes that would include prostrating before the Lord in utter dependency. And so they kneel there on the dock with the great apostle who now prays for them and he prays with them and they're wiping their tears away and it's interrupted by a sob here and a sob over there and as they're huddled together praying their dependency on God is expressed here perhaps more than ever in their lives. What a prayer it must have been. And the Bible tells us they evidently got up and embraced him and repeatedly kissed him. The Greek is so descriptive. Having fallen around his neck they kept on kissing him. The language indicates that each one of them did not want to let him go, that is they would embrace him and hug him and they just didn't want to let go as they repeatedly kissed him.

Even though the call, the board had been repeated perhaps several times. If we could summarize Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders and his comments to us as a church, I believe we would need to apply a couple of different ways. I think we could take it this way. Our relationship with the Lord must be balanced by, and I just went back to those and nows, and now, and now. Three summary statements. Our lives must be balanced first of all by abandonment to the Holy Spirit, that is total submission to the Spirit of God. Second of all, alertness to the enemies of our soul. Being abandoned to the Spirit doesn't mean, well, okay, I just said God's in charge, he can have his way and I'll take a spiritual nap. I'll kind of coast.

No, not at all. The warning of Paul needs to ring in the ears of the church leaders then and the church leaders in the body at large today. You remember, wake up, watch out, be careful.

Why? Because the enemy of your soul roams about seeking whom he may devour. You can't have your soul as a believer, but he will devour your testimony. He will take your integrity. He will rip that from the fabric of this church if he could.

So be alert. Third, there must be allegiance to the grace of God. When Paul had said everything, he turned their attention to the grace of God, the grace of the gospel, the grace of the saving God. And when they knelt with the one who had introduced them to the grace of the gospel, he did nothing more or less than commend them to this word of grace, which is able to build you up, he said, to give you a hope that is rock solid and give you an inheritance among those who are sanctified. That is, he pointed them to the future fact of the kingdom when the God of grace will rule and reign. With that, we bring today's Bible message to a close.

This is Wisdom for the Heart. We've gone back to our vintage wisdom archives to bring you this series from the book of Acts. Stephen first taught this series back in 1998, but the truth and application of God's timeless principles are just as relevant today as it was then. Our desire here at Wisdom International and Stephen's desire as your Bible teacher is to proclaim the truth of God's word as accurately and practically as possible. Please continue to pray for Stephen and for this ministry. Like you, Stephen desires to finish well, and our ministry is empowered by your prayers.

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Again, it's info at wisdomonline.org or Wisdom International, PO Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. Here's how Beth from Michigan phrased it. She wrote, I appreciate your clear explanation of God's word and insightful detailed application in our current world. You've motivated me to keep reading the Bible and remember God's daily grace that makes me grateful for the alterations He's making in my life, as well as giving me the words to speak to others.

Thank you. Well, thank you, Beth, for taking the time to share that with us. We have two resources that can help you, like Beth, remain faithful in God's word each day. You can follow along in our Bible reading plan.

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