Acts 20 opens with Paul leaving Ephesus after an uproar, and the pattern that has followed him through the whole book follows him again: the plans change. He heads through Macedonia into Greece, stays three months, and then a plot is made against him by the Jews as he is about to sail for Syria — so he turns around and goes back through Macedonia. By this point in Acts, he has been imprisoned, rejected, threatened, and run out of towns. And he keeps going.
That is the tension this Sunday's message put its finger on. Starting something is usually the easy part. There is excitement when God first puts something in your heart, excitement when you first start serving. Then life happens. Marriages get harder than they were expected to be. Children don't always make the decisions you prayed for them to make. Ministries that were exciting to serve in start to require sacrifice. Somewhere in the middle it would be easier to quit — maybe not quitting Jesus, but quitting what He asked you to do. Which is why we have to come to a place where we say God, if You are not finished, then neither am I.
Keep Giving Life When Others Are Falling
Acts 20:7 puts us in an upper room on the first day of the week. Paul talks until midnight, and a young man named Eutychus, sitting in a window on the third story, sinks into a deep sleep and falls. Luke says he was taken up dead. Imagine what that does to the atmosphere of a room.
What Paul does next is the whole point. He doesn't stand at the window wondering how it happened or suggesting nobody should be allowed to sit in windows. He goes down to where Eutychus is, takes the young man into his arms, prays, and God restores him to life. Compassion does not stay at a distance. It steps into it.
We saw a small picture of that here at the church just last Sunday. Right after first service, a gentleman walking out the glass doors fell. The people in the room immediately rushed over, helped him up, and made sure he was okay — and then the church surrounded him and prayed. When somebody falls in the family, the family doesn't stand around and discuss it. You don't have to have a title for that. Sometimes ministry simply looks like helping somebody up off the floor.
Then notice what Paul does after the miracle: he goes back upstairs, breaks bread, and keeps preaching until daybreak. He never builds an identity on the miracle and he never treats it as permission to stop. He continues the assignment — because sometimes the people God puts in your path are the assignments.
Direction Without Details
At Miletus, Paul sends for the Ephesian elders and says something that almost sounds like a contradiction. He is going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit — and he does not know what will happen to him there. The one thing he does know is not exactly comforting: in every city the Holy Spirit testifies that imprisonment and afflictions await him. He is not walking toward an easier road, and he goes anyway.
This is the part of following Jesus that makes most of us uncomfortable, because we want the direction and the explanation. Thousands of years earlier, God told Abraham to leave his country and go to a land He would show him, promising a great nation and blessing for all the families of the earth. But He didn't give Abraham a map. Hebrews 11 says he went out, not knowing where he was going. Oswald Chambers put it this way: faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading. We don't have to know what it will look like a year from now, or five, or ten. We just have to be committed to obeying Jesus today.
Make Sure It Continues After You
Paul tells the elders they will not see his face again. After three years of laboring among them — praying with them, correcting them, admonishing everyone night and day with tears — he knows his season has ended. He will not be there tomorrow to answer their questions or fix their problems. What he is essentially saying is, now it's your turn. So he charges them to pay careful attention to themselves and to all the flock, warns them that fierce wolves are coming from outside and that twisted teaching will rise up from among their own selves, and commends them to God and to the word of His grace.
The message put this in terms a lot of north Idaho families felt in their bones this week, with school starting: a third-grade teacher at Southside is about to meet twenty-five brand new students, and every spring she ends up in tears when they move on. But the goal of a great teacher is not to keep students in the classroom forever; the goal is to prepare them for the next classroom. Paul's goal was never to make the Ephesian church dependent on Paul. It was to make them dependent on Jesus. That is the ultimate goal of discipleship, and it applies whether or not you ever stand behind a pulpit — because somebody is learning what following Jesus looks like by watching how you follow Jesus.
Finish With Nothing Left on the Table
At the end, Paul looks back. He didn't covet anyone's silver or gold. He worked with his own hands. He helped the weak. He never shrank back from declaring the whole counsel of God. He is not claiming perfection; he is saying he didn't hold back. Then he kneels down, prays with them all, and there is much weeping as they walk him to the ship.
No season in life lasts forever. Children grow up. School ends. The job changes. The opportunity passes. And oftentimes later runs out before we ever even get started. So take the honest inventory: is there an encouragement you could give, an apology you need to make, someone you keep saying you'll invite to church, a coworker who needs to hear that Jesus can save them from their sins, a place to serve you already know God has been calling you to? Give it. Do it. Start it.
Watch the full message and find your next step at theriverag.church.