Acts 20:17-28 | A Worthy Life

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

You never know what's going to happen to you when you come to church.

I've been singing Be Thou My Vision for all of my life.

And I just heard my favorite rendition.

Thanks, music team.

Appreciate all of your service and your work.

That was fantastic.

Please take your Bibles with me to Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

As we have been working our way through the book of Acts, we've been moving at a pretty steady clip.

It's because most of the sections in the book of Acts are large.

And rather than get bogged down in all of the details and aspects, we've wanted to move fairly quickly through the book.

The problem with Acts chapter 20 is Acts chapter 20 is one of my favorite chapters.

Acts 20 · chapter mention Acts 20 · chapter mention

It is probably my favorite chapter in the book of Acts, and maybe one of my favorite chapters in all of the Bible.

And so I just want to spill everything that I can on you from it.

I'm trying to restrain myself from doing that.

But I can't just cover the rest of the chapter in one Sunday, so we're going to have to split it up.

There's just too much richness here.

So we're going to look at Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through verse 27 this morning, the passage that Webb read for us a little bit earlier.

Acts 20:17

So we get into it again.

I'd like to remind you of the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Most of you are familiar with him.

Bonhoeffer wrote about being a Christian while living, existing, barely existing in his own thoughts, while in a Nazi German prison.

He wrote these words from prison.

He said, when we have completely renounced trying to make something of ourselves, hear that word, hear that part again.

When we have completely renounced trying to make something of ourselves, doesn't matter what it is, be it a saint or a converted sinner or a cleric, a so-called priestly figure.

It might be a righteous or an unrighteous person or a sick or a healthy person.

When we've tried to, when we've given up trying to make something of ourselves, when we have done this, then we completely throw ourselves into God's arms.

And we take God's suffering in the world seriously rather than our own.

And then we begin to keep watch with Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.

He said, That I think is faith.

Now Bonhoeffer was able to compose those words only after fully dying to himself and resigning to follow Christ wholly, even if it meant never getting out of prison and dying as a Nazi prisoner.

But it took Dietrich Bonhoeffer decades to fully grasp that truth and to resign himself in always to Christ's care.

Bonhoeffer wrote the words about throwing ourselves into God's arms sometime in the year or so before being executed at Hitler's command in 1945.

But what is striking is that he had also said eight years before this that when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

And the question that we're left with is how did it take him eight more years to come to the realization that he needed to throw himself into Christ's arms?

Nearly every Christian understands that Christ calls us to come and die.

We understand that to some extent.

Jesus' words about taking up a cross and following him somehow take on new meaning not long after trusting in him.

We begin to get new understandings of what God has called us to.

We possess some comprehension of a cross, not merely being an element that hangs on a wall in a church or a piece of jewelry, but an instrument of execution.

It's a sign of death.

But slowly, maybe with some of us it's days, with others, it's weeks and months and even years.

We begin to learn more about our human frailty and faith as we follow Jesus.

And as those years turn into decades, dying to self and throwing ourselves into God's arms takes on new and richer dimensions.

It takes time to fully comprehend what Jesus asks of us.

So when Jesus tells us that we can follow him, when we hear Von Hoeffer telling us that when Christ calls us, He calls us to come and die, we can hear and consider the reality of carrying a cross with pessimism and gloom, or with hope and trust.

Because he had learned to die to himself and live for Christ.

Placing all of his hope, all of his trust in God's good purposes.

He had learned to throw himself into the arms of Christ.

We think about that a little bit differently.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer had learned to imitate the Apostle Paul, as the Apostle Paul had imitated Jesus.

I think we find evidence of this in Paul's life and ministry in Acts 20, 17 through 28.

Both the Apostle Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer had learned the same truth.

In Bonhoeffer's words, the truth was throwing yourselves, casting yourselves into the arms of God.

For Paul, that truth was expressed as trusting in the gospel of God's grace.

Twice in the second half of this passage, we see this concept of God's grace.

First, it's the gospel or the good news of the grace of God in verse 24.

Later on, he calls on the elders of Ephesus in verse 32.

He commends them to God and to the word of his grace.

Throwing yourself into God's arms or trusting in God's grace becomes the primary motivator for living for Jesus.

I assume that you're here today because you want to live for Jesus.

Your motivation for that should be the gospel of the grace of God.

This is why Paul would later write to the church of Ephesus.

That's where he is.

He's meeting with the church elders of the church in Ephesus.

He later wrote to them, I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called.

Bonhoeffer would say it's a calling to die, to die to yourself and to live for Christ.

With all humility, with gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love.

The Apostle Paul could call the Ephesian Christians to a worthy walk because he had given them an example to follow by carrying himself the cross of Christ.

And as Luke records that for us in Acts 20, it becomes our example to follow.

Look at it with me.

We see here how trusting in God's grace transformed the Apostle Paul's heart, it motivated his service, and it enriched his faith in Christ.

So again, we're talking here about the gospel of the grace of God in verse 24.

What does that do for Paul?

What does that do for you, for me?

Well, first of all, we see that transformed Paul's heart.

The gospel of God's grace transformed the apostle Paul's heart.

These are some of Paul's last words spoken in person to these people.

He's meeting in person with the elders of the church.

They won't see him again.

They'll hear from him again through his letter as he sits in a Roman prison.

But this would be the last in-person connection with these people.

And so he begins by reminding them of his life in verse 18.

You yourselves know how I lived among you.

And he wants them to know that as he lived among them, he lived with a transformed heart.

What does a transformed heart look like in the Apostle Paul?

It looks like service.

He says, I lived among you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews.

God transformed Paul's heart to serve.

The reason he is in Asia Minor, the reason he's ministering to the men of Ephesus is out of service to the Lord Jesus.

The reason he left Jerusalem, the reason he left Antioch in Syria, traveled to Asia Minor, spent years on missionary journeys, suffering all kinds of things, is because he's serving Christ.

This is a constant New Testament theme.

Jesus, you remember, spoke about the need to serve God alone.

He said, It's impossible to serve two masters.

You'll either listen to one and not listen to the other, or vice versa.

So serve God alone.

The Apostle Paul would remind the church in Colossae, whatever you do, do heartily, with energy, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive an inheritance as your reward, because you are serving the Lord Christ.

And that applies to whatever we do, whether it's our job in the workplace, whether it's serving one another with a meal, with encouragement, with prayer, whether it's coming to church and serving in some manner here, you are serving the Lord Christ.

1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verse 9, the Thessalonian believers, we are told, turned from idols to serve the living God.

1 Thessalonians 1:9

So in some sense, service to Christ is a picture of salvation.

It's turning from worshiping something other than what Christ is and who Christ is, and turning to serve him.

And it encompasses all of our life.

God transformed Paul's heart to serve Christ.

In fact, this is a theme that continued on.

So, for example, the pastor of the church of Rome, Clement of Rome, in his letter to the church at Corinth, around the time that John wrote the book of Revelation, he wrote to the church in Corinth, let us therefore serve God with a pure heart, and we shall be righteous.

But if we do not serve him, because we believe not the promises of God, we're going to be miserable.

In other words, he says, remember who you are and what you've believed and serve God.

That's part of what it means to be a Christian.

Now you remember that Paul did not begin with a heart to serve God.

We're told that he was zealous for the strictness of Judaism to the point of approving of Stephen's stoning.

But he persecuted Christ rather than serving him.

That is until he met the risen Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and Christ transformed him.

Similarly, no one possesses a heart to serve Christ genuinely until he gives them a new heart.

You must be born again, Jesus said.

Through faith, God grants us a right standing before him, and with that new hearts that long to serve and love and obey him.

Paul set that example for the Ephesians and for all of us since who read Luke's account of Paul's life.

Now, as we think about Paul's life, we see that serving Christ has a twin attribute.

Serving has a twin.

Humility.

God will not share his glory with another.

So genuine service can only be done in humility.

And that's what we see in the Apostle Paul.

God transformed Paul's heart to be humble.

Verse 19.

I think I messed something up up there, guys.

Look at verse 19.

Serving the Lord how?

With all humility.

God will not share his glory with another.

So you cannot serve him genuinely with pride.

That doesn't work.

He served with all humility.

Now, humility means not thinking more highly of yourself than you ought to think.

That means humility is understanding reality properly.

Who God is and who I am in relation to who God is.

And having the right thinking about that.

For example, Romans chapter 12, verse 3, for by the grace given to me I say that everyone among you ought not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.

Romans 12:3

Don't put yourself on a higher status, on a higher plane than you think you are, but to think with sober judgment.

Jesus told the disciples, when you go to somebody's house, don't take the best seat in the house.

Because that's pride.

He said, think of yourself properly as I'm not worthy.

I'm going to put myself at a lower place.

Humility is the opposite of pride, thinking properly about yourself.

Now humility is displayed in two ways.

First, it's displayed in the way you think.

Romans 12, 3 again.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, you ought not to think more highly of yourself.

So it starts in your head, understanding who God is and who I am.

Peter writes, All of you have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.

So humility comes first from the way you think.

If you're a proud person, you need to be transformed in your mind.

But humility has a second display, and that isn't the way we act, especially toward others.

Jesus Himself humbled himself by taking on human form to die.

You remember this?

Philippians chapter 2, verse 8.

Philippians 2:8

He humbled himself to the point of death.

To get there, he had to take the glory of God, had to clothe himself, wrap himself with human flesh.

That was a humbling act.

And as if that wasn't enough, he humbled himself to the point of being a slave.

And if that wasn't enough, he humbled himself to the point of death.

That's why James would write, humble yourselves before the Lord.

That's why Peter writes, clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.

Because God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

So Paul's humility here was displayed in how he thought about himself and how he displayed that toward others.

How did he display that toward others?

He relates that later on in verse 34.

He says, You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It's more blessed to give than to receive.

He displayed that by considering others more significant than himself.

What do we do with that?

Well, it's worth asking, friends, if the gospel of God's grace has genuinely transformed our hearts.

It's worth asking.

God's work is powerfully transformative.

If you do not have a heart to serve, and if your thinking about others and yourself is dominated by pride, arrogance, certainty, then you either need to humble yourself before Christ and trust in him alone for your salvation, throwing yourself on his mercy and grace for salvation, or you need to stop resisting him through your sin.

That's a lot to take in.

Let me say each one of those two things differently.

If you haven't experienced God's transforming work of grace, so that you serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you haven't experienced that, then you might not genuinely be saved.

You might be trusting in something else.

Like your own innate goodness, your consistent church attendance or whatever.

That's you, my friend, cast those aside and come to Jesus empty-handed and receive Him.

On the other hand, if you haven't experienced the transforming nature of God's grace, you might be genuinely saved, but you might be harboring some sin that battles against the Spirit's work in you as you seek to maintain the dominance of your own self-centeredness.

If that's you, and the words of Bob Newhart, stop it! If that reference confuses you, ask me about it afterwards or Google it.

Later.

Later, not now.

My friends, let the Spirit of God crush you to humility.

It will be the best thing for you in life.

This is the gospel of God's grace.

It transformed Paul's heart.

And it transformed his heart to be humble.

Look at me now with look with me now at the gospel of.

God's grace and how it motivated Paul's service.

He served the Lord.

That was the transformative nature.

It transformed his heart to serve, but the gospel of God's grace doesn't just do a work to make us different, it also provides the energy, the motivation to serve.

And it does that by motivating perseverance.

God's grace stirred Paul's perseverance so that he could continue on with tears and through trials of all kinds.

He even says in verse 22, I'm going to Jerusalem bound by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there.

He says, I'm imprisoned by the Spirit, and I don't even know what's going to happen to me.

But I keep going.

So we've seen how God's grace transformed Paul's heart to serve.

Now we see how it motivates him to serve.

We see that motivation in his perseverance.

I don't know that many people in the last 2,000 years have had the difficulty in serving Christ that Paul had.

Maybe you remember that when he met Christ on the Damascus Road and God blinded him, Ananias was told, hey, go pray for him and heal him because I've shown him how much he will suffer for my name's sake.

Paul here says his ministry included tears and trials as he kept on ministering to people while some Jews plotted to get rid of him.

He was chased out of town on multiple occasions.

He was beaten.

He was imprisoned for the cause of Christ.

Coming up in his life, he will be shipwrecked.

Yet God's gracious transformation enabled Paul to see Christ as worth all the pain, sorrow, agony, and suffering that came with serving Jesus and his people.

Cast yourself into the arms of God so that you experience his strength to persevere.

If you ask yourself ever, I don't know if I can go on, that means you're trying to do it in your own strength rather than casting your arms.

Casting yourself into the arms of God.

Throw yourself into the grace of Jesus until you know him so well that you are empowered by that knowledge to keep going because of the overwhelming nature of his grace to you.

God's grace transformed Paul's heart to serve humbly, and it motivated him to persevere with all boldness to speak of Jesus, which is what we see next.

Paul was stirred to boldness.

Look at verse 21.

I testified both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 24, I testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

He testified to everyone.

He's a witness at a trial.

The world is put on trial, and Paul is a witness saying, you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Doesn't matter who it is, he's going to testify.

He's going to speak of Jesus.

Verse 25, he proclaimed the kingdom of Jesus.

It's the same message that Jesus preached.

You can see Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

That's the first sermon Jesus ever preached.

The kingdom of God is at hand.

Verse 20, he did not shrink from declaring anything that was profitable.

Verse 27, he did not shrink from declaring the whole counsel, the whole will of God.

He says, I was bold before you.

After this meeting with the Ephesian elders, Paul said, therefore, be alert, verse 31.

Remembering that for three years I did not cease, day or night, to admonish everyone with tears.

Christ so changed the apostle Paul's heart that he was emotional about making sure people heard the word of God.

That they came to faith in Christ and grew up in him.

He was bold.

When needed, he was in your face.

If you doubt that, read 1 Corinthians.

When required, he was gentle.

He says, like a nursing mom with her baby.

But always his speech contained and was guided by the word of God's grace.

So we see here two of the many reasons we fail to speak of Jesus as we should.

One is because we've not been stirred by God's grace to persevere.

And the other is because we have not been adequately stirred by the gospel to motivate our boldness.

They want everyone to know about it.

They want everyone to experience it with them.

That's what consumes them.

But if we fail to speak of Jesus, it's probably because we've not been stirred by God's grace to persevere.

Or we've not been adequately stirred by the gospel of God's grace to motivate our boldness.

And that is you must meditate on the glory and the grace of your Lord.

If he is your Lord, study him and speak to him through prayer, asking to know the greatness of his grandeur and his grace to you.

You must become overwhelmed by Christ to be stirred to persevere in boldness.

But take heart.

Jesus doesn't call his sheep to himself and then send them out in the world to make it on their own.

No, he said at the very end of the gospel of Luke, going into the book of Acts, no, I will be with you today, tomorrow, and to the end of the world.

He calls us and empowers us through his transforming, stirring presence to be his witnesses.

You and I don't do this.

Jesus does this as the resurrected and ascended Lord through his people.

The gospel of God's grace transformed Paul.

The gospel of God's grace motivated Paul.

And last in this section for today, we see the gospel of God's grace enriching his faith.

It enriched his faith.

Verse 22.

And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem.

Constrained, bound.

So he's talking about when he gets there, he's going to be imprisoned.

He knows that imprisonment is in his future.

He's going to be in chains.

And so he talks about that as though the Spirit is doing that to him, that God has chained him, bound him with ropes, making him go to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.

Except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.

We see here that God's grace undergirded Paul's faith to face the unknown.

Paul experienced a very missionary-like situation.

He was compelled by the Holy Spirit to go somewhere.

In his case, it's to Jerusalem.

And there he would, along the way, he would make several stops.

He was certain, absolutely certain, of God's will for him.

He knew where God wanted him to go.

And he was intent on obeying.

But he had no idea what would happen to him once he got there.

It's a very missionary-like mindset.

But he did know that he would obey.

And he had some sense of what the path of obedience would look like.

He knew that he wouldn't be staying in five-star hotels and be treated like a celebrity along the way.

He knew that.

He says in verse 23, I know.

Because I hear it in every city.

Imprisonment and afflictions await me.

He didn't know what would happen to him, but he did know that imprisonment and afflictions would happen.

So, wait a minute.

He didn't know, but he did know.

How do we make sense of that?

Well, I take from Paul's statement that he didn't know the result, the end result of arriving in Jerusalem.

But he was fully aware of the path that he would have to take to get there.

He didn't know where that path would lead in the end.

But he knew the path would be unpleasant, painful, and challenging.

I think that's why he says, I'm constrained, I'm bound by the Spirit.

It's as if he was imprisoned by the Spirit so that he would be taken down a path of hardship ending in physical imprisonment.

How might we face that kind of awareness?

What if, what if it was very clear to you that God was sending you somewhere, doing something with you, and you didn't know what the end result would be like, but you you were content to obey, and you knew that the path was full of unpleasant pain.

How might we face that kind of awareness?

Well, I think there's several options.

A popular one today is we could deconstruct our faith and walk away from God.

We could throw a pity party and sulk until finally giving in because what can you do?

You can't fight God.

Right.

We could we could go down the path of obedience with a heavy and a depressed heart, full of melancholy, but obeying because we know we should.

Or we could we could command our hearts and minds to trust God's purpose to enrich our faith through suffering and hardship and follow Jesus with hope.

As Bonhoeffer said, we could choose to throw ourselves into God's arms.

I think we get a glimpse of the Apostle Paul's mindset about all of this in Ephesians chapter three.

Keep your finger in Acts 20.

And look at Ephesians chapter 3.

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

Remember that this letter to the book of Ephesus was written after the offense of Acts 20.

It was written after being imprisoned in Jerusalem.

So Acts 20 looks forward to Ephesians 3, and Ephesians 3 looks back to that point.

Paul in Ephesians 3 is a prisoner.

He starts out in verse 1 for this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles.

Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I've written briefly.

When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men and other generations, as it's now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

What is that mystery?

It is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

Of this gospel, I was made a minister, a servant, according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power.

To me, though I'm the least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he realized in Christ our Lord.

So how does Paul think about his situation?

Well, he views his circumstances through the lens of Christ, not through the lens of his circumstances.

Verse 1, he's a prisoner for whom?

For Jesus.

He views his circumstances through the lens of the gospel of God's grace.

Verse 2, verse 7.

He views his circumstances through the lens of God's eternal program, verse 11.

He views his circumstance through the lens of the significance of others.

Look at verse 13.

So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you.

Paul's putting into practice everything that he had lived up to that point in Acts 20 and is still living now later in a Roman prison.

My friends, God's grace was the rebar in the concrete of Paul's life.

He didn't see it, but it was there running through it, adding strength and support and stability.

God's grace is the anchor of his soul.

Now returning to Acts 20, what we find in verse 24 that Paul's life was given entirely to Jesus.

He says, I do not account my life of any value, notice his humility there, nor as precious to myself, doesn't matter what happens to my body, to me, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I receive from the Lord Jesus.

His only desire was to finish what Jesus gave him to do.

He wanted to finish his race regardless of the unknown.

And he knew that was possible because of Jesus.

Because God's grace undergirded Paul's faith in the superiority of Christ.

Allison and I were, maybe unwisely, awake and sitting on our couch with the blinds opened at twelve thirty at night, watching the storms the other night.

Felt terrible the next day.

But my friends, if you don't see Christ and his power and his glory behind that power and glory, you're missing something.

The Apostle Paul's ministry was to witness.

God called him to tell others about Jesus and the gospel of his grace that's behind everything that lives and moves.

Because even the world's poets and philosophers know that it's in him that we live and move and have our being.

Paul's service to Jesus was to be a testifier, a perpetual witness to his good news of God's grace in Jesus by saying, Yes, you're afraid of this, be afraid of him.

You see power and glory and awesomeness in this.

You're missing out on everything if you don't see it in Jesus.

He contends that he has fulfilled his duty among the Ephesians.

He testifies that he's innocent of their blood.

Verse 26, I'm innocent.

Like a watchman who gives a warning.

Paul has proclaimed the will of God to them.

This duty, this responsibility, this service God called Paul to was a service to and about Christ.

Verse 19, serving the Lord.

Verse 21, of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 24, the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.

Paul labored as a witness to Jesus.

He endured all manner of trials because he believed in the resurrected and ascended Christ, the powerful and glorified Jesus who works from heaven through his spirit, through his people.

Jesus is greater than all of them.

One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

Which ones?

The ones on earth, the ones in heaven, the ones under the earth.

It doesn't matter where they are.

Every tongue will proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

A comprehensive grasp of the gospel of God's grace undergirded Paul's faith in the supremacy and the preeminence of Jesus Christ.

Do you see that?

Does that motivate you?

Does that undergird who you are as a Christian?

I suggest to you that this review of Paul's life is the basis for his challenge later to the Ephesian church and his challenge to us today.

He says, I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk worthy.

What's a worthy walk?

He says, just look at me.

Just look at what I did.

Do the same.

Because you've been called to this.

And do it with all humility and with gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

So we should ask ourselves, my friends, have we been transformed by the good news of God's grace?

Have we been motivated to serve?

Is our faith undergirded by the supremacy of Christ over all, including ourselves?

Do we follow Christ faithfully, humbly, perseveringly, with motivating awe at the glory and power and supremacy of our risen and ascended Lord?

Have we thrown ourselves into the arms of Christ for his glory and our good?

Lord Jesus, may we do that very thing.

Fill us with your spirit so that we might be your people, motivated by your spirit and your glory.

May you be all in us.

May the world see your light, your power, your divine being because of your presence in us that transforms us and stirs us to speak of you.

Make us, Lord, into your people, vessels for your glory and your good.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

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