"Fairwell Ephesus" Acts 20:17-37 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

I'm going to begin in verse 17 and read to the end of the chapter.

This is Paul's farewell address to the Ephesian elders.

He had been their pastor for three years, and now he finds himself years later in Miletus, verse 17.

From there he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him.

When they came to him, he said to them, You yourselves know that I lived among you the whole time, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I didn't shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance towards God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

And now, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, 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.

But I don't account any of my life as value, nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish the course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

And now behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I didn't shrink from declaring to you the whole council of God.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the Church of God, which he obtains with his own blood.

I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease, night or day, to admonish everyone with tears.

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give to you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel.

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

And 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 himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

And when he had said these things, he knelt down, prayed with them all.

There was much weeping on the part of all, and they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word that he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.

And they accompanied him to the ship.

Well, I'm grateful for Ryan, who preached the last four weeks in my absence through John 1, and I'm thankful for the theme he drew out in every one of those passages.

There was certainly a progression.

Everybody was pointing back to Jesus in John 1.

Do you recall John in the first few verses is pointing to Jesus?

John the Baptist is deflecting everything to Jesus.

The disciples are pointing people to Jesus.

Jesus is pointing people to Jesus.

Everything is pointing back to Jesus.

And this theme in Acts chapter 20, though it is long after the ascension of Christ, is carrying in the same direction.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

Paul, though he uses the first person pronoun frequently in this address, is continually pointing people back to Christ.

And so I'm just fascinated by this sermon here.

Acts is a book of sermons, but this one really is unique.

And so we're not going to be able to address all the depth of this.

I can't even go through every verse.

There's going to be whole sections of this I can't comment on, but I do want to try to bring about the overall tone of this sermon from Acts chapter 20 for you.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

First of all, a few preliminaries.

This is a sermon given in Miletus.

Miletus is about a 15-hour walk from Ephesus.

Paul was on his way from the Roman Empire across the Mediterranean.

They're going to cut across the Mediterranean down to Jerusalem, where he will be bound.

It's been prophesied to him he'll be bound.

The prophet Agabas is going to pretty soon describe Paul being bound in chains when he gets to Jerusalem.

There's no mystery about what's going to happen there.

Paul is on his way to Jerusalem where he will be arrested.

Now Paul is thinking he's going to be martyred.

As the boat is making its way there, it stops in Miletus.

Paul probably didn't have a lot of warning about this.

It was stuck in Miletus to change the crew and to change cargo.

They were likely only there for a few days.

Paul sends a runner over to Ephesus.

Ephesus is a church, as I mentioned, 15 hours away by foot.

He had ministered there for three years.

It is the most mature of all the New Testament churches.

Paul had ministered there.

Timothy would be their pastor.

John spent time as their pastor there.

Tychicus would be their pastor there.

I mean, all it's like the who's who in the New Testament.

Like the all-star lineup of New Testament people, all pastored the church of Ephesus.

In the book of Ephesians, it is the most mature and godly church that there is.

That was Paul's doing.

He poured out his life there.

For three years he was their pastor.

And now out of the blue, some runner shows up in Ephesus saying, Come quick.

Paul, who's in custody on his way to be put in custody in Jerusalem, he's down in Miletus.

Come quick, grab the elders and come.

So the leadership of the church in Ephesus, that all know Paul, I mean he was their pastor for three years.

They make the day-long journey back to Miletus, where Paul addresses them for a day and then likely sail to Jerusalem the next day.

This message here is not the full content of what he said.

I mean, they didn't travel 15 hours to get something that would take you two minutes to read.

There was probably a long address.

There was most certainly a sermon based upon the words in Matthew 10, verse 8.

Matthew 10:8

He addresses that down in verse 35 of Acts 20.

It's more blessed to give than receive.

That appears to be the text that he had drawn his sermon from.

And he he preaches to them.

Now, what's unique about this sermon, the book of Acts is filled with sermons, but there's something special about this one.

This is the only sermon in the book of Acts that is given to Christians.

The other sermons in the book of Acts, you know, some of them are to the unbelieving Jews back in Acts chapter 2, some of them are to the Sanhedrin that haul the disciples in for questioning, some to kings, some to a hill full of scholars and scholastics.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

I mean, Paul preaches to raging mobs and colosseums.

He's addressing all kinds of groups in the book of Acts, but this is the only sermon given to us given to Christians.

It's not the only sermon in the New Testament, of course.

We have the teachings of Jesus, and we have the book of Hebrews, which I would say is another sermon given to Christians, also by Paul, but your mileage may vary on that diagnosis.

But this alone in the book of Acts is a sermon to Christians.

With that in mind, notice that he's not addressing the whole church.

He's pulled aside the elders from the church.

And he's addressing them.

So it's interesting, this being the only New Testament sermon to Christians, the only New Testament sermon to Christian elders, what's not here.

Before we deal with what's actually here, just think about what would you imagine would be in this kind of sermon?

A church growth strategy?

A vision for reaching the next generation?

Things about Paul, Paul's greatest hits.

I mean, in our own evangelical culture, which creates kind of rock star pastors, if there was ever a famous pastor, it would have been Paul, right?

I mean, he is the best-selling Christian author of all time.

If you don't get that joke now, you will on the way home, probably.

And he's here, and he's not making much of himself.

Everything, as I mentioned, there's lots of first-person pronouns, but they're all taking him down.

It's all pushing him down to push Jesus up.

The crux of this message, and I have outlined this message many, many different ways.

Uh Pastor Ryan said last week that Jesus was a Baptist because he preached a three-point sermon, and you laughed, and I said amen.

And now I look at this and I'm wondering if Paul was a Baptist, because there are not three points to this.

Paul was a Baptist, by the way.

I outlined this sermon.

Every day this week I outlined this sermon differently, and I came up with different outlines, but no matter which way I sliced and diced it, there's one thing that just jumps out.

Verse 24 is the heart of this message.

Verse 24 is the main point of his sermon.

And he says, I do not account my life of any value.

I mean, that's his proposition.

That's his purpose statement.

If he had his main point up on the screen, that would be it.

He doesn't count his life as having any value.

His farewell message is making himself low.

And it's not even subtle.

The word he uses for not having any value, it's the word that means worthless, negated.

The word that's translated life there is the word for soul.

So all the self-esteem experts can head for the aisles right now.

Because Paul says, I look at myself in the mirror, and I don't say, you know, you're good enough, you're strong enough, by golly, you can do it.

Paul says, I look at myself in the mirror and I say, worthless.

Worthless.

In fact, I said the word for life there is the word for soul.

Paul says, I look at my soul in the mirror.

I look at myself eye to eye.

I cast my eye on my soul, and I see that it is worthless.

It has no value.

This is the point of his message.

The true ministry is self-denying.

True ministry denies yourself.

Far from doing a farewell tour where he talks about how powerful and influential he is, in his farewell sermon to these Ephesian elders, he talks about how low he is.

Worthless, in fact.

It's an accounting term that he uses.

He's appraising his own soul.

This reminds me of those old uh reality TV shows where people would bring their treasure to, you know, an auction and the expert would come out and, you know, here's my grandmama's chair, this rap and saran rap.

For 17 generations, no one has looked directly at it.

It's so valuable, and the snobby British expert comes by and takes off the cover, and they're always British and they're always snobby, but I repeat myself.

And looks at the chair and says, Ha! Worthless! And all the tears.

You know, and somebody else comes out with a China dish, you know, everything else was destroyed in the 94 earthquake, but this one lone dish remains, and the expert faints and is revived and is like priceless.

You know the shows I'm talking about, right?

This week Deedra went to the Fairfax Library, the George Mason Library, and they were having their book sale.

And she found this on the shelf at the book sale.

It's a book of Keats poetry from the 1800s.

And it says in the front, as I turn to the title page, only 250 copies of this large paper edition were printed.

And it's got the year it was printed, and you know, so we're she snags it.

20 bucks at the book sale.

And we Google it and how much is this thing worth?

And we can't find this exact edition because it is so rare.

We found one a little bit earlier.

It's being auctioned in England right now for$20,000.

Don't worry though, there's free shipping to the United States, it says.

The Holy Spirit has testified that Paul can see the value of people.

And he declares here in Acts chapter 20, I look at myself and I have no value.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

That's his message.

Now there's one phrase in this that makes the rest of the sermon kind of snap together like an honor guard here.

He says, nor is precious to myself.

That's the key phrase.

Paul looks at himself and he says, I have no value, I have no worth.

I'm a sinner, I'm a stranger, I'm an alien, I'm an exile, I'm a rebel against God, I have no value of any any real sense in this world to myself.

Now, Paul has taught the Ephesians for three years.

He's given them more theology than just one sentence, of course.

He has the book of Ephesians, he has written them, and the book of Ephesians has not been written by the time of Acts 20.

It'll come a year or two later.

But it certainly represents the content of what he had been teaching them.

And you recognize that you have value not in yourself, but you have value by virtue of your position in Christ.

This is the whole point of Ephesians chapter 1.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

That the Father has set his love and affection upon you.

He has written your name in the Lamb's book of life from before the foundation of the world.

He then sent his son to die for you, to be your redeemer.

He then sent his Holy Spirit to regenerate you and act as the seal, the guarantee of your salvation.

You now then have good deeds to walk in in your life, Ephesians chapter 2 says, because the Holy Spirit saved you and he will guide you and direct you.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

So you have value in worth.

You were redeemed at a cost, not precious metals, not gold and silver, but the priceless blood of Jesus Christ purchased your salvation.

So you have value just not in yourself.

You have value by virtue of your position in Christ.

That's a very important distinction because when you get that distinction, you can lead the selfless Christian life.

If you think of yourself as having importance, then you lead a guarded Christian life.

You have you don't have secret service literally around you, but you protect yourself and you avoid risks, you avoid even risks for Christ in such a way because you are valuable to yourself.

Paul is freed from that because he has no value to himself.

He only has value to Christ.

So as the Holy Spirit directs him, he can go to Jerusalem and be martyred, he can go and be bound, he can go preach the gospel to an angry crowd, he can speak up and share the gospel at work or to his neighbors because he doesn't value his own life.

There's such a freedom in that.

Paul recognizes he's the wrong person to assess his own value.

I understand this as a high school soccer coach.

I have had mothers come to me and say, you know, my son, I've been watching him play his whole life, and he deserves more playing time than you're giving him.

He's better than you think he is.

Okay.

Good luck with that.

Paul recognizes he's the mom in this analogy.

He cannot appraise himself rightly.

So he goes down.

He is low, Jesus is high.

And if Christ is high, then it's up to Christ to value Paul's life.

Paul's a sinner, he's worthless, Jesus is worthwhile, he is holy.

So Paul finds value in this world by finding value in Christ.

I'll give you an outline from that.

I'll see the rest of the sermon flowing out of that.

I said it was hard to get a three-point sermon from this, but I didn't say it was impossible.

Self-denying ministry is, and I want to give you descriptions of self-denying ministry, but before I even do that, understand this is not new for Paul.

When Paul's talking about self-denying ministry in Acts chapter 20, his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, this isn't novel.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

He's not making this up right here.

Jesus himself taught this all over Matthew's gospel.

It seems likely to me anyway that Paul would have had access to Matthew's gospel by this point, certainly.

I mean, Luke has done his research, Matthew is before Luke.

Paul is preaching a sermon from Matthew's gospel in this.

When Paul writes 1 Timothy, he has Luke's gospel already.

So I think by Acts chapter 20, Paul has Matthew's gospel.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

He's familiar with the kind of teachings that Jesus says.

For example, Matthew 16, if anyone were to come after me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross.

So this language is coming from the mouth of our Lord.

Matthew 16 was Jesus' first instruction to the church.

And so it is poetic here in a sense that Jesus' first instruction of the church and Paul's last instruction of the church that he loves bracket themselves.

It's the same thing.

You want to be a Christian, you deny yourself.

You want to be successful in ministry, you deny yourself.

You want to save your life?

Guess what?

You need to lose your life.

This is the gospel message.

You want to find success as a Christian, then deny yourself and die to yourself.

You want to experience the resurrection when you die, then you die in this life.

You die to yourself.

You are crucified with Christ.

Whatever loses his life for the sake of Christ will find it, Jesus says that.

That talk is unusual in the world.

You won't hear other religions saying that kind of stuff.

You won't hear business people saying it.

You won't hear salesmen saying, buy this and it'll kill you.

But this is normal Christian speech.

This is Christianity 101 here.

It's foundational.

You have to be lost in order to be found.

You have to die in order to live.

You have to recognize your worthlessness so that you can find your worth in Christ.

You have to deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow Jesus.

He had already told Nicodemus, who had all the power and influence in this world, he told Nicodemus, you want to see the kingdom of God?

You have to be born again.

Erase your whole life, my friend, and start over.

He didn't tell that to a homeless guy in the street.

He told that to a Pharisee.

Control A, delete, restart.

And Nicodemus says, What?

His jaw drops open.

Jesus says, Pick up your jaw.

You're the teacher of Israel and you don't know this?

So this is foundational stuff here.

This is self-surrender.

Jesus tells his disciples, if you love your family more than me, you're not worthy to pick up your cross and follow me.

I mean, you weigh your life on the balance.

You do your own math.

You weigh your life on the balance.

You reduce the fractions, you carry the one, you cancel things out, you weigh your own life against the life of Christ, and you better come up that your life is worthless compared to the majesty of Christ.

That's what a self-denying ministry is.

I fear before we go any further, there are some people here that take themselves way too seriously.

You shouldn't take yourself seriously in Christ.

You know, you shouldn't take yourself seriously in Christ.

Understand that you have a self-denying ministry.

You deny yourself.

Al Moller said something many years ago that has always stuck with me.

He said, it doesn't matter how important of a Christian you are, how famous of a pastor you are.

And at the time Al Moller said this, he was president of the largest evangelical seminary in the world.

And he said, no matter how important you think you are, let me tell you what's gonna happen when you die.

Your church is gonna put you in a hole, throw dirt on your face, go inside, eat potato salad, and vote in the next guy.

When he said that, I thought, I don't even like potato salad, but I mean there's truth to that.

There's no famous Christians.

It's like saying there's a famous backgammon player.

That's a selfless, self-denying ministry.

Now I'm gonna give you an outline about this.

As I toyed with how to structure this, so understand this is a message from Paul to elders.

You know, Emmanuel has its own seminary here.

We have 18 students at our extension location of the seminary, so in some sense, this is a message addressed to those 18 students.

We have 35 elders, so in some sense, this is a message addressed to those 35 elders and those 18 students.

We have thousands of people, but so many of you are serving in different ministries and children's ministry and parking lot ministry, ushering in the sound booth.

I mean, you're serving all over the place.

So I thought, how do I make a message to pastors and elders applicable to people serving in all those capacities?

And I eventually decided not to.

I'm just gonna Preach to pastors and elders and the seminary students here, and trust that the Holy Spirit will apply it to your own heart in whatever way you need to hear this message.

Because he'll be more specific and personal in your own heart than I could be if I was like, and this applies in this way, that way.

It'd be silly.

So I'm going to give you an outline this morning about how to have a self-denying ministry.

First, a self-denying ministry is spiritual.

It's spiritual.

And Paul says this repeatedly.

There's a couple themes that jump out of the sermon.

He identifies that his ministry is, of course, spiritual.

He says this back in verse 22 that he's going to Jerusalem constrained by the Spirit.

He's attributing the effective work of God to the agency of the Holy Spirit as what is driving him further in pastoral ministry.

He's going to Jerusalem.

He knows in verse 23 that the Holy Spirit testifies to him that he will be imprisoned there, that afflictions await for him there.

In other words, the Holy Spirit is guiding his ministry.

For you to have a ministry that is guided by the Holy Spirit, it has to be a ministry that denies self.

Because if you make much of self, you are guided by self.

In order to be guided by the Holy Spirit, you have to yield yourself to him.

You yield is kind of a soft word.

You have to crucify yourself, die, and be made low so that you are submissive to the word of God.

The word of God, of course, is spirit-inspired.

So the Holy Spirit directs your life through the ministry of his word, telling you how to live.

That shapes your affections.

That tells you what kind of ministry you want, where you want to preach, how you want to shepherd, how you want to care for the flock of God among you.

It's spiritual because you have yielded your own desires to the desires of the Spirit who is at work in your life.

This is the majesty and the mystery both of the Christian ministry, that every person who is a true member of a local church is regenerate.

That's the goal.

Certainly there's tares and there's false converts and there's false teachers that arise among you.

Paul tells the Ephesians that in a few verses he tells them that.

But every member of Emmanuel Bible Church has been baptized and is given a confession of faith and has said, This is what happened to me, this is how I met Jesus, this is how I was saved.

So if they're speaking the truth, then every member of the church is spirit-filled.

And so Christian ministry is inherently spiritual because every person with whom you minister is being led by the Spirit in his own life or in her own life.

He or she is following the Lord in their daily life.

You then, as a shepherd or as an overseer, or as an elder, or as a pastor, all the language that's used in this chapter, is guiding and discipling and shepherding that person who is also spirit-filled.

So the Holy Spirit has his hands all over Christian ministry.

This is self-denying because it is not the ingenuity of the pastors or the elders that guide the church.

It is the gifts that build the church, the gifts that Jesus gives through the Holy Spirit to the church.

That's what gives the church its strength.

Not the elders and not the pastors, but the gifts that the Spirit gives that are used by the congregation.

That's the walls of the building.

So the church then gets.

We then serve each other through those gifts, creating a unity in the body.

So we are one body with one spirit, the spirit that has worked in the strongest and the least of the Christians.

And the most mature saint and the newest believer, all bound together by the same spirit.

So any ministry in the church is spiritual ministry because he is the one who is gifting the church.

And one of the gifts he gives to the church in Ephesians chapter 4 is pastors and teachers and shepherds to care for the congregation.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So a self-denying ministry is a spiritual ministry.

It is the Holy Spirit who is at work.

The entrance of the Christian life is spiritual.

Every Christian wrestles through whether or not to obey the word or to obey the lust of the flesh.

Elders who have that same fight in their own life, they help others resist the temptation of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and take stands for Christ.

Even when those stands require suffering, as is described in verse 23.

Or it involves uncertainty as described in verse 22.

Paul says, I'm constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen.

So Paul's stepping out in faith here.

He says, I don't know what will happen when I get to Jerusalem, but I do know it's going to be very bad.

And some of you commentaries think that this is a contradiction to Agabus' prophecy, who says you're going to go there and be bound, and everybody says, Oh, don't go, you'll be bound.

And they're like, see, the Holy Spirit says to the prophet that he'll be bound, and then in Acts chapter 20, he says, I'm going to go there anyway.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

Contradiction.

It's not a contradiction because he says, he's even using the word for bound in verse 22.

I am bound, constrained by the Spirit, because in verse 23, I know I will be afflicted there.

He's telling his people farewell, like he's never going to see them again.

They're weeping at the end of this chapter.

The thing that made them sad is he says, I'm not going to see you again.

He's ready to die.

His life is yielded.

He's not taking the safe route.

He's yielded to the Spirit.

This is the tug of war, by the way, that is in every one of our lives.

Will I obey the Spirit of God through the Word of God, or will I obey the flesh and the desires to lead a life, this materialistic life that I want to seek meaning and significance apart from the word and apart from Christ, to make much of myself over Christ.

That's the battle in every human heart.

That's the tug of war.

Follow the flesh or follow the word.

Well, Paul wrestled with the angel and he still limps.

I mean, he says, I don't account my life as any value, and because he says that, he can say the Spirit is directing me to a place where there is persecution.

And by the way, this conveys, this sense of the Spirit leading your life, conveys.

Paul is being directed by the Spirit to persecution, and he says down in verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

So he's transferring this to them.

They are made overseers by the gifting of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is set on them.

He says that to them in Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

He tells that to Timothy, who's pastoring in Ephesus in 1 Timothy 3.

It's not confined to this.

This is a constant refrain to the Ephesians.

You have pastors and elders, not because they received a special word from the Lord, but you have pastors and elders because they have the desire the Holy Spirit gave them.

They aspire to the work of the ministry.

Their lives are elder qualified.

The Holy Spirit, in that sense, sets them apart.

There's laying on of hands.

They're ordained to the ministry.

That's what he tells Timothy.

You have the gift through the laying on of hands.

It's not a mystical transfusion.

It's the elders of the church saying, This person is set aside, called by the Spirit to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is the ministry of the Spirit.

The church's ministry is spiritual.

Which means it cannot be self-promoting.

You can't exalt the Holy Spirit and yourself at the same time.

Brothers, if you aspire to Christian ministry, you have to crucify the flesh in any lingering ambition that is there.

If your priority is your own life, it's hard to lead a spirit-filled ministry.

If your priority is the will of the word, not just in your life, but in the life of others, then it can only be a spirit-filled ministry, because the spirit is the one who is at work.

Listen, everything that happens in the church is spirit-led and spirit-filled.

That's why every spiritual gift is for the church.

Paul isn't pouring his life out to reach the poor in Ephesus.

He's pouring his life out to strengthen the church in Ephesus.

He even says this at the end that he's working with his hands to help the weak who are there in the church.

He tells 1 Timothy and 1 Timothy 5, you're helping the widows in the church.

Because this spiritual gift is building the church.

It's all about the church, the glory of the church, because the church is a spiritual body that God is building on earth now.

Anyway, a self-denying ministry is firstly spiritual.

Second, a self-denying ministry is verbal.

This is the most common refrain in this sermon, Acts chapter 20.

Acts 20 · chapter mention

It's all about what Paul says.

It's vocal.

I'm sure you noticed that when I read it.

It's repeated over and over and over again.

In verse 20, Paul says, I didn't shrink from declaring to you.

Or teaching you in verse 20.

Verse 21, testifying.

Verse 24, I testify.

Verse 26, I testify to you.

Verse 27, I declare to you.

Verse 31, I admonish you.

These are all vocal words.

Paul is saying that the crux of his ministry, what drives his ministry is words.

It's the content of what he's saying.

Martin Luther called the Christian church a mouthhouse.

In German, a mundhaus.

I'm sure it sounds way cooler if I actually spoke German.

A mouthhouse.

There's nothing else like it in the world, Luther said, and he's right.

The Catholic Church is bound together by sacrament.

The Islamic Church, which Luther was writing against, by the way, when he called the Christian Church a mouthhouse, the Islamic gatherings are about the pillars and about works and actions.

The Catholic Church is a sacrament.

Luther said that the Christian Church is a mouthhouse.

A person opens his mouth.

There's nothing else in the world that's like it.

You all have a Bible, and yet you come here to hear a pastor explain things that are in a book that you have.

It's a mouthhouse.

The church is built by speaking, by testifying.

The word that's translated testify, it's the word for witness or martyro, martyr is the word that comes from that.

Ultimately, when Justin Martyr is killed for his witness of Christ, it's a word that takes on a dual meaning.

In the book of Acts, it doesn't mean death, it means to witness something, to see it, and then to testify of it.

You see a crime take place, you go to court, put your hand in your Bible, you raise your right hand, you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, and then you point at the person, he did it.

You have to actually say that.

You can't say, I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help me God.

I actually don't want to say who did it, but I saw it and I'm just going to treasure it in my heart.

No, you'll get found in contempt and you'll go to jail.

You have to say it to testify of it.

That's what Paul says.

My three years was spent testifying about Jesus Christ.

That's which we have seen, that's which we have touched, handled.

That's how John opens 1 John.

Paul says the same thing in Acts chapter 6.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

We tasted and we did more than taste, we partook.

We saw this and we drank it in.

He experienced it, and so now he's testifying about it.

The content of what Paul's saying here over and over again, it's always the word of God.

He declares in verse 25, or verse 27, the whole counsel of God.

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

Verse 21, I testify of repentance towards God.

That's the content of this.

He's testifying over and over again about what's in the Bible.

Because very easy to say, oh, a self-denying ministry is verbal.

Well, how is a verbal ministry self-denying?

Wouldn't a verbal ministry by necessity be self-promoting?

Because you're the one speaking?

And that's true if you're speaking your own vision or your own wisdom or your own thoughts.

If you're speaking your own plan for the church, if you're a vision-casting pastor, then it is self-promoting.

If you're saying, I think these are the three keys to reaching the next generation, that's self-promoting.

If you're saying I have this insight into culture and society, that's self-promoting.

If you say I have a vision for the church, that's self-promoting.

But if you say this is what the Bible says, that's self-denying and Christ promoting.

Do you see that?

I know so many of you are military and FBI and this year, the next year you'll be transferred and you'll go away somewhere, and you'll look for a new church.

If you walk to the door and the pastor is like one of those vision-casting pastors, I would run.

I would get out of town so fast.

You don't want a vision-casting pastor.

You don't want a pastor with a plan for your future.

You want a pastor who opens the Bible and says what it says.

Paul says, I never stopped doing that over and over and over again.

I testified to you so much so in verse 25, he says, I'm innocent of your blood.

You guys can die.

This is Ezekiel reference.

You guys can die in your sin if you want.

If you apostasize, it ain't gonna be my fault.

If you end up apostasizing, it's not because I didn't preach you the whole counsel of God.

All I did was lift up Jesus to you, he says in verse 27, the whole counsel of God.

Verse 24, he says, I'm testifying the gospel of the grace of God.

The gospel, the good news that God became man, the eternal Son of God was born on earth with a human nature, lived a human life, never sinned, you deserve death, he did not.

If you put your faith in him, he has taken your sin on himself.

He suffered and died for your sin, was buried, descended into the grave, resurrected, and ascended into heaven, and now can forgive your sins if you confess them and place your faith in his death and resurrection.

That's the gospel.

And Paul says, I never stopped sharing that with you.

I testified over and over and over again.

This includes repentance, verse 21.

I'm testifying to Jews and Greeks, they need to repent.

That's a self-denying message by necessity.

This is the first words that John the Baptist preached.

Repent.

The first words that Jesus preached in Mark chapter 1, repent.

Mark 1 · chapter mention

It's the first words of just about every prophet in the Old Testament.

Repent.

And Paul says it was the first and last word of my ministry.

Repent.

Turn away from your sin.

That's self-denying, where you say, I was going this way and that was wrong.

I want to turn this bus around and go that way.

That's repentance.

That requires faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The one thing you need to be saved is the one thing you don't have.

Faith.

But God gives it as a gift.

This is self-denying.

And Paul says, I did this all the time.

Verse 31, he did it with tears.

He wept over them as he preached to them.

When I first came to Emmanuel Bible Church, Michael Easley gave me a gift, and it's on the wall of my office to this day.

I read it this morning.

I read it almost every Sunday.

It's a plaque, and it says this preaching is the most public of ministries, and therefore the most conspicuous in its failure, and the most subject to the temptation of hypocrisy.

Thus it is imperative that only those gifted by the Holy Spirit make an effort to preach.

Let me say that one more time.

It's imperative that only those gifted by the Holy Spirit make an effort to preach.

But then this next sentence is the gut punch.

There is no special honor in being so gifted, only special pain.

To preach, to really preach, is to die naked a little at a time, and to know that each time you do it, you will do it again.

That was my welcome to Emmanuel gift.

What a contrast.

What a contrast with many, most approaches to pastoral ministry in our country today.

Churches that talk about politics and movies and propaganda, sermons that focus on man and not God, self-help, not braille for the blind, not life for the dead, but self-importance for the self-important.

Much of what's called preaching today is really pop rocks and pop tarts and pop psychology.

Cotton candy and sugar-coated messages.

You know there's more than one way to starve a person to death.

You can deprive deprive food.

You can poison them with false doctrine and heresy and whatnot.

Or you can just feed them sugar.

See how long you live on fruit loops.

See how long you live on cultural insight and political messages.

Now obviously this is an Acts 20 as a summary message.

I mean, everybody didn't travel this far just to hear a little 10-minute sermonette.

Paul poured his soul out to them, and this is how Luke captured it.

But I I'm convinced that Luke, I mean, Luke heard this message.

By the way, this is the first sermon in the book of Acts with the we.

This is the first time where Luke is recording a sermon that he heard with his own ears.

That's what's cool about this, too.

All the other sermons were, you know, Luke joined at some point, but this Luke was here for.

And he draws your attention to the fact that Paul preached a sermon, even in this.

He chose a passage.

He chose Matthew 10, verse 8.

Matthew 10:8

ESV translates Matthew 10, 8.

You receive without paying, so give without paying.

And Paul renders it here to give, it's more blessed to give than to receive.

It's the same point.

As you were saved without effort and without your own merit, so you should live.

You give yourself out.

You receive the gospel without paying, so give it without paying.

Give yourself to the work of the word.

I'm telling you, this is such an unusual place, a church.

There's nothing else like it where people come to hear a sermon.

Nothing else like it.

But it's the work of the Lord, not the work of men.

Finally.

A self-denying ministry is spiritual, it's verbal, it's pastoral.

This almost sounds like a tautology here.

It sounds circular.

Pastoral ministry is pastoral.

See?

But shepherding is the metaphor that is used.

The word pastoral, we can lose sight of this.

The word pastoral means shepherd.

It's a translation of the word for shepherd.

The word elder, the word pastor, the word shepherd, they're all synonymous.

Now there's different words for them, but they're all synonymous.

But the word pastor has inherent into it this idea of shepherding.

Shepherding is the metaphor that is used for the title of a pastor.

The Ephesians would have known what shepherds were, but they were not shepherds themselves.

The Ephesians were Areodite, they were sophisticated.

There was a cultural nexus there.

It was a hot spot of the wonders of the world, the temples that were there, multiple temples there.

These were educated and sophisticated people.

They were not shepherds.

You want to find a shepherd, you'd probably go, you have a better luck finding a shepherd in Miletus than in Ephesus.

However, they would have clearly known what shepherds are, and that's the analogy Paul uses.

Pastors and elders are like shepherds.

So he says, guard the flock, verse 28.

Pay attention to yourselves and the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers.

Verse 29 continues the metaphor.

After my departure, fierce wolves will come in.

Verse 31, so be alert.

He's using shepherding metaphors here to describe what it means to be a pastor and an elder.

And I harp on this because shepherds are not esteemed in the Israelite society, they're not esteemed in today's society.

Shepherds are low, they're dirty, they smell like they're sheep.

You are what you love, and shepherds love sheep.

That's the reality.

I mean, the Israelites experienced that in the Old Testament.

The Israelites were despised back in the book of Genesis.

Abraham's offspring were mocked in the book of Genesis because they had sheep.

And not a lot has changed.

There's a very famous pastor in the United States.

There's a story in Christianity today a few years ago about how he was arguing that the concept of shepherding and pastoral ministry as shepherd is obsolete.

He said that Jesus called pastors shepherds just because he was in an agrarian society in Galilee.

And by he says, in fact, in this article, that by the time Jesus and the disciples went from Galilee to Jerusalem, shepherding had been obsolete by then, because now he's back in the scribe world instead of the shepherding world.

And so he says Americans shouldn't view their pastors as shepherds, but rather they should view pastors as CEOs.

And I could tell you this guy's name.

I mean, you would all know this pastor's name, but it would probably be more distracting than helpful, so I won't.

But he says pastors should view themselves as CEOs, not shepherds.

And you can see the allurement to that, can't you?

If a pastor is a CEO, then the congregation is businessmen and businesswomen.

And businessmen dress sharp.

They got a briefcase, they're doing important.

Important things.

They're making money.

They have business lunches.

But if the pastor's a shepherd, that makes you a sheep.

Sheep don't wear suits.

Sheep get made into suits.

Sheep don't have business lunches.

They are lunch.

Sheep don't have fancy aftershave.

They smell like sheep.

Sheep aren't smart and important.

They're dumb and deficient.

So you can see why a pastor would say, I've rather fancy myself.

A CEO.

May it never be.

May it never be.

A pastor is a shepherd because we're sheep, you know.

I look in the mirror and I'm like, I think I could be a CEO today.

What just happened?

The Israelites are mocked because they were shepherds.

David was chosen because he was a shepherd.

Ezekiel prophesies that the Savior will be the good shepherd who will lay his life down for the sheep.

Jesus says that he is the good shepherd because he does lay his life down for the sheep.

Peter says that we are all under shepherds as elders in his writings.

And then Paul here, far away from Galilee, through Jerusalem, through Corinth, to the Ariadite sophisticated crowd of Ephesus, says that elders are like shepherds.

This is why I cringe at the idea of the pastor as vision caster or the pastor as having a grand plan.

You know, the only plan is to preach the word.

Jabra Crow is a better pastor than Elon Musk.

A shepherd is a better pastor than a businessman.

Bottom line.

Shepherds protect, feed, and heal and bandage wounds and trim fur and go and find the lost sheep.

That's the reality.

So where does this leave us?

Back where I left Paul in verse 24, he has one goal.

I want to finish the course of a ministry.

He tells that in 1 Corinthians 9.

He says, I just don't want to be disqualified.

He tells that to the Philippians, I want to finish my race and grab hold of the prize.

He tells that to the Ephesians right here.

All I want to tell us to refrain.

Philippi, Corinth, Ephesus, Miletus.

He's saying the same thing.

I just want to finish without taking myself out of the race.

I want to cross the finish line.

I want to just run as long as the Lord has me.

And he doesn't know how long the course is.

He thinks it's his last lap right here.

Spoiler alert, he tries to get back there.

1 Timothy 4.

He says, I'm going to see you soon.

That's way after this.

He doesn't know how long his course is.

He's looking around the next corner.

He's like, there's no way I can run past that next mile marker.

I cannot do it.

Peace out.

I'll see you all in heaven.

Four laughs later, he's still running.

And that's why he says, I just, okay, pray for me.

That's why he can say to live as Christ to die as gain.

I don't know what I read.

I want to get to heaven.

Paul gets sick and he's like, don't pray for my healing, please.

He says I left Trophimus sick.

That was probably Trophimus' own request, honestly.

I don't consider myself having any value.

I just want to finish my course and my ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.

I want to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

Pastors and elders are shepherds because they deny themselves to care for their sheep.

This is exactly the example of our Lord Jesus.

Paul denied himself to care for the lost.

Jesus denied himself.

He sat in that garden and said, Let this cut past from me.

Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.

He esteemed the call of God in his life more than his own physical life.

Even Jesus, the greatest human who ever lived, made himself low before the cross.

Jesus went to Galilee.

He went to Canaan.

He went to obscure places.

This is our goal, by the grace of God, to find, save the lost, to strengthen the weak.

There were ninety-nine that safely lay in the shelter of the fold, but one was out on the hills away, far off from the gates of gold, away on the mountains wild and bare, away from the tender shepherd's care.

Lord, you have ninety-nine sheep.

Are they not enough for thee?

But our shepherd made an answer.

None of the ransomed ever knew how deep were the waters crossed, nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed through until he found a sheep that was lost.

Out in the desert he heard his cry, sick and helpless and ready to die.

But all through the mountains, thunder riven and up from the rocky steep, there rose a glad cry at the gates of heaven, Rejoice, I have found my sheep.

Lord, we're grateful that you left your father's throne above to come make your dwelling among us.

Preferring the obscurity of Nazareth.

You drew your disciples from Galilee.

Nowhere, nowhere'sville.

You send us into the world, not to make names for ourselves, but to go to the unknown, to go to the least, to go to the weak is Paul's language here.

So Lord, I do pray that you would magnify yourselves in our life and that you would make little of us, that we would be laid low, and that we would be brought up.

Specifically for anyone here today who doesn't know you, I I know there's visitors here.

I've met people in the hallway who've come with friends who have come not claiming Christ, not saying they have faith in you, but I met some people today.

This is their first time at church.

But I pray that their hearts would be open to what they just heard.

I pray that they would see themselves as a lost sheep so that they can be found by you.

I pray that they would see their sin and yet see you as a savior greater than their sin.

As we turn our eyes to you, we really do strive to see you as the one who holds all things together by your own sovereign will.

You hold the world together.

Our bodies don't fly apart because of your will you've bound us together.

And so we really count our lives as nothing.

They have no value in ourselves.

We only seek to live in a way that is pleasing to you.

So I pray for anyone here this morning that doesn't know you.

I pray that they would, as they heard the news of the death and resurrection of Christ already, I pray that they would believe that and their sins would be forgiven.

We turn our eyes now to you, the one who does indeed hold all things together.

We give you thanks for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.