Sermon Idea: The sweetness of gospel ministry can be experienced in gospel friendships, encouragement, worship, life, and sacrifice.
Introduction: If I were to give you numerous details of a series of events, it would not be obvious that there was anything significant about them at all. For example, I could tell you that I woke up early, roughly 5 AM, and boarded a bus traveling to Gatlinburg, TN, where I stayed for three days. While there, I dined with friends. A year later, I traveled to Louisville, KY, where I stayed another three days with friends. After arriving home, it became routine to gather with friends every Thursday night. We would speak late into the evening.
These are rather ordinary details about ordinary life. But as often is the case, there is great sweetness that surrounds the ordinary. It was during that trip to Gatlinburg that the Lord opened my eyes to see the beauty of Christ and his gospel.
I was with my pastors, friends, and my dad in Louisville at Together for the Gospel for some of the richest, most encouraging gospel encouragement of my young spiritual life. During a break, my pastor spots a familiar face in the distance. He goes off to talk to him—someone he hasn’t seen in decades, a former student named Josh Greene. I didn’t think anything of it, or hardly remember it happened. That was until I moved to Louisville for college and found myself at a small Baptist church whose pastor was Josh Greene. I spent four years there, the final two as the youth pastor.
Of course, there were those ordinary Thursday evenings. We’d meet, eat, and talk for hours about ideas, books, and ministry. We met in this little house in Patriot Place, ironically enough, directly across from the very house in which I now live. It is not an exaggeration to say that those Thursday evenings with Joe Buchanan changed the entire trajectory of my life.
The strenuous details that make up our lives are often saturated in and surrounded by a sweetness that gives them significance.
In Acts 20, Luke records Paul’s travelogue. That is, he gives details about where Paul goes and who he is with. He visited Macedonia, Corinth (Greece), Syria, and Troas. We know that during this time in Macedonia Paul wrote the letter we know as 2 Corinthians.
We are even given details about time. Paul spends three months in Corinth. During these three months, mentioned just in passing, Paul wrote his most famous letter: Romans. He left Philippi after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It takes him five days to meet up with friends, where he stays with them for seven days. Paul makes his travel arrangements with intentionality—he wants to be in Jerusalem by Passover.
In between the travelogue is a worship gathering that nearly turned into a tragedy, except that God worked through Paul to raise Eutychus from the dead. This is the part of these verses we’re used to seeing as prominent, and to be sure it is significant, but if we don’t take into account why God gives us this story when he does, in the middle of a travelogue about Paul’s missionary travels, I think we’ll miss the fullness of all that God wants to teach us.
The sweetness of gospel ministry can be experienced in gospel friendships, encouragement, worship, life, and sacrifice. These are the five things I want to show you this morning.
I.) Gospel Friendships (Acts 20:1-6)
The first glimpse of friendship we see in Acts 20 is in verse 1: After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia (Acts 20:1).
These are the twelve men who had come to saving faith in Ephesus, and with whom Paul spent so much time in the Tyrannus Hall (Acts 19:9-10). After enduring the riot, no one would have faulted Paul for retreating and keeping to himself, but he gives of himself yet again to these brothers whom he has grown to love. They are fellow followers of Jesus. They are friends. He doesn’t leave without assuring that they’re properly encouraged.
Beyond the twelve disciples in Ephesus that he must now leave are the seven named in Acts 20:4.
4 Sopater the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus (Ac 20:4)
These brothers are from the churches that Paul helped plant. These verses tell us how Paul visited them again to strengthen the churches and care for them. Paul cares deeply for these churches, and he doesn’t stop at their founding; he visits, encourages, and strengthens them so they flourish as healthy churches.
The relationships between Paul and these churches were so good that, at some point, they parted with some of their faithful members so they could travel with Paul and help him advance the gospel and plant churches.
I love the way Patrick Schreiner reflects on these relationships: “His missionary team grows as he continues to travel. They look, sound, and smell like the places he traveled. Like David had his mighty men and Jesus had his Twelve, Paul has his companions. The mission of God takes collaboration; it takes friendship.”
We don’t have time to trace every reference, but some of these brothers are mentioned repeatedly by Paul, especially Timothy, Tychicus, and Aristarchus. Paul’s ministry was never isolated or solo; it was always shared by co-laborers who walked alongside him as friends.
Ecclesiastes reminds us of the importance of friendship: 9 Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. 10 For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! (Ec 4:9–10)
The fruitfulness of Waldo’s ministry will flourish or flounder depending on the health of friendships within the church and on our commitment to building partnerships outside our church.
Pray the spirit of camaraderie increases and the competitive spirit decreases.
II.) Gospel Encouragement (Acts 20:1-6, 12)
After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples, and after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed for Macedonia. 2 When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. (Ac 20:1–2)
12 And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted. (Ac 20:12)
This has been a consistent theme throughout Acts.ds
22 strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith (Ac 14:21–22)
32 And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words. (Ac 15:32)
40 So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed (Ac 16:40)
Encouragement should be the mark of true Christian friendship and gospel-partnership. We don’t need to be flattered or lied to, but we do need to be redirected to God, the Word, and the work of God among us.
We should have good, wise partnerships in church planting and mission so we can be conduits of encouragement.
III.) Gospel Worship (Acts 20:7,11)
At the center of the church’s life is not work or service, but worship. We are worshippers first, sent out on mission and service.
7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. (Acts 20:7)
Lord’s Day
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet (Re 1:10)
Didache, 14.1, But on the Lord’s day, after that ye have assembled together, break bread and give thanks, having in addition confessed your sins, that your sacrifice may be pure.
The Lord’s Supper
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42)
IV.) Gospel Life (Acts 20:8-10)
8 There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered. 9 And a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. (Acts 20:8–9)
Eutychus is in a lit room hearing a gospel about the light of the world, but he drifts toward darkness, falls asleep, and then falls to his death. No doubt we are meant to remember the disciples who fell asleep as Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 9:32; 22: 45-46). Eutychus literally falls asleep, but his death is also symbolic of so many of the warnings we are given about the Christian life. We are to be alert, stay awake, be watchful.
35 “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, 36 and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. (Lk 12:35–37)
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 Jn 1:7)
5 For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6 So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober. (1 Th 5:4–6)
The story does not end in Eutychus’ death, but in his resurrection. Like Elijah and Elisha in the Old Testament (1 Kings 17:17-24; 2 Kings 4:33-36), Paul resurrects a dead man.
10 But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.” 11 And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while, until daybreak, and so departed. 12 And they took the youth away alive, and were not a little comforted. (Acts 20:10–12)
In the face of death and darkness, Paul brings light and life. This story is somewhat of a summary shorthand of Paul’s ministry. He brings life.
The Apostolic era is over, and it is not our task to physically raise the dead. Christ will take care of that on the final day. It is our task to preach the gospel which gives life. We are to be ministers in a world of death being life through the gospel, the one who promises life everlasting and resurrection in the life to come.
V.) Gospel Sacrifice (Acts 20:13-16)
This last one is a mixture of sweetness and sadness. Paul has every intent to go to Jerusalem, and like Jesus before him, Paul’s arrival in Jerusalem will be his last act as a free man. He will be arrested, tied, handed over to the Romans, and imprisoned. Paul truly gave of himself so that many might be free and have in the name of Jesus.
45 For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mk 10:45)
Toward the end of his life, as he said in that Roman prison, he wrote to one of his dear friends—Timothy.
6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Ti 4:6–8)
Even in these final days of Paul’s life, it is characterized by gospel friendship, gospel encouragement, and gospel life.
Nathaniel R. Martin 