Introduction

Over the last two Sundays we’ve looked at two of the three sermons set out for us from the apostle Paul in the Acts of the Apostles.

These are the only sermon accounts we have from him.

The first is an evangelistic sermon to an audience of Jews or would-be Jews in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch.

The second is an evangelistic sermon delivered in front of an audience of Greek philosophers in the Areopagus at the heart of the intellectual life of the University of Athens.

But this third one is the only sermon we have on record from him that is delivered to believers … in fact to leaders (the elders) of  the church that came into being under severe opposition from the dominant pagan community at Ephesus, but which turned into the central hub for mission in the cultural and spiritual cauldron that was a centre of trading routes and therefore of commerce. 

Situated on the Aegean Sea at the mouth of the Cayster River, the city was one of the greatest seaports of the ancient world. 

It was a transport node where three major roads led out from the seaport:

·       One road went east up the Lycas Valley towards Babylon via Laodicea

·       Another went to the north via Smyrna

·       A third cut south to the Meander Valley

It was on Paul’s second missionary journey (A.D. 52) that he visited Ephesus after leaving Corinth, and evidently planted the church there (Acts 18:19) leaving Aquila and Priscilla to care for a bit until he returned.

So it was on Paul’s third missionary journey (A.D. 54-56) that he seems to have spent between two and three years teaching in that city and really growing the strategically placed church there (Acts 19:8-10). 

We know that he spent a fair bit of his time addressing false doctrines and pagan practices. 

Paul’s teaching in the rented school of Tyrannus was so successful that those who practiced magic arts brought their magic books and burned them as an act of repentance (Acts 19:18-20). 

However, as the sale of silver idolatrous images began to fall off as the Gospel made progress, the silversmiths caused uproar (Acts 19:26-41). 

Shortly after that outbreak of persecution, Paul left for Macedonia. 

It seems that it was several months later (A.D. 57) that Paul met with the Ephesian elders on the nearby island of Miletus and made his farewell address in Acts 20, which is what we’re looking at today.

Then, about a decade after the church had been started, Paul wrote the letter to the Ephesians commending their faith and love (A.D. 62). 

A careful reading of this epistle shows that they had done well. 

They appeared to be devout in their faith, well organized, and busy in the gospel. 

During these early years they had been growing, expanding and doing the will of God. Jews and Gentiles, from several ethnicities and nationalities, had come together to form “one new man,” (2:15), “one body” (2:16). 

They were multi-ethnic as well as diverse in their socioeconomic make-up … with people from Jewish and Greek faith backgrounds together there living in ‘the Third Way’ as followers of Jesus.

In Paul’s first epistle to Timothy (around the mid-60’s) we begin to see some evidence of doctrinal drift: “As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith” (1 Timothy 1:3-4).

Tradition says that Ephesus became the home of the Apostle John (mid-late 60’s). 

This may or may not be true.

But by the time John wrote from exile on Patmos to the churches mentioned in Revelation 2:8–3:22 the church had some difficult problems and had apparently undergone a church split. 

False teachers had arisen in the church who claimed to have deeper knowledge of the things of God. 

They claimed to have the “secret” to knowing Christ, but in reality they denied His bodily incarnation and His deity.

The Lord’s assessment of the Ephesian church through the apostle John (Revelation 2:1-7) compliments them on their good works, but rebukes them for leaving their first love (Revelation 2:4). 

He commands immediate action – repent, remember, and repeat (the first works) (Revelation 2:5).

We have no way of knowing whether they corrected their problem at least initially, but, sadly, it seems the church in Ephesus died sometime during the second century … but not before the church there had multiplied itself in individuals who became disciples under its ministry and then left and spread out carrying the Gospel with them all across Asia Minor.

Paul, back in AD 57 in our passage, tried to prepare the elders of the church for the trials that would come to it … demonstrating that good and effective churches are never perfect and untroubled in this world and that their lasting legacy is to be seen not in geographically fixed institutions but in the lives of the people who find Christ there and go on to serve Him wherever they end up in the world.

We’ve seen that Paul’s missionary method in his sermons to Jewish and Greek non-Christians can be summed up as radical in identification and radical in difference.

So, what now characterises his teaching approach as he preached this his only sermon to believers we have recorded for us here in Acts 20 as he addresses the Ephesian elders?

{There are two points of radical similarity with rabbinical training methods and one point of radical difference.}

Let’s get to it.

1) Paul’s ministry example, vv. 17-21

Paul leaves Corinth going to Syria and arrives in Ephesus in Acts 18:19.

He’s on a journey but always up for a Gospel opportunity, so …

“He himself went into the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews. 20 When they asked him to spend more time with them, he declined. 21 But as he left, he promised, “I will come back if it is God’s will.” Then he set sail from Ephesus.’

He left some travelling companions there in the interim then he gets back in chapter 19 and sets up there as a travelling rabbi really, for as long as he can … that’s the great golden age, if you like, of his ministry in Ephesus.

And here he is now again in Acts 20, talking like a rabbi, but with many doffs of his cap to Gentile culture, as he addresses these men who have received his ministry, grown into and been trained by it in eldership.

These initial verses of his speech to them set the whole context of what he is doing … that was the Jewish way in discourse … and Paul starts out by what they learned from close observation of his way of life.

That is CLASSIC rabbinical method.

Acts 20:17 ff. “From Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church. 18 When they arrived, he said to them: “You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia. 

19 I served the Lord with 

great humility and with 

tears and 

in the midst of severe testing by the plots of my Jewish opponents. 

20 You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.”

Now, already there is in this radical identification with them in the relationship of the rabbi and his pupils … who would bind themselves to a rabbi at a charge for the teaching they would get and live in his home, be given access to the inner workings of his family life, his responses, his interactions … you name it in order to learn the law by his practice of it in his life.

They’d lived close, and Paul is referring to that.

That’s what all that stuff in v. 18 is setting us up for:

““You know how I lived the whole time I was with you, from the first day I came into the province of Asia.”

That is a reference to this sort of closeness of a disciple-making rabbi with his apprenticed disciples.

Radical identification.

But radical difference is not lurking far behind but comes roaring into the picture at some pace!

You wouldn’t hear these next claimed accrediting features of his ministry amongst them from a normal Jewish rabbi:

Vv. 20-21 “You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you 

but have taught you publicly and from house to house. 

21 I have declared to both Jews and Greeks 

that they must turn to God in repentance and 

have faith in our Lord Jesus.”

There wasn’t a lot of help in the average Pharisee’s teaching.

You might find them teaching people, though not freely, and as Jesus had so clearly pointed out they were in the business of binding burdens on people’s backs.

But the idea of teaching Jews and Greeks (not the word for God-fearer here but “Greeks”) to turn to God in repentance and have faith in the Lord Jesus … that is all RADICALLY different in the first century discipleship context!

2) Paul’s missionary aim, vv. 22-24

Notice none of what he is doing here now is attributed to any human strategy or planning.

A) Spirit-led ministry, v. 22

V. 22 ““And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.”

Now, no doubt what is happening here again is that Paul is opening his experience of God to these leaders he has trained up, just as the old Pharisee rabbis opened up the law to their disciples … here’s where they learn again at his hand what it means to embrace the way of faith he’s been commending in the previous verse.

They’d heard him teach the Jews AND Greeks to turn to God in repentance and put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ … and HERE’s what that looks like:

‘now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there.”

He has no idea where this dicey-looking course of action will take him, but God speaks and Paul follows … and that teaches Paul’s disciples in leadership at Ephesus, by his example, to walk that same way: here’s what faith LOOKS like.

Here, and Paul repeats this theme elsewhere, is the authenticating mark of Gospel ministry that follows a crucified Messiah … and it contrasts radically with the sort of thing that Jewish rabbis taught that according to them characterised the person God authenticates and blesses.

B) Hardship in service, v. 23

v. 23 “I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me.”

That is what Paul points to as the authenticating characteristic of His ministry when that is challenged in 1 Corinthians … authentic following the Lord Jesus in the way of the Cross.

C) One all-consuming passion, v. 24

And the one thing that motivates Paul’s ministry … remember he is modelling this behaviour for them as it’s the way he does training by this rabbinical model he’s embracing … is this:

“… I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”

Since Paul, the hyper-religious rebel, met with God on the Damascus Road as he travelled towards Damascus to persecute God’s people there, Paul has been overwhelmed by God’s grace for him, a sinner and a persecutor and a violent man, and that consciousness of GRATITUDE for God’s grace has revolutionised the foundations of the way Pau lives his life … in fact it has revolutionised everything that Paul now aspires to.

And he MODELS this gratitude for grace for those Ephesian elders.

Like THIS, he says to them:

“… I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”

3) What this means for them, vv. 25-35

Paul is back in the saddle now again taking the initiative to teach them what they need to know.

And look … Paul is very big on orthodoxy (the right doctrine, which is what drives right practice), but he is just as big on orthopraxy (the right practice that is driven by right doctrine).

But the first thing he tells them comes as a bit of a blow … and it won’t be easy for him either.

A) You are on your own now, v. 25

It is absolutely crucial for Christian leaders, teachers, disciple-makers, to bring people to the point of independence.

However much it hurts then to do so, they have to be ready to leave elders they have trained behind to get on with THEIR own costly Christian service and walk away.

He goes further.

This is a total transfer of responsibility.

B) The responsibility is no longer mine, vv. 26-27

Clearly giving responsibility over is also a crucial part of Christian disciple-making.

Paul is making it absolutely clear that his responsibility to them as their disciple-maker, their rabbi, has been faithfully filled.

“I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of any of you. 27 For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God.”

They are, as it were, being discharged as his charges.

They are graduating as Paul’s duty to them is being declared to have been faithfully met and concluded.

And as he hands over the responsibility he makes clear their commission …

C) So here’s your commission, vv. 28-31

Here is what is expected of you … for the avoidance of all doubt and the prevention of ‘Mission Creep’, which always seems to creep in only one direction.

Here it is:

‘Keep watch over yourselves 

and all the flock 

of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. 

Be shepherds of the church of God, 

which he bought with his own blood. 

29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 

30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 

31 So be on your guard! 

Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.”

           •          i) Watch yourselves

           •          ii) Watch over the flock

•          1. Why? This is your commission from God … ‘overseers’

•          2. Why? This flock is valued at the price of Christ’s blood, v. 28

•          3.  Why? Sheep in the wilderness attract wolves - even sometimes dressed like sheep, vv. 29-30

•          4. Why? Because that’s what Paul taught them to do, v. 31

D) I hand you to God’s care, v. 32

V. 32 ““Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.”

And while he’s there Paul wants to make doubly explicit the difference of the not-for-profit principle …

E) You have freely received from me so freely give, vv. 33-35

Vv. 33-35: “ I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

Elsewhere he speaks of the labourer being worthy of his hire but this context is not that and it would take a while to go into who Paul does and doesn’t take money from and in which contexts … here he is teaching that the love of money and the ministry don’t mix!

4) The impact on them, vv. 36-38

Humanly this talk was devastating to them.

“When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.”

All we really need to notice here is that simple fact.

God’s will for our life in His service is sometimes very hard to take.

I see too many people, often would-be or Bible college trained young leaders aspiring to a particular sort of career in Christian ministry.

We can’t find people to come and serve here in rural Wales coming along behind us.

It isn’t something that seems to be aspired to.

Now, of course the Lord teaches us to send labourers out into His harvest field.

I trust we are doing that in connection with rural Wales.

I just see an awful lot of people seeking Christian service who seem very resistant to being the fruit of these prayers.

We don’t get to do what we fancy in His service and sometimes we want what He doesn’t.

That seems to have been the case in vv. 36-38.

But it’s time to draw some conclusions about what we see of Paul’s approach in what he’s saying to these leaders of that very significant church plant down in Ephesus.

5) Radical identification and radical difference in Gospel ministry training

What we saw from Paul in the preaching campaigns to start churches in both the Greek and Jewish world was a dual commitment … radical identification and radical difference at the points where it really mattered.

And here, in this farewell speech to these now Christian-culture people from both backgrounds, we see Paul identifying with both those backgrounds at once in the  leaders of the Church at Ephesus.

He has CLEARLY been addressing them within the Jewish cultural paradigm of the rabbi, the Pharisee who gathers disciples around to teach them God’s ways and demonstrate those in practice to his disciples by allowing them into his life to learn by observing how he fleshes out the teaching of God’s way.

He also touches on concepts from the Geek world they can identify with and fills those with Christian content as well.

And yet in all of that there’s also radical difference where the New Covenant way now demands that.

1. Identification

A) With the Greek world

Vv. 21, 24 & 26 repeat the use of the verb διαμαρτύρομαι (diamarturomai) 'to testify solemnly’.

It is a word that occurs 15 times in the whole NT and three of them are here!

διαμαρτύρομαι [ῡ], 

It was used in the Greek world, to call on their pagan gods and to assembled people to witness, to protest solemnly, especially in case of falsehood or wrong, often with an oath.

And here Paul is stepping into that world with this solemn term, three times in six verses.

It’s just a small example of radical identification with one of ‘their’ words in this passage.

He is ‘speaking their language’.

b) With the Jewish world

Throughout this passage we’ve seen Paul explaining how he had ministered to them from within a Jewish pattern of ministry training … discipleship to a teacher.

That is some RADICAL pattern of identification.

It is the one the Lord Himself modelled with HIS disciples throughout the Gospels, and it is one we have radically lost in the way we train future church elders in the West today … our training methods are based on the university model, not the disciple one.

2. Difference

But then Paul demonstrates radical Gospel-created difference between their current world view and the Christian culture view too.

a) From the Greek world

The whole responsibility for the pastoral care (see v. 28, for example) is alien to the Greek approach to leadership training … it was all ‘latest ideas’ stuff with them (as Paul’s description of what made the Areopagus in Athens tick so clearly stated).

Paul on the contrary is emphasising that the function of the Christian leader is not only to convey TRUTH over ideas but to do so in the context of caring for the flock, in the footsteps of the One that Hebrews 13:20 calls ‘that Great Shepherd of the sheep’.

That’s a huge conceptual shift but is brought about by the very purpose of God in the Gospel.

b) From the Jewish world

And then Paul’s address here is radically different from Jewish approaches to ministry training too, in that this Christian rabbi’s teaching is totally free.

The Lord Himself in Galilee twenty years or so before had gone around calling people to Himself to be His followers, which was the opposite of the way Jewish rabbis operated … you had to persuade them to take you on, and the privilege came with a hefty charge.

Here Paul, following the Lord Jesus’s example and the prophecy of Isaiah about how things would be in the Kingdom of the Messiah (Isaiah 55:1-3), calls people freely to Christ and to learning the way of discipleship.

It is very different from the way first century Rabbis operate, but a beautiful fulfilment of Isaiah:

““Come, all you who are thirsty,

    come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without cost.

2 Why spend money on what is not bread,

    and your labour on what does not satisfy?

Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,

    and you will delight in the richest of fare.

3 Give ear and come to me;

    listen, that you may live.

I will make an everlasting covenant with you,

    my faithful love promised to David.’”

And it reflects the gloriously free salvation that has been brought about in Christ.

Conclusion

This is what authentic Christian ministry looks like in the ministry of the Apostle as we learn it from the only three sermons we have a full account of from him as he went about calling people to faith and establishing in the faith the church that formed as a result.

It is all characterised by radical identification with the hearers’ culture, and radical divergence from their culture where the Gospel indicates that.

So here’s the question:

How are we formulating our approach to the cultures we’re called by God to serve here right now?

And how are we making crystal clear the radical impact God and the Gospel should be making upon them?

Because the answer to THOSE things will keep us walking in His ways, as salt and light, in the world in which He has placed us.