WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 So we're in the book of Acts and we're up to Acts chapter 20 and this is a story of Paul. 00:00:08.720 --> 00:00:15.720 Paul was a missionary that took the Gospel, the story of Christianity to Europe for the 00:00:15.720 --> 00:00:21.080 first time and this is Paul on his third missionary journey. He took three missionary 00:00:21.080 --> 00:00:27.240 journeys that we know of, maybe four. And on this journey he planted one of the most 00:00:27.239 --> 00:00:32.879 important churches he ever planted in a big city called Ephesus and he was there for three 00:00:32.879 --> 00:00:39.960 years in Ephesus living with the people that you read about here. And now he's left Ephesus 00:00:39.960 --> 00:00:46.320 for a while and he's on his way back kind of reversing his exact route towards Jerusalem 00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:52.399 because he feels like the Holy Spirit has called him to come to Jerusalem and he's in a hurry. 00:00:52.399 --> 00:00:57.560 And so he asked the Ephesian elders, the guys that he trained up to lead the church in Ephesus 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:01.719 to kind of meet him in the middle a little bit. He asked them to meet him in Miletus 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:07.599 which is a port town right on the coast. It's about 50 miles away from Ephesus so in order 00:01:07.599 --> 00:01:12.280 that he didn't have to travel 50 miles inland and not get to Jerusalem in the time he was 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:19.280 trying to get there, they come to him. And this is Paul's farewell address to his disciples, 00:01:19.280 --> 00:01:27.280 to the people that he trained at, that he mentored if you will, at Ephesus. And it's not 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:33.159 unlike, commentators will say, it's not unlike Jesus' farewell address to his disciples in the 00:01:33.159 --> 00:01:41.120 book of John. Paul is setting his face towards Jerusalem and he says that he is prepared to 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:46.920 go there and die. And so he's giving a farewell address to the people that were serving underneath 00:01:46.920 --> 00:01:54.120 him in this passage. And so because it's Paul speaking to elders, leaders in a local church, 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:59.079 most of the time if you've ever heard this passage preached or studied it, it probably was 00:01:59.079 --> 00:02:03.799 preached in the context of talking to the leaders of the church and the elders because it's directed 00:02:03.799 --> 00:02:13.199 to elders. But this is the only passage in the entire book of Acts that is speech. Somebody 00:02:13.199 --> 00:02:18.919 gives a speech that is to Christians. So every other single time in the book of Acts, every 00:02:18.919 --> 00:02:24.000 single speech or sermon or whatever that's given is either to people who have never heard 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:29.799 the story of Christianity or making a defense before authority, before they're going to 00:02:29.799 --> 00:02:34.280 be beaten or killed or something like that. So this is the only one in the entire book. 00:02:34.280 --> 00:02:40.439 And I think Paul's really clear about this in Titus and Timothy, that his words to elders 00:02:40.439 --> 00:02:46.280 or deacons or whoever, leaders are words to them as exemplars of a ministry that everybody 00:02:46.280 --> 00:02:52.599 shares in. Everybody's a minister that's a Christian. And so we can look at this passage 00:02:52.599 --> 00:02:57.560 more generally as well because what Paul's doing here is he's basically teaching us what 00:02:57.560 --> 00:03:03.919 kind of church he wants us to be, everybody, the ministry that everybody is going to share 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:09.240 in as the people of God at different capacities and different levels. And you see that especially 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:14.960 in three things, three lessons, there's tons in this passage and we can't do it all, but 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.240 I just want to draw out three lessons in verse 1920 and 21 that are kind of all over the 00:03:20.240 --> 00:03:26.120 passage that Paul's teaching us. What kind of church should we be? A church that proclaims 00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:33.240 first that life is meaningful. And then second, a church that testifies to the truth. And 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:42.240 then third, a church that loves in tears. So first, the Christian church, one of the 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:49.560 missions of the Christian church is to declare to the world that life is meaningful. This 00:03:49.560 --> 00:03:57.439 is simple, but it's important. It's never been more important to say this that the church 00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:05.240 exists to declare to the world that life has a purpose, that life has meaning because 00:04:05.240 --> 00:04:12.240 we live in a world that often and in a modern world that says it doesn't. So if you look 00:04:12.240 --> 00:04:19.040 in verse 20, Paul says something like this, I did not shrink or hide or neglect from telling 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:23.800 you what was helpful, but another word for helpful there, it can also be translated as 00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:30.079 meaningful. And what he's saying is I didn't tell you everything. I didn't sit there and 00:04:30.079 --> 00:04:34.040 kind of give you a systematic theology and give you all the details and the nitty gritty 00:04:34.040 --> 00:04:39.960 of every single doctrine and all that, but I told you what you needed to know to make 00:04:39.960 --> 00:04:46.759 sense of your life and to give you a purpose for your existence. I told you the central 00:04:46.759 --> 00:04:53.680 parts of the story, in other words, that would make sense of who you are and why you exist. 00:04:53.680 --> 00:04:58.800 And he says it more famously in verse 24 and this is kind of the, this is the ordination 00:04:58.800 --> 00:05:02.879 verse. Like if you're into an ordination service, you've probably, they've probably 00:05:02.879 --> 00:05:12.680 preached from verse 24, verse 24, but I do not account my life of any value nor is precious 00:05:12.680 --> 00:05:18.319 to myself if only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord 00:05:18.319 --> 00:05:25.000 Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. But in other words, what he's saying 00:05:25.000 --> 00:05:32.319 is that he's asking the question, what makes life precious to you? What makes life sweet 00:05:32.319 --> 00:05:38.279 or precious or gives you a meaning to get out of bed? And Paul's saying my life is precious 00:05:38.279 --> 00:05:44.680 because of the ministry that I've been given. The purpose to run a race for something that's 00:05:44.680 --> 00:05:51.959 bigger than me, bigger than me, bigger than my emotions, bigger than my daily pleasures. 00:05:51.959 --> 00:05:58.280 This is what makes life precious and meaningful is, and he says Jesus Christ, the purpose 00:05:58.280 --> 00:06:05.800 that I've been made for, right? So the church is called to declare purpose and meaning to 00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:12.600 a modern world that often doesn't think the world has any purpose or meaning. One of 00:06:12.600 --> 00:06:17.520 the most famous philosophers of the 20th century, Martin Heidegger, a German, said 00:06:17.520 --> 00:06:26.560 that the 20th century and the 21st century following is an era of the crisis of meaning. 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:32.320 And so in the ancient world, everybody believed in an ultimate purpose. I mean, even if you 00:06:32.320 --> 00:06:35.760 didn't believe in Christianity, you believed in some kind of story and a religion and a 00:06:35.760 --> 00:06:42.160 higher power of some sort that gave your life an ultimate purpose. But in the modern world, 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:47.480 one commentator says meaning is an illusion, meaning is an illusion in the popular culture. 00:06:47.480 --> 00:06:53.960 And this really became apparent in the 1900s with the development of a type of fiction, 00:06:53.960 --> 00:07:00.120 a type of literature called nonsense literature. You've all probably read some nonsense literature, 00:07:00.120 --> 00:07:04.760 even if you didn't know it. The most famous example of nonsense literature is the story 00:07:04.760 --> 00:07:10.080 of Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. And the purpose of nonsense 00:07:10.079 --> 00:07:15.399 literature is that the author offers the reader elements of what seems like it's going to 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:19.639 be a normal story, a beginning and a middle, and you think there's going to be an end and 00:07:19.639 --> 00:07:23.680 a conclusion to some kind of problem. But then when you start reading it, you realize 00:07:23.680 --> 00:07:28.799 like this is craziness, that you can't make sense of it. And the purpose of the development 00:07:28.799 --> 00:07:35.199 of nonsense literature was to convey an ethic that meaning in life is actually an illusion. 00:07:35.199 --> 00:07:39.879 And this didn't start cropping up until the 1900s. Just if you remember the famous scene 00:07:39.879 --> 00:07:44.759 of Alice with the Cheshire Cat, you know, the Cheshire Cat sitting on the tree, right, 00:07:44.759 --> 00:07:50.360 everybody has probably at least seen the movie or something. And Alice says to the cat, which 00:07:50.360 --> 00:07:55.079 way should I go from here? And the cat says, it depends a good deal on where you want to 00:07:55.079 --> 00:08:01.319 go in this world. And she says, I don't much care where I want to go. And so he says, then 00:08:01.319 --> 00:08:06.360 it doesn't matter which way you go, does it, right? And that's the central, it doesn't 00:08:06.360 --> 00:08:11.000 matter which way you go, life is meaningless, it's pointless. But more seriously, Thomas 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:17.800 Nagel, who's probably maybe the most famous philosopher alive today at New York University 00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:23.319 in New York, he wrote a book called What Does It All Mean? Exploring Modern People's Wrestling 00:08:23.319 --> 00:08:28.400 with the Crisis of Meaning. And this is what he said, for modern people, the grave is the 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:36.679 only goal. The grave is the only goal. So it's ridiculous to take our lives seriously. 00:08:36.679 --> 00:08:41.559 But the problem is that people want more than that. They want a reason to believe that life 00:08:41.559 --> 00:08:48.480 matters somehow. And so in this passage, Paul warns at the end of verse 28 against the wolves 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:53.679 that are going to come in and corrupt the church, if you will. And wolves, of course, 00:08:53.679 --> 00:09:00.439 in the New Testament is a metaphor, right, for ideas that come in and damage the purposefulness 00:09:00.439 --> 00:09:05.559 of life, the meaningfulness of life. And there are all sorts of wolves in the New Testament 00:09:05.559 --> 00:09:10.199 era and all sorts of wolves metaphorically today. But one of the greatest wolves today, 00:09:10.199 --> 00:09:17.759 I think, is this. And Nagel summarizes it later on in the book. He says this, even if 00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:23.240 you produce a great work of literature, which continues to be read thousands of years from 00:09:23.240 --> 00:09:30.080 now, eventually the solar system will cool down or the universe will wind down and it 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:35.639 will collapse and all traces of all of your efforts will vanish. And the problem is that 00:09:35.639 --> 00:09:38.840 although there are justifications for most of the little things and the big things we 00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:44.360 do in life, none of these explanations can explain the point of your life as a whole. 00:09:44.360 --> 00:09:49.879 In the end, it would not matter if you had never existed. And after you've gone out of 00:09:49.879 --> 00:09:55.080 existence, it won't matter that you did exist. Because that's one of the greatest philosophers 00:09:55.080 --> 00:10:01.080 in the world explaining the problem of meaning in the modern world. I've offered this before 00:10:01.080 --> 00:10:08.600 from Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist who wrote books like War and Peace. 00:10:08.600 --> 00:10:12.639 But he came to a point in his life that kind of exemplifies this dilemma in the modern 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:18.639 world, in the modern culture. He was about to commit suicide. And so on the verge of 00:10:18.639 --> 00:10:23.240 suicide, this is what he wrote. My question, he's reflecting about that experience. My 00:10:23.240 --> 00:10:29.000 question was the simplest of all questions, lying in the soul of every human being from 00:10:29.000 --> 00:10:34.480 the littlest child to the wisest elder. It was a question without an answer to which 00:10:34.480 --> 00:10:41.000 one cannot live as I had found out by experience. It was this, what will come of what I am 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:46.399 doing today or do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life differently expressed the 00:10:46.399 --> 00:10:51.240 question is this, why should I live? Why wish for anything? Why do anything? It can also 00:10:51.240 --> 00:10:56.159 be expressed like this, is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting 00:10:56.159 --> 00:11:05.159 me does not destroy? Every single human being faces three great problems. The problem of 00:11:05.159 --> 00:11:10.480 guilt that is within you, the things that are bad about you. The problem of suffering 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:15.039 and sorrow, the things that are bad outside of you that happen to you. And then ultimately 00:11:15.039 --> 00:11:23.279 the problem of death, the reversal of all life. And what Paul is saying is that one of 00:11:23.279 --> 00:11:30.360 the ministries of the church, especially in the 21st century, is to say to the world that 00:11:30.360 --> 00:11:35.639 life has purpose, that it has meaning, that Christianity actually has an answer to all 00:11:35.639 --> 00:11:40.679 the great problems of human existence. The problems that drove Leo Tolsoi to almost 00:11:40.679 --> 00:11:46.879 commit suicide. And here is the solution. Carl Bart, one of the great theologians of 00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:51.879 the 20th century, was on the cover of Time Magazine, one of two Christian theologians 00:11:51.879 --> 00:11:57.479 to ever be on the cover of Time Magazine. And the quote at the bottom simply said this, 00:11:57.479 --> 00:12:06.439 the church's task is to proclaim that the goal of human existence is not death but resurrection. 00:12:06.440 --> 00:12:12.560 Everyone wants to live. The goal of human existence is not death but resurrection. And the church 00:12:12.560 --> 00:12:19.960 exists, that's what makes life precious to proclaim that story, that ministry. And so 00:12:19.960 --> 00:12:25.400 we'll close this point with C.S. Lewis reflecting on this dilemma. It's always good to end things 00:12:25.400 --> 00:12:31.560 on C.S. Lewis. He says this, if you accept the story of meaninglessness instead of preciousness 00:12:31.559 --> 00:12:37.599 in life, you might decide to have a good of a time in this life as possible. The universe 00:12:37.599 --> 00:12:45.359 is a universe of nonsense, nevertheless. But while you are here, grab what you can. Unfortunately, 00:12:45.359 --> 00:12:51.359 if you believe this, you can't really be in love with a girl if you know that all the 00:12:51.359 --> 00:12:57.919 beauties of her person and all her character are a momentary and accidental problem produced 00:12:57.919 --> 00:13:03.199 by nothing more than the collision of atoms and that your only response to them is something 00:13:03.199 --> 00:13:08.360 arising from the behavior of your genes. You can't go on getting very serious pleasure 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:14.839 from music if you know and remember that its air of significance is a pure illusion, that 00:13:14.839 --> 00:13:20.839 you like it only because your nervous system is irrationally conditioned to like it. If 00:13:20.839 --> 00:13:25.559 you are ever inconsistent enough just for a moment to be pushed into real warmth and 00:13:25.559 --> 00:13:32.159 enthusiasm and joy about life, what you know will force you once again to feel hopeless 00:13:32.159 --> 00:13:38.000 disharmony between your own emotions and the universe that you think you live in, a meaningless 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:46.799 one. Christianity, it says this, we do not simply find life precious in the moments that 00:13:46.799 --> 00:13:53.559 our emotions tell us it is. Life is precious, it's not meaningless, and the mystery of meaning 00:13:53.559 --> 00:14:01.959 in the whole universe is a person in verse 24, a person Paul identifies him, Jesus Christ. 00:14:01.959 --> 00:14:07.279 So the first point is that the church's ministry and modernity in the modern world is to proclaim 00:14:07.279 --> 00:14:15.519 that our lives have purpose. Secondly, of three things and these are more brief. Secondly, 00:14:15.519 --> 00:14:21.439 the Christian ministry, the church's purpose, we're called to testify to the truth. We're 00:14:21.440 --> 00:14:26.200 called to testify to the truth. So he says this a few times in the passage, you'll look 00:14:26.200 --> 00:14:35.000 in verse 21. I was testifying to both Jews and Greeks of the truth, repentance towards 00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:40.760 God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. In verse 20 he uses two verbs to describe 00:14:40.760 --> 00:14:47.720 that. He says, I preached, or I declared to you, and I taught the church the truth. And 00:14:47.720 --> 00:14:54.399 then what's the truth? And then in verse 27, I did not shrink from declaring to you, and 00:14:54.399 --> 00:15:00.519 then he says this, the whole counsel of God. Now Tom Wright, who's up at St. Andrew's says 00:15:00.519 --> 00:15:07.800 that the word counsel there in the ESV, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole 00:15:07.800 --> 00:15:13.960 counsel of God, is probably better spoken as the whole plan of God because it's a word 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:18.560 that actually is used for a narrative or a story. So he's saying I did not shrink from 00:15:18.560 --> 00:15:23.680 telling you the whole narrative of God, the whole story of God from the beginning to the 00:15:23.680 --> 00:15:29.680 end. So in other words, what he's saying is that when he conveys the truth to people, 00:15:29.680 --> 00:15:34.160 he doesn't come in and merely explain doctrines. He doesn't come in and first tell them, let 00:15:34.160 --> 00:15:40.280 me tell you about justification. He comes in and tells them the story of the beginning 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:45.959 to the end with Jesus Christ in the middle. That that's how the church comes in and witnesses 00:15:45.959 --> 00:15:52.759 to the world by telling the world about a history, about a history. There's a film in 00:15:52.759 --> 00:15:59.079 1979 called Hardcore. I don't know if any of you have seen it. I can't technically commend 00:15:59.079 --> 00:16:06.439 it to you because it has problem portions. But a film called Hardcore, and there's a 00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:13.440 movie in it. It's about a Presbyterian elder. He is very much a stereotype in this film, 00:16:14.320 --> 00:16:19.760 if you will, very dour fellow. Not true of any of us, but true of this guy in this film. 00:16:19.760 --> 00:16:25.240 And he's in an airport and this girl who's just in Las Vegas, and this girl who's very 00:16:25.240 --> 00:16:31.240 much from Las Vegas, I mean just has no relationship to him culturally whatsoever. And you can 00:16:31.240 --> 00:16:36.759 see it in the way she dresses and speaks and everything. She starts asking him questions 00:16:36.759 --> 00:16:40.200 and she says, they're getting kind of a little bit of an argument. And she says, well, what 00:16:40.200 --> 00:16:47.200 do you believe in? And he says, I believe in the five points of Calvinism. And she was 00:16:48.759 --> 00:16:53.720 like, what? And he says, tulip. I believe in tulip. If you don't know what that is, that's 00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:59.720 okay. I believe in tulip. And so he starts explaining to her, T stands for total depravity 00:16:59.720 --> 00:17:06.160 in you for unconditional election. And da, da, da. It's from the Cannons of Dort, 1619. 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:10.880 And then he spends a few minutes in the scene explaining to her the doctrine of predestination, 00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:16.960 the ancient doctrine. And at the end of the conversation she says, well, it sounds like 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:23.960 you've got it all figured out. And of course she's completely put off, right? Paul is saying 00:17:23.960 --> 00:17:29.559 no to that approach of the Christian witness to the world. The Christian witness to the 00:17:29.559 --> 00:17:35.759 world is actually to tell a story first before it is to expound doctrine. And that's exactly 00:17:35.759 --> 00:17:41.160 what is happening all throughout the book of Acts. Paul and Peter, they go through and 00:17:41.160 --> 00:17:47.039 they tell the story of Jesus Christ and how your life makes sense inside of a story of 00:17:47.039 --> 00:17:54.039 meaning, a story of death and resurrection. One commentator says it like this, Christianity 00:17:54.599 --> 00:18:01.240 before it is a proclamation of doctrines is a proclamation first of a history of the 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:07.319 history of the world. The Bible is not a book of doctrines, but it is a history, a true story 00:18:07.319 --> 00:18:14.319 of redemption. Paul is first telling them about God's whole plan from creation to recreation. 00:18:14.319 --> 00:18:19.759 And only then is he coming back and explaining to the church more specifically in his letters 00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:25.759 about central doctrines, the great doctrines of the faith that he pulls from the story. 00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:32.759 Now, what exactly is the truth that the church is called to testify to? What is the story? 00:18:32.759 --> 00:18:36.839 Commentators, I said this at the beginning, but commentators will look at this passage 00:18:36.839 --> 00:18:42.839 and they'll say that never before has Paul looked so much like Jesus than he actually 00:18:42.839 --> 00:18:49.839 does here. So you can see that in verse 22. And now behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained 00:18:59.599 --> 00:19:04.399 by the spirit not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit 00:19:04.399 --> 00:19:09.639 testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. And then later on 00:19:09.640 --> 00:19:14.040 he talks about death, potentially death awaiting him. And so what commentators do is they look 00:19:14.040 --> 00:19:19.560 at this passage and they say, Paul has never looked so much like Jesus. He's sitting with 00:19:19.560 --> 00:19:24.960 his disciples, calling them together and giving them a farewell address like the book of John. 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:31.960 And he's saying, I've been called to set my face west towards Jerusalem. In other words, 00:19:31.960 --> 00:19:36.600 the Holy Spirit is bidding me come and die. And that's what he thinks is going to happen 00:19:36.599 --> 00:19:43.240 to him in Jerusalem, that he's prepared to go and give up his life. And so he's giving 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:50.240 them his final commission, his great commission, if you will, to the Ephesians and elders. 00:19:51.799 --> 00:19:56.879 Some commentators say this is Paul's Gethsemane moment. It's him living out the sufferings 00:19:56.880 --> 00:20:06.880 of Christ in his own sort of Gethsemane moment. And so he looks like Jesus here, but he doesn't. 00:20:08.000 --> 00:20:15.000 He doesn't. Tim Keller makes this point. Why does he not look like Jesus here? And if you 00:20:15.760 --> 00:20:22.760 noticed, what's happening is that he's telling people that he loves deeply goodbye and commissioning 00:20:22.759 --> 00:20:29.759 them, and they're weeping over him. And they're throwing, it says, a thin to passage. Unfortunately, 00:20:29.759 --> 00:20:35.759 it says they embraced him, but it says literally they flew their arms around his neck. And they're 00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:42.240 crying for him, and they're begging him not to go, probably. In other words, what he has 00:20:42.240 --> 00:20:49.240 here is he has a deep community. They kiss him as he goes towards Jerusalem to face his 00:20:49.240 --> 00:20:56.240 death. Paul's Gethsemane moment. It's not like Jesus' Gethsemane moment. When Jesus was 00:20:57.160 --> 00:21:03.759 facing death in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was afraid. He was human. He was a human 00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:10.759 being. He is a human being, and he was afraid. And he came to his friends, his disciples, 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:17.319 and he said, will you come with me for just a moment and pray? Because I can't face 00:21:17.319 --> 00:21:24.319 this by myself. And he says in Luke 22, my soul is overcome with sorrow. Jesus said, 00:21:24.720 --> 00:21:31.720 will you stay with me through the night? Will you send me as friends or sending Paul here? 00:21:33.240 --> 00:21:40.240 He was human. And he needed pastoral care. He needed pastoral love. And what happened? 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:47.240 They all fell asleep. Paul was sent to suffer in Jerusalem with kisses of love. And Jesus 00:21:52.839 --> 00:21:59.480 Christ, the only kiss that he got was the kiss of betrayal. Paul looks like Jesus here, 00:21:59.480 --> 00:22:05.359 but he doesn't. You see? And the difference is that Paul has a deep community sending 00:22:05.359 --> 00:22:12.359 him into the sufferings of ministry, and Jesus was alone. He had no friends. He had no loving 00:22:14.319 --> 00:22:21.319 community. His disciples hid from him. They were ashamed. And when he was on the cross, 00:22:21.559 --> 00:22:28.479 his father turned his face away in wrath. He was completely alone. The difference in 00:22:28.479 --> 00:22:34.799 Jesus and his people in this Gethsemane moment is that Jesus Christ died so that you would 00:22:34.799 --> 00:22:41.799 never have to be alone in the midst of your sufferings. We are like him, but we aren't 00:22:43.759 --> 00:22:48.399 in that way. And so this is the story. This is the story that you are called to go and 00:22:48.399 --> 00:22:55.279 testify to. And so we'll just close with a very brief final point. Lastly, the church 00:22:55.279 --> 00:23:02.279 then is called to minister, to love, and tears. Jesus Christ died in ultimate loneliness so 00:23:02.279 --> 00:23:09.279 that Paul and every other believer called to minister after Jesus would never have to. 00:23:09.279 --> 00:23:16.279 And that means that the church is called into deep community, to minister and love in tears. 00:23:16.279 --> 00:23:20.799 That's the word here for deep community. You see it all over the place in this chapter. 00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:27.799 In verse 19, he says, I serve the Lord with all humility and with tears. And then in verse 00:23:27.799 --> 00:23:34.799 37, as he departed, there was much weeping for him. In verse 38, they wrapped their arms 00:23:35.119 --> 00:23:41.119 around his neck. They were affectionate for him. And then in verse 25, he told them, I 00:23:41.119 --> 00:23:48.119 know that none of you will ever see me again. And the problem with how fast the book of 00:23:48.720 --> 00:23:55.720 Acts moves is that you can't quite see how emotional this scene was on the service of 00:23:55.720 --> 00:24:02.720 the text and how much they loved each other. The only way I could think to illustrate it 00:24:02.720 --> 00:24:09.720 was from the story of John Patton, the great missionary, the Scottish missionary to the 00:24:09.720 --> 00:24:16.720 New Hebrides. John Patton wrote his own autobiography and he left in 1858 for the New Hebrides to 00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:23.720 minister to people who were cannibals at the time. And Patton describes in this just, get 00:24:23.720 --> 00:24:30.720 the book because it's like reading Indiana Jones missionary stories. I mean, it's amazing. 00:24:30.720 --> 00:24:37.720 But Patton describes as he's about to leave to go to Glasgow. He was in a village somewhere, 00:24:37.720 --> 00:24:44.720 I think, pretty far east in Scotland. He's walking to Glasgow for training and he thinks, 00:24:44.720 --> 00:24:49.720 he and his father both think that they'll never see each other again. And he's just a young 00:24:49.720 --> 00:24:53.720 man and he lived every day of his life so far with his father. This is what he writes, 00:24:53.720 --> 00:24:57.720 suspecting that they would never see each other again. My dear father walked with me the first 00:24:57.720 --> 00:25:04.720 six miles of the way. Tears rolled down my cheeks as freely now as they did then as my memory 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:11.720 steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so, we walked on together in unbroken 00:25:11.720 --> 00:25:18.720 silence. My father, as was often his custom, carried his hat in his hand while his long flowing 00:25:18.720 --> 00:25:25.720 yellow hair streamed like a girl's down to his shoulders. Now there's a scene. He was a 00:25:25.720 --> 00:25:31.720 Presbyterian elder in the 19th century with blonde hair down to his shoulders. His lips kept 00:25:31.720 --> 00:25:38.720 moving in silent prayers from me and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in 00:25:38.720 --> 00:25:44.720 looks for which all speech was now vain. We halted on reaching the appointed parting place. 00:25:44.720 --> 00:25:50.720 He grasped my hand firmly for a moment and there was silence. And then solemnly and affectionately 00:25:50.720 --> 00:25:58.720 he said, God bless you, my son. Although he tried, he was unable to say more. His lips kept 00:25:58.720 --> 00:26:04.720 moving but no words came out and I knew it was silent prayer. And tears we embraced and 00:26:04.720 --> 00:26:11.720 parted. I ran off as fast as I could and went about to turn a corner in the road where he 00:26:11.720 --> 00:26:16.720 would lose sight of me. I looked back and I saw him standing there with his head uncovered 00:26:16.720 --> 00:26:22.720 where I had left him, waving my hat in a dew. I was around the corner and I hid out of sight 00:26:22.720 --> 00:26:28.720 in an instant. But my heart was too full to carry me any farther so I darted into the side 00:26:28.720 --> 00:26:35.720 of the road and I wept for a season. And after hiding, I looked back up for him and I saw 00:26:35.720 --> 00:26:42.720 him in blinding tears off in the distance. He was looking for me but he could not find me. 00:26:42.720 --> 00:26:50.720 But I could see him even now as an old man the scene arises vividly before my mind as it had been 00:26:50.720 --> 00:26:56.720 but one hour ago. A beautiful story of departure. We don't experience things like this today 00:26:56.720 --> 00:27:03.720 because of FaceTime and Skype but this is what's happening in Acts 20. And they have deep 00:27:03.720 --> 00:27:11.720 affection for one another because Jesus Christ had died to create deep community. And so we'll 00:27:11.720 --> 00:27:17.720 just close by saying this. The church is called not only to declare that there is purpose to 00:27:17.720 --> 00:27:25.720 existence, that there is truth to testify to the truth but also to be a community of tears. 00:27:25.720 --> 00:27:31.720 And tears is simply a specific term in this passage that describes a condition of the heart, 00:27:31.720 --> 00:27:40.720 a condition that can be broken for other people's sorrows and griefs. So I want to ask you men 00:27:40.720 --> 00:27:50.720 especially you white, I think exclusively white, Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish, American, 00:27:50.720 --> 00:28:01.720 Western, European peoples, are you able to cry for other people? Are you able to weep with those 00:28:01.720 --> 00:28:08.720 who weep? Or at least are you able to have your heart broken over the sorrows of others in this 00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:16.720 life as a Christian community? And so one of the great evidences of being changed by the gospel 00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:22.720 I think especially for men in the Western world is that you grow into crying more or at least into 00:28:22.720 --> 00:28:28.720 having deep affection at looking out at the sorrows of the world. And we said this before here 00:28:28.720 --> 00:28:33.720 and I'll close with this but Christians are the happiest people and the saddest people on earth 00:28:33.720 --> 00:28:40.720 for that reason. Why? Because when you have a hard, hard heart before you see the gospel, 00:28:40.720 --> 00:28:45.720 you don't care about other people's problems. So all you're worried about is your own problems. 00:28:45.720 --> 00:28:51.720 But when you have a heart of stone that becomes a heart of flesh because you believe what Jesus 00:28:51.720 --> 00:28:56.720 has done for you and a new purpose of existence, then you start to care a lot more about what's 00:28:56.720 --> 00:29:01.720 happening in other people's lives and you start to weep with those who weep as the New Testament 00:29:01.720 --> 00:29:06.720 says and rejoice with those who rejoice. Everybody's happiness becomes your happiness, 00:29:06.720 --> 00:29:11.720 everybody's sorrow becomes your sorrow. And so Christians are the happiest and the saddest 00:29:11.720 --> 00:29:22.720 people on earth. Soft hearts make deep sorrows and true joys at the very same time. 00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:28.720 So if you have faith that Jesus Christ walked out of the grave and then you are a Christian 00:29:28.720 --> 00:29:33.720 minister in the church, what kind of a church does Paul want us to be in this passage? Called 00:29:33.720 --> 00:29:39.720 to proclaim that life has purpose to the world, called to testify to the true story of Jesus Christ 00:29:39.720 --> 00:29:44.720 and called to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those 00:29:44.720 --> 00:29:54.720 who rejoice. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would make all of us into people who are soft. 00:29:54.720 --> 00:30:00.720 And we know that the only way is that we believe in the gospel. So we ask now that for those 00:30:00.720 --> 00:30:06.720 who are exploring the mysteries of the faith, the gospel, Jesus Christ died and rose again 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:11.720 for sin in our place for the first time, that they would be helped by your spirit to believe 00:30:11.720 --> 00:30:15.720 that and for those of us that have known this, traced for some time, that we would be once 00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:40.720 again reshaped and reoriented by it. We ask for this in Jesus' name. Amen.