Acts, 18:23-19:41
Vern Peterman · Jul 3, 2005
Acts (2005), No. 26
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262328517269

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, alright, last week, here's Paul taking off, and the passage we did is sort of the start of this third missionary journey. Now there's a few things we want to look at before diving into this. One is, the first two missionary journeys were, especially the first one, evangelistic and get the churches established.

Here's Paul and Barnabas, they go off, they're going into places that have not heard the gospel at all, departing from Antioch. As they head out into the Gentile lands, they kind of do a loop, and you see them going back through the same churches appointing elders on the way back through. The next missionary journey, they go back, revisit those same churches again, and then do some evangelistic work. And what we see recorded in the first and second missionary journeys is Paul's evangelistic discourse. See, for example, in chapter 14, there is the first journey.

He's heading out and talking to the unbelievers about the gospel. Second missionary journey, revisiting some of the same churches, but also talking to unbelievers about the gospel in new areas. Third journey now we're starting off on, it changes character because we don't see him substantially, or the biggest portion of his third journey, focused on evangelism. This time it's revisiting the churches. Now, as important as evangelism was and remains, Notice that he didn't say, I've just got to get new believers in, new believers in, new believers in. There is also a priority in building up the church body. And so by now his third missionary journey, we notice he isn't going into still more new ground, but he's going back through the churches that he's established and revisiting those, spending time with them.

So that's what we're seeing start off here. Let me run through a few slides as well. and just kind of cover some different areas. This is a Corinthian mirror at the Louvre, and so they would have a mirror, but it wouldn't just be, you know, here's a mirror. Here's a handle. Good. Be happy. Okay? Instead, they would have mirrors, and this is probably a more well-preserved example, and they would have all these, you know, various religious symbols that would go along with them.

They were frequently Something fairly fancy, not just, you know, here's a mirror and a handle. Fairly fancy, and it was common. This one is preserved in the Louvre in Paris. Here's another, now these are not necessarily Corinthian. They may be, but I wasn't able to identify them as specifically Corinthian, so I note that they're Greek. perhaps from Corinth, we're not sure, but similar examples you see.

The mirrors were pretty fancy, especially for those days where making things was not so much an automatic affair. We don't have a mold, let's make 10 million of them, right? Instead, these are things that are each handcrafted, and so there's a lot of detail that goes into each one of those. The one on the right is actually relatively simple compared to the examples that we've got.

So they would have these mirrors, and obviously these things have gotten pitted and tarnished over the centuries. But initially it would be smooth, but they would have something along with it to polish it up. Because every time you'd use it, it had gotten tarnished again. So you'd go back and polish up your mirror. Then you could use it for a little while, until next time when you had to polish it. So I just wanted to show you some examples. When Paul, in each of his letters to the church at Corinth, he included once in each one, that word mirror, and to no other church did he use that. Why? Because Corinth was famous for its mirrors.

Here's Paul's third missionary journey. He takes off Manioc, goes through the same churches that he had before, and then heads off to Ephesus. He'd been there before, right? So you notice he's going basically back through the same churches that he's been at before, because the third missionary journey, we say it's a missionary journey, but it's not all just evangelism. It is, in this third journey, build up the churches that are already there. That's the priority, that's the focus.

So he's not going out to new territories. There is a possibility, and we'll look at it here, because we're not, Dr. Luke did not give us every single detail. Paul makes mention of going to Illyricum, which is otherwise known as Dalmatia. That's off the map here in what is now Kosovo.

And it's possibly in this route here. In that case, it might have been an evangelistic trip up there. But that's speculation at this point, so I just put that as a suggestion. Here's Troas, where we're going to see the first part of the lesson today. And Troas, it's a coastal town, and that's where the port was that they pulled into. and some of the ruins inside the town. Truth is, a lot of it's pretty well wrecked and you see just that one arch. Why that arch is still there, I don't know. The place is subject to incredible earthquakes constantly. But that also probably explains why that's the only thing left there.

And here's Miletus, where Paul met the elders at Ephesus. We'll be taking a look at that here this morning. And similar to Ephesus, it had a pretty good sized theater and you can see some of the town there in the adjacent areas. And here's a little bit more of Miletus. This is the Agora, the marketplace area. And a little bit more.

Oh, this one, let's see. This is not the marketplace. I'm trying to remember which one that was. I can't recall. Okay, time-wise. Here's the second journey, which we'll be looking at the wrap-up on today in our questions, around 50, and then 55 and a little bit beyond that is the third journey that we're starting to look at. Okay? All right.

With that, let's take a look at it. We're going to start off with 1823 through 1941, and take a look at the questions there. See what you came up with. So in Acts 18.23 through 19.41. We got anybody that needs handouts on that by the way? Anybody need to catch up on that? Alright. First question.

Why is it that the spirit baptism, the spirit baptism and the gift of tongues, that is languages, by the way, we commonly call it the gift of tongues. The truth is, just in our modern vernacular, gift of languages. That's really all it means. Gift of languages because they had multiple languages.

We're recorded here in this passage. What are the things that made this event unique in the book of Acts in the New Testament? And why don't we find the gift of tongues more prominent among the writings of Paul and the other apostles? Okay, we actually have several questions there. So, let's start off there. Why is it that spirit baptism is in gift of tongues recorded here?

What makes it unique? What can you tell us? Okay It wasn't something necessarily happened constantly. It wasn't the main thing Okay, so yeah, there was a uniqueness about it in part simply because it was unique There was a unique uniqueness about and what was that uniqueness? Can you point to some things about it?

Not only is it there's only a third time and the last time in the book of Acts that it's recorded What else about it's unique? We pointed out previously in here, here's Paul, he's with these guys who are disciples of John the Baptist. We pointed out that it's at least two and a half decades after John the Baptist had been beheaded. and off the scene, and yet here we have in areas far away from the Jordan, where you have disciples of John the Baptist that have spread out. So that's kind of different. And the only thing similar to that we find was Apollos, who was also of John the Baptist, a disciple.

Okay? Yes? Ah, okay. Now, let's ask that question, and a very good question. These people that were baptized by John the Baptist, were they believers? Excellent question. What's the answer? Ah. Yeah, what John was doing, I mean, they were all to be looking for the Messiah, right? What John was doing was kind of refreshing that call be looking for him, okay? And so they were kind of the last of the Old Testament believers in this category. Were they believers? Yes, in the Old Testament sense. They had not had the news about, yes, look, remember what John was telling you about?

Well, it's done did. It's happened, okay? It's come to pass. And so what Paul was marking, he didn't come back to him and say, hey, you know that stuff that John told you, that's a bunch of bonk. He didn't say that, did he? He came to him instead and said, what John told you was good as far as it went. I need to tell you what's happened since. Something that John never saw.

And that is that Christ the Messiah has indeed been crucified and buried and resurrected all for you. Do you believe it? Now that the news is here, do you believe it? Yes, we do. That's good, because here's what's happening next. So, were they believers? Yes, in the Old Testament sense. John had kind of refreshed the whole Old Testament expectation of the Messiah coming, and now they've gotten the rest of the story. And they were indeed believing in it, and that's why this event.

Here you have three events of tongues. specifically recorded in Acts. Once with Jews, once with Gentiles, once with Jews in the Gentile land. Those are the three events. Once with Jews, once with Gentiles, once with Jews in the Gentile land. At each event there was an apostle present. This is unique because it was Paul. Those are the patterns. with Jews, with Gentiles, Jews in the Gentile land. So those are the three tongues recordings, languages actually, in the book of Acts. And that's the last one.

Why don't we find the gift of tongues more prominent among the writings of Paul and the other apostles? Why not? Why isn't it? Boy, I mean, every book ought to have that, right? Why isn't it in every book? In truth, 1 Corinthians 12-14, that's it. That's the mention among the apostles. Why is that the case? Is it because they were shy? They were tongue-tied, right? No. What's the reason? Why is it that that's the only mention of it? Ah, yes.

It was a revelatory gift for one thing, and we find the various, you know, prophecy, knowledge, tongues, those were revelatory gifts, and as more scripture was revealed, and by the time of this writing scripture has begun to be written, as more scripture is revealed, the purpose for which those gifts were given is being fulfilled. Therefore, it's fading off. there was a diminishing reason to even address it. Let's not talk about it, you know, chapter after chapter, book after book, because after all, it's fading off. The more we write, the more it fades off. The more it's disappearing. Yes, Art?

The Corinthians are the ones that the scripture makes any note of. The records that we have from extra-biblical writings is that the only occurrence of tongues in subsequent centuries even took place among those who, Montanus was one, I think Josiah covered it when we were going through church history. Montanus was the one in the second century, and that was actually the second half of the second century, who began bringing these things out at that time, and the rest of the Christians just said, this guy's a heretic.

He had various problems. He had two prophetesses along with him who were prophesying, but they'd left their husbands to do so. And everybody said, this isn't right. They also said that Jesus wasn't coming back to Jerusalem, but he was coming back to the place where they lived. Interesting, a little local color there. But just several things just didn't line up. They said, what you are doing, the way you've gone about it, where these prophetesses you have have left their husbands, now following you around, the way you're going about it, something's not right.

What you're telling me, that Jesus isn't coming back where he said he was coming back, but he's coming back the second time in Phrygia, okay? Something's not right here. And so that was about as good as a subsequent or later occurrence as we can point to from any records of that. But so far as the church is present in the Apostolic times, only Corinth appears to have a problem that we have record of.

And it appears to be, you know, they seem to be out of control with a lot of things. So it's just like among the list of things that they've got that are out of control. Paul tells them right off, first chapter, I urge that you say the same thing, but you're not be all going off different directions. Third chapter, oh, I'd love to be able to tell you more things, but you're so fleshly, so immature. And so they definitely had lots of issues, and this was just one of them. No other church that we have record of had the kinds of abuses that showed up there. Yeah, Josiah. Yes, yeah. And that's something else that shows up in the lesson here.

This time is very much church building time, not just an evangelistic time, because not only was he making the journey, but he was also beginning to write letters to other churches in the process to try to make those connections. And it appears he makes a visit over to Corinth as well as writing a letter. Okay, second question.

Why was Demetrius, the silversmith, upset by Paul spreading the gospel? If the Greek and Roman religious character was not exclusive One could worship as many gods as one wished. Why would Demetrius be upset at the loss of sales of silver statues? Why are they going to point to Paul here?

What's the problem? What's going on? Yeah, this is a serious loss of market here. You see, if you've got a market share issue, you know, hey, they're buying the marble ones instead of my silver ones, you know, then you can't point to Paul for that. If you're saying, well, you know, there's a little downturn in the economy and, you know, we're just having a tougher time selling anything these days, that would be one thing. But Demetrius definitely sees the cause of the problem.

Because as we see in Acts 19, the people who had spent big bucks on the magic documents, they weren't buying them anymore, and they're taking them and just burning them. 50,000 pieces of silver, that's a big chunk of change, okay? Burn them. The little silver idols that Demetrius made. Not sell them so many.

I'm not interested in that. I believe in Jesus. What? He hears that a few times and that just gets him ticked. It's tough to feed the kids when you can't sell these little things. So his perspective, Paul is really creating a problem. Come in there and sell any god you want. That's fine. But this exclusive thing, I don't do this because I believe this, that he couldn't handle, right? Couldn't stomach that. Couldn't sell it either. Alright. So that's really the problem.

He was looking at belief in Jesus Christ was exclusive, contrary to all the other Greek and Roman teachings. They had 50 gods in Ephesus that we know of, maybe others that we don't know of. None of that seemed to bother Demetrius and his friends. It was, you believe in Jesus, and now these others go by the wayside. That was the problem. All right, question three.

Obviously Paul and his companions had a part in the near riot in the theater, and they were the focal point of the great contention that was quieted by the city clerk. Shouldn't Paul have been less disruptive and more accommodating to the local culture? Why didn't he just apologize and allow matters to be settled so that they could, I should say, go about things more peacefully. I should insert that there. Go about things more peacefully. Here Paul comes in and he eventually ends up in this riot. Shouldn't he have calmed the waters and figured out how could he have less of an impact on the culture?

What do you think? James, you're shaking your head. You think that's not a good idea. Yeah, basically there's nothing, you know, there's nothing different that Paul should be doing, right? The consequence of the culture was there was an economic disruption. But that doesn't mean that, and there's also a disruption at the theater, but that doesn't mean that Paul should have been doing anything different. One of the things that's happened over the years is that as Christians go in to evangelize other cultures, they have at times disrupted the culture in ways that were not necessary to the gospel. And sometimes you run into some real difficult ethical issues. My uncle was a missionary for 40 years in one little town in Honduras, Santa Cruz de Guayape. And you had to get there by driving down this creek bed for 40 miles. So it was a remote town. And he went in there, and the way it had been for generations is half the kids die of dysentery. So you just, you know, have a population, you know, controlled just because of the dysentery.

All the sons would get the property broken, you know, broken up from the father, and that was also the tradition. My aunt and uncle move into this little town, Santa Cruz de Guayape, and he brings in things like, you know, some drugs to take care of the, you know, problems that they have, and hey, there's this little practice, do this and that, and it'll stop it. All of a sudden, you know, I say all of a sudden, but during the time they were there, after generations of things going on, population boom. Now the property is being broken up to such a small little section that now you can't survive on the land.

I mean, they create a problem. So you can run into things that are not explicit to the gospel that can create problems. Their response was to start a school to teach the kids other skills, something that they could sell and do. So that's how they dealt with it. But Christians can run into that. Here you've got something that's explicit to the gospel. It is the nature of what's going to go on. It will impact the culture.

A story, I'll tell it, and my apologies if you've heard it before, but my grandmother was a missionary of the cannibals in Fiji. And one story in downtown Suva, there were two white guys who were walking down the street in Suva and they were talking about, the missionaries shouldn't have come here, they're going to disrupt the local culture and cause all kinds of changes and it's a real disturbance to the tribes and the culture that's there.

Well, they didn't know that right behind them was a barefooted Fijian man and Fijians, just kind of by background, are very tall people. The barefooted Fijian man walking very quietly right behind them overheard the conversation. He came up behind them, and he grabbed each of them by the shoulder and stopped them short. And he put his head right between them and looked right in the eye and said, if those missionaries hadn't come, I'd eat you.

And so was it a disturbance to the culture? Yes, it was. It was a real disruption of the culture. In this case, unlike my aunt and uncle with the shots and the various practices, It was a disturbance of the culture that was basic to the gospel. Because the people would say, you know, I've been doing things just like the Ephesians would say, hey, I've been buying these magic documents and doing all this hocus pocus on the pages. And now we're burning it. And just like that, in the Fiji Islands, the people would say, I used to eat people.

And how do you deal with that kind of a guilt once you recognize how wrong it is? Only a Savior like Jesus is sufficient for such guilt. For people who used to have pig meat and chicken meat and people meat at the marketplace. How do you deal with that guilt?

Only a Savior like Christ. That's a sufficient Savior. So, as we look at this case here, let them get upset. Let them get ticked off. Let them have their riot in the theater. The gospel must be told. They desperately need it. Most desperately need it. And if it diminishes Demetrius' idle sales, all the better. All the better.

All right, now, let's take a look at this next handout here. Acts 20, 1-38. Now with this, I have a confession to make. The confession is this. This is my favorite chapter. I just love it. And there's a reason here. Hang on a sec. That's from last time. Anybody else need one for this week? Need to catch up with that? Okay. If you can help out with that, I'd appreciate it. So Acts 20, 1 through 38. So here's the deal.

He's still on the third missionary journey. Still pursuing that. He goes from Ephesus and begins to making kind of a rather quick tour through some of the different cities and hitting some churches where he'd been. And this tour is summarized rather briefly, and he's heading on his way down because he's determined to set his calendar for reaching Jerusalem by Pentecost. And so in order to do that, he's got to kind of hit the places he's going to hit quickly but keep moving. And in order to do that as well, He arranges to have the elders from Ephesus, rather than get in Ephesus and get all snarled up and everything that's there, to meet him in Miletus, the next major port city to the south there. So here are the Ephesian elders coming probably by land, taking a trip that's probably like a day trip. Day there, day back.

And Paul would meet them there and speak to them for what would be the last time. So what happens here, this is a period of time where Paul sent Titus into Dalmatia, otherwise known as Illyricum. That took place later. Paul may have made this trip into Illyricum. Later on he sent Titus there.

The other thing that begins to show up, and Josiah made note of it, Paul's also writing letters in here. It's not recorded in the Book of Acts. That's something very interesting in the Book of Acts. Dr. Luke recorded oftentimes many fine details. Sometimes, you know, little tiny little details were recorded, but not the letter writing. But what we do find is indications from the letters that check back with the things that Dr. Luke recorded. and things that cross check between the letters.

So we find Paul and these references we have here from 1st and 2nd Corinthians give confirmation of this. Paul is beginning to write letters to deal with some of the issues. He had first gone out the first two missionary journeys with evangelism. Now there was enough just dealing with the issues with the churches that that kept him plenty busy. Lots to do just with that.

One of the things we see take place here, Paul is in Troas. Now, Troas is one that, it's interesting, we don't find other mention of church or anything there, but one of the things to remember is that it says in Acts that the gospel went all throughout Asia. And it didn't necessarily mean that Paul did it. For example, we know that the church at Colossae, Laodicea, Paul doesn't seem to have any contact there. But instead, another fellow who heard the gospel, likely when he was in Ephesus, carried it there. This may be a similar situation with Troas. So he meets there. Paul's talking until midnight. Now, I've got good news. I won't be doing that, okay? But Paul's talking until midnight.

And there's this fellow, Eutychus, a young fellow who's sitting up in one of the windows. And he gets tired. It's understandable. He may have been working all day, you know, and may have just had a full meal. Who knows? But he gets tired and, well, just the head doesn't just go down and he snoozes. He goes three stories down. Whomp, okay? And falls. And the expectation is he's dead.

What's interesting here is we have Luke. Luke uses the first person pronoun there, you know, we, we, both before and after. So here's Luke, who's a doctor. He may well have been there and said, hey, this guy's gone. So here's a pronouncement Luke records that he's just considered dead.

And Paul says, oh, no, wait a minute. And Paul brings him back to life. And it's interesting, the account says, and everybody was greatly relieved. That's almost an understatement. Can you imagine? All right, now this guy's dead. Oh, no, he's not. Greatly relieved, I'm sure, was understatement. They were not just relieved, because that's not something you expect to happen, is it? No, not something you anticipate. But that was the response here.

Now, the next major event that we see described, Paul meets with the elders there at Ephesus. He's meeting, excuse me, from Ephesus, meeting them at Miletus. As he does so, He begins talking to them, first telling them, guys, I've spent this time with you, here's what I've been doing. And he tells them in that, kind of a couple of succinct pieces of info, and something that's no news to them, but it's perhaps helpful news to us.

And he says, I've been with you for three years. During that time, I've given you the whole counsel of God. I taught you day and night. Okay? I taught you day and night. as I gave you the whole counsel of God for three years. I've been among you. I've tried in the midst of that not to burden you.

Paul, as we saw revealed in chapter 18, was a tent maker. And in those days, it is most likely that meant he was a leather worker. And these would have been leather tents, most likely. Not assuredly, but most likely leather tents. So he would work to avoid burdening people. But nonetheless, imagine here he is working away on this craft, you know, punching holes in things and cutting stuff and all the time talking. Okay? Talking away.

It says he was in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. But here he is with these elders for the last time. How many were there? Have any clue how many of there were? You're shaking your head. More than one. It just says plural. It does not give us a number. Who is their leader?

Do we have the name of the head elder or anything like that in the passage there? Bishop. What's interesting is there is no distinguishing And one of the points to be made, and this brings it to the surface, outside of Jerusalem, where we have the names of some outside of just explicitly the apostles who were elders, outside of Jerusalem, although elders are talked about in multiple books in the New Testament, we don't know outside of Jerusalem the name of one single elder. We never, at any point, were any of the elders given a title. In fact, the only time, and the word pastor, poyman, okay, the word pastor, the only time it's used as a title is of Christ. Yeah, interesting. And it is used only as a noun for referring to an elder once.

Ephesians 4.11, that's it. So interesting the patterns that we picked up in our culture. as opposed to that.

Now, so here's Paul, he's talking to these elders, and he says, boy, I hope you guys have a good time, right? I hope you guys have a really fine time here, build up a great church, do a lot of fun stuff, you know, have lots of picnics, you know, that's a great thing, you know. Is that what he tells What's his concern?

As he talks to the elders here, he turns around, verse 28, starts focusing at that turning point. There, he starts focusing on, and now, I've told you that I've taught you for three years. I've told you that I've given you the whole counsel of God. I've taught you day and night with tears. He says, now I want you to hear me. Hear me out.

What are some of the things that he tells them, starting on that passage there? 2028 and the next few verses. What are some of the things that he lays out with them? What are the things that are to be their focus? Can you pick up on that? What's to be their focus?

Yeah. Yeah. He says there's danger here. Now, do you worry about wolves here when you come to church? I know how it is that Ann Marie was talking to Josiah before they're coming to church, they're in the car, and she says, man, I hope those wolves don't show up. Right? Is that what she says? What is he talking about with wolves? Ah, people coming in and dividing up the flock with false teachings. It's interesting.

Christendom now has about 33,000 denominations at last count. Can you imagine that? Now, most of those we never hear of. Besides, that listing 33,000 would take us a long time. But somebody's apparently done it. Most of them we never hear of, but all kinds of divisions easily get sewn into the church.

And what's real interesting is quite often those divisions tend to focus around personalities. We have churches that are even named with personalities, named after people. There's a tendency to divide up the church according to certain personalities or certain teachings, to start tearing the church. And basically, is a personality a basis for starting a church? No. Is there any basis for coming up with new teachings?

No. So these are things that come out of the world and the flesh, and not out of scripture, not out of what God intended. So he gives them a warning, watch out, I know from, and where are they going to come from? Does he spell that out? Acts 20? Some of the teachings are even going to come from where?

Among themselves! What? You got the elders, they're supposed to be watching over these kinds of things, they're supposed to be looking carefully at doctrine and things like that. You're even going to have them causing the problem? Yeah. That's exactly what he's telling them. That's exactly what he's warning them about.

Even from among yourselves, there will be those who will tear people apart. And one of the things that happens is, as you get church leaders, you've got somebody who is a leader, and it's easy for that to take off in a fleshly mode. And you get people following after a personality and a leader, and they begin to play on that. Or somebody gets some little quirky teaching, and all of a sudden they're off following this quirky teaching.

So, yeah, there's a concern. Now, what does he say that the elders ought to be doing? What does he say this is what ought to be happening? What does he tell them? Shepherd. And it's real interesting, whereas culturally we wanted to attach the title pastor to that guy, in scripture it never does. Paul is talking to the Ephesian elders and he uses a verb, Peter, by the way, 1 Peter 5, is talking to the elders, writing to them. You know what he does? He doesn't say, you who are shepherds, he says, get shepherding. Both Paul and Peter agree marvelously between Acts chapter 20 and 1 Peter 5. They both say, get shepherding. Verbs. They both use the verb.

God is much more interested in action than titles. Okay? Much more interested in action than titles. There's something else. They both use The word among in those passages. Among. The elders are to be among the people. Not somebody who seems kind of isolated and is off on some pedestal, exalted way above, but among the people. They're with them. Let's ask this question. In what ways does an elder have a different position in Christ from the rest of the body? Ruth, you're shaking your head no. They don't. Yeah, that's right.

Here's Paul the Apostle. He writes to the church at Ephesus. And what does he write? You've been blessed. And later on we see him start using we and us. And the reason is Paul the Apostle has no difference in his position than all the rest of the believers. His position is no different one bit from the guy that he says, stop stealing. From the guy that he writes to and he says, don't be lying to each other. The position in Christ is identical. So there's no reason based on position for someone to exalt themselves up in some special place.

So he says, shepherd, be shepherding. He tells them, you're to be among. And both Paul and Peter make the point, this is the flock that is owned by God, purchased by the blood of Christ. It's God's flock. So the elders don't have their flock, they're given as under-shepherds, untitled, and from any evidence we have, nameless, anonymous, Under shepherds, they're given a responsibility for the flock that belongs to God. It was purchased by the blood of Christ. So he's laying out some clear things here. Wonderful stuff. And I am constantly astounded at how consistent Peter and Paul are.

From any evidence we have, they spend at most weeks together. It has been probably years since they've seen each other. And what they write Though not having seen each other, what they write, 1 Peter 5, and what Paul speaks, Acts 20, the commonality of words, even to the point of using shepherd as a verb in each one, is phenomenal. Among, he uses. They both talk about God's flock.

They're phenomenally consistent for guys who haven't talked with each other for years. And you know why? You know why that is? It's inspired. It's the same Holy Spirit who inspired, that's why. That's why the amazing consistency. This is God's Word, that's why. Okay, we're plum out of time here. One of the last points I want to put here, and we've got bullets, so I'll leave it to you to go through the details of it on page 3.

Paul spent, there is a focus in Ephesus, we brought this out previously, but we put them down in detail here with the scripture references. There is a focus of attention on Ephesus that we have record of few other churches having. Paul spent three years there. The longest discourse in the book of Acts is to the elders at Ephesus.

He wrote them a New Testament letter. It's not the longest, but it is rich, as we've been seeing on Sunday mornings in the main service. It is rich with marvelous teaching, some of which is unparalleled and unequaled in any other book. There is no other New Testament book which tells, for example, that here is the Church of the Bride of Christ, and that's the example for a marriage relationship. No other New Testament book lays that out. And we'll be looking at that starting two weeks from now at the main service, spending a month on it. Unique book.

Now, on top of that, Paul sent Timothy. First Timothy, he starts off, I sent you to Ephesus, why? To deal with the false teachers there. So Timothy was sent there explicitly. We also have a couple other mentions of Onesiphorus and Tychicus, both having gone to Ephesus, so there's some additional ministry.

And they're mentioned, by the way, in 2 Timothy, which is Paul's last letter, and that's when he's saying, a whole bunch of people have left me, and yet he says, these guys are faithful. You know, so he's writing in the last letter that. We have, largely from outside the biblical record, we have records of the Apostle John having spent his last years there, And this includes, possibly, it's only extra-biblical record that would imply it, possibly with Jesus' mother Mary, because remember at the cross, Jesus told John, you know, behold your mother. So anyway, there's even Mary's house is one of the things that's marked there, whether it actually is is a question, but nonetheless. John appears to have spent his last time there, and in the book of Revelation, the last New Testament book, seven messages to the churches, and the first one is Ephesus. So Ephesus has a period of time of several decades of apostolic attention.

The first apostle to be sent out to the Gentiles, Paul, puts three years with them. John, the last of the living apostles by any record we have, spends his last years with them. There's an extra biblical record in which John was getting very old and they would bring him up to the front of the church to speak briefly to the people and they'd help him up and he'd get up to the front and the record says he would say, love one another and then sit down. John spent his last years from anything we know.

Here's a church that had phenomenal, phenomenal apostolic teaching and presence among them. So, what's interesting is to look at that message to the seven churches, the first one, starting in Revelation chapter 2, verse 1, I think it's the first seven verses or thereabouts. To look at that and say, okay, you had 40 plus years. What did you do with it? How did it go? What happened? So, interesting reading. Alright, let's take a look at the questions briefly. Make sure that you don't have any additional questions. Question number one, page four.

Here's Dr. Luke's account of the travels at the end of Paul's third missionary journey. It's not balanced in the sense of providing detail in proportion to time. You notice that Here we get a quick clip here and some other, you know, he spent three months in Corinth. We don't have any explicit detail of that. But a visit to Troas, that gets a little account with Eutychus there. He visited various people. What gets recorded is this meeting, you know, with the elders in Miletus.

So it's not necessarily an objective, even recording. Why is that? What would be the reasons for our having recorded for our benefit things that are not exactly proportional, objective, systematic? It seems instead, while it records what is true, to record kind of emphasis on one, less emphasis on another. Why would that be? Think about that. Second question.

Paul addresses the elders from Ephesus and Miletus. What concerns does he have for the elders themselves? What impact should those concerns have on the establishment of patterns of church leadership today? And the third question, given the time that Paul spent with the believers in Ephesus, in which he told them that he gave them the whole counsel of God, teaching for three years, day and night, what indications do we have about how long it takes for someone to be fully equipped? What does it take? What does it take? What does it take to be fully equipped?

Think about that. Also think about what is the context that it takes place in. If you're really going to be fully equipped, the most important thing is that you go to seminary, right? Yeah, it is a big one because we find much of Christendom, oh boy, if you really want to get equipped, you've got to call off and do this. a fellow not too long ago, and he said, you know, I want to really study deep. I've had four or five pastors tell me to go somewhere else. Is that what Scripture lays out? Anyway, take a look at that. Now, any questions? Art?

Just a quick fact, a few weeks ago, you mentioned in regard to the Bereans. Yes, the Bereans, yeah. The fact that they Yes, yes. at that point in time. Yeah. That's a very good point. The question he's asking is, here you've got the Bereans. who are examining the Scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true, what commonality, what overlap, if you will, if I understand what you're saying, is there between those people and the ones we saw at Ephesus, it says there were about a dozen of them, that were disciples of John the Baptist. Very interesting. Is there an overlap there? Good question.

We don't have time to cover it, but that's a good question. So think about that for next week, okay? Alright, thanks for asking that, Art. Let's do close our time with prayer, okay? Lord, as we look at this, boy, some precious times are going on. We know that through the last of this passage, these elders embraced Paul and wept tears of joy for the time that they had had together and grief for the parting that would place them in separate places until they would all meet in the air. And yet, in the midst of that, Lord, there were those who would cause divisions even among them. And Paul knew it. Lord, these are things that cause us to think, think seriously and to think deeply and to consider carefully where we are spiritually and where we are as individuals, where we are as a church body, to look at it and to ponder. And we just thank you for your word that brings these issues and insights forward. Thank you in the name of Jesus our Lord. Amen.