Acts 20 - Apostle Paul bores a guy to DEATH?!?

have you ever bored someone to death Paul has today Paul will show us what to do when you bore young people and it'll also show us how to say goodbye all that and more today on branch together [Music] welcome to branch together my name is Jared and today we're diving into Acts chapter 20 getting towards the last third of the book before we dive in as always let's take some time and pray [Music] father again we thank you for your servant Luke his diligence to to get and gather these stories his courage to be a part of these stories and to follow with Paul and Timothy and Silas and we thank you for all of these different people Priscilla Aquila Paul and Silas Barnabas and nopales and all of these men and women who came to know you and then just spread your good news and debated with others and sought to show others and suffered all for the sake of sharing the love and grace of Jesus Christ god we pray that your word would go out today I pray for all those today who are willing to share this faith and who have a love for you and a love for others in such a way that they want to share the good news I'm all those who are suffering today in different places where they are rejected for believing rejected for sharing I pray that you would give them courage today I give them strength fill them with your love and your spirit and for that all of us would be inspired by the way your spirit was at work in these men and women sharing your good news it's in your name we pray amen Acts chapter 20 after the disturbance had ended Paul sent for the disciples and after encouraging them and saying farewell he left to go to Macedonia after he had gone through those regions and spoken many words of encouragement to the believers there he came to Greece where he stayed for three months because the Jews had made a plot against him as he was intending to sail to Syria he decided to return from Macedonia Paul was accompanied by sapota son of Tyrus from Berea Aristarchus and secundus from Thessalonica Gaius from Derby and Timothy as well as thickest and trophimus from the province of Asia had gone on ahead and were waiting up waiting for us intro as we sailed away from Philip I after the days of unleavened bread and within five days we came to the others intro as where we stayed for seven days on the first day of the week when we met to break bread Paul began to speak to the people and because he intended to leave the next day he extended his message until midnight now there were many lamps in the upstairs rooms where we were meeting a young man named eutychus who was sitting in the window was sinking into a deep sleep while Paul continued to speak for a long time fast asleep he fell down from the third storey and he was picked up dead but Paul went down threw himself on the young man put his arms around him and said do not be distressed for he is still alive then Paul went back upstairs and after he had broken bread and eaten he talked with them a long time until dawn then he left they took the boy home alive and were greatly comforted we went on ahead to the ship and put out to sea for ASUS intending to take Paul aboard there for he had arranged it this way he himself wasn't tending to go there by land when he met us in Asus he we took him aboard and went to Mitylene we set sail from there and on the following day we arrived off Chios the next day we approached Samus and the day after that we arrived at Meletis for Paul decided to sail past Ephesus so as not to spend time in the province of Asia for he was hurrying to arrive in Jerusalem if possible by the day of Pentecost from my lead us he sent a message to Ephesus telling the elders of the church to come to him when they arrived he said to them you yourselves know how I lived the whole time I was with you from the first day I set foot in the province of Asia serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with the trials that happened to me because of the plots of the Jews you know that I did not hold back from proclaiming to you anything that would be helpful and from teaching you publicly and from house to house testifying to both Jews and Greeks about repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus and now compelled by the Spirit I am going to Jerusalem without knowing what will happen to me there except that the Holy Spirit warns me in town after town that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me but I do not consider my life worth anything to myself so that I may finish my task in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the good news of God's grace and now I know that none of you among whom I send around proclaiming the kingdom will see me again therefore I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of you all for I did not hold back from announcing to you the whole purpose of God watch out for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to Shepherd the Church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own son I know that after I am gone fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock even from among your own group men will arise teaching perversions of the truth to draw the disciples away after them therefore be alert remembering that day at night and day for three years I did not stop warning each of you with tears and now I entrust to you God into the message of His grace this message is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified I have desired no one silver or gold or clothing you yourselves know that these hands of mine provided for my needs and the needs of those who are with me by all these things I've shown you that by working in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive when he had said these things he knelt down with them all and prayed they all began to weep loudly and hugged Paul and kissed him especially saddened by what he had said that they were not going to see him again then they accompanied him to the ship all right next twenty we're getting into the deep tracks of the book of Acts we might be more familiar with the earlier stories but this book is getting rather long and we might want to kind of check out at some point but there are some great powerful things happening in the last third of this book and in these chapters I love the Eutychus story Paul is talking to a local church and he knows he's leaving the next day he knows he's never gonna see these people again so he's really trying to share a lot of information the text says he prolonged his speech until midnight a young man eutychus falls asleep in the window and and the way Luke writes it as Paul talked longer still I'd like to think that Luke is pointing out one of maybe Paul's flaws here or being a little passive-aggressive in this chapter yes Paul is incredible and does a lot of miracles and is this incredible theologian but sometimes he talks for a long long time the text makes that point two or three times that Paul is going on long anyway this young man Eutychus gets super tired falls into a deep sleep and falls out of the window and dies Paul has bored someone to death it's what Paul does next that I love so much Paul takes the young man in his arms and says there is still life in him these words should hit us today where we record BT in the heart of Monmouth County New Jersey we're in an area that is increasingly less interested in things of faith and in long-winded teachings it can be easy both to bore young people with all our talking and also to get discouraged and think that people just aren't interested both Darren and I spent around 10 years in student ministry and we know how difficult it is sometimes for young people to connect with this or that young people can get so easily bored and distracted so a chapter like this is always been encouraging to me as I worked with teenagers Paul looks at someone that we would see as dead he looks at a young person who was bored who didn't care who fell fell over board and it'd be easy to say oh that person is out that person doesn't care that person's giving up that person is bored and Paul looks at that bored person lying on the ground and says no there is life in him and he takes him in his arms and says there is life in him some things for to consider today first have there been times in your faith journey where you felt like you had no life where you felt just bored where you could relate to eutychus just saying I've heard this I've been here I've sat here and there's nothing going on if you have you're not alone but think about this has someone come alongside you hugged you and believed that there was life in you if there's been someone who's done that for you when you were down when you were out where you were scared when you were lost in your faith remember that person and thank that person something else to consider is there someone around you today who is discouraged who was bored who is lifeless that you might tend to think is hopeless don't give up find a way to take them in your arms and believe that there is still life in them that's all for today join us tomorrow as we keep digging through the book of Acts [Music]

Channel: Branch Together

Views: 6,137

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Keywords: branch together, bible reading, daily devo, daily devotional, quiet time

Id: jrrsip-AyVs

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 28 2018