This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of week five of our look together through the
book of Acts. That means we're in chapter 20 today. You might remember yesterday
we looked at Paul's ministry in Ephesus.

After this ministry, Paul begins to head back toward Jerusalem. He has a purpose
in mind that we're going to see in the later chapters that we study together
this week. In chapter 20 verse 1, the Bible says when the uproar had ended, the
uproar we talked about yesterday, Paul sent for the disciples and after
encouraging them, said goodbye and set out for Macedonia.

He's heading back toward Jerusalem and along the way he's going to meet with
some of the churches that he served. And by the way, this is the part of the
journey as he's heading back toward Jerusalem where a young man named Eudicus
falls out of a window because he falls asleep as Paul is preaching. So late,
late at night, falls to his death and Paul, by the miraculous work of God, is
able to go and raise that young man to life.

So God's continuing to do these miraculous things in his journey of Paul. But I
want to focus today on the last half of chapter 20. It's one of the most
poignant and emotional moments in all of the book of Acts.

On his way back to Jerusalem, knowing that he's walking into danger, Paul meets
with the leaders of the Ephesian church. He doesn't go all the way up to
Ephesus, he asks them to come down to him at a place called Miletus. And as he
talks with them, in what for many of them he knows will be their last meeting
with him, he reveals the heart of a man whose life is dedicated to serving
others in Jesus' love.

As I read the words of Paul to these Ephesian elders at Miletus, I realize I
have a lot to learn from Paul, a lot to learn about what it means to serve him,
a lot to learn about what it means to focus in him. Let's just walk through
these chapters together and listen together to what we can learn from the heart
of the apostle Paul. In verses 17 to 19, from Miletus, Paul sent to Ephesus for
the elders of the church.

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, I served the Lord
with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots
of the Jews. " What do I learn from Paul about what it means to serve and to
love Jesus?

I learn in these verses that I serve with humility and tears. That's how you
serve. Serving him is not about how great you look in front of others or how
gifted others might say that you are or how many opportunities you might get or
how big the ministry might grow.

That's all in God's hands. He might want to grow the ministry big. He might want
to do marvelous things.

He certainly did through the life of the apostle Paul, but Paul didn't focus
back on the wonderful, marvelous things that had happened. He didn't start his
talk to the Ephesian elders, "Do you remember, do you remember when this person
was healed? Do you remember what used to happen when they took my handkerchiefs
to people?

" No, he started by talking about his heart. He says when you serve, you serve
with humility and you serve with tears. You serve with humility because you
recognize who you are before God.

Humility, by the way, is not putting yourself down, it's lifting God up. It's
recognizing who God is, the greatness of who God is. You live out the full gifts
that he's given you in light of his greatness.

That is a place of humility because he is so much greater than we are, but he
also served with tears. His humility went to the place of connection with other
people. He cared about those he served.

He had tears because he loved. He had tears because he gave, he sacrificed.
That's what I learned from Paul.

You serve with humility and tears. In verses 20 and 21, Paul said to the elders,
"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. I have declared to
both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in
our Lord Jesus.

" You serve with humility and tears and then you teach repentance and faith. You
may say, "I'm not a teacher. " Everyone's a teacher.

You may not stand in front of a group and teach. You may not have that gift, but
it may be your kids that you teach or a class that you teach or somebody at your
work that you teach or somebody in your carpool that you teach. Everybody's a
teacher in some way or another.

Anytime we tell the truth to someone else, we are actually teaching. Paul says,
"I taught repentance and I taught faith. That's what I want to teach.

Repentance is hope. Repentance is you can turn around. Repentance is God can
give you a new life and a new start.

And you also preach faith. You preach God has something in store for you. He has
a plan for your life.

No matter what happens, no matter what you're facing, He will not let you down.
In fact, He will use anything and everything that you face in order to show the
world who He is. You preach and teach repentance and faith.

That's what I learned from Paul. What else do I learn? I learned in verses 22 to
24.

This is what the scripture says. And now Paul said, "Compelled by the Spirit,
I'm going to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. I only know
that in every city, the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are
facing me.

However, I consider my life worth nothing to me. If only I may finish the race
and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me, the task of testifying to the
gospel of God's grace. " What do I learn from Paul?

I learned to focus on finishing the race. There's a lot of people who focus on
starting the race. There's not enough people.

There's not enough in me sometimes, maybe not enough in you that focuses on
finishing the race. That's where Paul's heart was focused. And because of that,
he could say, "My life is worth nothing to me.

" Now, he wasn't saying he was worth nothing. He knew his worth before Jesus
Christ. His worth is that Jesus died on the cross for him.

He preaches it again and again and again in his letters. He's not saying he's
worth nothing. He's saying his life on this planet earth is worth nothing
because he knows what's waiting for him in heaven.

So he is not holding on to his life and giving up what God wants to do in his
life. Because he considered his life in the hands of the Lord, he was able to
focus on finishing the race that God had given him, completing the task that God
had given him. The question I have to ask as I read these words of the apostle
Paul is, "Where is my focus?

Where is my focus? Is it on this world or is it on the next? It is on what I
want to get done or on his task?

Is it on what I want to do or is it on finishing the race? " What do you learn
from Paul? You learn to serve with humility and tears, to teach repentance and
faith, to focus on finishing the race.

You also learn verse 28, Paul said, "Keep watch over yourselves and all the
flock which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, over which the Holy Spirit
has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with
his own blood. " I learned from Paul to shepherd the flock of God.

Now I know Paul is talking to elders here, leaders of the church. And so this
may speak more to me because I am a leader of the church and as a leader I need
to be a shepherd. I need to be someone who is out in front leading, not someone
who is in some way overbearing over the sheep, but someone who is leading by
example, leading by sacrifice.

Yet the truth is every one of us has this group, this flock of God that we are
leading. As I said a moment ago, it could be your family, it could be somebody
in your business, it could be somebody that you are riding with in the car right
now, it could be somebody down the block. Your flock might be one, it might be
ten, it might be ten thousand, I don't know.

But whatever the flock is, what I learned from Paul is our job is to shepherd
that flock. Never get over that. Never get to the point where you think, "Oh,
other people are shepherds.

" You may have other tasks to do, tasks of teaching, tasks of organizing with
your family, with your church, but you never get past this place of, "It's God's
flock. " And in one sense, if Jesus is the Great Shepherd, how could I have any
greater job than to shepherd the flock of God? That's what you learn from the
Apostle Paul.

What else do you learn? You learn verse 32. Paul says, "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.

" You learn to commit all you do to God. It's his from beginning to end. So you
commit it to him.

What does it mean to commit it to God? In one real sense, it means you release
it. To commit something to God is to release it from your hands, to recognize
it's not mine, it's his.

He recognizes that with all these he had served in Ephesus. "Now I commit you to
God and to the word of his grace. " You're not mine, you're his.

Whatever money God has put into your life, commit it to him. It's not yours,
it's his. Whatever possessions God has put into your life, you commit it to God.

It's not yours, it's his. Whatever family, whatever people, whatever church,
whatever leadership, whatever responsibilities, you commit it to God. There is
something incredibly refreshing about that.

It relieves you of a great deal of worry. It brings incredible peace, but even
more importantly than that, there is the power when we commit it to God of now
God can do what only he can do. As long as I hold on to it in my hands, in one
sense I am keeping God from doing all that he can do.

So you commit it to him. Now you may still have responsibility over what you've
committed to him, but even in that area of responsibility, it's still his. It's
still his.

One more thing I learned from Paul in this address to the Ephesian elders of
Miletus. In verses 33 to 35, Paul says, "I have not coveted anyone's silver or
gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my
own needs and the needs of my companions.

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 receive. '" That's what I learned from Paul. Remember that it's more
blessed to give than receive.

Now that's not the message that the world always gives us. In fact, the world
often gives the exact opposite message. It's more blessed to receive than give.

It is not true. How do I know? Jesus taught us and Jesus knows us.

Jesus made us. The greatest blessings of life come out of what you give. That's
not only true in this life, and it is true in this life by the way.

It's also true all the way into eternity because what you give is an investment
all the way into eternity. Paul says all these things to those elders. He
teaches us all these things, and then in verses 36 to 38, "When he had said
this, he knelt down with all of them and prayed, and they all wept as they
embraced him and kissed him.

What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face
again, and then they accompanied him to the ship. " Lord Jesus, let us learn
from Paul. Let me learn from Paul.

How to serve you. How to serve you with humility and with tears. How to teach
repentance.

How to teach faith. All these things that Paul modeled as he talked to these
that he had served, Lord, let them become more and more and more a part of my
life. More and more a part of me and who I am and how I serve.

I ask this. We ask this together, Jesus. In your name.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to see that Paul arrives in Jerusalem, and we're
going to learn some tough lessons in ministry.