“A Life Lived on Purpose”
Acts 20:17-38
June 22, 2008
Hardly any of life’s goodbyes are as dramatic—and thus well-remembered—as those words of General Douglas MacArthur when, forced to leave the Philippine island fortress of Corregidor, his goodbye contained the promise: “I shall return”, which he did, some 19 months later. And yet it’s difficult to say “goodbye”, isn’t it? Packing up and moving hundreds of miles here forced our family to say our goodbyes to longtime friends, some of whom we knew we’d likely never see again. Paul’s message today was a hard goodbye to a group of people he’d come to love.
Table Talk
What’s the hardest goodbye you’ve ever had to say?
This was a difficult goodbye for Paul. Notice how it came about:
• Prologue: Arranging the Meeting - :17-18a
The apostle Paul was a passenger on a merchant ship making its way slowly down the Aegean Sea toward the Mediterranean, stopping with regularity. At Miletus, the boat docked to load and unload cargo. Paul saw and seized an opportunity here, sending word for the elders from the church at Ephesus to come and meet him. Because of the distance, it was likely the third day of Paul’s stay in Miletus when these elders arrived. Paul looked into the eyes of these men and remembered their stories. Converted Jews; leaders of the city; maybe a transformed silversmith or one of the itinerant exorcists who went around casting out demons, but who had found the real Deliverer, Christ. He knew their lives and stories, and now he thought he’d never see them again; this was Paul’s one shot to show/tell them everything they’d need.
And for us, his words to them illustrate a life lived on purpose. I read this somewhere recently:
Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHA HOO what a ride!
Well, maybe or maybe not, but can we not agree that just putting in time here until we get to Heaven, just running out the clock on life with little purpose or plan, is not living the life God intended for us to lead? Paul was active, engaged, focus, and energetic in life.
Purposeful Living: The Testimony of Paul
I. Serving God - :18b-19
Paul had in Ephesus, as in some other places, opponents of the gospel of grace who would use the opportunity of Paul’s absence to not only teach false doctrine, but also to deride the character and work of the apostle. As memories fade with time, and as human beings are susceptible to the power of suggestion, these false teachers used the opportunity of Paul’s absence to slyly call certain aspects of his character and teaching into question, that they might substitute their own false teaching in its place. Thus Paul begins his words to the elders with a defense of his life and ministry among them.
Paul identified with the people of Ephesus. This explains why he could spend an entire evening with the folks at Troas; they considered him a personal friend as much as they did a spiritual mentor, a guy who lived among them, not some spiritual guru who dropped spiritual truth from some exalted position over them. This explains why many tears were shed over the thought that they’d never see him again.
I cut my teeth, pretty much, on pastoral ministry strategies that focused on “up-front” forms of teaching and disciplemaking, and less on shoulder-to-shoulder, life-on-life ministry. I still bear some of the marks of what I now consider to be an unbalanced perspective on ministry. Paul was close to these people; he rubbed shoulders with them, was a visitor in their homes to teach/challenge/encourage, ministered the gospel alongside rather than only from the stance of teaching the crowd/preaching from the pulpit, if you will.
Paul lived “among” the Ephesians, and we can say he served them, certainly, but it was God Whom he ultimately was serving—and while it was a blessing and a spiritual experience he’d not have traded, it wasn’t a picnic!
A life lived on purpose, for the follower of Christ, is a life lived ultimately for an audience of One. It’s a life that takes its queues from Jesus, is concerned with pleasing Him, even if no one else is pleased or impressed. Paul had his priorities straight: while he loved people and toiled among them, it was God Whom he served.
II. Telling the Truth - :20-21
Here was the message that Paul preached, the message opposed by his (likely) Jewish opponents: repentance and faith in Christ. There were opponents who strenuously objected to Paul’s willingness to preach salvation to Gentiles which did not include a message of conformity to Jewish laws. The idea that they couldn’t abide was that unclean Gentiles could come directly to Jesus Christ without submitting themselves to become Jewish proselytes first; this, of course, would mean the observance of the ritual of circumcision, as well as submission to all sorts of rules and regulations that God had given to the nation of Israel. Paul zeroes in on the gospel message here: repentance and faith. This is the salvation equation, of course; trust in that Christ-centered gospel saved then, and it saves now.
“Repent, or you will all perish”, Jesus said (Luke 13:3), and that word is still vivid and critical for us today. If there’s no repentance in our message, our message is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Repentance means a change of mind, in the case of the gospel a change of mind about sin, about Christ, about the way of salvation itself not being through human effort, but through faith. It involves a turning from our own way, a desire to follow His way.
In keeping both with his determination to be a preacher of the gospel, and a personal friend/mentor, he both proclaimed the gospel in public and taught from house to house as well. He was open about what he proclaimed; he spoke the same thing to everyone. There was widespread in the area of Ephesus in that day the idea that special doctrines, available only to the initiated, were the key to real spirituality; frankly, we see that among Mormons today in some respects; it’s nothing new or different. Paul, though, didn’t have one truth for one group of people and different truth for others; the knowledge of the gospel was available to all.
And thus a life lived on purpose, as a Christ-follower, is a life committed to telling the truth. Our means may not be the same as Paul’s, nor our abilities, but our commitment ought to be. Who in your life needs to hear the truth of Christ from you?
III. Following the Spirit - :22-23
It is the Holy Spirit Who is moving Paul toward Jerusalem, and it is that same Holy Spirit—likely in this case speaking through the mouth of prophets in the church—Who is warning Paul that he’s going to really face a hard time once he gets there, including prison and pain. Why was Paul so set on going to Jerusalem? The spiritual answer is that the Spirit was leading him; the practical answer was that Gentile Christians in different cities had taken up a financial collection to minister to the needs of the poor and persecuted Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, and Paul’s concern for both their squalid conditions, and for the promotion of unity between Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ, prompted his resolve to go to Jerusalem.
Here’s a side note: isn’t this passage one among so many that strikes a dagger in the heart of the popular notion that living life as a Christian, if we have enough faith, means that God only ordains “health and wealth” for us? Paul’s faith to follow the lead of the Spirit put him in peril, cost him dearly. And sometimes real faith will cost us as well; we kid ourselves and think unbiblically to the degree we allow ourselves to think otherwise!
Paul followed the leading of the Holy Spirit. Such is a life lived on purpose!
IV. Keeping Focus - :24-27
Paul was concerned to keep his focus, to finish his course, to complete the ministry God had entrusted to him, and the ministry centered on the message of the gospel, part of the “whole counsel of God”. Paul had proclaimed the gospel, laid the foundation, charted the course for the young church; it was up to the elders locally to continue the work he’d begun, and his consistent focus on gospel priorities was something he wanted to impart to them. Like a laser Paul zeroed in on the task God had granted him.
Self-preservation was not at the top of the list of Paul’s priorities; there were some things worse than death to him, and disobeying the Holy Spirit’s leadership was at the top of this list. Life or death were not the biggest concerns for him; rather, in Philippians 1:20, he spells out his priority scheme, that “Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or death”.
James Calvert was aboard a ship bound for the Fiji Islands as a missionary to a cannibalistic tribe there. The ship captain, a man who developed a concern for this young man, tried his best to dissuade him from carrying through on the mission. “You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages”, he said, to which young Calvert replied, “We died before we came”.
If we only do that which is easy in life, we will never accomplish the mission toward which our adventurous God moves us. Not proving to be an easy thing to “resurrect” Red Oak, if you will, but I believe it is well worthwhile!
V. Leaving a Legacy of Leaders - :28-35
Paul would soon be off the scene for good, and he knew that the success of the Christian enterprise, from a human standpoint, would hinge upon one generation passing the faith along to the next. Listen to what he writes young Timothy, his prize protégé:
“2:1 You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, 2 and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
A. Attending to self - :28a
28 Pay careful attention to yourselves
This is the first word to leaders—and one that is utterly timeless. Before we construct messages; before we lead business conferences; before we comfort the afflicted, visit the sick and imprisoned, mend the broken; before we set the vision and direction of ministry, or instruct elders: before all else, we “pay careful attention to ourselves”. And the sad truth is that this priority has gone lacking on too many occasions, and we have leadership scandals plaguing the church and contributing mightily to the destruction of many lives and churches.
In his characteristic colorful language, C.S. Lewis said, “The true Christian’s nostril is to be continually attentive to the inner cesspool.” We are saints, to be sure, but we are saints who are nonetheless prone to sin, and the moment we believe we’ve got sin licked is the moment Satan will trip us up for sure.
Robert Murray McCheyne lived only 29 years, but his influence today, nearly 200 years after his death, is still strong. McCheyne was a young pastor fully devoted to Christ, and his comment on this point is that “my people’s greatest need is my personal holiness.” If you want to pray one thing for me, that might well be it, that I’d increasingly be the kind of pastor whose life never dishonors Jesus.
B. Attending to others - :28b
Then, making sure that our lives are before God what He desires them to be, we care for those entrusted to us. It is God’s Holy Spirit Who has given the charge to church leaders, to the elders. Some translations render this verse “shepherd” the flock of God, and that’s an accurate picture; it encompasses, as Daniel Akin points out, “tending, caring for, feeding, protecting and leading.” Our example is Christ, the Good Shepherd, and the example of the Good Shepherd is that He lays down His life for the sheep (John 10:11-15), and He calls on us to lay down our lives as well (John 15:12-13).
And notice his description of the church: “obtained with His own blood”. Whose blood? God’s. Wait…how can some claim that the Scripture teaches that Jesus was only a man? In His veins flowed, in some way beyond our ability to grasp, the blood of God. It was human blood, to be sure, but it was God shedding His blood when Jesus died on Calvary’s cross; we see reference to all three members of the Trinity in this verse. And the upshot of that is that the church is His. He owns it. He owns Red Oak, not you or me or us, but Jesus. And that means we can’t just do any old thing we please; we are required to do His thing, to the best of our ability.
C. Warning about false teaching - :29-30
Who are the “fierce wolves” he’s speaking of here? False teachers, of course, and notice their actions:
• They have no concern for the flock of God
• They will speak twisted things
• Their motive will be to make disciples, not of Jesus, but of themselves
And they will arise, sometimes, from within. How did Paul know this would happen? I believe that it’s because Paul knew human nature, and it always tends away from God’s truth and toward error, sinful selfish motives, and compromise of the truth. Unbelief is man’s default position, if you will. That doesn’t mean that we aren’t people who operate on the basis of faith; we all place our faith in things. The most devoted Darwinist is a person of faith; the most ardent atheist is a person of faith; the most sure-of-himself secularist is a person of faith. But sincere faith in the God of the Bible? The words of the hymn-writer are so true: “prone to wander, Lord, I feel it! Prone to leave the God I love!” Contemporary examples abound:
• Denominational movements tend toward denial of the truth – for every denomination that has rebounded from a serious flirtation with doctrinal liberalism (I can think of exactly one, and the struggle there, in the SBC, was monumental), there are many which have continued down every-deepening paths of doctrinal degradation and cultural compromise.
• Harvard University is a different example. Founded in the 17th-century to train preachers of the gospel, I’d not send my child there to save my life today, as it’s become a den of liberalism and iniquity, and the same story is repeated over and over again. Why? Our tendency as human beings is toward compromise and unbelief.
• Then there are those who intentionally set out to fleece the flock. This is a different issue. In fact, some of these folks will have reasonably good theology, sometimes, and people may come to faith in Christ through their ministries. But their purpose isn’t the glory of God, but rather their own self-aggrandizement, their own self-promotion, perhaps their own financial enrichment. Don’t ever get too attached to a human speaker/pastor/preacher. Now, I’m not too worried about you guys doing that with me, ‘cause you know me and what a doofus I can be at times, but if we’re not careful, we can lift up religious personalities to a position far above where they ought to be. Appreciate pastors? Fine. But be a disciple of Jesus, not of any human being, OK?
We are told, in some quarters, that we need to emphasize the “positive” at all times in our teaching/preaching ministry, that we shouldn’t concern ourselves with refuting falsehood. People who say such things either have never read the New Testament, or they are determined not to believe it, because Paul says that there is a critical place for the refutation of lies, and we live in a world full of lies today. I do you no favors by pretending otherwise, by failing to warn you of false teachers and false teaching. I must do it in love, sure, but it’s unloving to allow lies to go unchallenged when it’s in my power to challenge them. Paul, a man living on purpose, recognized that the flipside of right teaching is the refutation of wrong teaching.
The foundation of the church is Jesus Christ, the truth of His gospel. Jesus is Truth personified (“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” – John 14:6). Without the truth, we have nothing upon which to build our lives, our churches.
D. Calling to alertness - :31
Getting lax, getting lazy, getting complacent: these are some of the symptoms of the violation of Paul’s word to the Ephesian elders. Error doesn’t come in guns-a-blazin’; it comes in subtly, gently, sounding and looking so much like truth that we’re very tempted to pick it up and run with it. This is why alertness is critical!
E. Entrusting to God - :32
Paul could only do his part—and he had. Now, he had to entrust them to God. And he entrusted them to God’s Word. At that time, the New Testament was not written down; they did not have the privilege we do of having the timeless truth of God’s revelation in written form. But they had the apostles’ teaching in their memories, his countless hours of instruction on the truth of Christian faith and living.
F. Encouraging selfless hard work - :33-35
And his final words were an encouragement to guard their motives and actions. It’s not for money that a person ministers, and in fact if it is, that fact alone both disqualifies the person from ministry and qualifies him, in most cases, as a nut!
The motive of money can trip up many an individual in ministry.
Further, Paul’s example was one of hard work in ministry to the churches.
• Epilogue: Farewell - :36-38
Finally, after an affectionate farewell and prayer, Paul boards the ship, never expecting to see his friends and co-workers again.
And there we see him, the man of God, sailing off into the sunset, having done all within his power to prepare the church at Ephesus to carry on, to go to new heights in its fulfillment of God’s commission. He’d been focused; he’d been faithful; he’d been filled with love for God and the church. In short, he’d lived a life with purpose. Have you found the purpose to which God has called you? It’s in His Word, in part, to be sure; beyond this, God has gifted you and burdened you to do a work that I can’t do—that others maybe can’t do either. Are you living your life on purpose—God’s purpose?
Table Talk
Paul lived a focused, “on purpose” life.
• What does “living life on purpose” mean for you? Can you identify what God wants you to do to serve Him? How has He gifted/wired you?
• Do you believe most Christians live “on purpose” for Christ? Why or why not?
• Do you think that some struggle with keeping focus? If so, why do you think this is the case?
