Paul in Macedonia
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2023 · 8 October 2023
We are studying in Acts 20 the ministry of the apostle Paul. In Acts 20:1-17, we have seen Paul’s love for the church. And we’ve seen this not directly but implied, the love that Paul had for the church people, the saints. Paul said in Ephesians 5, “Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it.” And that was also Paul’s testimony, for he loved the church and gave himself for it as well.
Jesus gave Himself to redeem the church. Paul gave himself to serve the church. In redeeming the church, Jesus died. In serving the church, Paul died. So there was a parallel there. Paul’s commitment was at the level of total self-sacrifice. And whatever the will of the Lord was became the will of Paul. In other words, it’s not hard to love Christians if you love the Lord.
It is spiritual maturity to will with Christ that which He wills. And most of us are still learning how to submit our wills. We haven’t grown to the level of maturity where we will what He wills. Paul loved the church and gave himself for the church because he so loved Jesus Christ that there was no other reason for living than to fulfill the will of Jesus Christ in behalf of His church.
In Ephesians 3:20, he said, “Now unto him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we could ask or think according to the power that works in us.” In other words, he says to the Ephesians and all Christians, “You ought to be fulfilling your potential. Paul saw God glorified when the church was maximized in terms of its potential. And this was his passion; for this he suffered and died.
In Colossians 1:24, he said, “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you.” He was willing to pay the price of the maturity of the saints and the price of the unity of the church. In other words, I suffer in the place of Christ. Even in jail he wrote to the Philippians and he said, “My being in prison is to the advance of the Gospel, and some people are becoming bolder because of my imprisonment.”
If the goal of the ministry is not for the love of the church to see the saints brought to the place where God is glorified in their lives, then you’ve got a perverted goal. The only way to be in the ministry is for the love of the church. Only reason Jesus came into the world was for the love of the church, to die to redeem us, to redeem mankind. And again, this is basic to the ministry.
Well does that include me? Sure, all Christians have a ministry. But I wasn’t called to preach. But you were given spiritual gifts, weren’t you? And the effectiveness of your ministry of spiritual gifts will be determined by whether or not you love other believers. If you really love them, you’ll minister to them because you want them to be grown up in full stature. The ministry of gifts is for others.
You say, “Well my gift is the gift of helps.” Fine, then you ought to know that for the love of the church you ought to spend yourself to help others. Now in this passage verses 1-17, we see Paul’s love for the church implied, and it isn’t here directly; it’s here indirectly. Now Paul is on his third missionary tour, and this time he is in the same area generally that he’d been previously.
He went to Syria, Celestia, moving west to Galatia and then the area of Phrygia and Pamphylia and all of that and coming further west to Asia Minor and then to Macedonia, then to Achaea, which is where Corinth was. And planted churches all over the place, and the Gospel was growing up. Well, this time he has companions with him. And he stayed in Ephesus for nearly three years.
Paul is leaving Ephesus. In fact, a riot just broke out. He’s going back to Jerusalem. Then from Jerusalem he wants to go to Rome, and from Rome to Spain. So this is the last time he’ll ever be in eastern Mediterranean. And so there’s that feeling through this passage of finality. Perhaps his roman imprisonment was separated into two sections, and in the middle he made another little trip near Asia Minor.
And so we see a series of goodbyes and a series of farewells all through chapter 20 as Paul goes back toward Jerusalem. And there are six different things here that express Paul’s love: His affection, his giving, his teaching, his persistence, his availability and his concern. But Paul’s love is revealed in just little ways implied in the text. First, Paul’s love is revealed in his affection.
Verse 1, “After the uproar was over,” the riot of Ephesus “Paul send for the disciples, encouraged them.” The usual customary thing was a hug and a kiss on the cheek. There must have been something warm about Paul that they felt comfortable in loving him in this manner. But Romans 16:16 says, “Greet one another with a holy kiss.” 1 Corinthians 16:20: “Greet one another with a holy kiss.”
Five times in the New Testament the church is commanded to demonstrate its affection physically. Now that breaks down a lot of barriers. Verse 1 continues, “And after saying farewell, departed to go to Macedonia.” He says, “I’m going to take a collection for the poor saints at Jerusalem.” Now, it took him almost one year to get all that done. Paul collected money for somebody else’s needs.
He was a selfless person; he was a giving person. 1 John 3:16 illustrates the biblical principle of giving in terms of its relationship to love. It says: “This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us.” Now some Christians aren’t even willing to give their time, let alone their life. Many people are very concerned about humanity; they just don’t like people as individuals.
Don’t say you love the brethren unless you meet the need of the one guy that crosses your path. God doesn’t want sentiment; He wants sacrifice. 2 Corinthians 8:9 says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor that you through his poverty might be rich.” How are you going to prove your love is sincere? Do like Christ did.
We see Paul’s love in Acts 20 in his teaching. It says in verse 2, “And when he had passed through those areas and offered them many words of encouragement, he came to Greece.” It was wonderful that Paul gave them spiritual truth, right? Because that’s the core. That’s what makes them grow up to be all that Jesus wants them to be. If you really love the church, you’ll teach the church.
To feed the flock is the ministry. I see so many seminaries and so many people in denominations where preaching is just minimized. In the early church, preaching was central. Preaching was the key to everything. The center of it all was the proclamation of God's truth. In 1 Timothy 4:13 it says, “Until I come, give your attention to public reading, exhortation, and teaching.”
That’s expository preaching. In 2 Timothy 4:2 Paul said, “Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and teaching.” The church now has gotten so far away from the apostolic preaching of the cross that the church has turned into all kinds of things other than to be the center for teaching, to feed the saints so that they may win others.
There is a loss of belief in the authority of the Scripture. If you do not believe that the Word of God is inherently God's truth, then you can’t preach because you haven’t got any conviction. The second thing is that people have become liberal. Thirdly, the church has been invaded by media and music. And some of it is excellent. But it cannot take over the place of teaching the Word of God.
The real problem in the church is spiritual malnutrition. And if God's principles aren’t the key to your own spiritual health and your own mental health, I don't know what are. And you can learn the principles that come out of the Word of God in any context. God wants the church to be a place where you can minister. And all you need to minister to is the people nearest to you, not everybody.
We also see Paul’s affection then in his relentless teaching, but also in his persistence. Love is persistent. Verse 3, “And stayed three months. The Jews plotted against him when he was about to set sail for Syria, and so he decided to go back through Macedonia.” He stayed in Corinth three months, and he wrote the Book of Romans. He was busy and he was teaching.
And when the Jews laid wait for him, he found out about the plot. The man was absolutely persistent; it didn’t matter to him. And so when he heard about this, all he did was change his route. So he went to Macedonia, to go all the way back through the cities that had chased him out. He was going to get that money to the Jerusalem saints even if it would cost him his life.
Paul even said in Romans 15:30, “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in prayers to God on my behalf. 31 Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea.” He said, “I know it’s going to be a problem and I’m going to get it all the way. Especially in Judaea there’s going to be antagonism.”
Well, he didn’t go alone. Verse 4-5, “He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, Gaius from Derbe, Timothy, and Tychicus and Trophimus from the province of Asia. 5 These men went on ahead and waited for us in Troas.” Notice the word us, Luke the author is back. Paul had left Luke at Philippi. Now Paul comes back and picks him up.
The items covered from verses 1-5 are general, but from verse 6 on every little detail is covered as we have an eyewitness in Luke. Paul takes these guys because they represent all the churches of the gentiles. And he’s going to take this offering to the Jews and say, “You need to see the unity of the church. So all these gentiles with all this money shows that the church is one, Jew and Gentile.”
Verse 6, “But we sailed away from Philippi after the Festival of Unleavened Bread. In five days we reached them at Troas, where we spent seven days.” He originally wanted to be in Jerusalem for Passover, but when the riot plot came up he couldn’t make it. So now he hoped to get there by Pentecost, which was 50 days after Passover. The feast of unleavened bread lasted seven days immediately after Passover.
It took them five days to come across to Troas. It only took them two days the first time they came the other way, so it must’ve been a difficult trip. And they stayed seven days. Now this is his persistence. And they’ve got to hang around Troas for seven more days to catch the right ship. And it tells us again that Paul was still very Jewish in his heart and his attitude. Well he was persistent.
He was a tired man, and he arrives in Troas and look what happens. Verse 7, “On the first day of the week, we assembled to break bread. Paul spoke to them, and since he was about to depart the next day, he kept on talking until midnight.” Do you know he had to leave the next day on a tedious journey of six or seven weeks? But he stopped long enough, to preach to them, and continued his speech ‘til midnight.
Actually he preached all night long. And it wasn’t just a sermon. He answered all their questions, met all their needs in terms of information from God. Availability. Now that’s just a beginning hint at his availability. Look at verse 7, “On the first day of the week.” Now this is the first direct statement of the time when the church met. What is the first day of the week? Sunday.
Now the Sunday ought to be called what it’s called in Scripture, the Lord’s Day. In Revelation 1:10, John said, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day.” So by that time, all Christians knew Sunday as the Lord’s Day. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul said, “On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he is prospering, so that no collections will need to be made when I come.”
Did you know the first meeting the church ever had after the resurrection was on the first day? Remember they were together in the room and Jesus came through the wall? And so the first day of the week became the commemorative day. Ellen G. White who started the Seventh Day Adventism wrote, quoting: “To us, as to Israel, the Sabbath is given for a perpetual covenant. This is a sign that God recognizes them as His chosen people.”
What she’s saying there is that the people who meet on the Sabbath are the chosen people; the others are not. But do you know something? That is not Scriptural. In Galatians they met on the Lord's Day. In Galatians 4:10, Paul says to those Christians in Galatia, “You observe days and months and times and years.” You’re still hung up on the Jewish Sabbaths. If you really were saved, you ought to be over that.
That’s part of the old covenant. It’s gone. Colossians 2:16 says, “Therefore, don’t let anyone judge you in regard to food and drink or in the matter of a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of what was to come.” When the reality came, the shadow is gone. There is no justification for the Sabbath. The early church met on the Lord's Day, and that’s why we do as well.
Well Paul loved the church. It’s seen in his affection, seen in his giving, seen in his teaching, seen in his persistence, seen in his availability to teach when he was totally at the end of his rope. Still available all night to give of himself. May it be true of us that whatever our gifts are, we so love the saints that we measure that love by sacrificially giving of ourselves. Let us pray.