It’s a long Block of Scripture … Acts 20:17-39. But it contains Paul’s fullest expression of Pastoral Theology found anywhere in the New Testament, outside of the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) at least.
Yet its very succinctness and urgency may even make it a better paradigm (pattern, example) that anything else Paul wrote, Paul the Pastor. Remember that he invested a total of three years there at Ephesus, edifying those brethren and sisters in Christ!
For a couple of mornings we shall study this beautiful Section of Acts 20. It’s Paul’s final Sermon as a free man, one might could even say! He’s resolutely heading to Jerusalem … in spite of every warning the Lord has send his way!
Where he will be arrested and (as far as the Book of Acts is concerned, records) visits no more Churches, makes no more missionary journeys, and nearly fades into oblivion!
So I will add …
Thank God for Paul’s personal pen, his “later” writings! Which allow us to believe that Paul may have eventually been released and permitted to serve the Lord a while longer. But even with that extension … he clearly was re-arrested and subsequently killed by the Roman government, executed.
Yes, Acts 20:17-39 is vastly important Scripture when it comes to better knowing Paul! (A complicated little man! Yet one who has my admiration no end!) We’re about to begin studying Paul’s “Farewell Address” to the leaders of the Ephesian Church!
We learn from verses 16 and 17 that Paul is in a big “hurry” to get to Jerusalem. Acts 20:17-18 … “For Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus, because he would not spend the time in Asia: for he HASTED, if it were possible for him, to be at Jerusalem the day of Pentecost. And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.”
Jerusalem, a city God had earlier commanded him to vacate! Acts 22:18 … “Make haste, and GET THEE QUICKLY OUT of Jerusalem: for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me.”
So Paul did not even take time to go to Ephesus to preach … rather he had those men come to him, down to Miletus! (Nearly a fifty mile walk, at least two days on the road!)
Note that the Church in Ephesus had grown to the extent it required a number of leaders! Paul called for the “elders” of the Church, plural! This Assembly may have been the Apostle’s “crowning work” of all his ministry. Yet he nearly slights them!
Yet Paul certainly shares a number of “nuggets” of Wisdom here, truths that should yet be guiding Church leaders (Pastors and Teachers and Workers) today!
More tomorrow, the Lord willing, from this “jewel” of a Text!
Again, Pastoral Theology or Pastoral Behavior or just Pastoral Ministry … as it should be done!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
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