Acts Chapter 20: The Last Words to Ephesus

After the riot subsided Paul called the disciples together, embraced them, and left for Macedonia. He traveled through that region strengthening the communities there with many words, spent three months in Greece — almost certainly in Corinth, where he likely wrote the letter to the Romans — and then turned back toward Jerusalem. He was pressing toward Pentecost. He wanted to be in Jerusalem for the feast. The appointed times still shaped his calendar.

He traveled with a large company representing the communities whose relief offering he was carrying to Jerusalem: Sopater of Berea, Aristarchus and Secundus of Thessalonica, Gaius of Derbe, Timothy, Tychicus and Trophimus from Asia. These men were the living embodiment of what the first missionary journey had planted and what three more journeys had cultivated — representatives of communities that had not existed eight years earlier, now traveling together to bring generosity from the Gentile churches to the Jewish believers in Judea.

The Boy in the Window

In Troas — the city where the Macedonian vision had first come to Paul — they gathered on the first day of the week to break bread. Paul taught them, knowing he was leaving in the morning, and he kept speaking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room. A young man named Eutychus was sitting in a window, fighting sleep in the heat and smoke of the crowded room. He lost the fight and fell from the third story. Luke the physician records his conclusion simply: he was taken up dead.

Paul went down, fell on him, and embraced him in the manner of Elijah at Zarephath and Elisha at Shunem. Do not be troubled, he said, his life is in him. They went back upstairs, broke bread, ate, and Paul continued teaching until dawn. The morning came and they brought the young man in alive. They were not a little comforted — Luke’s restrained way of saying the room was overwhelmed.

The detail worth sitting with is what they did after. They did not end the meeting. They completed the communion, ate together, and Paul kept teaching until first light. The miracle authenticated the message but did not become the message. They had gathered to hear the word and they stayed until they had heard it.

Miletus and the Farewell

Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus. Stopping there would draw him into ministry he could not finish and farewells he could not complete before his deadline. Instead he sent from Miletus for the elders of the Ephesian community to come to him. They came, and what Paul said to them is one of the most searching and honest passages in the New Testament.

You know how I lived among you from the first day I set foot in Asia — serving Yehovah with all humility and with tears and trials that came on me through the plots of the Jews — how I held nothing back that was profitable, how I declared to you the whole counsel of Yehovah. He could make that appeal because his life had matched his words. The elders standing in front of him had watched him for nearly three years. Everything he was about to say was verifiable by what they had seen with their own eyes.

I am going to Jerusalem, he told them, bound in my spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not consider my life of any account as precious to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Yeshua, to testify to the gospel of the grace of Yehovah. I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

He had declared the whole counsel of Yehovah to them. He was innocent of the blood of everyone. Whatever happened to them from this point forward rested on their own response to what they had been given. Then he warned them about what was coming: savage wolves will come in among you after my departure, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after themselves. Therefore be alert.

He commended them to Yehovah and to the word of His grace, which is able to build them up and give them their inheritance among the sanctified. He knelt and prayed with all of them. They wept and embraced him and kissed him, grieving most of all over his statement that they would not see his face again. They accompanied him to the ship.

Three years of daily life together. A community built from the ground up in one of the most pagan cities in the empire. And now this. The parting is not dramatized. Luke lets it breathe in its own weight. The elders walked him to the ship and watched him sail. That is how the Ephesian chapter of Paul’s ministry ends.

Next: Acts Chapter 21 — The Road to Jerusalem