Why Would Anyone Listen To Paul Preach ALL Night?

Tom:

This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment, we are in Acts chapter 20, and Dave, we will pick up with Acts:20:2And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece,
See All...:“And when he had gone over these parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece—of course this is the apostle Paul,—And there abode three months.And when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail to Syria, he purposed to return through Macedonia.”So Dave, as we have seen in earlier verses, especially Acts Chapter 9, Paul was running into some problems, he was taking some heavy hits.

Dave:

Yeah, well, he said, Bonds and affliction abide me wherever I go.He didn’t come in his own private jet, they didn’t put out the red carpet for him, and he didn’t just say, Let’s all be positive, all the time.

Tom:

But now you’ve got groups of people looking for him.

Dave:

Right, yeah.Macedonia, of course, is a tiny country right next to Greece.He’s going to sail across part of the Mediterranean to Syria,he’s bypassing Turkey, as it is known today.Anyway, go ahead, Tom.

Tom:

This is Verse 4:“And there accompanied him into Asia Sopater of Berea; and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus; and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy; and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus.These going before tarried for us at Troas.”Verse 6:“And we sailed away from Philippi after the days ofunleavened bread, and came unto them to Troas in five days; where we abode seven days. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow; and continued his speech until midnight.”Now Dave, this doesn’t sound like a 30-minute sermon and you’re out—wow!

Dave:

Paul gives me a good excuse because I have never preached until midnight and then gone on until morning.So people complain that I’m too long-winded, and I could say, Look, I’m not even up to speed with Paul, and they didn’t complain.Tom, I have preached, or spoken, or taught, say in Russia, and they’ve just got wooden benches, pretty thin too, not too much more than a 2 by 6 you’re sitting on, and no backs on them, and I talked one place for probably three hours and these people were just eating it up.Besides that, the little kids, two and three and four year olds, you know, six year olds, they’re sitting right there, and no child let out a squawk.See, they must have some really good psychologists over there, to be able to keep the kids to behave like that, or maybe they give them all Ritalin or something.Tom, it is so ridiculous, so bad.But anyway, first day of the week they’re doing something, the disciples came together.Now the first day of the week is not the seventh day of the week, it’s not Saturday the Sabbath.But we have people who call themselves Seventh Day Adventists.You get this expression, first day of the week, several times in the New Testament.Paul said to the Corinthians, On the first day of the week you take an offering when you come together.So apparently, this was normal for them, they came together on the first day of the week.And then they are breaking bread, what does that mean?It doesn’t mean they are eating, they are remembering the Lord in His death.They are taking the bread, symbolic of His body broken for us, they are taking the cup, symbolic of His blood.Why are they coming together on the first day of the week?What happened?The Catholic church wasn’t even around yet, but the Seventh Day Adventists say that’s the mark of the beast, the Catholic church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday.No, nobody changed the Sabbath, you can’t change the Sabbath, the Sabbath is still Saturday.But we don’t meet on Saturday, we meet on the first day of the week because the seventh day, that’s when God rested from His work, that was the old creation.We are new creatures in Christ who rose from the dead the first day of the week, and He’s called the First Born in 1 Corinthians 15, the First Born of a new creation, First Born of many brethren.So they come together to remember him and his death, burial and resurrection on the day he rose from the dead, and it’s instructive why they came together to break bread.So, Tom, I grew up in a fellowship, I’m not trying to push this on anybody, we had this every Sunday.Now there are some churches, maybe they have communion once a month or once a quarter or once a year, I don’t know and I’m not trying to push that on them, but it does say that the disciples came together on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread.Anyway, so this is the occasion, this is why we are all together, they’ve come there to take the bread and the cup in remembrance of Christ and that’s not all they do, but Paul is preaching to them.I wish I could have been there to hear that.He’s probably explaining more about you’ll never get to the end of what it means that Christ became a man, that God the Son became a man and died for our sins on the cross.I think that’s probably what he’s talking about, and he has a lot to say about it.

Tom:

Dave, you know I had the privilege of preaching Sunday, and it dawned on me—well, one of the things I shared with the congregation I was really addressing sound doctrine.I pointed out that the letters, Paul’s letters, his epistles were not to theologians or scholars or, you know, seminarians, it was just to every day folk and you have the same thing here.As you mentioned, Paul is preaching, he’s teaching, and these every day folk, obviously they can understand it, they are not checking this out or having to run to this authority or that authority, they are listening to it for hours.Not only can they understand it but they are loving it, it seems.

Dave:

They are feeding on the Word of God.Well, how does the hymn go on:I’m feasting on the living bread, I’m drinking at the fountain head, And whosoever drinketh Jesus said, shall never ever thirst again.So, that’s what He’s feeding them, Feed my sheep.Well, he’s feeding the sheep right here with the Word of God.And there were many lights in the upper chamber where they were gathered together, so you’ve got to have some light there, people are there.But anyway, Tom, you’re reading.

Tom:

“And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep:(It can happen from time to time, Dave),and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.”

Dave:

Well, Tom, most of the Christians know that Paul is going to raise him from the dead, but anyway, people do sleep during sermons.Just in a lighter note, there’s one phrase, Tom, I know you do a lot of preaching, so do I, and if your audience is sleeping there is one phrase guaranteed to awaken them all, “And now in conclusion” that wakes them up, they come back to life.

Tom:

I’ve have to remember that, Dave, I haven’t used that one before, but I listen to you preach, Dave, and you usually half way your time allotted say, Now I want to get to the message.

Dave:

Well, Paul had a way of saying, And now in conclusion, and now in conclusion, and it’s very hard to stop when your heart is full of the Word of God, and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.