For my money, the most exciting event or one of the most exciting events in the Olympics is the 4x100 relay. Because you have this incredible world-class speed and strength from these athletes, but you have that combined with an element of risk and an element of teamwork. So, you know, in the 100-meter sprint, you just have to be the fastest guy down that one straightaway. And of course, in our lifetime, that's always going to be Usain Bolt, leading in this particular picture as well. But when you have a four by 100 relay, there are three different times in one lap around the track where you have to combine that world class speed with handing off a baton to a teammate within a 20 meter window of time. And so you've got to have one guy performing at his very best. And then you've got to have another guy who's already getting up to speed before the first guy even gets there. And then you've got to have this transition just go perfectly if you're going to win a four by one hundred relay. And the reason I'm talking about this is because when we come to Acts chapter 20 this morning, what we're going to see is the Apostle Paul. We've kind of been studying his life and his missionary journeys for a number of weeks now. He's going back to a church that he planted, a church in Ephesus. We studied this last week. And he's going to be essentially handing off the leadership of that church. And he's going to be saying very generally, this church isn't about me. This church isn't about my personality. This church is about Jesus. And because it's about Jesus, I have full confidence that it will not only survive in my absence, But the church can actually thrive. It can continue to grow and be healthy and be strong. So look with me and our scripture reading this morning will be Acts chapter 20, verses 17 through 38. These are the words of the Apostle Paul. Now, from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them, You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I'm going to Jerusalem constrained by the 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 account my life of any value, nor is precious to myself. If only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of you all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore, be alert, remembering that for three years I did not see night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I coveted no one silver or gold apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me in all things. I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said it is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all, and there was much weeping on part of all. They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful, most of all, because of the word that he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship. This is the word of the Lord. This text is important for a number of reasons. It's actually interesting that in all the different dialogues, the sermons, the interchanges that we can read in the book of Acts, this is actually the only one that Paul addresses to Christians. Specifically, he's addressing this, as I said, to the elders of the Ephesian church that are going to carry this church in his absence. But basically what he's saying is here, I want you to remember how I have lived among you. I want you to remember how I taught you and what I taught you. And as I transition this ministry to you, I want you to continue to run this course. I want you to continue to run this race just as you observed me running it. Now, since most of this text is either describing the way Paul led the church or is describing how he intends for these new elders to lead the church, we often look at Acts chapter 20. These verses I read this morning is kind of a job description for a pastor. OK, and often when we study it as churches, we read it and we unpack it that way. In fact, two years ago when I ordained Jeremy, we ordained him here in our church. This was the text that I spoke from, and I think appropriately so, because it shows you, you know, here's the character of someone who leads you. Here's their, you know, what their calling is and all that sort of thing. But I want to go a little different direction this morning. I'm not just repeating what I said two years ago, although many of you are new since then. But what I want to do is I want to generalize Paul's message a little bit, since he is speaking to Christians and he's speaking about the life and the health of the church. And kind of what I want to do with this is I want to I want to hear him again saying, I have the utmost confidence you're going to be just fine. So long as you allow this church in Ephesus to continue to be driven and fueled by the gospel of Jesus. But he doesn't just say that he doesn't just say I was about the gospel and you should be about the gospel, too. He gets a little more specific. And I'm calling this the gospel driven church, this this entire message, because he basically says, I want to show you four things that because my life is shaped by the gospel. I'm looking for these four things in church, I'm passionate about these four things in church, and here's what they are. Number one, leadership. Number two, truth. Number three, grace. And number four, community. So this will be my outline this morning. Leadership, truth, grace and community. So I'll start with leadership, because I think one of the most obvious things that we see throughout this farewell address is that Paul is presupposing and everything he says, there's going to be a succession of qualified, caring people to lead the church. And my first question is, who are they? So what from this text can we determine about who they are? And actually, the first thing I want you to notice is I'm saying they I'm not saying he, because in the model of the New Testament, there is a model continuously of shared leadership. Now, there are times and in our own church plant, you know, going back a number of years ago was one of those where maybe you go into missions or you go into a church plant. And for a time, there's only that one person. But that is not the long term picture of what God ideally wants for his church. It's not healthy for either a pastor or a church for just one guy to kind of sit at the top of a leadership authority pyramid and distribute all power downward and outward emanating from one person. That's not healthy for the long term life of him or the church. And what we see here in Paul's address is he's presuming there's going to be a team. that work together for the cause of Christ to lead, to serve, to minister to this church. Now, I want you to notice further that there are three terms that he uses here interchangeably. And I'll go through this quickly, but I think this is interesting. Number one, you notice, first off, he's calling the elders of the church together. And that doesn't necessarily mean that these are, you know, hoary haired guys, white haired guys, long flowing beards. You know, some of the Lord of the Rings kind of characters that you see, like they're obviously very, very old. The idea is simply, especially in Jewish culture, is that they do have some age. They do have some experience in particular to the church. They're not novices at this Christianity thing. They're not brand new Christians kind of still learning themselves. How do I apply theology? So you get this idea that they're responsible. They have character that's worthy of emulating. That's the first term elder. Then in verse 28, he uses the term overseer. And this is obviously not the picture that he had in mind, but I'll share something with you. Many of you live or drive through Stapleton often, and you know the control tower. And the control tower intentionally is built, you know, I think ours is 13 stories tall, so that someone sits up in that tower and they have kind of a bird's eye view of the different runways when this was an airport. And they're also looking at all these different computer monitors of what's coming in and what's going out. That's an overseer. You know, and there's a there's an element of vision to that, but there's an element of protection. There's an element of I need to see the big picture of what's going on in these different airplanes, where they are relative to one another, how fast they're going. And part of what God is calling these leaders in the church to do is lead to oversee in that way where the church is protected. And then the third term. And he doesn't use this exact word. He doesn't call them shepherds. But in verse 28, what he does say is pay careful attention to the flock. OK, who pays careful attention to the flock? A shepherd. And then he says and care for the church. And that verb care for is the verb shepherd the church. So basically, the third term that he's using is your shepherds. And I don't know if you know this, but actually our English word pastor is taken from this word shepherd. And we still have this term that we don't use it often, a pastoral setting is kind of a rural setting where there are flocks and fields. So he's saying shepherd them well, and from that metaphor, I get this idea of, you know, what does a shepherd do? He leads the sheep. He nourishes them, making sure that you're eating stuff that's good for you. You're not eating stuff that's bad for you. He's protecting them, even the willingness to lay down his life. And that's all I want to say about who they are. If you're interested, you can go to go to First Timothy three this week, go to Titus chapter one. And there are actually two sections of scripture there that Paul is writing to two different pastors, young men in the faith, Timothy and Titus. And he says, this is what an overseer or elder pastor. This is who they are. This is how they qualify for this office. Let's talk for a moment about what they did then. And this is again, this is both reflected in how Paul lived up to this point, but also what he's charging them to do. What do these pastors and elders and overseers do? Oh, and by the way, this is not describing three different offices. You have pastors, you have elders, and you have overseers. It's describing one person three different ways so that you get a more comprehensive picture of what this person is called to do. Okay. And this is a little bit redundant because when I say, what do they do? I mean, I just told you who they were. So, you know, obviously if you're an overseer, you provide oversight. If you're a shepherd, you lead and you feed and you provide pastoral care, that sort of thing. But the main thing I want you to see about what they did and what they were called to do is a ministry of preaching and teaching and counseling. Paul uses five different words to kind of charge them with, this is what you're to do. He uses the word declare, the word teach, the word testify, the word proclaim and the word admonish, which we may use the word today, counsel or warn. And the big picture, what I want you to get is that while shepherds are obviously serving some of the day to day needs of the sheep, that's what a real shepherd would do. The primary calling of these men is not to just look at budgets, to oversee facilities and programs and those sort of things. The primary calling of these people is a word based ministry of do you understand God's word? Do you see how it's relevant to your life? Do you see how it's a light? that brings hope into your darkness, that brings clarity and direction and all these things to your life. And you see that the way that Paul describes it here, it's a comprehensive ministry. And he talks about night and day in your homes, in public. There was no time he wasn't ready to say, I can I can charge you. I can teach you. I can debate with you, if you will. I can dialogue with you about the word of God so that it dwells richly in you. This is what these people are called to do. Now, how did they do it? OK, so you're preaching, you're teaching, you're counseling, you're leading, you're doing all these things. With what attitude, basically? And what I want you to notice is that Paul can actually say, you know, you remember how I was humble. And, you know, if you read Acts and we've gone through it, you know, humble may not be the first word that you ascribe to Paul because of how how bold and kind of lion hearted he was in certain instances. But I think it's important to see that, you know, humility is not timidity. Humility is not weakness. Humility is not, OK, I'll just kind of tell you what you want to hear. Humility is not. I'll remain silent when sound teaching and the gospel and morality are under attack, you know, that that may have an appearance of humility, it may look superficially to be humble. Oh, he's he's so gracious to say the things that we want to hear. He really gets us. But what you see in Paul is this humble, courageous self-denial. Some of you may know, you know, men and women who are who are humble, you would think of them as humble or they would think of themselves as humble people, but that really is a timidity or a quietness. And others of you, you may know someone who's really brash, someone who's really loudmouthed. And you would say, OK, that's a bold person. But you don't see the humility. And it is it is the gospel, it is it is Jesus and the work of Jesus that enables anyone to be humble and bold at the same time, you know, because if we simply understand our identity in Christ. You know, the reformers would say you are simultaneously saint and sinner. And if that's all you knew about yourself, that's who I am in Christ. Yes, I'm broken. I'm weak. I'm imperfect, but I am a saint. I'm declared holy and righteous by the work of Jesus. If that's all you knew. And there's a lot more. Well, that would be humbling. OK, I need grace, but it would be emboldening because I've received it and God has given me everything necessary through the spirit and through the gospel to minister to others humbly and courageously. So this first point, I'm talking about leadership, but I do want to I want to throw this to you for a moment. And I want to say, if this is all that the scripture is saying here about leadership, what are some of the implications of that for you as lay people? I think, one, you need to look for these kinds of leaders, you need to look for leaders who are humble and not timid, not shy, but humble, willing to serve others, but bold people who are willing to tell you the truth and speak the truth. Pray for this kind of leadership. If you find this kind of leadership, submit to it in a biblical sense of that word. And biblical submission is never a blind submission. OK, I check my brain at the door. I just follow, you know, ducks in a row. Whatever this person says, that's that's what you do. But it's a Hebrews 1317 type of thing where, you know, this text, he's saying, when you find these kinds of leaders, let them care for you with joy because there's a way to be a good congregant, a good friend. And there's a way to be a bad congregant and a bad friend where you're just kind of pulling against leadership, always kind of questioning people's motives. And, you know, and if that's you and that's you here, then I would say, first of all, stay and change. And if you can't stay and change, then then go look for this kind of leadership. Go look for someone that you can trust and put your put the you know, the care of your life or the care of your family under them so that you can joyfully serve together. The second implication, I think, of this is that God may actually be calling some of you to be this kind of leader. And you may put that out there and say, you know, I'm not an elder, I'm not a shepherd right now. You know, my charge to all the men in here would be that you should aspire to be this kind of man, even if you never officially would be an elder of a church, because this is simply godly character and godly faith. But if you're that type of person, you think, you know, maybe God has it in his plan for me and it's providence for me that I'd be one of those people that that helps oversee and shepherd and nourish. other people, I would like that. I feel strongly called that I say I invite you to come talk. You know, going forward, one of the things we want to do is start more intentionally mentoring some of you to become this next generation of elders. And it may even be some of our kids, which would be awesome that that already they're like, I don't know if God officially wants me to be a pastor, but I certainly would like to be that kind of person that God could qualify in that way. So those are just a couple of things I thought of. Look for that kind of leadership. Submit to it. Joyfully pray for us. Maybe be it yourself. Number two, and again, let's remember we're doing Paul saying my life is driven by the gospel as I hand off the baton for you to continue to run this race in the church in Ephesus. I want you to carry forward the same gospel drive. The second thing you have to be passionate about if you're going to do that is truth. And very often, this is what we do associate with Paul, that he's carrying the banner of truth wherever he goes, and he he just kind of had this humble and bold way about him of just he can walk into any setting, any circumstance. It could be a synagogue of Jews. It could be a temple of idols. It could be the marketplace. It could be it. We saw last week it could be a college, the Hall of Tyrannists. It could be an open air down by the river, whatever. But he would go and he'd plant the standard of God's truth wherever he went. He was passionate about the truth. And so it stands to reason that if he's going to say, hey, I'm leaving, you're never going to see me again. Here are some core things that I want you to be passionate about. It makes sense that he say you men need to be committed to the truth of God. You say, well, what exactly do you mean this commitment to truth? So so we're against lying as Christians, right? Well, of course, we're against lying, which includes intentional deception in half. I mean, there are many ways of lying other than just telling a bold faced lie. And I mean, the Christian faith would be against that because God refers to himself as the truth. And he says that his word is a word of truth. John 1717, actually, Jesus said, sanctify them in truth. My word is truth. But I think it's more important that we see we're not just against the line, what we're saying, and I'm going to use a big word here, but what we're saying is our epistemology is the Bible. Epistemology means this is our source of reality. This is our source of truth. So, you know, it's interesting to watch movies. It's interesting to read a lot of other literature. It's interesting to listen to other worldviews. But we don't bring those all together with the Bible and just say the Bible is one more voice. You know, and I kind of filter through it and I listen to what culture says, I love this one movie in this line and we can quote lines from books and movies. We're not doing that. We're saying the word of God. Is my it's my epistemological, so it is my source of ultimate truth and everything else like it may be true, but it's held up to the standard of God's word to determine if it's true or not. So the very first thing you see here, then, about truth is Paul saying very passionately, guys, we must stand for the ultimate truth of God's word. We must stand for that. It really doesn't matter that something in the Bible disagrees with your opinion. It doesn't matter that something in the Bible offends you. You think I wouldn't have said it that way, or I just completely disagree with its ethic on this or what it teaches about this. Let me suggest to you, if the Bible actually came from God, there are going to be points in all of our lives where it disagrees with us. It challenges us. It forces us to be like, oh, I don't know that I like that. And it does it in different places for different people. So I've given this illustration before. But, you know, if you were to travel halfway around the world, you enter an honor shame culture. and you're trying to tell them, here's what the Bible says about forgiveness. Jesus says, you have to forgive people who don't even ask you for forgiveness. You know, you have to seek reconciliation with people who've hurt you. You have to love your enemies. In an honor shame culture, they would be outraged by that. It's not just like, oh, I don't know that I agree with that. That sounds really hard. They would be outraged. They'd be like, you're saying that, OK, we've been at war with these other people for as long as our generations can remember. You're telling me that I'm supposed to forgive them. That's insanity. I'm not like there's no way. You know, but we're so progressive in Denver. And so we love this tolerant, kind Jesus who talks about forgiveness and reconciliation, don't we? And it may be hard to practice, but we like the sound of it. We like the idea that, you know, whether it's politically or ideologically or just relationally, we have enemies. We've butted heads with someone. We like the idea of this kindness, this talk. Like, let's figure out ways to get along with them and reconcile them and work together. We like that. That doesn't rub us the wrong way. But you come to the same Denver progressives and you start just read what the Bible says about sexuality. And the same people are like, that's outrageous. That's regressive. That's closed minded. That's judgmental. How hateful toward whole groups of people. But you go back halfway around the world to the honor shame culture, you tell them what the Bible says about sexuality and they would say, of course, that's what God would say about sexuality. I mean, that that just makes sense. That's just what's right. My point is simply that the unchanging truth of God's word, it offends everyone at some point. You know, some of you kind of let me know where it offends you or at least part of where it offends you. And you're like, I don't get this. And I may even say, you know what? I don't get it either. But it's God's word. It is our truth. And part of what Paul is saying here that we need to understand is he's saying we need to submit our lives to the unchanging, authoritative, absolute truth of the word of God. By the way, I understand some of the objections that some of you have, which forces you to reinterpret scripture in a way that it's never, ever, ever been understood by anyone until recently. But who's to say you have the right set of objections to scripture? You know, it's easy to look and think, well, my objections are the right objections. There's certainly better than the objections of Americans in the 19th century or the 18th century or the 17th century. I'm more right than them. Or it's easy to look halfway around the world and say, you know, I'm not saying I have the exact right idea, but I know I'm more right than those Muslims. I know I'm more right than the way that the Hindus in India are reading this right now and understanding it or the Africans are understanding it. And you know what that is? That's cultural or chronological snobbery. To think my objections are more correct than any other culture's objections at any other point in time. You know, you have no objective basis for your opinion. It's just your opinion. You just think, like, I think the Bible is wrong about this, right? I don't think there's any way you could interpret it that way, because I don't like that. Well, what I love about what Paul is saying here is there is an objective ground of truth. This is what we build our lives on. This is what we build our church on. There are parts of that that bug us. There are parts of that we're like, I'm not sure I understand that. But, but we must stand for the truth of God's word, even if we don't fully understand it. This is what Paul's saying. Look again at verse 20. He says, I did not shrink back. See, I didn't avoid it. I didn't hesitate. to declare to you anything that was profitable. He says something parallel in verse 27. He says, I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. And part of what he's saying is, I understand there are profitable things that you didn't want to hear. There are things in the whole counsel of God that we don't want to hear. You can even read this in the book of Acts. There are parts of what Paul was saying the Jews would be like, oh, we can get behind that. And the Greeks were like, whoa, what? And then other parts, the Greeks were like, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Go, Paul. And the Jews are like, no. And he's just saying, I didn't avoid talking to you about anything from the word of God. You know, one of the reasons I love expository teaching is it forces me not to just say, here's my pet peeve. Here's my thing. Here's my axe to grind. So I keep going back to the same thing over and over again. And you're like, dude, like, could he stop talking about this, you know, whatever cultural issue or whatever. But you're going through the word of God. And it's just like this is the next text up. And if it deals with, you know, giving money, that church doesn't like to talk about that. But I could be like, that's the next thing up. So we're going through the whole counsel of God. And we're hearing not only the things that we want to hear, we're hearing the things that we need to hear. And that's really good. Let me jump back to leadership for a second, by the way, you want to appreciate leaders. Who are willing to say things that you don't want to hear because they love God and they love you. You know, Richard last week gave a little personal testimony about giving, you know, I understand people don't love to hear about giving because you're talking about their money. You know, where our treasure is, there our heart is also, Jesus said. We don't like to hear that, but I don't know how many of you did, but you should go to someone like Richard and say, you know, I know that wasn't the easiest thing to talk about, but you challenged me. God used you. Thank you for being humble enough and being bold enough to say what you said. I needed to hear it. OK. So we're standing for the truth of God's word. But notice, and you can't miss this. He's saying simultaneously, it's like two sides of one coin. We also must stand against false teaching. Paul is passionately opposed to the lies that could hurt the church. Look at look at verse 20. Nine again with me, he says, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them. So what does he say? Well, so let it go, because, you know, like Christians, just we should be known for what we're for instead of what we're against. No, he says. So be alert. I mean, you're shepherds. If a wolf comes in, what do you do? You fight off the wolf. Now, why you got to be so negative, Paul? Why can't we just say we're for the truth and let people sort out that we're, you know, therefore we must be against false. He was directly against false teaching. I love something I read this week and John's thoughts, commentary on access is super helpful to me. Super encouraging. He said, we're frequently told always to be positive in our teaching and never negative. But those who say this have either not read the New Testament or having read it, they disagree with it. For the Lord Jesus and his apostles refuted error themselves, and they urged us to do the same. And actually, I'm not going to take time this morning, but I went back through the Gospels. I skimmed through them this week. And how often Jesus is and the apostles are saying to their followers, if you care about your own life, your own spiritual life and the life of the church and your care, you are going to refute error. And how many times Paul actually called people out by name? Why are we so bothered by that? You know, we can't remain neutral in this battle where it's like, well, I personally am opposed to that, but I don't want to, you know, I want other people to consider me fairly open minded. I'm not going to be the person doing that. OK, so so here's an analogy of what that's like. OK, we live in a small village. We all we all live in the same village. It's a great city village. Whatever. We have one. Well, OK, you're the shepherd. You see someone come during the middle of night and poison your well. And so what you do is you walk over to the next town and you get water from their well for you. That makes no sense. I mean, wouldn't you be like, hey, everyone needs to know the well has been poisoned. What you're drinking from, this is not healthy. This is going to leave you diseased. It's going to leave you deformed. It's going to leave you dead. See, we don't have it both ways where it's like, well, personally, I want to go get water there for my family. But if other sheep drink from this, well, I mean, I. I don't want to. Well, do because part of standing passionately for the truth is standing passionately against error, and it's really, really serious that the illustration that Paul gives here, I mean, we can we can grasp the gravity of it. He's basically saying, if you did that, you're protecting wolves at the expense of the sheep. I don't like saying things from time to time that I know someone's going to get offended at, but I can't back down. I'd rather stand before God one day having lost a few friends because I stood for something that I have a strong conviction about and saying the well has been poisoned. Let's all go drink over here until we can dig a new well. Then just say, well, I don't want to ruffle any feathers, so. Truth. But I immediately introduced this grace. Because you all know people that they would say, oh, I'm so passionate about the truth. And it's the kind of truth that just it leaves everybody feeling beat up and just driven into the ground. And Paul's speech here is just it's dripping with grace at the same time that he's so passionate about standing against error, fighting back the wolves, protecting the life and the health of the sheep that he loves. There's grace everywhere. And I want you to think of this. Basically, if the gospel's here and we're running the gospel race and we're on this train, the two tracks are truth and grace. And by the way, if you think of yourself as like, well, I'm a I'm more truthful than gracious, then you're not as truthful as you could be, because one of the greatest truths of Scripture is the grace of God. And if you're thinking, well, I'm gracious, but I do shy away from some truth, then you're not as gracious as you think you are. Because it's not gracious to let people drink out of a poisoned well. And be deceived by a half truth. So truth informs grace, grace informs truth. We're running our church, we're running our lives on these parallel tracks. Either way, you know, when Jesus came. John, chapter one, this is fascinating to me. You know, John's John the Baptist is pointing over, you know, you most, you know, this where he's baptizing people with repentance, but he's not baptizing with the spirit. He's not saving them. So when Jesus comes and he realizes this is the Messiah, he points everyone away from himself and to Jesus. And John one 14 describes Jesus this way. He's he's full of the glory of God, which means what? Filled with grace and truth. You know, and you could go back this week in your in your private time and Look at how Jesus was always truthful, but he was gracious. And there are times maybe you'd be like, well, when he overthrew the money, overthrew the money changes in the temple when he called someone a dog. I mean, those kinds of things, that's gracious. Well, yes, because he's protecting his flock. That's what a good shepherd does. Truth and grace. Grace is the heart of our gospel. I hope you understand that, that the law by itself, if we're just if we're just pounding people with truth and we're like, but it's true truth that doesn't save anybody. You know, the more truth I hear, if it's just graceless truth, if it's just the law that just makes me feel worse. Right. I mean, you're like, I didn't even know I was speeding until I saw the speed limit sign. Now I know I'm speeding. I feel worse. I don't feel better. But you notice how the heart of Paul's message, wherever he went, even if he's saying this is truth, it's going to it's going to break you down. before it builds you up. But he always built them up. He always gave them that grace. Look at verses 21 and 24. Basically, between these two verses, he's saying, look, everywhere I went, it was my passion to give as many people as possible. And he calls it the word of grace. Bringing them to a place of faith in Jesus and repentance. I love how J.I. Packer puts this. This is his book, A Quest for Godliness. He's talking about how these truth and grace, I said they're like two parallel tracks. He puts it like this. He says the preacher's commission is to declare the whole counsel of God. He's referring to Acts, Chapter 20. But the cross is the center of that counsel. And the Puritans knew that the traveler through the Bible landscape misses his way as soon as he loses sight of the hill called Calvary. That's kind of a cool way to think about it, that as we're navigating through life, like there's the mountain, there's the cross on which Jesus died and was raised up again. There's the gospel. And we may be talking about sexuality. We may be talking about our finances. We may be talking about the will of God. We will be talking about all these. How do we make friends? How do we keep friends? What kind of friends? Whatever we're talking about, we're navigating where we can see the cross and it's it's shining its light and it's enabling us to properly interpret the truth because it's truth and grace. That's what he's saying. Grace is the heart of our gospel. Grace is also the reason and power behind everything we do. Why? Why did Paul stand so vehemently opposed to the false teachers? You say, well, it just seems like that was his disposition. He was kind of a cranky guy. He loved fights. I don't know. No. Look back at the text, verse twenty eight. He says, the reason why I will fight the wolf and the reason why you must as well is because the church was bought with the precious blood of Christ. He's saying Jesus gave everything to rescue these people out of error, out of darkness, out of brokenness, into light and healing and transfer. Jesus gave the ultimate. You know, just a few moments, you're going to be going to these back tables and taking communion. And that little cup symbolizing his blood that was spilled to bring you into his family. He gave everything. He spared nothing. And Paul's sitting here saying that grace, that kindness of Jesus to give his life. That's what motivates me. Will other people assign false motives to me? Yeah, probably. But this is my motive. When I think of it this way, my brother, he was really into World War II films growing up. OK, so I saw some of these instead of sports, Bridge Over the River Kwai, whatever. OK, we're going to watch this. We're going to watch this World War II film. But I want you to imagine you're in one of those and you're fighting evil. You're fighting totalitarianism. You're fighting a murderous regime. And you're in a company of like a band of brothers, a band of sisters. OK. And you're fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting to take this strategic high point that you can defend this bridge or something. And your best friend dies taking that bridge and like he's dying gas to you. He's saying you hold this ground no matter what. Well, it's not faithful to him then to be like, I've got this idea that we invite the Nazis and the Japanese dictators and we'll have the Italian fascists, we'll have them come. We might as well like anachronistically invite the Khmer Rouge and Hamas and ISIS. Let's all get together on this bridge and just make nice. Why can't we just understand each other? You would say you gave up the ground that your best friend gained at the cost of his life. Well, Paul understood. Not just his best friend, but his savior spilled his blood to gain that advantage for him. And he's saying, I'm not giving it up. Now, look ahead to verse 32, I said it, it's the reason we do what we do, but it's also the power of verse 32, he says, and I now commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. And there's this humility again, by the way, the church doesn't need Paul, the church doesn't need me. I could entrust you to the word of grace, the word of God. And this grace has such inherent power, this grace. Well, he says it's already sanctified, you it's already made you holy. It's giving you this inheritance that Jesus won for you. Now I'm convinced I'm certain that it's able to build you up day by day, step by step. Grace is our power. Grace is the heart of our message. So you've got leadership, you've got truth, you've got grace. Lastly, community. And this is no specific thing here. Rather, it's the tenor of everything Paul is saying. Notice verse 18. Paul says, You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time. And we find out later that was three years. I lived among you the whole time from the first day I set foot in Asia. Verse 20, I was teaching you in public and from house to house. So this is life on life, personal Bible study. You know, this is this is your gospel community group. And Paul is saying this community is so vitally important. I'm not just standing there preaching it and disappearing. I'll preach it and I'll come down there and we'll talk about it. Verses 28, 29, he, he refers to the church as a, this is a collective noun, a flock. You're not just individual sheep relating to a shepherd. You're a flock. You're a family together. Verse 31, for three years, I did not see night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And you get both the night and day part of that. That's community. And you get the tears part. Like I felt that with you, what you were going through. Or I wept for your sin. I wept for your brokenness. I wept for the reasons that made you weep, because terrible things were happening in your lives. And you cried and and I cried with you. And then versus 36 and 37 is basically a picture of kneeling on the beach together. He's about to get on the boat. And they're huddled together, they're praying and crying. I mean, that comes from years of of Paul saying, I'm not here to be a CEO. I'm not here to be a hired gun or hireling. That first line of trouble, I'm out of here because it's about me. You see Paul moving into the neighborhood, getting dirt under his fingernails, putting his skin in the game. And in the process of that, he loved those people with all his heart and they loved him. And the only reason he moved on is because he said repeatedly, the Holy Spirit is telling me it's time to move on. And gospel driven people get this point that God is not just saving individual Christians to relate to him. God is building a family. God is building a flock. God is building a kingdom. And many of you, you're solid Christians in so many ways. You know the word, you study the word, you read the word. But I don't care how solid you were. God simply didn't design you to do the Christian life by yourself. We're made to laugh together, to rejoice together, to goof off together, to press the word in together, to cry together, to grieve together, to go to funerals and weddings and birth announcements together. We're made to do all of that together. And that's one of the greatest gospel resources that God has given us is simply a community of believers to worship together, to get in the word together, to pray together. And for each other, to encourage, to affirm, to serve. I'll close with this. I want to say, first of all, I take this text very seriously because it is my job description. And there are other places in scripture that flesh out a bigger job description. But this is my job description. Now, I'm supposed to love you. I'm supposed to serve you. I'm supposed to lead you. I'm supposed to say things you don't want to hear if it's God's truth. I'm supposed to give grace. These are my commitments, but I said again that we want to be a gospel driven church. And so I want you to be asking yourselves questions this week about these four key words like, OK, if God has called us to be passionate about the right kind of leadership for his church, how am I praying for that? How am I supporting that? Is there something I could do differently to affirm, to encourage leadership? The second word, the word truth, you know, how am I receiving truth for myself? You know, do am I trying to get it in me? You know, what is my what is my personal Bible study look like where I'm getting God's truth in me and letting it shine light in the dark places and change me? What am I doing there? What am I doing to support and encourage those who stick their necks out in a culture that's increasingly difficult to do so? And they say, no, you know what? This is where we're putting our flag in the ground and we're not moving. Thirdly, the word grace, what are you doing to receive grace? You know, don't just read God's Word and be like, OK, more truth for my day. And we need grace because, like he says here, that that is the inherent power of God to transform you. And if you have all truth and no grace or all grace and no truth, you need two rails or your trains not going to make it to the airport. Right. You need two rails. You need truth and grace. What are you doing to get God's grace in you? What are you doing to live graciously toward others so that, you know, our name is Grace City? What are you doing? To create the kind of atmosphere here that is a culture of grace. There's a culture of reflecting on how much God has given us and at what cost. And then what are you doing with this word community? What are you doing to say? I'll come early. I'll stay late. I'll talk to someone. I'll pray with someone. I'll encourage someone. You know, maybe it's not my personality, but maybe I'll even tear up and cry with someone because this is what they're going through. And I'll help shoulder the load. But I thought it was interesting how much this this part of this chapter aligns with our five core values. Grace city. You know, if you don't know grace, gee, gospel centeredness, our rule of scripture. That's a lot of what Paul's talking about here. The whole counsel of God. We don't we don't really care what our opinions are. We care what the rule of scripture is. Authentic community, continuing transformation, engagement. That's kind of what he's teaching here. You know, maybe maybe God is inviting someone. We have this upcoming opportunity to attend a luncheon and then beyond that, I get connected class. And maybe what what someone's calling someone to do is I need to make this my church home. And I'd love to talk to you if that's you. We say, you know, I want to be in a church that's passionate about Jesus and the gospel. And, yeah, we make mistakes. I certainly make mistakes. But is this what we're striving for? Yes. I want to be a part of that. Or maybe you could say what God is working on me is I want to be more vocal in supporting and encouraging people who are trying to do this. And in the days and weeks and months ahead, you know, I'll be sharing more vision about what God is doing and where where we believe God is leading us. But I want to say, like what Paul said here, you know, it isn't me. You know, and I more and more love to mentor and see people mentored where the people are interchangeable and someone can step in or some ones can step in and just say, our hope is the gospel. Our hope is the truth of God's word. We have a community. Maybe one person stepped out, a new person stepped in. We have a community. So we are strong. We are healthy. We are growing. And I leave you with verse 32, as Paul did. Now, I commend you to God. and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. Amen.