If you'll turn to Acts chapter 20. I'm going to read verses 1 to 12. Acts 21 to 12. Hear the word of the Lord. After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples. And after encouraging them, he said farewell and departed to Macedonia. When he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. There he spent three months. And when a plot was made against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. Sopater, the Berean, son of Pyrrhus, accompanied him, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and the Asians, Tychicus and Trophimus. These went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and in five days we came to them at Troas, where we stayed for seven days. On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day. And he prolonged his speech until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered, and a young man named Eutychus, sitting at the window, sank into a deep sleep as Paul talked still longer. And being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down and bent over him and taking him in his arms said, do not be alarmed for his life is in him. And when Paul had gone up and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while until daybreak and so departed. And they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord endures forever. There's an interesting theme, sub-theme in the book of Acts. And that is how Paul and the New Testament apostles or prophets cared for the church. And their care for the church, not exclusively, but at least in part can be summed up in encouragement. Now does that mean that they never got onto the church? Surely not. We see Paul in some of his letters speaking very forcefully with the church in particular situations. But I would say that from the reading of the book of Acts, the general tone in which Paul addresses the Christian community is that of encouragement. And let me just point you to a few examples of that. If you look back in Acts chapter 14, Verse 21, this is early on in Paul's ministry. We read these words. There's some difficulty starting to arise between the Jewish community and the Gentile community. And it's going to culminate in an assembly in Jerusalem that we read about in Acts chapter 15. We read in Acts 14, 21 these words. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. Now, turn to chapter 15, verses 30 to 32. After the Jerusalem council had ended, and the decree had been set about how the Jews and the Gentiles would interact together. We read the early prophets, New Testament prophets in 1530. So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement. Now, why? Why such an emphasis on encouragement in the book of Acts? Well, the reason for that is the church was constantly under attack. And I want to suggest to you that nothing's changed. We're as much the centerpiece of the devil's vengeance as the church has ever been. And there is a story running throughout the book of Acts of how the devil is seeking to destroy the public witness of Christ, which is the church, and how the church continues to prevail over the devil. We are vulnerable, aren't we? Not one person in this room has been glorified as far as I know. So you have a remnant of sin in you. You're vulnerable, you're weak, you're frail, and you need encouragement of the type that is being spoken of here in the book of Acts. Now, Paul and the early prophets are men Gifted to the church by who? By Christ, and empowered by who? The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Now, the word for encouragement in the book of Acts is pericleo, and I'm sure that's a word that many of you have heard of, and I want you to turn back to the Gospel of John, chapter 14. Because the type of encouragement that the church is receiving, it's not like a pep talk from a football coach before a game. There's something specific to the content and the aim of the encouragement. In John 14, verse 15, we read this. If you love me, You will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth. Now that term helper is, again, the same Greek word, paracleo, that we see in being translated as encourager or encouraging in the book of Acts. The Holy Spirit is sent by God to bear witness to Christ, and through that bearing witness to Christ, to encourage the people of God. How does the Spirit do that? How is the Spirit with us? Do we see this dove floating around over our heads? No. What we're learning in the book of Acts is that the Spirit comforts. He fulfills his ministry as the one sent by the Father to encourage and to bear witness to Christ to the church. He does it through other men. through the prophets, through the called elders, through leaders in the church community. And that will become more and more evident as we look through this. You see the work of Paul, and you see the work of some of his ministry partners, but really it's It's reflecting a deeper movement of the spirit of God with his church, and that same spirit is with his church even today. First thing I want you to see is the encouragement through Christian fellowship. In verse four, we see that Paul conducts his work with many helpers around him. Paul is not alone. In verse four we read this. After a plot was made against him by the Jews, he takes off, and in verse four, we hear of some of his companions. Sopater, the Berean son of Pyrus, accompanied him. And of the Thessalonians, there was Aristarchus, and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and the Asians, Tychicus, and Trophimus. And then in verse seven, We see the people of God coming together, gathering together on the first day of the week, and that is the Sunday which becomes the New Testament Lord's Day. They gathered together. There is an emphasis on the community aspect of the church. You cannot, and I mentioned this a little bit in the morning sermon about how Christ himself was never alone. As human beings, God created us to be in community with other human beings. Encouragement comes through the community. the fellowship of the believing community. Christianity is not a personal religion. It is a communal faith. Many people claim that they can be Christians without association with the church. That is foolishness. If you want to find a quick way into heresy, separate yourself from an orthodox Bible teaching church, and you will soon find yourself on that path. We were not created or designed for that purpose. Now, is the church perfect? Absolutely not. that was never the promise made by God. And even in Paul's epistles, he assumes that the church is not a perfect place. Look at the description later on in chapter 20 of the church. In chapter 20, verse 28, Paul is giving a charge to the elders in Ephesus. And then he reveals something of the significance that the church plays in the mind of the triune God. Paul says, 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. The church isn't a man-made institution. It is designed, it originates by or in God himself. That really starts to shape how you view your church membership and relationship in the church. When you start to say, you know, Jesus Christ purchased these people here that I kind of struggle with sometimes, but he purchased them with his own blood. He loves them. Maybe I need to start learning to love them too. The early church was a community of believers who valued meeting together. It was a time for them to encourage one another. And I want to just point out what happened last Sunday night. Danny came, spoke to this group, and there were a lot of other people from outside of this church community who came and listened to that. How many of you left from that after you heard of God's dealings with his life and you were encouraged? That's how we should be, sharing what we're going through, sharing how the Lord has blessed us, learning of the Lord's goodness as he deals with us in our own various ways. In the book of Titus, Titus chapter two, there's an emphasis of older women training up and teaching younger women. Older men training up and teaching younger men. That's the design of the church community. And I've made this point time and time again. You never experience that if your view of church is a place where you go simply to hear a sermon, or to participate in a sacrament, or to pray collectively, and that's really all that you understand or think is important about church life. We are called to invest in each other. And we live in a particular time in America where that doesn't come naturally for us. We have been taught and trained to live as islands. It's not always been that way. There's people in this congregation tonight who remember a time when people engaged more in their community than they do now. The church is meant to do that, and that's part of what we've tried to do with our community groups, and I think, to some extent, it's been very successful. And I would encourage you, if you're not participating in those groups, Learn to see that they are valuable. They may be different. They may be something that you're not used to. Learn that it doesn't matter. They're not for younger people. They're for all people. We need our older generation participating so we can gain wisdom and value from them. Think about church life. We've got people in this room who have battled successfully, by the Lord's grace, with cancer. We've got people in this room who have cared for elderly mothers and fathers with all of the difficulty and the stress that's involved with that. We've got people who have experienced the heartbreaking loss of a miscarriage or the death of a child. We've got people struggling with things like infertility. What if we took the model of the early church and started to apply it and realize that there is much we can learn from each other with how God has dealt with us, the lessons that he's taught us, how he's gotten us through difficult times, and how we can come alongside of others through that same situation. Who doesn't want to go seek Danny when they're facing some kind of a life-threatening challenge? Or Ben Chilcutt. or others who have gone through some of these things. We're not to keep those lessons learned bottled up. We're to share them. What new mother couldn't benefit from talking to an older lady in the church who's been through it all? There's problems on both sides. Sometimes we're hesitant to give help. Other times, we're too proud to ask for it. And what are we saying about ourselves? We need to depend upon each other. How often have you not wanted to come to church because you're going through something and you kind of force yourself to come and the Lord provided someone who spoke a word to you that was just what you needed and you left encouraged by that. That happens time and time again. Or a sermon that hits you in a way that you just didn't expect it to. It's funny, sometimes people will come up after a sermon and say, were you thinking of me when you preached that? And I'm like, no, but that's how the spirit of God works. He knows how to apply his word and provide the means of grace in our lives. There are some barriers to participating in this edification. One, when we isolate ourselves, when we withdraw. You are becoming vulnerable when you develop deeper relationships and that can be challenging for some of us. Selfishness is another problem. When all you can see is your problems and you can't think about the needs of others. being critical and judgmental of people. Seeing that maybe you don't want to interact because you don't think that people are where they should be. Envy and bitterness often is a barrier to fellowship as well. So in Paul's mind, He speaks of the church being together as a place where we encourage each other. And I just want to close this by reminding you of Hebrews chapter 10. If you'll turn to Hebrews 10, 23. In Hebrews 10, 23 to 25, fellowship is couched in a context of perseverance of the saints. So we're told in verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. for he who promised is faithful. So let's hold on in the midst of the storm and persecution that's raging around us. And there is a storm around us. I think Christianity is under attack like it's probably never been in America. And sadly it's by people who would identify themselves as Christians. What's going on in a lot of so-called churches is far removed from the scripture. So let us hold on. How do we hold on? How do we persevere? Verse 24 says, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, same verse. emphasis, encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. That's how we should be functioning. That should be, if you're an elder, that should be something that you have as a desire. How are we as a church functioning like this? Are we encouraging one another? Are we stirring each other up to love and good works? That's the means that God uses to persevere our faith to the end. Second thing I wanna talk about is the encouragement provided through God's means of grace. God knows our weaknesses. He knows how to strengthen us, and He does it through His appointed means of grace. And I want you to look at how the means of grace are utilized here in this text, particularly in verse seven. On the first day of the week, that's a public gathering of the church. On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, most likely a reference to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Gathered to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. So it was, You know, we have a tendency to set our way of doing church up as the way that it's always been. But I doubt that what Paul was doing looked a whole lot like what we do. It almost has a feel of kind of informality. They gathered and they had a meal together and we read in the New Testament that that meal looked more like a sit down kind of a meal. And they would have, they called it a love feast, but they would also participate in the sacrament in that meal as well. But he talked for a long time. I mean, hours and hours. And there was probably some dialogue that went on, some back and forth, some questioning and discussion that went on. So we see, Sacraments, we see the preaching of the word taking place. And I wanna talk to you a little bit from a book, this is a great book, short book, helpful book on the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is a means of grace more than a memory by a man named Richard Barcelos. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, but that's the best I can do. And this is what he says about defining the means of grace, and I've used this definition in a few other sermons. Why come next Sunday night for the Lord's Supper? What are you expecting? Is it just a time to kind of stir up your memory? Well it is that, it does stir up our memory to remember things, but he says here it's more than a memory. This is what he says about the term or the idea of a means of grace. The means of grace are those conduits through which Christ alters, modifies, adjusts, changes, transforms, and develops souls on the earth. Have you ever thought about that? that sermons and worship, Christian worship, isn't just kind of a nice, right thing to do, it's good to do it, but that there's actually promises that God is using those instruments to infuse and to transmit more of Christ to you. That changes things a little bit, doesn't it? When we think of it that way. He goes on to say, the means of grace then are God's delivery systems through which that which was acquired for us gets distributed or delivered to or in us. The means of grace. God has appointed preaching, He's appointed prayer, he's appointed the two sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper as conduits through which the Spirit brings Christ and all of his saving benefits to you. That seems kind of important. The point of the means of grace are to drive us to Christ. And that's the heart of Christian encouragement. You see, you can go through cancer. You can go through a life-threatening illness. You can go through the sadness of infertility, the disappointment of loss through miscarriage, or all of these things, and you can encourage each other in a non-Christian way. You can find some advocacy group that helps you through these issues. But that's not what Paul's talking about. He's talking about a type of encouragement in the midst of the difficulties of life that drives you closer to Christ. And that's what we're called to do in Christian community. That's what the means of grace are designed to do. That's what the Holy Spirit as the helper or the paraclete is, that's what he is ordained to do. Where are these means found? I heard recently of a person, that God told them to start taking part in the Lord's Supper every day, privately. It's interesting. Sounds like a really clever idea, right? And then to journal that experience. But then you think, isn't that in the Bible called communion? Aren't you supposed to be doing that with a bunch of other Christians, not by yourself? There's something that I don't think Jesus told you to do that. It may sound pretty neat and fun, but everywhere I find communion spoken of in the Bible, it speaks about the church getting together, gathering together. Now, in Ephesians, chapter four, we hear of The instruments of the means of grace being the prophets, apostles, elders, teachers, shepherds of the church, they are a gift to the church sent by the ascended reigning king Jesus. He gives gifts to the church. And they're meant for the up-building, edifying, and the maturing of the body. If you're an elder, that's what you're here for. You're gifted by the spirit for the up-building, maturing, edifying of the body. And he enables you to do that work because he gifts you with his spirit. Who does he give these gifts to in Ephesians? Four, not to you individually, but to the church, the corporate body of believers. That's how you mature. You don't have your personal Apostle Paul seated with you during your private interaction with the Lord, but you do when you gather together with the church. So that makes it special. It makes it important. It makes it necessary. The means are found in the church. They are necessary for spiritual growth and development. The goal of preaching prayer and the sacraments is to drive us to Christ, to unite us more closely with him, to strengthen us in him, to enable us and empower us, to guide us in more, to live more in conformity to his law, to train us to love like he loves. They reveal to us that we are his workmanship, and he takes that role very seriously. So we see encouragement through Christian fellowship, encouragement through the means of grace, and lastly, we have this whole encounter with Eutychus, and we find encouragement through miraculous confirmation. It's an interesting story of Eutychus. If Paul can make people fall asleep, that should give encouragement to all preachers everywhere. And he was a very gifted man. But he was preaching a long time, and Eutychus, by all accounts, was a young man, and he just got worn out, fell asleep, and fell three stories down, and died. Could you imagine a meeting like that? where somebody just falls out a window and is killed on the spot. Paul goes down and bends over him, takes him in his arms and says, do not be alarmed, for his life is in him. And he performs the miracle of resurrection. Now, central to this story is the fact that the church is a persecuted body. and they were feeling that persecution in a big way. Look at chapter 20, verse one. After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for his disciples. So there was this big public mob type of outrage in Ephesus. Paul gets out of town. It was a church that was It was life or death for them. And there's always been the question when the church is in these situations, why should we do this? Why should they listen to Paul and his story about Jesus? Why should they persevere in faith that Jesus is the one who will bring them back into a restored relationship with God and will carry them into glory at His return. In times of crisis, as we hear Jesus say in the parable of the sower, he speaks about seeds that are thrown on rocky soil, and they immediately grow up real fast. I'm amazed on my driveway, I was mowing grass yesterday, but isn't it strange how in those cracks on your driveway, these Weeds can grow so big and strong. I mean, what are they growing on? There's not a whole lot there. And you just pluck them off. They come right out. It's no big deal. So Jesus is using that illustration because the people understood it. They were a forming type of community. And he says, look, that's how it is for Christians. They get excited about Christ. until persecution comes and their faith is tested. And when persecution comes, they abandon ship pretty quickly. So they're facing a time of persecution. And the miracles that are performed in the Bible, They have a lot of functions, but at least one that is undeniable is that they confirm the message of the speaker. They confirm that the gospel is truly the only way for us to be restored to a right relationship with God. You see this in Exodus chapter four. And we're gonna turn to a passage in Hebrews as well. But Exodus 4, you got Moses, and God says, hey, I want you to go to Egypt and talk to Pharaoh and tell him to let my people go. And they're gonna follow you. And Moses says, what if they don't? What if they think I'm crazy? What if they say, who are you and why should we listen to you? Exodus 4, 1, then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me. He doesn't say what if, he's like, this ain't happening. They're not gonna believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you. So how do we know that someone is a messenger from the Lord? How do we know the Lord appeared? Well, the Lord says in this context, what's that in your hand? He said, it's a staff. He said, throw it onto the ground. So he throws it onto the ground and it becomes a serpent and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, put out your hand, catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand, caught it. and it became a staff in his hand. He says that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has appeared to you. And then he goes on in this section to say I'm gonna do 10 miraculous wonders so that they will believe that you are sent by me. Same things going on with the New Testament. Why believe Paul? Why believe Peter? Why believe these guys? Turn to Hebrews. Chapter two. We see a discussion here, y'all have gone through this with Brent recently, about how we need to pay closer attention to Jesus. We listen to Moses, but now Jesus is a greater prophet than Moses. Verse two, for since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, that is the gospel, it was declared at first by the Lord. It was attested to us by those who heard, that's the apostles bearing witness, it was attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. So God comes to this fledgling flock. He encourages them through their interaction with each other and community. He encourages them through the means of grace. And then he performs this miracle of resurrection right before their eyes. Now think if you were in that congregation that night, and maybe you were really seriously contemplating getting out of this Christian movement and going back to Judaism, and the Lord brought this miracle before you. Do you think that that was not a powerful form of encouragement for them? We're told, In verse 12, they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted because they were reminded that the God they were putting their hope in is a God of resurrection power. And if you're facing death, that becomes a doctrine. that is vital to sustaining you as you see the valley of the shadow of death just off in the short distance. Is it worth the persecution for this church? Absolutely, absolutely. They're being driven closer to Christ to cling to him more desperately so that nothing can remove their fingers from his grip. And I pray that that's our experience. as we meet together as a church community. That should be what you're praying for about Main Street, that it is a place that drives us all closer to Christ. Let us pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and we thank you for the testimony of the early church, and we pray, Lord, that that we would seek to emulate them and to reflect them as best we can. Lord, the church is, it's a mess at times, and you tell us that. It's a mess in the New Testament period as well, but it is your prize and your joy, and teach us to love it, mess and all, warts and all. Teach us to love the church that you shed your blood for. We pray this in Christ's name, amen.