All right, please open your Bibles to Acts chapter 20. All right, so Acts 19, we had that wonderfully reasonable assembly of unbelievers chanted for two hours about Artemis, repeating the same phrase so that they could hopefully maintain their trade in handmade gods. That assembly was dismissed by a pragmatic politician that told lies to their faces. Those lies were used so that the enemies of God are in discord, and God brought about order again, using his own enemies against his own enemies to give space for the church. And that discord, that eating of self, that disunity, is something that is used repeatedly for the good of the church. The enemies of God not properly bringing their own cause together. We think about the Tower of Babel and how God causes confusion in order to cause his own enemies to not be able to concentrate their force against the knowledge of God and against the people of God. Now, chapter 20. Let's read, starting at verse 1. After the uproar had ceased, Paul called the disciples to himself, embraced them, and departed to go to Macedonia. Now, when he had gone over that region and encouraged them with many words, he came to Greece and stayed three months. And when the Jews plotted against him as he was about to sail to Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. And Sopater of Berea accompanied him to Asia. Also Aristarchus and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus, and Trophimus of Asia. These men, going ahead, waited for us at Troas. But we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and in five days joined them at Troas, where we stayed seven days. Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where we, the majority text says we, where we were gathered together. And in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep. And as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him, said, do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him. Now when he had come up, had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed. And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted. He went ahead to the ship and sailed to Assos, there intending to take Paul on board. For so he had given orders, intending himself to go on foot. And when he met us at Assos, we took him on board and came to Mytilene. We sailed from there, and the next day came opposite Chios. The following day, we arrived at Samos and stayed at Trogilium. The next day, we came to Miletus, for Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost. From Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. And when they came to him, he said to them, you know from the first day that I came to Asia in what manner I always lived among you, serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials, which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews, how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you. and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem. not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulations await me. But none of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And indeed, now, I know that you all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, will see my face no more. Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Therefore, take heed to yourselves and to all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also, from among yourselves, men will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Therefore, watch and remember that for three years, I did not cease to warn everyone, night and day, with tears. So now, brethren, I 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. I have coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel. Yes, you yourselves know that these hands have provided for my necessities and for those who are with me. I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus that he said, He is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Then they all wept freely and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spoke that they would see his face no more. And they accompanied him to the ship. Let's start back at verse one. So what we have is a comparison of the assembly, this false church, so to speak, an ecclesia, a public assembly. And that is a word that was used for assemblies. And so the idea of calling the church an ecclesia, it should remind us of the idea of it being public, right? So we have public worship and we have public government. In both cases, those are acts of the Church, it's the Ecclesia, and so we have that. Now, we should be orderly and wise, unlike the disorder and foolishness that we saw in Acts chapter 19 in Ephesus. Now, verse 1. After the uproar had ceased, Paul called the disciples to himself, embraced them, and departed to go to Macedonia. Okay, so there's peace, Paul's planning to leave in order to do work elsewhere, and there's an embrace. So we have this apostolic example of different acts of fellowship, signs of fellowship. There's the right hand of fellowship, there's the embrace, there's holy kiss. There are different things that are appropriate for different times. You think about the fact that he has known these people for a great amount of time, and in departing here, having spent three years with them, he embraces them. And so this shows a closeness of the relationship that they had. And there is this kind of plan to depart. So verse two, now, when he had gone over that region, and encouraged them with many words, he came to Greece. So this this short line here came to Greece, he says, and stayed three months. This is probably when the Apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Romans out of Corinth. Okay, so that's where that likely occurs. This is about 56 or 57 AD at this point, to give you a kind of a time marker. And when the Jews plotted against him as he was about to sail to Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia. So to leave to go to Syria, he'd probably be leaving a port out of Corinth. And so that being the case, there is this relatively easy thing to go to a choke point when you go to a port and to grab somebody. So there's this idea of ambush. And instead, he goes the other way. He goes north and maybe east. to go up to Macedonia rather than going to the port. And so those are the actions. This is an evasion maneuver. Now, this is interesting because he has this kind of band of people with him. And you'll remember one of the things that happens when he's writing to the Corinthians. He's been going back and forth here. He's been talking about how the Macedonians were willing to give money to help to support the church in Jerusalem. And so he's got all these people that are representatives from these different churches with him. And there's seven of them that are listed here. And so these seven men are the representatives, probably, of those churches that are sent to deal with the money. And so they're there with him. So they're kind of they're coming back through with the same people with the same money. So imagine you send off some people on a journey to go do some work and come back here. That was fast. We actually haven't done it yet. We're coming back through. We'll be back again. And so That's what this group is. But this is kind of an all-star list. And the fact that there are seven of them, and they're involved with handling the capital, it points to things that are very similar to what Peter did. We read through, when you look at the raising from the dead of Eutychus, it should remind you of Peter raising Dorcas from the dead. Okay, and then we have the establishment of the deacons back in Acts chapter six, and these seven men that are traveling with Paul carrying money should remind you of those deacons. So we have very similar things, and the idea here is we're pointing to diaconal ministry, we're pointing to miracles that are being performed by Apostles. The Apostleship of Peter and Paul are being displayed as one to the Jews and one to the Gentiles, and look, it's one church. So that's an emphasis here of what's happening. Now, here's the list. Verse 4. They're going back through Macedon. They have Sopater of Berea. You remember Berea? It's known famously for encouraging people to test all doctrine. And so the doctrine of Paul that was brought, right, the Bereans were searching the scriptures to see if these things are so, and Paul praised them for it. The Book of Acts praises them for it. Sopater of Berea accompanied him to Asia. Also Aristarchus and Secundus of the Thessalonians. And Gaius of Derbe, and I remember Derbe, this is a part of Asia Minor. Thessalonia is right in the Greek region. Timothy and Tychicus and Trophimus of Asia. So this is a group of people from all these churches that have been going, this is kind of a group of guys from all over this area that has been evangelized, where churches have been planted. And so this is a group that's traveling. And these men going ahead, waited for us at Troas. Now, notice the us. Luke disappears a while back. And now, all of a sudden, Luke has rejoined the group. And so we're going to see the pronouns change to us and we. So Luke is present again. So these men, going ahead, waited for us at Troas. Remember, that's Troy. It's on the coast of Turkey, or Asia Minor. But we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and in five days joined them at Troas, where we stayed seven days." So Philippi, we talked about that before, a major city in Macedon, and it's a colony city. And so we have, going back through, we're being reminded of a lot of the work that's being done here. These lists, people, you know, why are these lists present? These lists, these names, have other places in scripture where they are brought up, most of them. And these places have other places. And so this is kind of a reminder of a lot of things that have already happened. And it's a tying of things together to remind us of the complexity of history and the way in which this is captured. This is historical. It happened in time and space. These are real events. This is not just some mythos. The denial of the historicity of Christianity is a denial of Christianity. And so we find there are liberals like Bultmann and Barth and other people who have tried to deny the historicity of the events of the Bible, deny the miracles, and try to hold on to some sort of eternal doctrine set. It doesn't work that way. Because history exists to display the glory of God, to have an unveiling of his majesty, and to have events building on each other, have the revelation be progressive, have the giving of information across time, and to have a display of the remarkable decrees of God that are meant to be kind of casting against each other opposites and opposition to display the grandeur of his attributes. The historicity of Christianity is everywhere on the pages of scripture. And so we look at this and we think about the letters and the places and the people. We have Sopater, who's mentioned probably in Romans 16, 21. He's called Sosipater there. And so there's speculation about that being the same person. Aristarchus has been on this third missionary journey. We have examples back in chapter 19, but he also goes with Paul to Rome and shares in the imprisonment of Paul there. He's referenced in Colossians. Secundus is not mentioned elsewhere. But Gaius, we have kind of two Gaiuses that are mentioned. We have the Gaius that is from Laconia, from Derbe. And then there's another one who's from Macedonia. And so we see him back in chapter 19. Timothy, you should be very familiar with. We have two letters to Timothy, and we have the reality that Tychicus is also somebody who is mentioned in multiple places. He's referenced in Ephesians, in Colossians, he's referenced in 2 Timothy. So there is a great deal of history of these locations and of these people. and their interrelationship. Paul was not just one man going around by himself, but he interacted with many and blessed many and worked with many. And so we see how there are weaknesses when he's just kind of by himself, but when he's working with others, there is the greatest sort of strength. And this is the strength that's coming in the church, is the filling of many with the knowledge of God, the cooperating together, and the having different tasks, specialties, and foci. So from there, back to verse 7, this text, this little chunk, we're going to look at verses 7 to 12. There is an interesting series of things that happens here. This is on the first day of the week. So this is the Lord's Day. This is the Christian Sabbath, the new Sabbath. There remains a Sabbath for the people of God. This is when the disciples came together to break bread. Now, I believe this reference to breaking bread is not just a getting together to eat from house to house. I think this is a reference to the Lord's Supper. So this is the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, when the disciples came together to break bread. This is one of the reasons that we believe that we should have a weekly Lord's Supper. And so You look at this and there's this idea of the regularity of the Lord's Day. The Lord's Day is a feast day. There are no continuing feast days in the New Testament. And so the Lord's Day, as the Christian feast day, is a day for this holy feast. Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. Now think about that. I don't do that to you, right? So now you can't complain about my long sermons. I don't keep you here until midnight. And so that reality, how is that okay? So when is it lawful for officers of the church to call the people to a symbol? Apparently midnight, I'm sorry. No, it's lawful to do it only on the Lord's Day. Or in the event of extraordinary providences that causes for thanksgiving or fasting. Okay, so if we're invaded, and there's a loss, and we have impending doom coming upon us, that we're going to be conquered by a foreign people, and so forth, that might be cause for a day of fasting, to mourn and to ask God to save us from devastation, something like that, right? So that would not be on the Lord's Day. But this is just an ordinary, this is the Lord's Day. It's not okay for officers to just say, you have to assemble on Monday and Wednesday and Thursday, and you have to do it at the time that we appoint for you, and that's just it. Because that makes you obligated to appear at any time. It makes you into a slave of officers that you have this obedience that you have to give to appear whenever they call you. That authority is limited ordinarily to the Lord's day. And so think about this. If you're an officer and you're looking for a way to manipulate that system, how can I keep everybody together and make them do what I want all the time? Let's just never dismiss the assembly. So the assembly has to break up before the end of the Sabbath. So what's the last moment you could end that on? Well, that depends on how you define the end of the day. And historically, you look at the Bible, what's the beginning of a day? Evening. And it ends at the next evening. evening and morning, evening and morning, evening and morning. That's given to us for all seven of the days of creation. The Jewish Sabbath, evening to evening. So should we as Christians keep the Lord's Day from Saturday evening to Sunday evening? Or is there something different? And I have wrestled with this. And so my position is midnight to midnight, which I think is a change of administration in the New Testament. And the reason I believe that is because Paul, I think, is keeping them assembled here until midnight. Now, there are some objections to that, but let me just run through my view real quickly. I'm open to being challenged on this, and I want to come to conclusion on this, but we're in this text, and so I'm going to give you my best understanding. So, they get together. It's the Lord's Day. The disciples, they come together to break bread, okay, during this assembly. You know, Paul got there. He's ready to depart the next day. Why isn't he departing now? It's the Sabbath. He's not traveling on the Sabbath. He's going to use the Sabbath instead to worship God. And so then he's giving a message until midnight. Now, ordinarily that wouldn't be okay, but if you've got some great teacher and you're going, I want to maximize the time and you can't leave anyways until midnight, then let's do this. So there may have been a desire to see that happen. But it says in verse 8, there were many lamps in the upper room where we gathered together and In a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep." Now, there are a number of great sermons that are given on this text to remind people to not sleep through sermons. Okay? Because if you sleep through my sermons, you will die. Right? That is the basic message. Now, physical death seems unlikely in this building. However, not believing, not taking in the Word, not seeking the knowledge of God leads to death. Now, that's the spiritualizing of this text. I don't think that's what's being taught here, but I thought I would use other preachers as an excuse to say those things. And so, that is what is commonly said, but I don't think that's the point. The point is, this guy, he's tired, he falls asleep, he falls out the window, he was overcome by sleep, and Paul continued speaking. And as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. So some people try to read that and they say this is what makes him stop talking at midnight is a death. Reasonable. That would get most people to stop talking. I am not certain about that. Let's keep going. We'll come back and talk about it. He was overcome by sleep and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. But Paul went down, fell on him and embracing him said, do not trouble yourselves for his life is in him. Now, When he had come up, had broken bread, and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak, he departed. And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted." So I think this is a second breaking of bread. So they're gathering together for the Lord's Supper. They have that, and there's teaching. And that teaching is until midnight. This is the public worship. It's the bread-breaking assembly. And I think there's a... a discussion that's occurring after around an ordinary meal. So I think there's two breakings of bread, and I think there's discussion, but there's also the teaching, there's the public teaching. So think about what we do in our church. We have the public worship, we have that public worship, and then there's also hospitality and discussion with breaking of bread. And so I think that we have this being in the same place, it was very common for churches to meet in the house, but you differentiate even though you're meeting in a house, the space doesn't differentiate the activity, but there are markers of time. Remember, we were talking about in the evening worship, when we were going through the regulated principle, we discussed marking off time for worship. Okay, so this is a marking of time for worship, a set apart time, followed by what is not the public worship, but is hospitality. And these are the types of activities that we saw back in the beginning of Acts in chapter two. There's the gathering in the temple that was occurring, but there was also the going from house to house. And so these are those two types of activities. There's the public breaking of bread. And even though it's in a house still, there is now this hospitality, the private breaking of bread. So that's my understanding of this text. He sticks around after the public teaching. And there is a waiting until daybreak. Why does he wait till daybreak? Well, it's not safe to travel in the night. At that time, especially. So there's this idea that when you're traveling between places, there was a bigger problem with bandits, with getting mugged, with sometimes what's called brigandage. Brigandage is having kind of a gang, basically, that's mugging people. And it could be even an army that's going around demanding things from towns. Rome did a pretty good job of stopping brigandage. That's what the piece of Rome is, the Pax Romana, is a kind of settling of that. And so having the road system, having standing armies, they were known for being pretty effective at stopping brigandage. But you still had mugging that was going on on these highways. And so that would be a part of that concern is you travel in the daytime, so you're able to see things respond to threats, it's less likely that you'll be attacked. So those are kind of the common things that are thought about for traveling at this time. So There are three ways of reading this about the Sabbath. One is just saying, this has nothing to do with the Sabbath, or there's no Christian Sabbath, or don't worry about it. Assembling together, this is not public worship, maybe. Okay, so that's one way. And you just say there is evening till evening Sabbath. It's just the way it is. And this has nothing to do with that. The other one, sometimes you look at this text, and you'll say, hey, wait until daybreak to let to leave. And there's a connection back to Matthew with the breaking of dawn into the new Sabbath. There's a text there about the resurrection of Christ. And people will try to connect that and say there's a change as opposed to being evening to evening. Now the Sabbath is morning to morning. And so. My view, looking at this and saying that I believe it is from midnight to midnight, is based upon my concern to look at the government of the church and to understand what are the limits of that authority. And I think that you cannot call an assembly without there being a special providence for Thanksgiving or fasting, except on the Lord's Day, and that there is a public worship here that is occurring. And that's not talking about government assemblies. I'm talking about calling all the people of God to appear for the worship, the public worship. And so that is, that's what I understand this to be talking about. So I think it ended at midnight, and that's given to us as an approved example, an apostolic example, to show us that. So, open to discussing it, explaining to you my view, trying to give you what the other views are, and I'll move to the next portion now. So, verse 13. Then we went ahead to the ship and sailed to Asos, there intending to take Paul on board. For so he had given orders, intending himself to go on foot. And when he met us at Asos, we took him on board and came to Mytilene." Okay, so what's the deal here? Why is he traveling on foot? So this is a place where the traveling by sea actually takes longer. It's about a 20-mile foot trek. It's on a Roman road. It's a paved road. So what's the deal? There are a number of theories about why he did it. I don't know which one it is. There are matters of business, putting things in order, people he wanted to see on the way. Those are the things that are put out there. Maybe he wanted the time to meditate, to be by himself, to pray, whatever. Those are the things that are put forward. I do not know why, but we have it recorded that this is what happened. And so he gets to them and rejoins them and gets on the ship with them. Now, this ship, OK, they're in a rush. They're stopping all the time. Ships make money doing a couple of things. They carry things and they carry people. OK, so they carry things and they carry people. They go from town to town. as a way of making sure they don't have to carry too many supplies. They can buy things, they can trade things, but they're also dropping people off, picking people up, dropping off goods. picking up goods. Okay, so that process is the money making process. And at the same time, they're trying to go fast. So they're doing quick skips. They're also trying to avoid probably sailing at night a lot. Because sailing at night is how you get wrecked on rocks, or reefs or what have you. And so there is this kind of day trip hopping. And so that is the kind of activity that's occurring. And so even though the ships are basically traveling every day, there is this frequent stopping. And so that's why he could just cross over and get to the next point. Verse 15. We sailed from there and the next day came opposite Chios. The following day we arrived at Samos and stayed at Trigillium. The next day we came to Miletus. So this is just a tour little ports all over Greece. And they just hop, hop, hop. And that's the way the whole coast would be in the Mediterranean, is these little towns where you could land briefly. And so the ships would not typically cross the Mediterranean. They would not cross seas. You're just constantly kind of skipping along the coast. And so that's the way the traveling would work by sea. Verse 16, for Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend time in Asia. For he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost." So, you look back, we've had a pretty small period of time. It keeps telling us, here's a day, here's a day, here's a day, here's some five days, here's seven days. We go back into verse 5, and it tells us the days of unleavened bread. So, he's trying to get to Pentecost. That's a 50-day period. So we have a lot of activity being tracked here in detail. And prior to that, we've got, we're kind of skipping large periods of time. Think about this, we're at 56 to 57 AD right now. And so these earlier 19 chapters, we're dealing with something like 20 years of time after from Christ's ascension till this period. And now all of a sudden, we are going into detail about these, this element of the trip And so there's a reason that this has been given to us. There's a reason that we are being shown these details. And again, the historicity of things. But also, there must be details in here that we are supposed to be shown, that are supposed to be captured for us to understand principles. And so rather than overlooking something like verses 7 to 12 and saying, this is just an interesting story about Eutychius being resurrected and connecting it to Peter, Why do we have the details about the first day of the week? Why does it talk about the breaking of bread and then have the breaking of bread for the house in there? And so when we think about the fact that this is a book written by God, that it is sufficient, that the details are planned by the all-wise eternal mind, you have to give heed to details. If you are reading your Bible and you are reading a section and you think, you know what, this section is a little bit boring. I'm going to just get past it. You need to use that as a signal for yourself to say, there's something here and I'm not seeing the value of it, but God put it here. And so it would be worth checking some commentary, stopping and thinking, what is this passage here for? Genealogies are a classic example of that. So you have those texts, and there's value to them. And lists of names, like we just went over early on in chapter 20, you know, it's important to see where do these things appear elsewhere, it's important to see what you're being reminded of. It's kind of like if you're watching a movie and you get a flashback and it's kind of just a reminder for you of the previous scene. That's the literary value. And so. that is only effective when you know the meaning. Think about singing psalms. We just sang Psalm 43, right? It referenced harps and just moved on. If you don't know what role musical instruments play in the worship of God, that reference is going to be meaningless to you. It's going to be a sign without meaning. And so the Bible is full of things like that. And so when there are lists, stop and think. When there is close detail, stop and think. Now, next time we'll be going into Paul's speech with the Ephesian elders. Paul avoids going to Ephesus and spending time in Asia because of his speed, but he calls the elders from there. He's basically doing a drive-by, but he doesn't want to miss the opportunity to see them. And so he's going to talk to them. And I want to give you a little highlight of what we'll be going into next time, which is verse 17. From Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. That verse right there, the idea that there's one church there in Ephesus, is a very important verse in the arguments for Presbyterianism historically. The church in Jerusalem, the council at Acts 15, and the church at Ephesus are New Testament examples of a church being extremely large. In Jerusalem, you have thousands of people in the church. And so how can you call it a single church? Is it a single congregation? Is it like Joel Osteen's assembly? Or is it that they are broken into multiple local assemblies, but they are bound together by a shared government, a council, a regional council? And so therefore, able to be called a church because there's an assembly that unites them, a court. And so this verse is used for that. You think back on Ephesus and all the detail about the large number of people, the economic impact, the huge amount of money spent on burnt books, right? And that all suggests that there's a lot of people there. And there's a lot of teaching there. Paul's teaching there for a long time. And so is he sticking around to teach for that many years of his ministry when there's not very many people? So there's a list of arguments that are used. At Westminster Assembly, you have the Congregationalists, which were a minority, and the Presbyterians there arguing about this. And so you have a record of them talking about this verse. There are pages of debate about this verse. So good stuff coming. Comments, questions, objections from the voting members. Then, let's pray. Yes, Mr. Nye. Thank you. I have just a couple of questions, just for clarification. So when Paul is ministering in Croatia on the fourth day, verses 7 to 12, Are you saying that the first example, or the first instance of breaking bread, that was the Lord's Supper, but then, after midnight on the following day, in verse 11, when Paul came up and broke the bread and he talked for a long while, are you saying that that is not the Lord's Supper, but just like a fellowship meal? As the question is, am I saying the first breaking of bread is the Lord's Supper, but the second breaking of bread is not the Lord's Supper, but is instead just a hospitality or fellowship meal? Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. OK, thank you. I think just I wanted to give a quick clarification that when you were talking about verses 13 through 16, You mentioned that they were kind of like hopping along the Greek coast. And I just wanted to make a big graphic correction that it was the Asia minor coast instead of Greece. Sure, yes. So the point was that the location was not the Greek coast that they're hopping along, but it is the coast of Asia Minor. Yes, it's accurate. Forgive me. It's the Hellenic world. These are all places that are colonized by Greeks. It's a continuous Greek culture, but it is not Greece. You're absolutely right. Forgive me for that mistake. Thanks. And that's true. And he definitely understood that way as well. But you're right. You're absolutely right. Thank you for the correction. You're right. So thank you. Anything else? Okay, great. Then let's pray. Father, we ask that you would bless the preaching of your word that you would give us wisdom out of it. You would help us to see benefit to see application. to be concerned with the details of your word, to draw implications, to look at things, I ask that you would help us to consider carefully the application of the Lord's Day, when it begins, when it ends, and if I am applying that wrongly, I ask that you would help me to see it, help the discussion to make that clear, that we not wrongly have a change from evening to evening, to midnight to midnight, but that we only do that if that is what is being taught, and that we be careful to consider those things. We thank you for the example of the Apostle Paul and of his traveling companions and their concern to carry out their duties well, the work that they did, and the ways in which they are giving to us encouragement to redeem the time. And so we thank you for this record. We thank you that you are the God of history who has determined the end from the beginning. And we thank you that we have these kinds of details and connections to be able to see the way in which you are displaying your glory and history. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.