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Dr. Eric Russ | When Christ Meets a Tired Church
Sunday Evening, November 23, 2025
Given by Dr. Eric Russ | Pastor of Evangelism and Outreach, Christ Covenant Church
When Christ Meets a Tired Church
Acts 20:7-12
Hey family! I don't know, guys, I was singing to myself. I was like, man, I got to step up my singing stamina game, because toward that sixth song, the book started getting heavy. You know what I'm saying? Like looking around, is anybody feeling like that around here? I appreciate it, but I was like, man, I gotta do some reps. So, if you're like me, you know, shake it out a little bit now, because we still in the waiting room, ok?
This series has been, you know, some of our favorite passages. And Acts 20, if you're not familiar with it, is – on its face can look like a very hilarious passage. It can also seem almost insignificant, but it's actually extremely important to the life of the church, and so I'm excited, by God's grace, to be able to just walk in it and with it with you guys. So, if you will just bow your heads as we ask the Lord's help, that would be awesome.
Holy God, we are grateful that we're yours. We are thankful that only by your grace, we are not right – like right now, even out here worshiping ourselves, giving ourselves over to things that don't honor you, that you have us here. We know that that's a divine appointment. And so, there's some people who are visitors, and Lord, we ask that the gospel would be clear, that our hope in Christ would be so sure and that you would draw people to yourself. And Lord, I ask that you would use me even now. Would you speak through me? Would you give us attentive ears and allow us to just to take away – just would you take away – all distractions so that you might be exalted? And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, if you would turn to Acts chapter 20 with me. And as you're turning, I just want to encourage you – to give you a little backdrop. It's important to remember that in Acts 19, what's happened, if you don't know, is that Paul – well, basically Luke, who's our author – shows us the gospel power interrupting the idolatry that's happening in Ephesus, which is where Paul was beforehand. And so, what happens is you have Paul's ministering in Ephesus, the Lord is doing the wonderful things, and then we move here to a quieter moment in Troas, which is a port city. It's near the ancient site of Troy. Now Paul, who's this missionary guy who has become a Christian and is proclaiming Christ, he's now on his, what we call, third missionary journey. By this point, Paul has – he's planted churches, right? Across Asia Minor, across Greece. He's been strengthening the disciples. He's been going around praying for people. He's been collecting funds for the poor in Jerusalem, and preparing for what we believe is actually, probably, his final visit of churches, this whole round here, before, likely, imprisonment or affliction or even what we know to be martyrdom. And so, it's in that context we have this Troas church – they gather in this upper room in Acts chapter 20, probably in a home of a wealthy believer. And so that's kind of the background we have here. So now let me do a little – if you can look at the text – let me do a little run through the passage, and then what we'll do is we'll make some observations, and then we'll make some, hopefully, some important interpretations based on those observations. So I just gave us the backdrop, ok?
So, we start in verse 7. The scriptures read, “On the first day of the week” Right? That phrase, even, that Greek phrase sabbaton, mia ton sabbaton, is – it kind of alarms you to this whole sense of the Sabbath, right? So this Sabbath language – it connects the gathering to the resurrection of Christ. So, you have these people gathering, and what you should see is like, oh, they're gathering like how and it's reminding us of this the first day of worship. In fact, this passage, family, is the earliest reference to Sunday worship, signaling this whole concept of new creation, this whole rhythm that we see the church entering into. So he says, “On the first day of the week when we gathered together to break bread.” So we have Paul – he uses this term breaking bread – we know this is a clear allusion to the Lord's Supper. Okay, so we have the Sabbath, we have this word picture, we have the Lord's supper. Then it says Paul talked with them. So, they gathered together, they broke bread, and then Paul talked with them. And this means a little more than just preaching, guys. It refers to this kind of a dialogical, like this reasoned instruction. So what Paul is doing here is he's catechizing the people of God. He's preparing the people of God. This is not – he's not entertaining them at all. This is participatory. This is spiritually rich stuff that's happening right here. This is – he's forming community here. He's extending his teaching, and this is serious in the mind of Luke as he's presenting this to the readers.
So Paul, now he's teaching, and it says he “was intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.” It says “there were many lamps” (verse 8) “in the upper room where we were gathered.” I don't have a lot of time to talk about the lamp – that whole picture of light being in a room, the light of God, the goodness of God – but we see here, we have the we (this is in verse 7) because Luke is traveling with him. So he's talking about himself, and they've been in Troas about seven days, and you see, if you notice, as I'm talking right now, I'm showing you – well the scriptures are showing you – all these little word pictures, and what's happening is he's building evidence. He’s starting to make it clear that this wasn't just happenstance, that this wasn't just an all-nighter, but that this actually is a farewell moment for Paul. In fact, right after this, he actually gives a farewell speech in Ephesus. So, think of it. Paul's last sermon to the people he deeply loves is packed into one urgent evening that seems open-ended because he's teaching. And it continues on in verse 9. Look what it says here. It says, “A young man” (in that context) – “a young man named Eutychus sitting at the window sank into a deep sleep as Paul talk still longer.” So Paul told him, I'll be done at midnight, right? Which was a while altogether in itself, but he still has some more to share. And it says, and being asleep in the scriptures, and being asleep, “being overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.” So Eutychus falls asleep in the window, and he dies. And verse 10 says, "But Paul went down and bent over him, and taking him in his arms, said, ‘Don't be alarmed, for his life is in him.’ And when Paul had gone up” (verse 11) “and had broken bread and eaten, he conversed with them a long while until daybreak and so departed." So Paul ended up talking to them all night, right? So this says – the text says – daybreak, which was 4:30 a.m., 5:30 a.m., depending on the time of the year, and it ends in verse 12 when he says, “and they took the youth away alive and were not a little comforted.”
So, let's unpack this. Notice in verse 8, they are gathered in an upper room. Clearly this is last supper vibes right? Luke is making an unmistakable connection here. This is Paul's last meal, and he's teaching the session with the community he loves. He's gathered in this upper room. It says that he's breaking bread. It says he's teaching longer into the night. Clearly paralleling, guys (right?), Jesus' final meal, the upper room discourse. See what he's doing here. This is absolutely intentional. Both scenes – both when you see Jesus's scene and here now – they involve the passing of a torch. So you have the passing of a torch in an upper room with a meal. You have spiritual fatigue. These individuals are tired. They're tired as they're identifying with Christ outside the camp. And you have the looming shadow of suffering coming in the future, which we actually understand what happened with Jesus. But that's going to happen with Paul if you continue to read the book of Acts even after you leave here. And all of that – all of that – is centering their worship on the word and table. In the midst of that – okay, so in the midst of that backdrop set by Luke, you got Eutychus – his name actually means, and I’m not making this up – it means fortunate, which is ironic, right? Because a brother hits his dome, and he dies. So Luke, being a physician, it’s interesting that he confirms – says he was taken up dead. So you have this odd reality here that you have a miracle. So the question you need to be asking yourself as we're looking at this text is like, okay, is this a random, isolated miracle? Well, we absolutely know it's not random, right? Because we've just made the case with all the evidence that you got the connection to the upper room. It tells us there must be more here. And Luke doesn't disappoint, family. Look what he does here. He gives us even more evidence.
Look at what he says within the miracle in verse 10. It says Paul bent over him. Paul's physical posture – what does it do? It echoes. It's echoing. It's echoing Elijah and Elisha. In 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings chapter 4, they both do the same thing. So, you see Luke is masterful. All these allusions he's providing, all these word pictures, all these memories and this information he wants to evoke as this is happening lets us know this wasn't just a simple guy falling out a window, and that was kind of weird. That's not what's happening here. See, just like his prophetic predecessors, Elijah and Elisha, Paul descends, he embraces, and he speaks life to Eutychus. In fact, when Paul says, "Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him," Paul’s assurance – it actually recalls Jesus' assurance, right, in Luke 8, when he says, "She's not dead, but sleeping." You see, God's temporary resurrection of a person in scripture – when you see that, when God raises someone from the dead – what he's doing is actually, he's validating the prophet's authority, the one who raised him from the dead, and he's always foreshadowing the power of Jesus' lastingly raised from the dead. What am I saying? I'm saying that the beauty of all of that is that it points to Jesus, because it says, "Hey, guess what? Every person in the Bible that has been raised from the dead, they still died again. There's only one person who was raised from the dead and they are still living, and that is Christ from that resurrection.” So what you have here is you have this picture that he's trying to evoke in us, guys. We have a public miracle followed by a private parting, which happens in Elisha and Elijah's standpoint, and you have the commissioning of others. Man, it's a symbolic act.
What is the symbolic act he's trying to show us here? He's trying to show us that the resurrection hope is what he's focused on here – that the resurrection hope is what Paul is trying to frame as this final phase of this ministry. Think about this. In this narrative, you have the combined mention of first day of the week, upper room, the breaking of the bread. Luke is clearly pointing to the beauties and these rhythms of a community of followers of Jesus who centralizes on the ordinary means of grace. Let me say that again, because when you read this the tendency is to focus on the miracle, but actually the miracle is pointing to something, in that he is centralizing things on the ordinary means of grace, that this is the only story of someone rising from the dead, family, in the book of Acts in the second half, and so you would think you have somebody rising from the dead, that'll be a showstopper. You'll think they’d be like, wow, what's going on here, but it's not. This miracle is buried in the middle of a long sermon in a small room late at night. And yet Luke, what he does, he slows down and he zooms in, not to amuse you and me, right? A lot of times you'll hear this passage preached, and people want to laugh about falling out the window. I get all that, but it's not about it being an anecdote, but he's trying to tell you and me something about the nature of the church.
Let me say it another way. Either this is a subtle flex by Paul – let me tell you what I mean, right? Either Paul – and my good friend of mine brought this up – either it's like – I’ll give a hyperbolic example. It's like you’re sitting with a rich friend, and he says out the blue, you're like, you know, how's your day, man? Oh, it was pretty good. You know, I went to, you know, Trader Joe's, and I was, you know, parked my Ferrari, came back out, you know, there's a dent in my Ferrari, you know. So, I called the dealership, you know, and I tell him, "Let me buy another Ferrari." And it took about 45 minutes. They brought the Ferrari back. And so, I got the new Ferrari. Then I took, you know, James at soccer practice, and he just keeps talking as if he didn't say, "I had a dent in my Ferrari and I bought a new one." You ever have people like that? They'll say something, and so, is that Paul here? Is Paul basically saying, "Oh, it was supposed to be a big deal, but I'm gonna focus and just act like it wasn't a big deal"? And kind of just say, "Yeah, I'm preaching, and brother fall out the window. He dies, I go over to him, I heal him, we go back up, and we keep teaching.” And it's really important, but he didn't really want to make it a big deal. That's not what's happening here, family. I would say maybe what's happening is that this incident is actually to be a providential opportunity to teach and I dare say, even warn the church about the reality of the church and a priority. Or may I even say, to dignify – to dignify – what many of us overlook, and that is the primacy of God's word, the beauty of prayer, the reality of communion – to centralize and applaud the beauty of the slow, tired, ordinary life of a church that just simply gathers, that just simply listens, that just simply hopes.
Paul's point is that the resurrection-shaped life is centered – the resurrection hope life that we want, that we desire, that people are passionately about as Christians – that is actually centered not on spiritual miracles, but it's actually centered on word, prayer, and communion. Let me prove it to you. This term in our tradition we call the ordinary means of grace, okay, meaning that boring, faithful stuff that we do as a gathering of people every week. He's saying that that actually, in this text, gets to center stage as the arsenal – the actual bullets that the Lord uses for nourishment and sustenance. It's even artillery for spiritual battle. He's saying, "I am passing a baton." This is Paul. He's leaving, y'all. He has a speech to say. He's teaching these guys. What is he teaching them? He's passing a baton, and he's reminding them. He's saying, "Guys, the consistent resurrection power – we think it should be displayed in a huge revival. We think it should be displayed in a stadium where you have huge size miracles. But actually, we see in this text that resurrection power is in a tired room, with tired people, listening to a tired preacher. And in that fatigue, in that tiredness, in that unassuming reality, something happens. Quietly and undramatically, life returns. See, this resurrection is not for Eutychus alone, but it's Paul preparing the church not to just survive, family. This is Paul saying, I'm preparing you to live and endure after I'm gone. And how do you prepare a church to live and endure? He's about to leave, and the focus is the teaching and the fellowship of the saints. That's his focus. Luke includes this story before his farewell speech, family, in Ephesians for a reason. See, Paul is expressing the kind of church life we will need when all the apostolic voices fade, and ordinary disciples like you and me are carrying things out. He's saying it's a church that's devoted to the word even when tired. A gathered church around the table – that's not a spectacle. A church graced with resurrection hope, that it's not just simply about spiritual heroics. A church that knows how to carry one another's burdens is what he's pointing us to. He's leaving a legacy template for how the church can be resilient, Spirit-filled, and sustained by Christ when he is gone, family.
We're talking about resurrection power in the ordinary life of the church. See, when we hear that – can I have a pastoral moment? When we hear that, I want to propose to you that the trick of Satan is what he's battling after. It's what he's battling against, and that is this – that when you hear me say that the ordinary means of faithful preaching of the word of God and of sitting under God's truth and gathering together and experience the spiritual grace of communion and seeking the Lord in prayer – when you hear that, the question you got to ask yourself is, do we fall for the culture and for the lie that that's not enough? There has to be something more. There has to be something. I need some pizzazz. I need something crazy, right? See, Satan tricks you and me to say that the mundane, ordinary realities of what it means to walk with God just is not enough. Some of you will go off to college, and you'll get into Christian movements, and you'll see it. People will tell you – that's all you do is just pray? You just want to read your Bible, and love people, and care for the poor? And isn't there more to this spirituality? Reformers – we always get pegged as being a boring church, right? But may I suggest to you that the older I get, the more I'm not impressed with spiritual gifts, because it doesn't mean much for you to do all these supernatural things and then cheat on your wife. You want to show supernatural realities? Try being holy when you really want to be sinful. That takes supernatural power. Love people when you know they've done something to you wrong. Go and identify with the Lord Jesus Christ when the world says he's a horrible person, he's a mockery, he's a joke. And stand firm, and identify with your Savior outside the camp. Go and knock on doors. Love on people. Give yourself out as a drink offering.
See, Paul is saying, "You are spiritual when you're obeying the Lord." Satan dupes us in thinking there's something more to this. And God is saying, "No, don't you understand? That resurrection hope, that resurrection power, is shown when you are living out your faith rightfully in Christ, when you're being holy, and it's manifesting itself with how you care for your neighbor, how you love across difference. How the world tells us we need to separate, and we need to be in our own affinity groups, and we say no. We show that everyone – God has created every person in his image, and so because of that, we love all people. When we model those ordinary graces, those aspects, they tell the world that Christ is risen. You don't need more. Satan will always trick you and me in thinking – he tries to redefine resurrection power in your life. But God says choosing good when you want evil, loving your wife and being present with your kids, tithing, worshiping, identifying with the saints – a faithful, sustainable volition to Christ is what he is aiming for. Paul is not in there talking about the new, cool spiritual thing to do. He's saying, "Guys, it's going to be hard, and I might die. So even if they slay me, you continue to honor God, you continue to love each other, you continue to proclaim Christ.” And how does he do that? Through those ordinary, boring means of grace. So the question is not, are you staying awake? I think that's too easy. The question is deeper.
The question is, is the resurrection still true even when his people are tired and crowded and unimpressive? I had a friend – I remember 20-something, 26 years ago or so, I was on staff for Campus Crusade for Christ, and I was raising support. You have to raise money, and they support you, and then you're able to minister the gospel in your free time as a job, you know, because you have people like you supporting people like me doing that work of the ministry – and he was of a humble family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I was visiting – they wanted me to come and do a youth retreat, and so I went, and he said can you stay with us? Sure. So I go, and at night I’m going to bed, I'm like where am I sleeping? He shows me, and I noticed that the boys go and they sleep on the floor. But then I get into this one little bed. I was like, well, whose room is this? And David said, oh this is the boys’ room. And I said, well man, there's one bed. And he said, "Yeah, well man, I was thinking about buying another one," he said, "but man, then I couldn't give more to the church." This dude was supporting me $150 a month. And his kids – 14 years old at the time, 15 years old – were sleeping together in a bed, because he wanted to make sure he had a little more money to support the people of God. That was the first time he ever met me. This man was supporting me. He had never even met at me. See, only Spirit-filled Christians do dumb stuff like that. Luke has this text, family, as a hinge. It's like the door hinge, where he's trying to say – you have Paul's public ministry here, and then you have his private goodbyes, and it's about – he's trying to tell us, he's trying to tell these guys, the kind of community that God is forming. One that is word-saturated, that is resurrection-rooted, right? That's radically hopeful. Why? Because of what Christ has done.
Now, so you continue on, and you add in verses 11 and 12. Look at verses 11 and 12. Now notice that. So now you have this post-resurrection meal. It's the second meal, which mirrors Luke 24. You have even more. He brings more word picture. The risen Jesus eats with the disciples in Emmaus, right? Breaking bread and opening the scriptures. And so, we have Paul here, in Christlike role, breaking bread after the resurrection, continues to teach until dawn, like the Lord, and the church is not a little comforted. Scriptures say this meal isn't just about comfort. It's a sign of ongoing life, right? The presence of God, the restoration of fellowship is what he's doing here – after you see fear and death and then you have the meal, as it were. Now notice something, verse 11 – don't miss this. Luke doesn't end the story by saying, “healed him, and they were amazed.” You notice that? There's no fireworks. There's no frenzy. Just this: “they were not a little comforted” because they had seen the gospel in real time. You had a young man raised. You had the word preached. You had the church being fed, right? And the promise of the resurrection was woven into the fabric of their life together. You see this? It was a comfort, not just of the moment, but of the future. This what was happening here. So he was trying to prepare them for what would carry them long after Paul boarded the ship, what would carry them on. What are you talking about, Eric? What are you saying? In plain language, guys, Luke right here in verse 11 and 12, what he's trying to show you throughout the whole passage is he's careful in making sure that he doesn't turn the miracle into the main event. You hear that?
Let me prove it to you. He wants us to see that he doesn't turn the miracle into the main event. Well, that's odd. I would, and probably so would you. But notice Luke barely describes the miracle. He devotes just one sentence to the miracle itself, in verse 10. There's no dramatic dialogue in the text. There's no long prayer. There's no commands to rise. And immediately, the emphasis shifts back to the word and the table in verse 11. I mean, they didn't miss a beat. Can you imagine? You’re preaching – all of a sudden, crash – excuse me, y'all. Hold up one second. Go back down. Hey, man, get up. Hey y'all, he alright! Hey, man, get back upstairs – we ain't done. And he goes back, and the scripture says he just continues to teach. Why? Why do you think that's the case? The evidence and the context is clear that Luke's silence is intentional. He's not sensationalizing a miracle, family. This is extremely important. He's not sensationalizing, but he's situating this miracle. He's situating it within the resurrection-shaped rhythm of the church, saying after the resurrection, people – they go back upstairs, they break bread, they teach until daybreak. So clearly in this text here, he's not, “let's ride the high. We just had this awesome moment. Let's sing more songs and ride the high.” No, he says, let's eat. Let’s teach. Let me strengthen you for what's coming. That's what he's doing. He's saying, "I'm preparing the people." His focus here is spiritual vigilance. Paul spends the least time on the miracle and more on prepping for the spiritual battle by the renewing of the mind. That's what he's doing. And guys, that's just kind of boring. But it's the means in which God is saying, "Don't be fooled. Satan wants you to have all the bells and whistles." God says, "I want you to be faithful." Paul is arming the church for the future. He's not inviting them just to dwell on a past wonder.
Look at this – think about this, family. The subject matter – think about the subject matter in the New Testament. Fact check me on this. You go read, apart from the book of Acts where he's describing the beginnings of the new church, and so you have miracles because he's validating who these people are and bringing together all the different types of people is one is probably the modus operandi behind many of the miracles in Acts - apart from Acts and Corinthians, where we're talking about the Holy Spirit, and people are doing things and abusing of gifts and things of that nature – apart from that, when you read through the epistles, you know what you see? A dear friend of mine was talking about this – he was so insightful when he said this to me – he said, "E, you see a boring church." Think about that. Family, think about that. Think about the subject matter in the epistles. Relationship with the Spirit. Love your neighbor. Give to the poor. Defend against false teachers. Protect sound doctrine. Suffering. Trials. Fighting sin. Being holy. Forgiving people. Serving others. Being obedient. Self-control. Prayer. Missions. Being a good daddy. Being a good child. Being a good mommy. That's just normal, everyday stuff that God asks us to do. That's what it means. That's interesting to me, that that's what the epistles are chock full of. You see, what he’s trying to teach us, family? You see what he's trying to teach us? So in verse 11, Luke is masterfully mimicking the flow of the Christian life. That's what he's doing. He says the second meal submits the church's identity of the people that they say, "Hey guys, we're the people of the resurrection." And so just as Jesus breaks bread, just as Jesus suffered, just as Jesus rises from the dead, and then he eats again on the Emmaus road, he says, "So now the church lives out that same rhythm." That's what we do. This is Paul's last supper with his local body. And so, like Jesus, his farewell is indeed saturated with the word, with love and warning and resurrection hope and table fellowship. And God wants you and me to put on our spiritual glasses and to see that as powerful, that resurrection hope. Look what God is doing in the Spirit. He's teaching, he's training them to go out to a world and identify with Christ. The first meal is spiritual formation. The second meal is about resilience.
In your own time, read Luke. Both in the gospel and Acts, miracles always serve the word. They never overshadow it. And that's why Eutychus’s resurrection is not a distraction. It's a picture of what the word does, right? That the word does that. When you sit under the authority of the word, it raises the weary. God’s truth – it re-gathers the wandering, right? It sustains the faithful. We got to be careful, family. He's trying to help us. He's trying to help them understand how to identify what true spirituality is, because you know we go out here chasing stuff. You know, it reminds me, when I was in college, I was interning with Proctor & Gamble, and they take you out to, you know, they take you out to one of the plants. And so they make a ton of stuff, but at this point, they're making – we're at a soap plant. And so the engineers come up to me, and one of the engineers, he kind of bumps me, and he kind of giggles. He's all excited, you know? And he felt excited, he had this, like, engineering secret to tell me, you know? He was like, "Hey, Eric." And I was like, "What, man?" He was like, "Did you know that the bubbles do nothing?” It’s like, "What, bro? What are you talking about?" He was like, "The bubbles, you know – you know, the lather – they do nothing. Actually, the ingredients, those are what kill the germs and that's what washes you clean. Actually, the bubbles are just for psychological rest for the people." Like, what? He was trying to – but I thought about it. I thought that is extremely insightful that we so dumb that they like, you know what, we got to clean them, but we'll clean. But you know what? They probably don't even think they clean. So, man, make some bubbles come up. And you got the bubbles going. So, now they think they clean, even though they was clean before the bubbles came, but that'll help them out. So, in essence, the bubbles are the hype man for the active ingredient, correct? Right? It's not doing the work, but it's actually pointing and allowing the real thing to do the work. Now, imagine if it’s a hype man, I was thinking to myself, that's where we get in trouble as the kingdom people.
In hip-hop, you have hype men. You have the guy with the turntable in the back, y'all. Alright, don't laugh at me, but you know, and they're screaming the main artist’s name. You know what I'm saying? And so, you know, can you imagine if it's Run DMC – I'm dating myself – or it's Jay-Z or somebody, and that guy back there like, you know, he's doing his thing, and you come run up and you stare at the hype man like, "Yeah, boy." Yeah. You would look ridiculous, because the hype man would look at you and be like, "Bro, I came – I'm pointing to him. I came so you could see him." In Christianity, God's supernatural workings – as it were, even his Holy Spirit says, "What are you doing looking at me when my job is to point to him? I'm just the hype man." What he's doing here, he's trying to train our eyes to quit looking at the hype man and to focus on the main act, and that is Christ. If in here some of us would have stopped the service right after the miracle, thrown a celebration, right, talked about ministry stories, but Paul doesn't do that. What he does, family – he stops, he eats, he teaches, he stays, because he understood that the church needed most not amazement – they needed formation, to be trained up on what it means to be God's people and live that out faithfully. Resurrection hope – it never just lifts you up. It prepares you to walk through the dark until daybreak. That's what resurrection hope does. And that's what he's trying to do for us. And that's what he's trying to do for his people before he leaves. So Luke gives us this story so we remember the church really thrives when it clings to God's word, gathers in hope, and trusts that the resurrection is still breathing and is still active in tired rooms just like this.
So, family, from the text, Paul wants you and me to be God's people, to be filled with that resurrection hope, to be able to cast down idols and not idolize miracles, to be able to embrace this resurrection-shaped life that we see so clearly in the text here, and to see hope as not just a flash. Hope isn't a flash, but hope is about formation, God's word, being in prayer, being with his people in communion, in fellowship – which, as it were, when we are experiencing those necessary diets, it fuels us to do that tired, sacrificial ministry work in these streets of loving people and serving people and proclaiming the word to the lost, both in word and deed, so that the world would hear and see and experience the gospel and hopefully respond in faith. That's what he's preparing those people to do. That's what he's preparing us to do. He's preparing us to experience that resurrection hope, so that we might be his people to this world, and so that we might enjoy him. Will you pray with me, please?
Lord, we ask that you would allow Acts 20 to always be in our hearts – whenever we glance by it, to remember your priority of gifts, your priority of miracles, your priority of the ordinary means of grace. May we not rest in the personality of even our church, where this truth kind of deems well for us, but yet we need to still search our hearts, perhaps take more risks. But Lord, we ask that you would allow, by your grace, for your glory, for us to clearly depict what it means to be a people that live in light of the resurrection. And we ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.