It seems like in recent history there has been an uptick in our culture of what some are calling the “happiness craze.” There have been thousands of new books published on the topic… here’s just a few titles… Happy Money, Happiness for Beginners, and the Happiness Advantage… with this in mind… I find it pretty interesting that most studies are now arguing that pursuing happiness tends to not provide happiness…
What seems to be a growing realization is that more than happiness… we need meaning, purpose, or a sense of mission. Having a sense of purpose actually tends to create a greater sense of happiness, just as a by-product… The authors of one study wrote this, “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.” But while being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As one of the researchers said, “Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.” But happiness is often a byproduct.
And I think this is something that is probably true for us across the board… we want our lives to matter. We want to get to the end of our lives and be able to draw the conclusion that my life meant something, it had value, there was purpose behind it… and once a person has found those things… we say, “that’s the good life.” That’s what a life well-lived looks like.
Scripture addresses this sort of thing, too… one of the keys to having a life well-lived, a life of value, is to have a sense of purpose outside of yourself…
I’m gonna make the big idea clear here from the get-go… this is what Acts 20 is all about… here’s what Paul says in Acts 20:24, “…I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” This is the hinge of the text.
Here’s the Joe Seaton paraphrase: A “Whatever It Takes” life finishes its course by fulling it’s ministry. He’s talking about Purpose. And in essence says, “what’s my life worth if I don’t finish the course by fulfilling by ministry?” He recognizes the things that matter most in life… the things worth devoting his life to… the things that provide purpose…
Acts 20 has been called Paul’s farewell tour and address… and we’re picking the story up in a bit of an abrupt place… so I’ll give a little context to bolster our understanding. This is the third time that Paul goes out on a missionary journey in the book of Acts… and on this journey he stops to say goodbye to the leadership of the Ephesian church. He’s getting ready to head into Jerusalem… where his story will kind of mimic Jesus’ story… but before then, he shares this moment of deep relational emotion, full of wisdom, and full of lessons for us as we walk the path of faith, too.
And some of the details of this text are pretty incredible… I don’t think Paul was trying to leave us with ingredients for a life well-lived… but as he says goodbye to these people he cared about, that’s exactly what we find — a life that has left an impact on others and has honored God. And a model for us to emulate… a person who has lived “the good life.”
Acts 18:22-23, “When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and went down to Antioch. 23 And having spent some time there, he left and passed successively through the Galatian region and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples.”
Something similar is said in chapter 19… it was kind of characteristic of Paul’s life… Paul would spend some time with the people he was ministering to. Sometimes it’s months… sometimes its years, as it was in the city of Ephesus… and there are times when we don’t really know how much time he spent there.
You could liken it to social media… what happens with our online presence? We tend to post only the highlights of our life… and we tend to leave out some of the gaps… in my mind, this creates one of the questions that I have for Paul about his life and ministry… he’s going to go on his Farewell Journey… his third tour… and he’s stopping and saying goodbye to various churches along the way… and we don’t actually know the extent of his goodbyes or all the churches he served… we don’t know the full accounting of his time… we get the highlight reel, but we don’t really get to see what took place in the in between… notice what Luke says… “he left and passed successively through the Galatian region and Phrygia, strengthening all the disciples…”
The statement is a little ambiguous and open-ended… we don’t exactly know all the intricate details of these interactions with the disciples he’s going around visiting and strengthening… We don’t know all the details of what these stops looked like… or what that strengthening looked like… what is clear is that he’s spending time with people… As we walk on this journey with Paul this morning… I want us to notice that specifically…
Living a “whatever it takes” life may at times be mundane. If we desire our lives to be characterized by faithful ministry, “whatever it takes”… we must realize that we can romanticize things to be something that they’re not… something that is just not realistic. Time in ministry and a life of ministry [and I’m talking about followers of Jesus, not paid church staff…] can certainly be mundane and ordinary at times.
We see this illustrated in one of my favorite parables in the Gospel of Mark… it’s called the parable of the seed… in Mark 4:26-29… Jesus tells of a farmer who plants seed… he says that the farmer plants seed and when he plants seed he puts it in the ground, and then every day he spends time and he works and he toils and he goes to sleep and he wakes and he works and toils and he goes to sleep and every day he continues to work and yet doesn’t actually know if his labor is going to produce a harvest… but eventually that seed he put in the ground sprouts and it grows and it yields a harvest… and Jesus just says, “But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (v. 29). And there’s a mystery in that text… in essence, “the farmer doesn’t exactly know like how all of that came about…” He was just faithfully going about his work…
I love that parable because in many ways that parable describes this mystery of time in between the mundane and the ordinary… and that is the place where so much of what we do takes place. Much of our labor may look like working in a mundane way and just waiting in that in between phase… hoping for a harvest to come…
That was certainly true in Paul’s life and ministry… and yet through it all there was this consistent theme of discipleship… Paul is going to go around and he’s going to make disciples… not a surprise to us… after all… that is kind of what the Great Commission is all about… it is what he was commanded to do… and it is also what we are called to do… to go into all the world and to make disciples, baptizing and teaching…
And that’s one thing I want you to see about Paul’s ministry… making disciples takes time… and so Paul goes from place to place and he ministers there… like in Corinth in Acts 18… and in our Bibles it’s one chapter… but in Paul’s life… it’s a year and a half… in Ephesus, its going to be 3 years… other places it might just be a few months… and yet regardless of the time frame in each place… one of the things that holds all these pursuits together… is that making disciples doesn’t happen overnight! Making disciples takes time… and we can flip through the pages of Scripture… much like how we flip through someone’s Facebook page… and only see the highlight reel… it leaves thinking, “wow, look at all the disciples that Paul made” and yet we would be hard-pressed to make sure that we slow down the clock and kind of count it as the days go by… Paul stayed in Corinth for a while… and he made disciples there…we just a couple highlights…he made an investment.
He’s going to talk to the Ephesian elders later on in our text this morning… and he’s going to reminisce about the three years he spent there with them, making disciples.
Can I just encourage you for a just a minute? The book of Acts comes across as very exciting… if you read it cover to cover… it outlines this very exciting quest… it’s a narrative about the gospel going out from Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria and the surrounding regions and to the very ends of the world… and sometimes we can get really caught up in the excitement of gospel expansion, that we fail to recognize that in between the lines was the mundane, daily routine, of putting in the time and effort to live faithfully and make disciples. Like a farmer working the ground not knowing when the harvest was going to come… we live life faithfully, make disciples, and trust God to provide the harvest.
Making disciples can take time. But let me remind what a life well-lived looks like… A “Whatever It Takes” life finishes its course by fulling it’s ministry.
In fact, if we jump ahead to Acts 20… you may remember that time when Paul was preaching and making disciples, and he actually put someone to sleep… Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.” This text is so encouraging to me…
People have been falling asleep in church for a long time… First day of the week… the day of the communal gathering moved from Saturday to Sunday… because something significant happened on a Sunday morning. It was a church day and they gathered together to break bread, the church got together and they were going to take communion together.
And Paul was delivering this message… he was supposed to leave the next day, but his sermon went a little long [as sermons tend to do sometimes]… but it went so long that Luke just says he prolonged his message until midnight! … so I don’t want to hear any complaints if we ever go for more than an hour and 15…
Acts 20:8-9, “There were many lamps in the upper room where we were gathered together. [I imagine this detail is included to help us make sense of the narrative… lamps were burning, which means the room was probably feeling a little warm and cozy… and I can see why eyes maybe started getting a little heavy… ] 9 And there was a young man named Eutychus sitting on the window sill, sinking into a deep sleep; and as Paul kept on talking, he was overcome by sleep and fell down from the third floor and was picked up dead.
While I was in college at OCC, they had classes starting at 7 AM. And I remember there being a few students that sure acted like Eutychus in class…
With Eutychus, I don’t know if this was his fault or Paul’s fault… but he falls asleep, falls out the window, and dies. Paul ends up going down and raises him from the dead, and then continues to teach them… they break some bread and eat, and he leaves…the boy is alive, and the church is comforted. 
I just want you to see that sometimes making disciples can actually look a little mundane and ordinary… and even though that was an exciting story… it was born out of a sermon that by our standards went way too long… and by a kid who was clearly sleepy and bored… and I want us to keep that in mind as Paul is journeying around on this farewell tour. He continues to make disciples… and that discipleship wasn’t about him… and its not about us… discipleship is about Jesus… its centered on His Gospel… and this is what we’re called to… this is our mission… this is why we exist… we make disciples of Jesus, who can go on and become self-initiating, multiplying disciples of Jesus themselves.
And here’s what’s so cool about his… His discipleship didn’t stop at one generation… he makes disciples who go out and make other disciples… and they’re not disciples of Paul, but disciples of Jesus. Earlier in Acts Paul made disciples of a couple people named Priscilla and Aquila… and they go out and make a disciple of Apollos… and Apollos goes and makes disciples in Corinth…
And Paul spent 3 years in Ephesus… and some of the disciples had grown to become elders in the Ephesian church… and Paul sends for them to tell them goodbye… and some of his parting words are about going out and continuing to make disciples… and as his time with this group of people is coming to an end, he’s still set on making disciples. It was his goal, his mission… and it just makes me wonder… when was the last time you as an individual or as a family decided to sit down and have a conversation about what it means to make disciples and what it could look like for you to make disciples.
This was everything to Paul. He went out on all these journeys and we just call them his missionary journeys, and the entire purpose was to make more disciples of Jesus. Making disciples was the why of his existence… that’s just how he lived his life.
And this is kind of the theme of Acts… and it’s kind of like our story, too. We take the Gospel with us as we go… and it’s in the midst of all this that Paul defines a well-lived life for all of us… and with all that context in mind… all that disciple-making… let’s look at the marks of a life well-lived… let’s see what a life of purpose looks like… I’m just gonna highlight three truths from our text… a life of purpose:
- Serves God Selflessly (Acts 20:18-19)
“You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time, 19 serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews;”
He’s saying goodbye… and he starts by saying, “remember how I lived among you.” He reminds them of his ministry. And he uses some weird words… he uses words that would have been understood as shameful, rather than held up as badges of honor… he uses words like “serving,” some translations call him a “slave” to the Lord… he served with “humility” in spite of Jewish “plots” against him.
These words all would have carried the weight of shame in that culture… but for Paul, honor and shame had been reversed in God’s Kingdom. That which the world prizes, he considered shameful. That which the Kingdom prizes, the world would call shameful.
He doesn’t focus on his accomplishments or accolades… instead he highlights these paradoxes of God’s Kingdom. Humility… tears… trials… oppositions… his life wasn’t marked by fame, fortune, or personal comfort… his life was marked by sacrifice and dedication, and an unwavering commitment to God’s call. His life had purpose.
Ours should, too. We are called to live lives of humble service. Jesus puts it this way in Mark 9:35b, “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”
The New Testament is full of those kinds of paradoxes of God’s kingdom… Losing is winning. Defeat is victory. Failure is success. Weak is strong. Stand last in line to get there first. Servants are leaders. If we give up our lives for Jesus’s sake, we find them. God chose weak/foolish things in this world to shame what seems strong and smart. What the world thinks fancy and amazing is really rubbish. Jesus commanded us to “crucify” ourselves every day and follow Him (Luke 9.23)..and a favorite of minePaul says, “If we die with him, we’ll also live with him. If we endure hardship, we’ll reign with him…” 2 Timothy 2.11-12
- Paul modeled this attitude. He didn’t boast in his success, but in his faithful commitment to the mission God had given him. So here’s the question for us… are we humble servants, focused on God’s will and the good of others? Or are we seeking personal gain and recognition? And here’s the mystery of this:
- When we embrace the paradoxes of the Kingdom we find them to be true.
Lesslie Newbigin was a theologian and a missionary and he once said, “If the church does not exist to fulfill God’s purposes on earth, then it ceases to be the church.”
I think Paul would not only affirm that statement, but would include that if a follower is not doing what the leader did or said to do, then you can’t honestly say they’re still a follower!
I think one of the greatest lies the enemy ever told was that we are at peace. That we’ll be alright, if we act good enough we’ll be okay, that we don’t actually need anyone’s help, there’s no need for a savior because we are at peace.
If we are alright, then we don’t need a Savior because there’s nothing to be saved from! And then you’ve got post-modernism, everything goes, whatever you feel is right is right. There is no absolute, and we can’t actually know anything for sure, and we can all do whatever we want because we are at peace…what a lie.
We are not at peace! The Bible describes it as a war. The enemy is actually described as a lion prowling around, looking for someone to devour. That is an apex predator, waiting to kill you. And we do not take that seriously enough.
But we’ve also been equipped to resist him, to stand firm, and actually to send him running. Our work is spiritual, not physical, our weapons are supernatural, and our work is holy and set apart. A follower of Jesus toils and strives to serve our Lord and Savior, proclaiming by his life, death and resurrection from the grave, not only to our families, churches, and communities, but to the entire world. That is a follower who’s work is approved by God, with no need to be ashamed. A “Whatever It Takes” life finishes its course by fulling it’s ministry. A life of purpose:
- Declares the Word Faithfully (Acts 20:20-21, 26-27)
“20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, 21 solemnly testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
26-27, “Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. 27 For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.”
Paul knew where the power was and didn’t shy away from it. Paul did not hesitate to preach what was profitable, even when it was hard. He didn’t soft-pedal the truth. He went out of his way to declare and teach people to turn to God and put their faith in Jesus. Notice the relentless focus on Jesus. God blesses a ministry that is centered on Jesus. I think of what Charles Spurgeon said: “Preach you Christ, and Christ, and Christ, and Christ, and nothing else but Christ.” We need sermons and conversations and people and prayers that are saturated with the news of who Jesus is and what He has done for us. One of the marks of a faithful ministry is faithfulness to the Word, even when it’s hard, and that leads us to Jesus, because God works through his Word and delights in exalting Christ.
Do you realize that you can’t trust anything unless its grounded in this book? Because I believe the same words that spoke life into Creation, is the same Word that I now have in front of me. The very breath that spoke Creation into being, is the same breath that we have in this inerrant Word of God!
And there is power in the Word of God. And we want to raise up a generation of people that crave the Word of God in worship. A people that demand the Word of God in every aspect of their being! That all baptized believers with the gift of the Holy Spirit would be completely devoted to the inerrant, God-inspired, flawless, beautiful Word of God.
We need a love for Jesus that can replace any love of this world that we might have. We must devote ourselves to Jesus. Remain in Him and He will remain in you. This isn’t a “do this and do that” religion. This is a relationship with God. This is the gospel of God’s grace!
That ever since man fell in the garden, God has been pursuing our redemption. Nothing can take away our guilt before a holy and just God except the blood of Jesus Christ at Calvary, where He died as a sacrificial lamb on the Cross. Nothing but the blood of the Savior of the World, this Christ Jesus, this divine God-Man, this carpenter from Nazareth who is God, can save us from our sins. May that be the message of your life. A life of purpose:
- Pursues the Mission Diligently (Acts 20:22-24)
“And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, 23 except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me. 24 But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.”
His future is uncertain… what is certain though… is that he’s gonna get beat up. He knows that in every city he preaches in, that’s what lies ahead… and to him, that is just part of the race he’s been given to run… his life was not his own. He was bought with a price and called to proclaim this marvelous message of God’s grace… he was going to make disciples… and if he died in that task, he considered that gain.
In essence he says, “My life is nothing to me. My only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me.” His focus is on fulfilling the task God gave him… not on his own comfort, safety, or reputation… he just wanted to do what God wanted him to do.
So here’s the question for us… what’s your ministry? What role are you playing in fulfilling the Great Commission? How are you laboring and toiling for the Gospel with the purpose of making disciples? We can’t finish our course if we don’t know our course and we can’t fulfill our ministry if we don’t know our ministry!
And this is the very purpose of life!! This is the why of our existence!! Paul knew that fulfilling God’s purposes for him on earth was the most important part of his life… his life was secondary to the calling God placed on him… he lived the words of John the Baptist… He must increase… I must decrease. Doing what God called him to do is where he found value in life… it was where he found purpose…
And I want that to be true of you and of me… I want us to be so committed to our mission that we would face challenges, endure hardship, and even give up our own desires to see it through to completion. A “Whatever It Takes” life finishes its course by fulling it’s ministry.