Dennis Tuuri

# The Day of Resurrection

Sermon title is the day of resurrection. We’ve been singing about the resurrection and the day of resurrection being preeminently focused upon the Lord’s day, the Christian Sabbath. This is the day when we’ll always think of our sins and death and God’s pitying eye beholding those who are consigned and condemned to death and raising us up to new life. Let’s stand in new life and hear the word of our king.

Acts 20 beginning at verse one. And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia. And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece, and there three months. And when the Jews laid wait for him, as he was about to sail into Syria, he purposed to return through Macedonia. There accompanied him unto Asia, Sopater of Berea, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe and Timothy and of Asia, Tychicus and Trophimus.

These going before tarried for us at Troas. And we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread and came unto them to Troas in five days where we abode seven days. And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart on the morrow, and continued his speech until midnight. And there were many in the upper chamber where they were gathered together.

And there sat in the window a certain young man named Eutychus being fallen into a deep sleep. And as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down to sleep and fell down from the third loft and was taken up dead. And Paul went down and fell on him, and embracing him, said, “Trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him.” When he therefore was come up again, and had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, until break of day.

So he departed and they brought the young man alive and were not a little comforted.

Let’s pray. Father, we pray that we might indeed be greatly comforted, greatly encouraged in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and in our daily struggles as we move from death to life. We pray Lord God to that end you would illumine this text for understanding. We ask that your Holy Spirit would cause our minds to accept it, to understand it, and cause our hearts to desire to walk in obedience to it and to be thrilled and encouraged by the message of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.

You may be seated and the younger children whose parents desire it for them may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools is pretty well known. Some preachers really like this text. I heard that Mr. Leithart—or however you pronounce his name. We need a definitive statement on that accord, don’t we?

The main speaker at the winter workshop last weekend referred to this text and also the preaching of Ezra and he said there only two really worship services recorded for us in the scriptures and in both of them the preachers preach for hours and hours and hours. So a lot of preachers like this text Paul preaching on to midnight and all and a lot of people who get tired during those long sermons like this text because they sort of feel camaraderie with this young lad who gets tired and omits of all this and falls out of the window. Other people say, “Well, this is a great warning to young lads.” Matthew Henry in his commentary on this text goes on for about a half a page or more about Eutychus’s sin here and not attending to the word properly and the judgment of God upon him falling to his death and then the mercy of God shown to him.

And he says we ought to, you know, he quotes the verse from Nehemiah where it was those who had understanding who were in the context of the preached word said it’s good to bring the young children to the preaching of God’s word as soon as they can understand it. We’ve allowed parents the right or the opportunity if they don’t think their children are of understanding and don’t want to train them here to listen to preaching to use the Sabbath school based on that text.

Matthew Henry quotes that text but he says you know as soon as they can understand they ought to be in the hearing of the sermon and this is a text you ought to remind them of the need to hear the sermon attentively and God’s judgment upon children who don’t listen attentively. So there’s a lot of uses of this text. I think it’s important for us to consider the context of this young man falling to his death.

The first few verses you know if you like literature good literature or if you like a good film that has messages explicitly or implicitly Christian. You know that those things are put together carefully to produce a particular effect and you can watch a particular piece of cinema or you can read a book and certainly identify with various characters as they go through particular lessons and they make you meditate and think about things.

Our own lives are that way as well. I was as you know most of you know I cut my hand at the chainsaw peeling up pretty good. But I was out working on the hedge again last week and since this was good enough to do that with now and you know I was thinking that it was foolish of me and probably sinful the way I cut my hand before foolishly not wearing gloves. It is important to recognize that God’s law tells us to protect ourselves too as we can through the use of God’s secondary means but as I was cutting that hedge I was thinking about the fact that you know I can take all the precautions I want but if God wants my hand off it’s coming off you know and this scar here is a reminder to me of that we don’t make use of the secondary means, we also recognize that God’s hand is always upon us.

The ultimate path to not getting hurt in things is the path of obedience, not the path of practical safety. As much as those things are part of obedience, the overall path to blessing and to life is obedience. And this scar is also a reminder of this basic text. This text talks about the movement from death to life. And it talks about it in various ways. And this scar is a picture of that, too. It’s an amazing thing, isn’t it?

If you had a big wound, have ever had a big wound on your body. It’s an amazing thing to see that heal up or those who have gone through heart surgery and these kind of things to realize the body can rejuvenate itself so to speak. God in his grace does that as a picture of the movement from death to life. Albeit in this life we will have scars usually from big wounds.

The point I’m trying to make here is that we can use this story as a moral lesson to our children or as an encouragement to people who are drowsy or an encouragement to pastors to preach long time. But I think the central message of this is this movement from death to life. And that’s why I’ve titled the talk today the day of resurrection.

It is not necessarily apparent from a cursory reading of the text, but these first five or six verses that lead up to the actual incident cover probably twelve to fifteen months worth of labor in the Apostles Paul in the Apostle Paul’s life. The scriptures are literature.

Doesn’t mean they’re not true. They’re absolutely true in every detail. But nonetheless, this is not some sort of raw historical account that Luke is writing for us here. This is a work penned by the Holy Spirit working through the secondary means of Luke. And he gives us what he wants to give us at the time he wants to give us. He takes out certain events and emphasizes them. Maybe Luke had his reasons, but beyond that, we want to look at God’s reasons for this.

So, let’s remember that we’re in a context here of the movement of the middle portion of this book of the Apostle Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles, first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles. And in the context of that, this is the third missionary journey and it’s wrapping up now. The third missionary journey, most of the details for it are recorded totally at the city of Ephesus. And all the details of the first and second journey are sort of summarized there.

We talked about that last week. And now we’re going to have this incident and then finally Paul’s charge to the Ephesian elders. And basically that’s it. From then on, we go Paul to Jerusalem. He gets imprisoned. He gets there for he’s there for a while. He goes to Caesarea. He’s in prison there for a while. He goes to Rome. He’s in prison there for a while. And the book ends, but we the book doesn’t really end there.

If you understand the pattern that God sets up in the first two-thirds of this book, in the first twenty chapters, you know what’s going to happen as a result of Paul being in Rome. And the end is not imprisonment. The end is deliverance from prison as he actually literally was. And the end is the proclamation of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel and the conversion of the Roman nation essentially and now that was certainly mixed with a degree of vain philosophies of the world in the time of Constantine but nonetheless the gospel is effectual for discipling men and nations and that’s the picture of the book of Acts so let’s look at this particular account and I prepared an outline just to sort of take you through the way the text reads and the first part of the outline is Paul’s journey to Troas verses 1-6 and as I said this account is given to us of how he gets to the place where the critical incident is going to happen.

Now, just so you’ll remember back in Acts 16:8, they were going down to Troas and that’s when Paul received that first vision of the man of Macedonia saying, “Come over here and help us.” So, the gospel now is kind of coming back to the place where Paul was going to preach earlier in the second missionary journey and yet was prevented by the Holy Spirit. So, that’s this place here. Troas is where this all happens.

This is where the gospel first was not preached but instead Paul went further west and now he comes back east to Troas as a result of his travels. So this that’s where this is all occurring. Now it is time in the providence of God and the work of the holy spirit for Troas to hear the gospel. And so we have Paul’s travels described for us here in the first few verses. We also have some companions of Paul described for us as well as he approached which is Troas.

And let me just say a couple of things about these companions. The text has them in there for a reason again. And so we want to recognize it. And as I said, this in a way is sort of summarizing this text with a postscript, this charge to the elders, all the missionary journeys of Paul, the travels in Ephesus were part of that. And now we see the settled peace of the church at Troas and this resurrection incident that occurs as the capstone so to speak of what the missionary journeys are all about.

In the context of that, it’s important that you know that these men that are listed here appear to be representatives from the various mission fields where Paul had planted major churches. And these men, there’s good reason to believe that these men, and I’ve listed some references on the text in the outline, were elected as representatives of these congregations to go with Paul to take the collection for the saints that we talked about in our sermons on offerings back to Jerusalem.

In this last period of the third missionary journey of big concern of Paul is this collection for the saints who in the midst of famine at Jerusalem and these men go as representatives from these particular areas and so we have men here listed from some of the churches that were established one of the company is from Berea two are from Thessalonica Luke himself in verse 6 we see the language indicating that Luke now rejoins Paul some people think Luke was at Philippi for about five years but Luke is part of this group as well.

So it’s seven and indeed an eighth. Luke is from Philippi. Then there were four from the province of Macedonia. That is Luke from Philippi, the one from Berea and the two from Thessalonica. Those are all from Macedonia. Next we have one from Derbe and another one from Lystra, Timothy. And then two from the province of Galatia. The only one the only major area here that’s not represented is Corinth itself.

Which is interesting. I don’t know how to read that. But in any event, that’s who is with him as he goes back in his travels headed back essentially for Jerusalem. But he makes this stop at Troas. I just mentioned to you here you remember I’ve talked before and I want to make some correlations at the end of the talk today between the book of Acts and the book of Joshua. Originally the idea was to go through Acts fairly quickly and show this correlation.

And I’m sorry I didn’t really do that. We’re on sermon number I think sixty-seven today going through the book of Acts. We did about thirty or so going through Joshua. But there are lots of correlations which we’ve talked about and you remember in the book of Joshua lots of name places were important to understand what they meant and the names of the twelve tribes etc. There are lessons in and of themselves. You could preach on these names and I might just mention to you here that some of these names are interesting in terms of what they mean.

Sopater is probably a shortened form of Sosipater and you know that last part of it pater you patriarchy father is what that means and the word so meaning salvation. So Sosipater is from the Greek means the doctrine of salvation. And so here this is the salvation by the father or through the father is what his name means. The father the savior is another way to put that. And it would be good to spend a lot of time just talking about the implications of that.

But in any event we also then read of Aristarchus. Archos. Archon means ruler. Arista means the first or preeminent. So we have the best ruler as indicated by his name. Secundus means the second or assistant. It just simply means second. And in the Greek and Roman languages of the time they would name their children sometimes second, third, fourth, fifth. Quintus is fifth etc. So Secundus here is the second or assistant.

And so we’re all essentially can identify with that. Salvation does come through the father and his decree with the son. He makes the preeminent ruler the Lord Jesus Christ. We become rulers or assistant rulers in relationship to him.

Gaius there. You know, probably twenty years ago, you might not have been able to put that name in your understanding what it might mean, but you’ve heard of Gaia worship today. That’s a renewed cult that is very old and ancient and it means earth worship. So, Gaia simply means of the earth and so we have a relationship of the faith to the earth pertaining to the land or earth.

Timotheus, one who honors God. Remember we said that Timothy, the shortened form really kind of doesn’t help you to understand the meaning of the word. Timē means valuation or honor. Theos means God of course theos. So timē theos honoring God or one who honors God.

Then we also have Tychicus and his name means fortunate and that is very similar form to this word Eutychus and I in the outline you’ll see where fortunate gets saved. Eutychus means fortunate or one who has been prospered or blessed in some way. And so we’re all blessed in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then finally Trophimus nourished. And that’s a good name to have in the context of this text because there are at least three or four references here to eating or there’s three references specifically to bread.

There’s references to eating and tasting. And there’s a nourishment process that goes on in the context of the worship service that’s described for us at Troas. And indeed, this entire text has reference to that nourishing process from God. So these men’s names are important also in the providence of God for being what they are.

So we have Paul’s travels described as he approaches Troas. We have his companions described for us actually named representatives taking this collection back to Jerusalem. And then finally, we have on that first part of the outline the rest of the story. And I’m not going to go through this in any kind of long detail or anything, but the references I have there indicate to us some other things that were going on in those first six verses. As I said, those are twelve to fifteen months of hard labor, evangelism, church planting by Paul. And indeed, those other texts indicate that he came to Troas before this second visit as he left Ephesus he goes to Troas and he plants a church there in the meantime that’s not pictured for us or described for us in this text but these other ancillary texts talk about that and it talks about him going back then to Philippi and other places where churches were established and strengthening them and working in the context of them and then it talks about him as this text does going back to Greece or Achaia and specifically he spends three months there at Corinth And while he’s at these various places, he’s writing epistles or parts of his letters.

He writes the epistle to the Romans and probably the epistle to the Galatians from his stay at Corinth. And while he’s at some of these other places, he’s writing the letters to the Corinthians as he prepares for that return to Corinth that’s described for us. And so the rest of the story means there that you can glean from other portions of scripture some of the travels and movements of Paul. And yet the Holy Spirit wants us to focus upon this incident that happens at Troas.

All those eighteen months worth of labor are covered in a few short verses here and not really spelled out at all except through these other texts that give us indication of what was actually going on.

And then finally then we come to the second part of the outline the central part of this text in terms of the literature structure of it and that is Paul at Troas the day of resurrection and we have here as I said sort of the summation of all this work gone on and we have a picture now of a Christian worship service described for us as we conclude essentially Paul’s missionary journeys.

So we have first of all the time of this happens on the first day of the week. It reads specifically that this is the first day of the week. The language here in the Greek has the number one and the term Sabbath and this can be variously interpreted but it’s important for you to know that they marked time at this particular period of time. The Jews specifically and many other people have as well in reference to the Sabbath.

So instead of saying Sunday, you’d say the first day after the Sabbath. Instead of saying Monday, you’d say the second day after the Sabbath. And you’d go through the five days after the Sabbath. And the sixth day, you’d call the day of preparation. That was what it was referred to. Instead of Friday, it was the day of preparation. And it’s good for us to see that same relationship to our week. Saturday is the day of preparation for the Lord’s day.

And Monday is the first day after the Sabbath. Well, in any event, here we’re told specifically it’s the first day of the week. You could read it the first or preeminent of the Sabbath as well by way of implication, not explicitly derived from the text. But we see here a the first example in the book of Acts where a specifically Christian worship service is described and it is described as being held or conducted on the first day of the week.

I’ve listed some other texts for you there from John 20 where our savior appears to the disciples on the first day of the week from 1 Corinthians 16:2 for the saints. He said, “When you gathered together on the first day of the week, Sunday we call it today, the day of the Lord.” In Revelation 1:10 specifically refers to that day as the day of the Lord. “I was in the spirit on the Lord’s day. I was in the spirit on the day of the Lord.”

And the vision of what the day of the Lord means for all of culture comes to John on the first day of the week. And so we have here the established practice of the apostles that Christian worship is conducted normatively on the first day of the week. The Sabbath has been transitioned from the seventh day to the eighth day or the first day, whichever you want to look at it. In the Old Testament, you’d have sabbatical weeks, which you’d have a double Sabbath at the end.

You would have an eighth day Sabbath that occurred. In the Old Testament system, and the sacrificial system, the sacrificial animal had to be at least eight days old. The altar was cleansed for a period of seven days. It was ready for work in terms of the sacrificial system on the eighth day. First day of the week, the priest himself was cleansed and went through a purification process. Aaron and his sons for seven days.

He’s ready to do his work on the eighth day. There are Old Testament prefigurements of the eighth day or first day Sabbath. Here we have and we have then the our Lord’s designation of that day is the day when he meets with his disciples specifically in the book of John. And here we have recorded for us apostolic precedent and the stamp of their impress so to speak upon the first day of the week for Christian worship.

And so we see all this as being very important for establish for us when we are to assemble, which day of the week we are to conduct Christian worship. And so we have them meeting together on the first day of the week on the Christian Sabbath, on the preeminent of the Sabbaths, the ones that all the other Sabbaths pointed to.

What do they come together for? They do come together. We read in verse 7, on the first day of the week when the disciples came together, that word come together is the root form of the word synagogue. When they humble themselves as a synagogue of God on the first day of the week, the preeminent of the Sabbaths. Why are they there? This is really significant for us. Why do they get together? Why do you come to this place this day? If you were to write an account of what you did on March 5th, you would say, “Well, that day I gathered with the saints on the Lord’s day for what purpose? To hear the sermon?” No.

Talk to my friends. No, this text tells us that you’re here together today specifically to break bread. That’s what it says. We were gathered together on the Lord’s day on the first day of the week to break bread. And in the context of that definitive statement of what the day of the Lord is all about, Paul is seen as preaching. But don’t fly by that breaking of bread.

Now, we read earlier in Acts 2 that they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine, the breaking of bread and prayers, etc. It gives us several components of what the worship service or what the day of the Lord is all about and listed at the first of that is the apostles’ doctrine but remember that’s a list of events here we’re we’re given a summary statement of all of those events what the Christians did in their worship service on the first day of the week and they come together to break bread now breaking of bread is used in the book of Acts got some references for you there other places to indicate communion, the Lord’s supper.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:16, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” What I’m suggesting to you here is that we want to readjust our thinking as to why we come to worship. And we think in America, in our particular culture, the sermon is the big deal. But in the scriptures, it says the Lord’s supper is the big deal. See? Well, that’s what’s going on here. He describes for us the breaking of bread as being a pre-minent reason.

Let me just read. I think this is just Dennis, you know, spouting off. Now, the text seems to clearly indicate. Let me read from some great commentators as well. J. Alexander said to break bread socially and sacramentally according to the primitive and apostolic usage which attached the Eucharist to an ordinary meal as its original institution. So, he says clearly here this is the Eucharist, but it’s seen in the context of an agape.

Lensky and his commentary says the purpose of the gathering was to break bread evidently not merely to dine together but to dine in the agape followed by the Lord’s supper. I believe this is Kismarker yes reformed commentator who says that in Acts the expression to break bread means to celebrate communion the worship service began at the preaching of the word and Luke relates that Paul preached until midnight so begins with preaching, he said, but essentially the worship service is the breaking of bread.

Let me just read you a quote here from Matthew Henry. And this first of all, this first quote talks about the need to honor the first day of the week. Note, says Matthew Henry, the first day of the week is to be rigorously observed by all the disciples or religiously observed by all the disciples of Christ, and it is a sign between Christ and them. For by this it is known that they are his disciples. And it is to be observed in solemn assemblies, which are, as it were, the courts held in the name of our Lord Jesus, and to his honor, by his ministers, the stewards of his courts, to which all that hold from and under him owe suit and service, and at which they are to make their appearance as tenants at their lord’s courts, and the first day of the week is appointed to be the court day, says Matthew Henry.

Then he goes on to describe the importance of the breaking of bread in the context of that service. They came together to break bread. That is, says Matthew Henry, to celebrate the ordinance of the Lord’s supper. The one that one instituted sign of breaking the bread being put for all the rest. The bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:16. In the breaking of the bread, not only the breaking of Christ’s body for us to be a sacrifice for our sins is commemorated, but the breaking of Christ’s body to us to be food and a feast for our souls is signified.

We read that again. Not only is the breaking of Christ’s body for us as a sacrifice for our sins commemorated, but also the breaking of Christ’s body to us to be food and a feast for our souls is what’s signified in this. In the primitive times, it was the custom of many churches to receive the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day, celebrating the memorial of Christ’s death in the former with that of his resurrection in the latter and both in concert in a solemn assembly to testify their joint concurrence in the same faith and worship.

There are those who have talked about in more recent times as part of the reformation that God is affecting some have written that they believe in the primacy of eucharistic worship. And I remember I read that the first time in this one newsletter I thought what are they talking about the primacy of eucharistic worship? We had come I’d come to a position of recognizing the need for the eucharist to be celebrated weekly.

But to speak of its primacy, I thought was going a bit too far. You know, we’ve talked about the synagogue model where the word is preached, the temple in the Old Testament where the sacrifices that pointed to the death of our Lord Jesus Christ, his resurrection were practiced, how both come together in the book of Hebrews to form the Christian worship service. So both elements, both halves of our service, you can look at it, are equally important.

But some people have talked about the primacy of the second what our what we celebrate as the second half of worship the Eucharist. And this is why they do it. This text that seems to identify the primary purpose for our gathering together, not to be the hearing of the word, as important as that is, but to partake of the Lord’s supper. Now, partaking of the Lord’s supper should be done obviously in the context of the preached word.

I’m not trying to get rid of the preaching, but I’m trying to elevate in our own minds the importance of attendance at communion to make it make our minds think the thoughts of Christ as revealed to us in scripture. And you know, it isn’t just if this was all the reason for doing it is that the scriptures say so, that’s enough. But you know, I believe that there’s a deeper relevance of this to us. We hear the sermon and we take away frequently intellectual truth.

We need more knowledge. We tell God, you got to give us more understanding of things in order for us to grow in grace. And God seems to be saying if this is correct in the understanding of this verse the primacy of the Eucharist in worship no you need to obey you need to do before you know in the garden man’s sin was to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life tree of life is represented to us in some ways at communion and the knowledge of good and evil comes from understanding of his word as the spirit teaches it to us what I’m saying in our culture We want intellectual truth at the center of our worship services.

We want an exposition of scripture. And if we don’t do the Lord’s supper, that’s not a big deal. If we don’t do it for three months, six months, a year, that’s okay. It isn’t okay. The scriptures say that’s why you’re supposed to come together. If you’re going to get rid of anything, get rid of the long sermon. Okay? That’s what it says. You know, a couple weeks ago in the providence of God, we had to get rid of some stuff because it was snowing pretty heavy outside and we didn’t cut communion out.

cut the sermon down close and short. And that’s the proper thing to do. See, and it’s proper to train our children that their primary problem in life is not their intellect, as fallen as it is, as rebellious as it is, and as needful as it is of hearing truth from the scriptures of God. But their primary problem in life as our primary problem in life is volitional. It’s what we do that gets us in trouble in spite of what we know.

And we must receive grace from God. And that’s the center of the worship service is the reception of grace from God in the ratification and reratification of the covenant before God through partaking of the eucharist communion. So very important truth I could talk about it more but there’s more in the text we need to go on to but I wanted to stress that now look at also you’ve heard me make reference in a couple of these commentators that this was done in the context of the agape.

Let me read one more commentator on this text. He says in the early church there were two closely related things. There was what was called the love feast. To it all contributed and it was a real meal. Often it must have been the only real meal that poor slaves got all week. It was a meal when the Christians sat down and ate in loving fellowship and in sharing with each other. During it or at the end of it, the sacrament of the Lord’s supper was observed.

It may well be that we have lost something of very great value when we lost the happy fellowship and togetherness of the common meal, the Christian fellowship. It marked, as nothing else could, the real homelessness, the real family spirit of the church. Well, praise God. Praise God that, you know, there are churches that have recovered much of that aspect. Some churches that we know of have an agape once a month.

This church has it every week. And praise God that he’s restoring back what appears to clearly be a New Testament practice of worship in which communion is in the context of a full meal that is based upon the agape or love feast, rejoicing time together. So these texts well and this isn’t by accident. We didn’t decide to do this sort of thing because we thought it’d be fun to have a meal together ten or twelve years ago and then say, “Oh gosh, that’s what we’re doing.” No, we ended up here because of texts like this.

We said, “Well, this is what the scriptures tell us to do. We better obey it.” For some of you who are newer to the church, it seems real weird to put your hands up during that ceremony. It seems odd to me. It’ll seem odd to me all my life probably, but it won’t seem odd to my little two and one-half year-old. She’ll be trained to do it. Why do we do it? Because we think it’d be neat or might involve us more in the worship?

No. There are practical reasons why we think it’s good. But it’s basically because of this truth here that even if we don’t understand intellectually what the raising of hands is about, if the scriptures tell us that there should be times of corporate raising of hands, and they do, then we should do it. And we should let God build in the understanding after we obey the truth. So we partake of communion that we might understand the sermon that’s been preached.

You could look at it that way. And so, praise God that our service in some ways resembles this service here. But I suppose I better get on with it. It’ll resemble that part where he preaches till midnight. Today is also a day of preaching. Exodus 24, Moses preaches and then he sprinkles the blood of covenant ratification upon the people. And here we see Paul also preaching in the context of the day of worship, the day of resurrection.

Preaching of the gospel is to accompany the sacraments and actually supposed to lead up to them in many ways the Eucharist and so it does here today particularly in a very deliberate sense in terms of the central theme of this text which is as I said before a movement from death to life this is the day of fortunate resurrection just so you’ll understand a few things about this text let me just mention a few things.

We are told in the text that there were many lights in the upper chamber and many people think that may be why Eutychus was having a tough time staying awake as well as Paul’s relatively long sermon. They probably met in the early afternoon or early evening. So, it wasn’t, you know, a fourteen-hour sermon, but it was probably a good number of hours this sermon. Usually, these men particularly which was a common name for a slave. Probably had worked most of the day. They would be tired because of that. There are a lot of people. This is in the upper room of a this is in a home apparently. It’s probably fairly stuffy.

A lot of lights burning. And that, you know, depletes a lot of oxygen, they say, and puts oil into the atmosphere, etc. And so that may be why that’s I don’t I don’t know why verse 8 is there, but in any event, it may well be that it was related to the drowsiness of Eutychus. And the text seems to indicate that he was fighting this flea. For those of you who tend to nod off this verse 9 says that he fell into a deep sleep but the in the Greek he sunk down with sleep.

It was like sleep overcame him. He was putting resistance up to it. He was trying not to go to sleep. His Sunday nap wasn’t supposed to happen then. He knew that. So he fought against it but he fell down from the third loft was taken up dead. He was by a window and a window and the architectural structure here were like little doors. There weren’t any glass. They would just have them covered up with doors would open out and they were bigger than our windows.

You could sit right next to it and you if you this is what he apparently did. He fell out of it outside of the house three stories down to his death. This is another thing that Matthew Henry chastises him for was sleeping next to that open or sitting next to that open window when he was kind of tired cuz you know it was kind of dangerous. There was no railing there or anything. It kind of like me using that chainsaw without gloves on.

Well, at any event he falls down dead. The text says explicitly he was taken up dead. He was taken out. He was filled up outside of the house. So Paul sees this. Paul goes down, falls on him, embraces him, and then says, “Trouble not yourselves, for his life is in him.” And some people said, “Well, he wasn’t really dead.” Well, the text says he was taken up dead. And this is a medical doctor who’s writing this.

He knew what death was. And he said this guy was dead. And in the Greek particular, you can see it more than in the English. The verb verbal forms used here make it clear that Paul’s statement that his life is in him followed these other two actions of falling on him and embracing him. So the text is quite clear that the boy is dead. I say boy he might have been as old as forty years that the Greek here used can be used for like a teenager up to thirty or forty years of age.

He’s dead. Paul rushes down embraces him and the word embrace there means to kind of grab a hold of all around I mean, really, you know, kind of got close to the boy there. Got right on him. And as after he does that, that’s what he says his life is in him. This is a resurrection from the dead. And it’s a resurrection from the dead accomplished through the secondary means of Paul. And so this day, the day that why are they eaten on the first day of the week?

The Savior’s resurrection from the dead. The context tells us this is in the context of a of them following the feast of unleavened bread. Passover is movement from death to life in the person of the lamb who would be slain whose life would be taken from him for the sins of those who partake. And so all these references going are moving from death to life. Even the transition here in the text it goes on to talk about how then after the boy is restored back to life it says that he broke bread and he ate and talked for a while and then he left.

This is talking about the apostle Paul to the break of day. So here we even have a movement from midnight, the darkness of midnight there to the break of day in the context of this worship service. Again, a movement from death and darkness to light and life.

By the way, when it says there that Paul talked a long while, that word there talk is different from the word for preaching earlier. This is a word that’s discoursing. So after this boy is dead and the sermon’s over around midnight, the rest of the night they talk and the eating there is different too. It talks about tasting the food. So it seems there that we have the agape and I don’t know it really we can’t tell for sure the sequence of events in terms of the preaching communion and agape they were all in there somewhere so we have here a resurrection of this boy and then they bring the young man back alive and they were not a little comforted they had brought the boy in from outside before dead now they bring the boy into the congregation of the people alive a movement from death to life and the text ends by saying they were not a little comforted meaning they were greatly comforted and the reason was because of this picture and the context of him.

And I believe that if you were sitting there and you saw that boy move from death to life, just as I look at this wound on my hand and think of death to life, it reminds me of the great movement from death to life that God has taken all of us from terms of spiritual death to spiritual life in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the great meaning of this text.

At the end of the missionary endeavor, the peace and stability of the church is wrapped up together for us here. A great day of feasting preaching, talking about the faith, and in the middle of all of that, a picture of why all this is accomplished. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ and his resurrection mean the day they’re gathered, and that indicates our movement from death to life. And so, this text, you know, it’s kind of like the book of Joshua. Next week in Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders, we’ll talk about that as his last words to the Ephesian elders.

And remember, Joshua had some last words in Joshua 23 at the end of that book and just before Joshua’s last words, there were the indication that all the conquering of the land had been accomplished and the scriptures said that not one word failed of what God had spoken. And you remember we said that the summation of that, the victory that was accomplished was the elimination of enemies and the presence of God.

That’s what peace and victory is in the scriptures. No enemies. You’re sitting in a particular location and God is with you. And here at the end of the three missionary journeys, we have the limit. There’s no mention of enemies here. The only enemies left alive in this place are sin of the own individual people. There’s no mention of enemies or persecution. They’re at peace and they have the presence of God with them.

Paul can’t raise anybody from the dead. You can’t raise anybody from the dead. Only the Lord Jesus Christ working through the Holy Spirit can effect that. And so the acts recorded in the book of Acts are the acts of the Lord Jesus Christ through the apostles to the preaching of the gospel. And all of that is summed up for us here in the peace with the safety. Now, their enemies pictured Paul had to change his course how he got there to Troas because the Jews were plotting for his life.

We’re told that in the first four or five verses. But in the midst of enemies, God prepares a table for his people, reminding us of Psalm 23. And it’s a reminder to us that what we come together for this day is to rejoice in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and in our own movement from death to life. I don’t know what Matthew Henry’s stuff about using this as an example to kids. But we know that death comes because of sin.

And we know that God has moved us from death to life not because of our goodness, but because of the grace and the pitying eye of the Father. As the apostle Paul sees it and he races down out of concern for that boy, we should see a picture of the Father in heaven who moves out of his love for his elect to throw himself upon them and bring them into covenant with the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ and so raise us up to life.

Gary North in his study on unconditional surrender that many of us are involved with right now, you know, he always talks about that three-fold order, the definitive sanctification, progressive sanctification, and then final sanctification at the end. And you could talk about that in terms of the resurrection here as well. There is a definitive resurrection that each and every member of the elect community of Jesus Christ who are assembled here today to hear this word know of.

You’ve been moved once for all from death to life. And you ought to be more than a little comforted about that, that you should be greatly rejoicing in that fact. But the text also indicates that this resurrection goes on perpetually in our lives. There is a movement of progressive resurrection as well as God strips away that old dead stuff away from us and rejuvenates us and makes us progressively more and more righteous in the sight of God.

And he makes us more and more vivified and alive to the Lord Jesus Christ and dead to sin. I said several weeks ago the old man was alive and well, he is and he’s crucified. But the scriptures tell us to put off the old man. What does it mean? Means those deadness, those old wicked habits and patterns we have and God through our lives takes away that deadness and throws it away and makes us put on the new man.

We move from death to life progressively. And so these people are fed. Talk about the feast of unleavened bread. We talk about the breaking of bread. We talk about the tasting of food. Food, food, food in this text. The movement from death to life. The day of resurrection is a day of strengthening for his people as well. It’s a day to remember the once-for-all resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and our once-for-all resurrection as well.

It’s a day to be strengthened and to be moved from death to resurrection in terms of the sinful habits of our lives as well. And it’s a day to look forward to the great rest to come in the future when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and we move definitively or rather not definitively but finally from death to life with the new body. But there’s another part of this text I want mentioned as well and it’s kind of mentioned there on your outline.

There are I was reading one commentator. He said there are seven resurrections in the Bible. One by Elijah, one by Elisha, three by Jesus, and then one by Peter, one by Paul. Well, that isn’t quite true. We have our savior’s resurrection. Of course, there was also the resurrection of the man who fell into Elisha’s tomb. And just coming in contact with his bones, this dead man was made alive.

Very interesting story. But the point the commentator makes is by the hands of men. You only have these that I know of, these seven resurrections. And what are they? They’re Elijah, remember, with the young lad that he raised up from the dead and Elisha after him. Then we have three by the Lord Jesus Christ, Jairus’s daughter, the lad from the city of Nain, and then Lazarus, death to life. And then we have one by Peter.

He raised up Dorcas or Tabitha. Remember that earlier in Acts chapter 9. And now we’ve got Paul. Is this painting a picture of you at all? Why does Paul here fall upon this boy and wrap himself up with the boy? Well, I think that the reason is very clearly to show an identification with Elijah and Elisha because that’s what they did. Elisha laid on that dead boy a number of times. The boy revives. See, what this is telling us is it relates Peter, Paul’s apostolic authenticity is being related to for us in relationship to Peter, in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ, and prior to that Elijah and Elisha.

But more than that, it tells us of the movement of biblical history. The day of resurrection should bring us no little comfort, pondering our own personal resurrection definitively and our progressive resurrection and our final resurrection. But it should also be a day of great encouragement to us because it paints to us the flow of biblical history. It says that Paul is to Peter as Elisha was to Elijah.

Remember he wanted a double portion. Elijah did. That’s what he got from God. Do you remember James B. Jordan wrote about this recently or Peter Leithart did? Do you remember what Elijah does before he dies? Him and Elisha leave Israel. They use his mantle and the waters part for them and they leave. They go to the other side and then Elisha’s Elijah is taken up into the clouds. Elisha comes back and again the waters part for him as he comes back into the land and then he begins his conquest.

I talked about the relationship of all this to the book of Joshua. Joshua was to Moses as Elisha was to Elijah. They had gone through to Egypt. The waters had parted that they might flee Egypt and death. And then the waters parted again so that Joshua might take the people of Israel into the new land. Israel had become Egypt by the time of Elijah, the waters parts they can leave Egypt and then the waters parts that the greater Elijah Elisha emblematic of Joshua could lead again in the conquest of the land.

And so we have here the picture of Peter and Paul and Peter. Where’s Peter? Where’s Peter in the last half of the book of Acts? Well, he’s wherever he is, we don’t know. But it’s kind of like Moses. He died. Nobody could find his body. Elijah was taken up. Nobody could find him. Peter can’t be found in the last half of this book of Acts. Not there. Because the focus now is Paul. And Paul…