The Lord's Day. I like that title,
The Lord's Day. Here in this chapter, Paul leaves
Ephesus after that uproar there had settled down. He left there
for the good of the church. No doubt his presence there kept
things stirred up, but he also had more places to preach. Paul was not one to just stop
and rest and sit back. Paul was continuously, continuously
traveling. And the travel, you know, we've
got it so easy nowadays. Jeremy, has a business trip in Houston
and he sent me a picture of the airplane flight, 583 miles per
hour. And he said, can you imagine
this? And then in two hours, he's in Houston, Texas. Paul
didn't have that. Paul had to get on a ship and
one time it wrecked. Paul had to, he had to take a
ship Paul had to walk for miles and miles and days and weeks
and weeks to get from one place to the other. And he never stopped,
he never rested, and he never complained about it. He didn't
complain about it. You know, Paul is a good example
to all of us who preach to be about our Father's business.
And he went into Macedonia to preach and to exhort the churches
there that he had been to, and the Lord had raised up. He went
there to encourage them in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know,
that's one of the reasons that when people call, or other congregations
call, us who preach, they call me and other pastors, and I have
other pastors that come here. One of the things we need to
do is to encourage one another. and are preaching. When I go
to other places, I want to encourage them. And Paul did this. He went around and he encouraged
them in the Word of God. In verses 2 and 3, from there
he went to Greece. And he stayed there for three
months, preaching the gospel. And the Jews laid wait to kill
him. While he was there, they wanted
to kill Paul as much as they wanted to kill Paul's Lord, our
Lord. But the Lord didn't let that
happen. Our lives are hid with Christ
in God. Our lives can't be touched. They
cannot be touched. The day you and I die, whatever
means God uses, He is the one who will call us home. He's the
one who will take our life from this world into heaven, to glory. And not until then, not until
then. They laid weight to kill him.
They tried to kill him. They couldn't touch him, couldn't
touch him. But they hated him. They hated
him with a passion. And our Lord said this, if they
hated me, this is a true principle, if they hated me, they will hate
you too. If they hate the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, they'll hate you. They'll hate you too. They
hate him, they hate his message, and they'll hate his followers.
They'll hate the members of his body. You know, if somebody,
if someone hates me, now they hate me. But you know, my body
is part of me. It's part of me. Well, I hate
your head. I don't hate your body, but I
hate your head. No, if you hate me, you hate all of me. And that's
why Christ said if they hate me, they'll hate you because
you're my body. You're my body. And then in verse 4 and 5, Paul's
companions, and this is the grace of God here. This is God's mercy
to Paul. These companions of his in verse
4 and 5, You know, all those names there. I'm not going to
try to read all those names. But they were faithful men of
the gospel and they encouraged Paul. They encouraged him. You know, I get, usually every
week, somebody will send me a text or they'll even maybe say something
to me, but they'll send me a text and they'll say, well, I enjoyed
this message. You know, they've listened to me on the internet
or a bulletin. I get things about writings in
the bulletins. I really enjoy that. And I always
text back, thanks for the encouragement. Thanks for the encouragement,
because you like to know that people are listening. It's an encouragement. And these
men came and they encouraged Paul. We all need that. We all need to learn to do that. We need to learn to encourage
one another. to support one another. Uphold one another. And then
from this place here in verse 4 and 5, Paul, there in verse
6, he sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened
bread. Now he didn't stay to observe the ceremonies and the
laws and rituals and all that. Paul was completely cut away
from that. Paul was not one of those who were struggling with
letting things go. He let it go. God taught him,
he let these things go. But you know, Paul knew that
here was an opportunity for him to preach to his kinsmen according
to the flesh. You know, he said, my heart,
in Romans 10, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel
is that they might be saved. That's the heart of a pastor.
Right there, that's the heart of a pastor. That's the heart
of a God called preacher, is that his hearers might be saved.
And Paul, he wanted this opportunity because there would be a lot
of people there and he would have the opportunity to preach
to as many as the Lord allowed him to preach to. You know, I
wish I could preach to the whole world every day. I do. I wish
I would to God that I could just preach to this whole community.
That I got something to say. I have good news. I really have
good... Here's a sinner that has good
news to tell to somebody. I wish this place would jam to
the walls. Because I got something to say. And Paul, he wanted to be there
because he had something to say. He wanted him to know and to
hear the gospel. And then it says here in verse
6 that Paul was at Troas for seven days. He was there for
seven days. They got there in five days and
he stayed for seven days. And on the first day of the week,
this is the Lord's day, the first day of the week, The disciples
came together to break bread and listen to Paul preach to
them. The first day, first day of the
week, the old Sabbath that they used to keep was on a Saturday. They would keep the Sabbath on
a Saturday, the last day of the week. Our Lord rose the first
day of the week And that day is used and has been set aside
for the church, not legally now, not legally, but it's been set
aside by the grace of God as a time for us to come together
and worship the Lord. I thought of this when I was
reading this on the first day of the week. You know, we usually
think the end of the week is Friday. That's the end of our
work week, and we're so used to that. The end of the week
is Saturday, and the first of the week is Sunday. And we get
to come here together, and I ask you this, is there a better
way to start a week? This is the first day of the
week, right here, Sunday, it's the first day of the week. Is
there a better way to start the rest of the week than to do this? This is the best way to start
it, to be able to come here on Sunday morning, Sit down, open
your word of God, and listen to the gospel preached, and now
we're ready for Monday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday. It sets the tone for the week.
If you really come here, and I preach in the power of God's
spirit, and you really come here hungry and thirsty, and you feed
on the word of God, it'll get you through the rest of the week.
It'll get you focused right on the rest of the week. The first
day of the week, it says, the old Sabbath, which was on Saturday,
was done away with. Now listen, that day that typified
Christ, our Sabbath, was fulfilled in Christ, and we don't keep
it anymore as a legal day. You know, as the law told them
that they were to keep the Sabbath. Christ is our Sabbath. Jesus
Christ is our rest. Why is it so, and I know why. I already know the answer before
I ask the question. Why is it so hard for us to rest?
Because of sin. That's the answer. Because of
sin, lack of faith. We have to strive to rest. Isn't that something? We have
to work at resting. to just rest in Christ and to
really, and I tell you this, and we're gonna see this a little
bit in Ephesians. The more we grow in grace and
knowledge of Christ, the greater our rest is in Christ. The greater
we experience that rest. And the more we experience that
rest that we have in Christ, now listen, we glorify Him. The more we rest, the more we
glorify Him. It's when we are struggling and
we have these doubts and we feel like we need to do something.
That's when we mess it up. That's when we mess it up. But
when we can completely rest in Christ our Sabbath, He is our
rest. As God rested from all his works
in creation and rested on the seventh day, the believer rests
in Christ from all his works or her works. We bring zero works
to the table, right? Zero works, we don't bring anything.
We come as we are, sinners in need of mercy. We rest in Jesus
Christ to provide us all that we need. You know, when God created
the heavens and the earth and he created man, he created the
Garden of Eden, he prepared the Garden of Eden, Adam prepared
zero in that garden. He didn't bring anything into
it. Sin. He brought sin into it. But other
than that, He brought nothing into it. God provided all of
it. This is a beautiful picture of the gospel. All things have
been provided for us in Jesus Christ. Now rest in it. Rest in Him. Rest in Him. You can read this over in Hebrews
4. I'm not going to go over and read it because we don't have
time. Hebrews 4, 1 through 11 speaks that there is a rest that
remains for the people of God, and that rest is Christ. It's
Him. If we don't keep a legal day
of rest anymore, this is the Lord's day. This is the Lord's
day. Monday's the Lord's day too.
Tuesday's the Lord's day. Now listen, there are some people,
and I know there are some people, and there are some people who
are believers. You know, Spurgeon. Spurgeon was one of them. He
didn't want to do anything on Sunday. I mean, nothing. And
that's fine. And he didn't attach salvation
to this, but as long as you don't attach, if you want to keep Sunday
completely a day where you just meditate and read and come to
the service. That's fine. Just don't attach
salvation to the keeping that. Just don't do that. Because Christ
is our Sabbath. He's our Sabbath. And we gather
here today to worship the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why
we are, listen, we are gathered here to worship We are not gathered
here to keep a day. We are not gathered here to keep
Sunday. We're gathered here to worship together. The Lord has set this apart for
us. He's given us this opportunity, and this is what we have, and it's a day to worship together. We worship the Lord every day.
Now, we don't just worship the Lord on Sunday. Sunday morning,
Go back out there in the world and do whatever. We worship the
Lord every day. But we come together to do it
together. And when two or three are gathered
together in my name, there am I in the midst, in the midst.
Are there two or three gathered here in the name of Christ this
morning? I sure hope so. We have this promise. I'm with
you. I'm right in your midst. I'm
in your midst. All days are the Lord's days,
but this day is set apart for us in the scriptures to worship
together. And it's set apart so that we would not forsake
the assembling of ourselves together. The scripture says, forsake not
the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some
is. Let's not forsake that. Don't forsake the assembly of
the saints. It's not meant for that. We are
not all meant to stay home and, no, we're meant to come together.
This is his body. This is his body. It's a place, listen, it's a
place where we come together to worship the Lord, but it's
also a place where sinners can come here. You invite people
here. You invite people to come and
hear the gospel. Someone invited you probably one time. You invite
people to come and they can hear the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ preached. And then in verse 7, Paul preached
to them. Upon the first day of the week,
when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached
to them. Now, let me say something about
this breaking bread. This is where they came together
And they have what they call a love feast, and at the end
of it, they would take the Lord's table every week. They would
do this at that time. The Corinthians abused it and
misused it, misunderstood it. But they would come together
and they would have what they call a love feast, and they would
take the Lord's table at the end of it. And while they were
there, And there's no doubt Paul took this opportunity when they
were going to take the bread and the wine. Paul took, he took
that opportunity to preach Christ to them. And he preached a long time.
He preached till midnight, and you're going to see this, and
a young man fell out the window, fell three stories. He fell,
he was sitting in a window and fell into a deep sleep and fell
out the window and three stories high. At least when you fall asleep,
you're in a soft pew. You're not going to fall out
a window. I see some of you. You're not going to fall very
far. This guy fell out, he fell three stories. I couldn't let
that go. I've put a few people to sleep.
But Paul, he preached to them. You see, preaching must have
the preeminence. It has the preeminence. And he
preached a very long sermon to them. You know why? He had something
to say and he wasn't going to say it again. I wonder what I would say and
how long I'd preach if I knew this was my last message to you.
I wonder what I'd say. If I knew this was my last message,
Paul knew it was his last time because he called the elders
here later on this chapter. He called the elders from Ephesus
and he said, you're going to see my face no more. You're not
going to see me again. He knew he was going to go to
Jerusalem and he didn't know what laid wait for him there. But he preached to him because
he had something to say and it was the last time he was going
to see them. And he probably started, since they had the bread
and the wine, he started with the reason for it. The reason
for it. We call it ruined by the fall.
And you know, and I thought about this this morning, as I was reading
over this and looking at this poem, ruined by the fall. Most people misunderstand that
word ruined. They think when you fall, well
if you fell, you know, you don't always die when you fall, you
know. You can trip and break your leg or you can fall down
and get back up. But you know the scripture doesn't speak of
it as a fall. You know how the scripture speaks
of it? In Adam, all died. It actually speaks of it as a
death. I looked it up this morning. I put the word fall in there
and I looked to see if it came up in Genesis. It speaks of a
death. Ruined by the death of Adam. Now I know, and I'm not gonna
try to change terminology. I know what ruined by the fall.
If we don't understand this, we don't understand the rest
of it. The cross is, you'll get the cross completely wrong. But
here's what happened. Paul spoke to them of death in
Adam. Death in Adam. Life in Christ. The second Adam. In Adam we die. In Christ we are made alive.
We died in Adam. See, if somebody said to you, John fell this morning. You're
going to say, is he alright? Did he break something? If someone
said, John died this morning. You know what that means. He
dead. He's gone. Life is gone. And so when we speak of the fall
in the Garden of Eden, we've got to speak of death. Death,
death, death. People don't understand that
until God gives them understanding, but still yet we need to speak
in language that they can understand. In Adam all die, in Christ all
are made alive. There is none righteous, no not
one, because of what happened in the garden. There is none
righteous, there is none right with God. There is no son of
Adam right with God. The only way we are right with
God, righteous before God, is in that second Adam, the Lord
Jesus Christ. That's the only way. The Pharisee
is no better than the publican. In fact, the Pharisee is worse
than the publican. The whole world is at enmity
with God because of what happened in the garden. Everyone comes
into this world with an inbred hatred of God. I can say everyone whom the Lord
has not saved, everyone who is born into this world, in this
congregation or in every congregation, you hate God. That's the honest
truth. You hate God. I told a man that
once, and I've told you this, but I told a man once, I said,
you hate God. And he was upset. I mean, this
man made no profession at all. I mean, he was rotten as can
be. I worked with him. I went to school with him. I'm
rotten as can be, but when I told him he hated God, it upset him.
Don't tell me I hate God. You do hate God. You just let the right situation
come along. Let the truth come along. You'll
find out how much you hate God. People talk about, oh, how I
love Jesus. Oh, how I love Jesus. And then you tell them who the
Lord Jesus Christ is. The Lord Jesus Christ is. and
they hate you for it. You don't love him as much as
you thought you did, do you? You hate him. Paul preached to them what happened
in the garden, and he preached to them the reason for redemption. The law had a claim on us. Justice
has a claim on us. You know, God's justice is very
real. We don't really think of it as
being as real as we do the law of the land. You know, we think
of the traffic laws out here. You know, we try to drive the
speed limit, don't want to get a ticket. But I tell you what,
God's law is very real. And that curse is very real. It has us. And Christ had to
redeem us from the curse of the law. And he was able to do so
because he's the kinsman redeemer. He had the right to do it because
he's the kinsman redeemer. He became bone of our bone and
flesh of our flesh that he might be our kinsman and be able to
redeem us, rightfully redeem us from the law. And he did it.
He did it. And this is what Paul preached
to them. He preached the glory of Christ, the glory of his person,
the glory of his redemptive work. He preached his resurrection
from the dead. He's not dead, he's risen. He
preached his power, his power to save us, his power to keep
us, his power to bring us home. He preached the efficacy of his
person, his blood, his work. And he did that, listen, he did
that until midnight and that young
man fell out of the, fell out of the window and they had to
take a break. That was their intermission. They had to go
down and say, what was his name, Eutychus? Yeah, Eutychus in verse
nine. Eutychus being fallen to a deep
sleep, as Paul's long preaching, he sunk down and he fell down
from the third loft, third story and he's taken up dead. So this
kind of, Paul had to take an intermission here and go down
there and he fell on him and he said his life's still in.
Now I don't know if God gave him his life back or if he, Actually
didn't die, but here's what's amazing. That young man got up
and walked back upstairs. I mean, if I fell three stories,
what do you think it's going to do to my body? But he got
back up and walked upstairs with him. And then Paul preached. Now listen, Paul preached till
midnight. I mean, I mean, till the break
of dawn. He went back upstairs and picked
up right where he left off and preached Christ to them. I mean,
his heart was in it because he wanted them, you ever see something
that you want somebody else to see? You ever see something so
beautiful? I've done this before because
I've traveled several places over the years and Vicki always
stayed behind. because she had the boys in school,
and so she rarely traveled with me anywhere for many years. And there was times that I had
stopped, and I'd see a beautiful scenery. I thought, man, I wish
she was here to see this. I wish she was here to see this.
You know, that's what makes an experience an experience when
the one you love is there to experience it with you. Does
that make sense? That's what really makes the experience,
is when you both stand there together looking at it and enjoying
it. Christ said, Father, in John
17, Father, I will that they be with me in glory, that they
what? Behold my glory, that they see this. I want them to see
this. And Paul wanted them to see the glory of Christ. He wanted them to see the salvation
that they had in Christ. They had it, but there's more
to see of it. And we're going to see this in
Ephesians chapter one here in a little bit. He just craved
for them to see it. That's the kind of preaching
I want to sit under. I want to sit under and listen to preaching
where the preacher is so passionate that he wants, he's like, you
got to see this. You got to hear this. You got
to hear that. You got to see this. And so Paul went back upstairs,
and Olive went back upstairs and picked up where he left off,
preaching Christ to them until the breaking of day. And then he bid them farewell. He bid them farewell because
he had to leave. But before he left, Before he left, he declared to them, like he
said to the Ephesians over here in the latter part of this chapter,
it says in verse 27, for I have not shunned to declare unto you
all the counsel of God. He said in verse 26, wherefore
I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood
of all men. For I have not shunned to declare
the counsel, the whole counsel of God, all that God has revealed
in the gospel, in his word, revealed to Paul. Paul said, I've kept
back nothing. I didn't keep something back
because I thought this might be too much. Or he was afraid. They'd turn
on him. No, he just laid it out there. He laid it out there. And he wasn't afraid to declare
the whole counsel of God to him. And that's what he did that night. It was going to be his last time
there. And he, with all his heart, set forth Christ in the gospel.
Because he said, later on in this chapter, he said, after
my departure, I know this, grievous wolves are going to enter in.
And there's even going to be some among you that's going to
raise up. It's going to cause trouble. It's the Lord's Day. I thank
God there's a day we can come together and worship the Lord
and I can declare to you the counsel of God in our salvation.