? Great is thy faithfulness,
O God my Father ? ? There is no shadow of turning with thee
? ? Thou changest not thy compassions, they fail not ? As thou hast
been, thou forever wilt be. Great is thy faithfulness, great
is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning new mercies
I see. ? All I have needed thy hand
hath provided ? ? Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me ?
? Summer and winter and springtime and harvest ? sun, moon, and
stars in their courses above. Join with all nature in manifold
witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love. Great is thy faithfulness, great
is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed thy hand hath
provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. Hardened for sin and a peace
that endureth, Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow. ? Blessings all mine with 10,000
beside ? ? Great is thy faithfulness, great
is thy faithfulness ? ? Morning by morning new mercies I see
? All I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. Please be seated. Mark. Good morning, brothers and sisters.
If you would please turn with me to Matthew chapter 11. We'll
be reading there in verse 25. Matthew 11, 25. Very familiar
passage in the Bible. Very sound passage in the Bible. At that time, Jesus answered
and said, I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because
Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast
revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for it seemed
good in Thy sight. All things were delivered unto
me and my father, and no man knoweth the son but the father. Neither know of any man the Father,
save the Son, and to he whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come
unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn
of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find
rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden
is light. Our most heavenly Father, we
thank you, Lord, for the many mercies you show to us each and
every day. We thank you for the gospel we had heard this morning
earlier, and we'd ask that you be with our pastor as he brings
forth a second. Cause his and cause your word
to go out with strength and grace and power, Lord. We know that
all your promises are yea and amen. You said when two or three
are gathered in your name, you're there with us, and we're glad. Cause us always to look to you,
the first cause of all, Lord, and be with our sick and infirm,
Lord, people that have illnesses and they're struggling, Lord,
give them grace, give them the strength that they so desperately
need and we all don't deserve. We thank you for all these perfect
things, through your most holy and perfect name, amen. Let's stand together again. We'll
sing hymn number 229 from your hardback hymnal. 229. Tell me the old, old story of
unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His
love. Tell me the story simply as to
a little child For I am weak and weary and helpless and defiled
Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and his love. ? Tell me the story slowly ?
? That I may take it in ? ? That wonderful redemption ? ? God's
remedy for sin ? ? Tell me the story often ? ? For I forget
so soon ? The early dew of morning has passed away at noon. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. Tell me the story softly with
earnest tones and brave. Remember I'm the sinner whom
Jesus came to save. Tell me the story always If you
would really be In any time of trouble A comforter to me Tell
me the old, old story Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. ? Tell me the same old story
? ? When you have cause to fear ? ? That this world's empty glory
? ? Is costing me too dear ? ? Yes, and when that world's glory ?
is dawning on my soul. Tell me the old, old story. Christ Jesus makes the old. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and his love. Please be seated. Will you open your Bibles with
me to Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter 20. This story, when usually preached
from, is either made light of or it's used as a rebuke for
spiritual slothfulness. This is the story of Eutychus,
a young man, the scripture says, probably a teenager, sitting
in a window on the third floor, listening to the apostle Paul
preach all night. And at midnight, he falls out
of the window and dies. And Paul immediately rushes down
and lays on him notice in verse verse 10 Paul went down and fell
on him and embraced him and said Trouble not yourself for his
life is in him The life of Christ was in him and the life of Christ
was his life If we look at this passage only
as a rebuke, or I think about what
the Lord said to the apostles at the Garden of Gethsemane when
he went apart from them and prayed, and he came back and found them
sleeping. And he said, could you not pray
with me for one hour? And I've been often convicted
by that. Don't know if I've ever prayed
for one hour. Not really. We do sleep. We do slumber. We are spiritually
dull. And to correct God's people for
that is to just tell them something they already know. I want this passage to be a comfort
to you. Notice in verse 11, and when
he therefore was taken up again and had broken bread and eaten
and talked a long while, even till the break of day, so he
departed. This was an all night worship
service. Paul preached from the setting
of the sun to the rising of the sun. And in the middle of the
night, this young 14 year old boy falls out of the window,
asleep. Notice in verse 12, and they
brought the young man alive and were not a little comforted. We do spiritually slumber. We
are dull of hearing. It is very difficult for us to
give our attention to spiritual things for very long. And for
that, every child of God is grieved. Lord, why am I so dull? Why am I so cold? Why is it so
difficult for me to enter into spiritual worship as I ought? And the comfort, brethren, is
that the life of Him is in us. The paradox of faith is that
our feelings are usually contrary to faith. And by that, what I
mean is that the best praise that we do feels faint. The best prayer that we pray
feels wandering. The best gifts that we give feel
selfish. The best sermon that we preach
feels wanting. Truly, the Lord will not share
his glory with another. And, If we're looking to feelings
for our hope, we're looking in the wrong place. We're looking for power over
sin or peace of mind or the joy of the Lord, revival of spirit,
the ability to fully forgive from the heart, to feel the weight
of sin. All of these things are the result
of looking to Christ. When Peter was drowning in that
ocean of sin, all he knew to say was, Lord, save me. Lord,
save me. I've got to have Christ to reach
out his hand and deliver me. When the Syrophoenician woman
was called a Gentile dog, she said, truth, Lord, help me. Help
me. When that thief on the cross
was dying for his criminal activity, all he knew to say was, Lord,
remember me when you come into your kingdom. I am just certain that the Holy
Spirit has put this story into the Word of God for our comfort,
for our comfort, not for our chastisement. Let's begin in verse five. In verse four, Paul sends seven
men ahead of him to Troas. Now Paul had been in Troas before
in chapter 16 on his second missionary journey. And it was in Troas
that the Holy Spirit came to him and told him to not go into
Asia, but to go into Macedonia. And now he's finishing up his
third missionary journey and he's back in Troas. And he sends
these men ahead of him, seven men. The number of perfection
to prepare the church for his arrival. And in verse five, it
says, these goings, 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. And there 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 lights, there were many lights in the upper
chamber. where they were gathered together.
And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus being
fallen into a deep sleep. And as Paul was long preaching,
he sunk down with sleep and fell down from the third loft and
was taken up dead. And Paul went down and fell on
him and embraced him and said, trouble not yourselves for his
life is in him. And when he therefore was come
up again and had broken bread and eaten and talked a long while,
even till the break of day, so he departed and they brought
the young man alive and were not a little comforted." This story is a comfort to me. I hope it'll be a comfort to
you because it says to me that The hope of your salvation is
not determined by how you feel or how keenly you're able to give your
attention to spiritual things. The hope of your salvation is
that his life is in you. There it is. And so they were
not a little comforted. I'm reminded often of Isaiah
chapter 40, When the Lord said to the prophet, comfort ye, comfort
ye my people, speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem and tell them
their warfare is accomplished. Tell them their iniquity has
been put away, it's been purged. All their sins have been covered
by the blood of Christ. And their battle with sin is
fought by Christ and won. And that's their comfort and
that's your comfort. And that is my comfort. Truth is that we grieve over
how cold and indifferent and how unspiritual we are. And plenty of people have made
lighthearted comments about this passage of scripture, about long-winded
preaching, and about, I heard one man say, you know, don't
fall asleep in church, we don't have an apostle here to restore
your life to, you know, and I get all of that. But here's the truth
of this story. He was sitting in a window. The
window is a picture of Christ. This was a young man. I said
earlier he was 14 years old. That's kind of in between where
he would have been in this phrase that's used as a young man. He'd
been a teenager. Probably a servant, most of the
believers were. That means that they were slaves.
That means that the first day of the week was not a day off
for them. Sunday was not their day off.
They worked seven days a week, worked from early morning to
late evening and had to have services at night when they weren't
working. And now they're up all night
long and they're not off tomorrow. This young man is going to go
back to work tomorrow. So it's easy to understand how
he could fall asleep in the middle of a service. Paul preached all
night long. What is the window a picture
of? Well, we find Noah putting one window in the ark. That ark
is a picture of Christ. That window is a picture of Christ.
It was a cubit by a cubit. It's the window that he opened
after the rains had ceased and released the dove out of the
window. And the dove came back and Noah
reached out his hand because the dove found no place to light
its feet. It wasn't like the raven who could feed on the dead
flesh that was floating in the water. No, he had to come back
to the ark. And that window was his way back
in. That window surely is the Lord
Jesus Christ. We see in Joshua chapter two,
when the spies went into Jericho and the harlot Rahab protected
them. She hid them. And then she let
them go out of the window. And then she hung a scarlet rope
out of that window. And the covenant promise that
those spies made was that anyone in this room, that window is
Christ, that scarlet rope is Christ. That's where this young
man is. He's got an interest in the gospel.
His spirit is willing, his flesh is weak. Can you relate to that? Your flesh being weak and having
a hard time giving your attention to spiritual things for very
long. But his hope is that the life of Christ was in him. they were not a little comforted.
They were greatly comforted. Here's your comfort. Here's my
comfort, is that the life of Christ is in us. It's not how spiritual we feel or how, you know, committed we are. It's It's Christ in you, which
is your hope of glory. Listen to what Paul said in Colossians
chapter three, verse four, for you are dead and your life is
hid with Christ in God. You are dead. That's why we feel
so dull and dumb and we're carrying around this dead flesh and the
spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. but you are hid with Christ in
God. And when Christ, who is your
life, shall appear, then you shall also appear with him in
glory. Here's our hope, brethren. Our
hope is that Christ is in us. Oh, how do you suppose Job felt
in the midst of the horrible trials and circumstances of his
life? Turn with me to Job chapter 19.
Job chapter 19. I mean, here's a man who had
lost all of his children, lost all of his possessions,
his friends turned on him. Now he's lost his health. He's
a leprous from head to toe. I mean, this man is in a desperate
place. Yeah, look what he says in Job
chapter 19, and we'll begin reading at verse 20. My bone cleaveth
to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of
my teeth. Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,
for the hand of God hath touched me. He's pleading with his miserable
comforters to please have pity on him. They kept telling him
that he was in the condition that he was in because of hidden
sin that he was refusing to admit to. So they were only adding
to his burden. They were adding to his pain.
And he's crying out and he's saying, the hand of God is on
me, please have pity upon me. Why do you persecute me as God
and are not satisfied with my flesh? Oh, that my words were
now written. Oh, that they were printed in
a book. Job, they are, they are. Here's the word of God. That they were graven with an
iron pin and lead in a rock or in the rock forever. There it
is, the word of God. is written by the very hand of
God, just like those commandments were written when they came down
off of Sinai in stone by the finger of God. So this word is
true and faithful. And here's Job's hope, for I
know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the
latter day upon the earth And though, after my skin, worms
destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. What gives
you that hope, Job? Whom I shall see for myself,
and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins
be consumed within me. For you should say, why persecute
we him? Seeing the root of the matter
is in me. What is Job saying? If I look to my circumstances,
if I look to my feelings, if I look to my fears, if I look
to anything other than the fact that the root of the matter is
in me, I have no hope. But here's my hope. Be of good
cheer. The life of him is in him. His life is in him. And they
were greatly comforted. I said, well, if Christ is in
me, if Christ is in me, why am I thus? Why am I the way I am? Genesis chapter 25. Turn with
me there. Genesis 25. Rebekah asked that question. Verse 21, and Isaac entreated
the Lord for his wife because she was barren, and the Lord
was entreated of him. And Rebekah, his wife, conceived,
and the children struggled together within her. And she said, if
it be so, If I'm God's, why am I thus? And she went to inquire
of the Lord, and the Lord said unto her, two nations are in
thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels,
and the one people shall be stronger than the other people, and the
elder shall serve the younger. Now who is the elder Esau was?
Who was the younger? Jacob. And he saws a picture
of the flesh. And Jacob's a type of the new
nature that we have in Christ. His life in him. And what's the
Lord telling us? What's he telling us? He said,
the elder is going to serve the younger. That's a reversal order. The elder was supposed to have
preeminence over the older. But here the Lord's saying no.
that struggle that you have between the flesh and the spirit, that
slumber and sleep that you have that doesn't even allow you to
give your full attention to the gospel for an hour, that's going to cause you to
plea to Christ and to plead with Him to have mercy upon your soul. And when doing so, he's gonna
say to you, here's your comfort. His life is in you. There's your
hope. His life is in you, or you are
dead and your life is hid with Christ in God. Unbelievers. conflicted also. Their conscience convicts them.
They do things that they don't want to do, wish they could stop
doing. They suffer the consequences
of their sin. They have guilty consciences
and broken relationships and troubles that they cause for
themselves. So what is the difference? What's the difference? The unregenerate unbeliever will
never flee to Christ. He'll not come to Christ. He'll
make resolutions. He'll try to turn over a new
leaf. He'll increase his religious activity. He'll make new commitments. He'll seek the counsel of men. He'll do everything to be relieved
from this from this conflict that he has, but he will not
come to Christ. And he will not find hope in
God's word that the life of Christ is in him. The Lord said in John chapter
five, verse 40, you will not come to me that you might have
life. The unbeliever will go everywhere but to Christ. just like the children of Israel
at the base of Mount Sinai. They couldn't see Moses. He had
gone up into the mountain. And what did they say? Where's
Moses? We don't see him. Let's, let's
fashion something that we can see. Let's, let's, let's put
something together that we can put our hands on and that we
can touch and we can see with our natural eyes. I was, Talking to a man one time
and he was rebuking me for my preaching. And he said, you keep
talking about looking to Christ. And he looked up to the ceiling
and threw his hands in the air and said, I'm looking and I don't
see him. And I thought, no, not if you're going to look with
your physical eyes, you're not going to see. You've got to have the eyes of
faith to see Christ. And you're not going to see him
in the sky or in the ceiling. You're going to see him in his
word. Here's the means by which he's going to... Here's God's
promise to you, brethren. You feel spiritually dull? You
feel like your prayers are wanting and your life is a contradiction
and a conflict. Here's God's word. Just like
the apostle Paul laid his life on this young man, just like
Elijah laid his body on top of this man, hand to hand, mouth
to mouth, feet to feet. You remember that? When the widow's
son died and the apostle Paul went and Prostrate himself over
his body. There's the type there's That's
what the Lord Jesus Christ did when he went to Calvary's cross.
He was wounded for our Transgressions his life is our life. His death
is our death. His resurrection is our resurrection
and The Lord says to you and me trouble not yourself For his
life is in him and they We're not a little comforted. No, we're
not looking to a golden calf. We're not looking to something
that we can see. That's the problem, isn't it? When we look to our
lives and we look to our feelings and we look to our behavior,
we're going back to Sinai. Looking to Christ as a spiritual
work of grace that can only be done in the heart of the regenerate.
It's a miracle. There was a time I couldn't look
to Christ. Notice where this miracle takes
place. It takes place in the city called Troas. Now, Troas,
just like all the cities of that day were, just like the cities
of our day, was a pagan city. These people worshiped gods of
their imagination, mythological gods. And until Paul went there
the first time and preached the gospel, they would have died
in their sins. And now the Lord has done for
them what he's done for many of us here. He's given us a interest
in the gospel and a desire to hear God's word and to know him. And we can remember. We can remember
a time just like they could remember a time when they had no interest
in the gospel. They worshiped a pagan God. Truth is that you and I come
into this world, pagan, and only by virtue of the new birth Can
we see the things of God and have a desire for the things
of God? The Lord told Nicodemus, Nicodemus, except you be born
again, you cannot see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus said what
this one man said, well, I'm looking, I don't see, how can
I go back into my, he was translating everything into physical things,
wasn't he? Also know Nicodemus, to be born again is to be born
of the spirit and the spirit's like the wind. He listeth with
us wherever he wills. You don't know where he's going,
where he's coming from. Spirit of God has to do a work of grace
in your heart. When he does, when he does, we have a desire for the things
of God. Though that desire is mixed with
our unbelieving flesh. Lord, I believe, help thou mine
unbelief. Trouble not yourself, His life
is in Him. And they were not a little comforted.
The life of Christ is my life. His spiritual life, His commitments,
His faithfulness to His Father. When we're not faithful, He remaineth
faithful. He's always faithful. Notice, when this took place,
took place on the first day of the week. That's when the believers
came together. This is not the Old Testament Sabbath with rules
and regulations of what you can do and can't do. That Sabbath,
the scripture says, was a sign pointing to the person and work
of the Lord Jesus Christ who would provide for his people
rest by his labor. The Sabbath was established by
God at creation. God rested because the works
were finished. And now that Sabbath has been
fulfilled, and the believers come together on the first day
of the week, on the Lord's day, in celebration of his resurrection. I think it's interesting that
in the Old Testament economy, the Sabbath was the last day
of the week, and in the New Testament, the Lord's day is the first day
of the week. We begin with grace, don't we? Begin with grace and
end with grace. What a blessing it is that the
Lord has given us a day of rest and a day where we can come together
and hear his word and worship together. And this is this is
a. We were talking about this this
morning before the service, how our how our culture and society
has changed so much just in the last few years. And I understand now as a result
of COVID that there is just a portion of people that acknowledge someday
what it is, but you know, here we have, God's people are gonna
gather together. No one's gonna have to force
their hand or manipulate them or or promise them something for
coming. No, they want to gather together on the Lord's day and
hear what God has to say. What were they doing on this
day? They were preaching. Declaring
the gospel of God's free grace in the finished work of Christ.
Paul was preaching Christ. Don't know what all he had to
say, how many passages of scriptures he went to, but he preached all
night long. Boy, that's fallen on bad times,
hadn't it? Preaching. Men don't value preaching
today. Now, the word preach has a bad
connotation, doesn't it? Men will say, don't preach to
me. I love it when God's people say, oh, pastor, preach to me. Preach Christ to me. I need to
hear him. I need to be reminded of who
he is and what he's done. I'm so prone to slumber and to
sleep and to fall away. And this matter of preaching
is not a one-man activity, is it? It's something we do together.
You know the old adage, if a tree falls in the forest and there's
no one to hear it, does it make a sound? And you know the point
of that is, the point of that is that sound has to be received
in order for it to be heard and truth and you gotta have a receiver. There's, there's sounds in this
room right now that we can't see because we don't have a radio
to tune into the frequencies to hear what they are. And, and
the Lord tunes the hearts of his people to be able to enter
into the words that are being spoken so that, so that they
are rejoicing and receiving and delighting and prayed and comforting
by the word of God. Oh, this is not something that
one person does. We do it together, don't we?
We don't preach at men, we preach with them and to them and remind
them of who Christ is. But knowing most churches today
that would be preaching certainly is not the preeminent thing.
Pop psychology or entertainment or something even as good as
fellowship becomes the main focus. Heard a man say recently, we've
lost our priority. We need to get refocused on our
priority. And as he went on to talk, what
he was talking about was evangelizing the world, getting out and winning
people to Christ. And the priority is to worship and
to preach Christ. And if anyone's gonna be saved,
that's the means by which the Lord's gonna save them. This is what the Lord's given
us to do. And we do it together. Notice
in our text, they met on verse seven, upon the first day of
the week, and the disciples came together to break bread. And
Paul preached and ready to depart on the morrow. He continued his
preaching. That word speech, by the way,
Every time I read this passage, I think of someone who said to
me one time after preaching, he said, well, that was a good
speech. Preaching is not a speech. And the word here translated
speech is the word Lagos, which is the word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
Lagos. So he was preaching God's word
about God's word. He was preaching Christ. there were many lights in the
upper room." What is that a picture of? Yeah,
there's many lights here today, isn't there? The Lord said in
Matthew chapter 5, that sermon on the mount, which is the longest
and greatest sermon the Lord preached, Matthew chapter five
through seven. And right after the Beatitudes
at the beginning of that sermon, the very first point in our Lord's
message was, you are the light of the world. If a light, if a city be on a
hill, set upon a hill, it cannot be hid. And men don't take a
light and put it under a bushel basket. No, they set it on a
candlestick and set it up so everyone can see it. Then he
concluded that by saying, let your light so shine before men
that they may see your good works and glorify your heavenly father,
which is in heaven. Now, does that mean to go out
there in the world and let people see what a good life you're living
and somehow your life is going to influence them to glorify
God? No. Preaching the gospel is the
only thing that's gonna do that. And I tell you what, the light
that shines in your heart, in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ,
your hope in Christ, your fellowship in the gospel is gonna cause
God's people to glorify their father. So when the Lord said,
let your light so shine before men that they may glorify your
heavenly father, which is in heaven, he's talking about the
light of the gospel that we have in us, the life of Christ in
us. There were many lights in that
room. And there are many lights in
this room, and let your light so shine among your brethren,
that they may see your hope in Christ, and together glorify
your heavenly Father, which is in heaven. Believers are the
only ones who are gonna glorify God. And finally, notice where they
were meeting. Scripture says he fell from a
third floor window. Number three is very significant
in the Bible. And the upper room is very significant.
Do you remember where the Lord celebrated the Last Supper with
the disciples? The Scripture says it was an
upper chamber. And here we have the presence
of the Lord Jesus Christ in that place. And then on the day of
Pentecost, the 120 disciples were meeting together in an upper
room when the Spirit of God came like a wind and a fire and blew
upon them and confirmed the gospel to their hearts and enabled them
to go out and preach. In Acts chapter 10, Peter at Cornelius's
house at Joppa, I mean, at Simon the Tanner's house in Joppa,
when the Lord sent him to Cornelius's, was up on the roof of the house.
It's in the upper room. This is where we are. The number three, we've got God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit meeting with
His people in an upper room. And causing the, light of the
gospel to shine in their hearts so that they can find their hope.
Not in how attuned they are to spiritual things and not how
committed they are, not how faithful they are and not how how much
feeling they have. But here's our hope, brethren.
Here's our hope. Trouble not yourselves, for his
life is in him. The life of Christ in you is
your hope of glory. And they were not a little comforted
by that. This is the promise of God. Why are you thus? Because you have two nations
in you. But here's our hope, Christ in us. And when he shall
appear, what did Job say? The root of the matter is in
me. And if you knew that, you wouldn't persecute me like you
do. There's my hope. Christ in me. The hope of glory. Our Heavenly
Father. We are so much like Uticus. Cannot even imagine. Working
all day and. Worshipping all night and working
the next day. Lord, our flesh is weak. We're
so prone to. to sleep and slumber over spiritual
things. Forgive us, strengthen us, and
give to us the faith to believe your promises that Christ in
us is our life and our hope. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. 125 and hardback tenor. Let's stand
together. 125. I hear the Savior say, Thy strength
indeed is small, Child of weakness, watch and pray, Find in me thine
all in all. Jesus paid it all, All to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. Lord, now indeed I find Thy power
and Thine alone. can change the leper's spots
and melt the heart of stone. Jesus paid it all, all to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow. For nothing good have I whereby
thy grace to claim. I'll wash my garments white in
the blood of Calvary's Lamb. Jesus paid it all. ? All to him I owe ? Sin had
left a crimson stain ? He washed it white as snow ? And when before
the throne ? I stand in him complete ? Jesus died my soul to save
? My lips shall still repeat Jesus paid it all, all to Him
I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.