I've entitled the message for
this evening, Death and Life in Preaching. And that is what
took place in this sermon. A young man by the name of Eutychus
was up in a windowsill during this message. Paul preached a
long time. He fell out. And how he died,
I don't know, but it was a three-story fall. He was dead. He died in
the course of that message. Paul comes down and embraces
him, and he's given life from the dead. Now when I've read
this passage, I've done so with interest, imagining the length
of this message. Can you imagine a message lasting
that long? We began this message at Six,
a little after six and at midnight, I would still be preaching. I just like to think of how people
would be responding to that. I couldn't help but to think
of a story that happened when I was a child. I've looked, there's
at least five people probably that were at 13th Street during
the 70s when they would have those Bible conferences. And
he would have three speakers in one service, and two in the
night service. He'd have five sermons. And well,
when you're a kid, I'm sure maybe some of you enjoyed him like
that, but I was one of those kids that I was having a hard
time with it. And there was a pastor there. I'm not gonna name his
name, but he preached two hours. And he had somebody coming up
after him. And I remember everybody thought they were gonna die.
You know, you were just, you were just, man, he was real intellectual,
he used big words, and you're a kid, you don't understand.
After he finished, Henry wanted to just close the service, because
he could see no one was with him anymore, and everybody was
just, you know, zoned out. And he told the man that was
supposed to speak. He said, why don't we just go
ahead and close the service? He said, well, give me 15 minutes. I've wanted to preach. Some people
came here to hear the message. So he began with a story. Everybody's in shock, whatever
it is, after that message. And I can remember the message.
And he said, back in World War II, They would put up pictures
of people who were killed in the service in the church buildings.
And a father came in with his son and his boy said, daddy,
who are those people in those pictures? He said, son, there
were people who were killed in the service. He said, morning
or evening. Well, this event. This passage
of scripture has been used as a warning against falling asleep
during preaching. You see what can happen. And
it's also been used as a warning against preaching too long. You
can see what will happen. I like what Charles Spurgeon
said. He said, I don't care what you preach about, preach about
40 minutes. If you get over that, you're getting too long. But
Paul was different. Paul was called of God an apostle,
preaching the gospel. Now, interestingly, I looked
for messages on this on the internet, and I found two messages where
people preach from this passage of scripture. And I listened
to the first part, of both of them. The first message was entitled,
Living on the Edge. And he said, Eutychus was living
on the edge. He was too close to the edge,
and that's why he fell off. And there are people who live
on the edge, and that's where the problem is. And I thought,
well, I could listen to that. And then there was another message
entitled, More Out Than In. And he said, the reason Eutychus
fell out is because he's more out than in. And therefore, that's
where most Christians have their problems. They're more out than
in. And that's where they fall. Needless
to say, I didn't finish listening to either message. It wasn't
worth listening to. But one of the things that we
need to understand here is that a supernatural miracle took place. Life from the dead. And every time we have these
supernatural miracles in scripture, it's given to preach the gospel
from. And that's what I hope the Lord
gives us grace tonight to enter into, the preaching of the gospel. There's a gospel message in this
miracle. Now, We read of 10 resurrections
from the dead in the Bible. Maybe you remember a few months
ago we considered Peter raising Tabitha from the dead and what
a gospel type that was. She made coats for the people
and now she's dead and all the coats, the coats the Lord's made
for his people, the garments of righteousness. And then We
read of the resurrection of Christ, his resurrection from the dead.
And it was utterly unique in that when he died, he never went
through the process of decay. You know what? Complete satisfaction
was made. And all of the elect were justified
the moment he died. Nobody died like that. As a matter
of fact, he's the only one who chose to die. Somebody says,
well, people who have taken their lives choose to die. Well, they're
going to die anyway. It's not, this is the only one who chose
to die, the Lord Jesus Christ and what he accomplished by his
death. And the moment he died, scripture
says the veil in the temple was rent from the top to the bottom,
the way into the holiest was open for every believer. And something else happened.
There was an earthquake, rocks rent. And during that earthquake,
tombs were opened and many of the dead saints were raised up
and walked about Jerusalem. There's some resurrections from
the dead. Somebody says, what's the point of that? Well, I know
this, his death is what causes life. That is why this resurrection
took place. It's let us know that the moment
he died, life comes from his death. Now, Elijah raised the
widow's son, and Elisha raised the Shulamite's son, and there
was a dead man thrown into the tomb of Elisha, and as soon as
his dead body touched the bones of Elisha. He was raised from
the dead. And then we're all familiar with
that passage in Ezekiel chapter 37 when Ezekiel preached to that
valley of dead, dry bones. It says, behold, they were very
dry and God gave them life. What a gospel message there is
in that. And then during the Lord's earthly
ministry, he raised three people from the dead. He raised Jairus's
daughter, that little girl, 12 years old. He got there just
when she died, and I imagine she could have looked alive.
Her body was still warm, but she was dead. And then we read
of the resurrection of the widow of Nain's son during that funeral
procession. He came and touched the coffin,
and that young man rose up alive. And then was probably the most
famous one is Lazarus. He'd been in the tomb four days. The process of decay had started
to where it was unbearable to be around him. He stank at this
time through the process of decay. And that's when Christ said,
Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth. There's powerful gospel messages
in every one of those resurrections. Now I've already mentioned the
resurrection of Tabitha when Peter raised her from the dead. And then we have the story before
us, verse six. 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." Now, does that mean they had a meal together? Perhaps,
but I think what it's a reference to is the Lord's table. It appears
that it's possible, I don't know this, there's not a commandment
with regard to this, but it appears possibly the Lord's Table was
observed every week by the early church. And you can't observe
the Lord's Table too much. We observe it once a month, we
could observe it every day and it would still be such a blessing
because of what it commemorates. our salvation by what he did. You can't think enough of the
life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our complete
salvation in that. They met together and the scripture
says Paul preached unto them and he knew this was the last
time he was going to see them. He was going to leave the next
day. So while preaching, He continued his speech until midnight. Paul's preaching, and I dare
say it was a great message, even if this was Paul preaching. And
he continued this preaching until midnight. First Corinthians 121
says that please God by the foolishness of what we're doing right now.
preaching to save them that believe. Titus 1.3, God has manifested
his word through preaching, which is committed to my trust. I love that passage in Romans
chapter 10. How shall they hear without a
preacher? And how shall they preach except
they be sent? Now, I've heard preachers take
those passages of scriptures and put too much emphasis, importance
on the preacher. The preacher's not important.
It's the message that's preached that is important, not the preacher.
This is not putting a preacher up on a pedestal. The preacher's
no different than you are, a sinner saved by grace. No more saved. Don't try to raise up the preacher
in that, but don't take away from the importance. It pleased
God. by the foolishness of preaching
to save them that believe. By what's going on right now,
this is how God speaks. This is where the Lord manifests
his presence, where two or three are gathered together in his
name. Oh, the importance of public
worship. And Paul was preaching to these
people Now, true preaching always comes from the written word of
God. Because I'm a preacher, there's
a gym I go to, and because everybody there by this time knows I'm
a preacher, and they'll come up and talk to me about religion
and stuff. There are a couple of people
from a church here in town, I won't name it, you can probably guess
it. Biggest church in town, figure it out. And they came to me and
they said, They were talking about what they heard, and I
said, well, it sounds to me like what you heard was pop psychology. That's what that church is known
for, pop psychology, not the preaching and the gospel, not
messages from the scripture. And one guy called me, he said,
you know, I'd like to hear a message from the scripture. Yeah, that'd
be a good thing, wouldn't it? But true preaching always comes
from the written word of God, And true preaching is always
the preaching of Jesus Christ. We preach Christ and him crucified. Who he is, he's God, he's man. What he did, he became flesh. He kept God's holy law perfectly. He died. and put away the sins
of everybody he died for. He was raised again, justifying
everybody he represented. Where is he now? He's seated
at the right hand of the Father. What's he doing there? He's interceding
for his people. He's representing me even right
now. He's ruling and reigning and
controlling every event and every body and everything as the God-man,
as the God-man mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. We preach the great themes of the
gospel. election. I don't know how many times I've
been criticized for dwelling on election too much. Well, you
go on criticizing, I love God's electing grace. I wouldn't have
any hope of being saved if it wasn't for God's electing mercy. The great theme of Christ's effectual
atonement in behalf of the elect and accomplishing their salvation.
The great theme of The regenerating work of God the Holy Spirit where
he gives life and he preserves those people. The great theme
of faith and repentance. Repent of anything that's contrary
to believing the gospel of God's grace and look to Christ only. The great themes of the gospel
are always dealt with in the preaching of the gospel. And
preaching is always preaching with a divine authority. This
is the word of God, that's the authority. And God the Holy Spirit
blesses it to where people hear from God through preaching. If all you hear is my voice,
it's not gonna do you any good. But people hear from God through
the preaching of his gospel. And he was leaving the next day.
Perhaps he felt that he would not see them again. He kept preaching
through midnight. And what a message it must have
been. I would have liked to have been there. I'm also probably
the kid that would have sunk deep in sleep too during that
time. You too, you too. He kept preaching and we had
long preachers, but I've never experienced that. And there was a young man, verse
nine, Look at verse eight, and there were many lights in the
upper chamber where they were gathered together. They were
up on the third floor of this building, and there's many lights.
Oh, the light that comes from the preaching of the gospel,
where Christ is revealed. You see Christ in the scriptures.
Verse nine, 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. I suspect at that time he might
have started snoring. It's always hard to preach while somebody's
snoring. I imagine that's really what this, I mean, this guy was,
I mean, he was crashed. He was sunk down deep in sleep. And he fell down from the third
loft and was taken up dead. Now he began this message alive,
didn't he? But in the course of this message, he fell and
became dead. Now there's so much significance
to this, this fall. He fell. And you know, you find
out about your fall through hearing the gospel. You don't just figure
it out. You don't figure out, you know, something needs to
be done for me. No, through hearing the gospel,
you hear of your fall and your death by that fall. That man fell, picturing the
fall of Adam in the garden, and he became dead. Graveyard dead. Call the undertaker. This man
is dead. Now, this gives us some idea
of what happened to Adam and what happened to me and you when
he fell. He fell and he became dead. Now what's that death look like?
dead in trespasses and sins. And you hath he quickened who
were dead in trespasses and sins, wherein in times past you walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince
of the power of the air, the spirit that even now works in
the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our
conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling
the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we were by nature
children of wrath, just like everybody else, dead in sins.
Here's what it looks like, Genesis chapter six, verse five. It says,
and God saw the wickedness of man was great in the earth and
that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only
evil continually. Now I dare say that most, if
not everybody, would agree that that's what the Bible teaches.
Adam died. We died in him. You can see the
Bible teaches that. It may be something that you
believe. I give adherence to that. I believe it's what the Bible
teaches. But let me ask you a question. Do you believe that you personally
right now are totally depraved? That everything that comes out
of your heart is evil? and that if God left you to yourself
right now, you would most certainly split hell wide open. Do you believe that you yourself
are totally depraved? Do you believe you're a sinner
is what that means? And I'm not talking about you used to be
a sinner, I'm talking about right now. Do you believe that you
are a sinner? That's somebody who cannot refrain
from sin. If you do it, it's sin. And because
of your sinfulness, you really believe that you don't have the
right to sit in judgment on anybody. I don't care who it is. Your
sin's all your fault, and you have no claims on God. That is
a totally depraved sinner. Now that person, and only that
person, needs the gospel. Election isn't just a doctrine
they agree to or adhere to. I need God to elect me. Particular
redemption is not just a doctrine. Well, I see the scripture teaches
that. No, I need Christ to put away my sin and make it away.
I need him to do it all for me. I need God, the Holy Spirit,
to birth me into the kingdom of God. I need the gospel. If I'm totally depraved, and
I am, And I'm not talking about the way I used to be. I'm talking
about right now. And the thing is, it's so difficult
people think, well, what are you doing then? Don't even think
that way. I am totally depraved. You are
too, whether you know it or not. But if you do know it, oh, how
you see the necessity of the gospel. Now, this man became
dead sometime during the preaching of that message. When you hear
the gospel, you find out that you are dead in sins. And you don't know it apart from
hearing the gospel, apart from hearing the truth, apart from
the gospel being preached. And he's taken up dead. Verse 10, and Paul went down. Now, isn't that a type of the
Lord Jesus Christ? Paul went down. He came down to this man as the
Lord Jesus Christ came down. Paul came down. Christ said, I came down from
heaven, not to do by own will, but the will of him that sent
me. Christ came down. And look what it says Paul did.
And Paul went down and fell on him and embracing him. Now in the first verse of this
chapter, It says Paul came and called unto the disciples and
embraced them. He hugged them. He loved these people and he
embraced them and was one of the best for them. I mean, he
loved them. But here the word embrace is a completely different
word than the original. And it's the only time this word
is used. It means he enveloped him. He comprehended Him. He knew Him. And understand this, on the cross
of Calvary, the Lord Jesus Christ comprehended me. He enveloped
and covered me up. He knew me. All my sin became
His sin. Now I feel the need to say this,
he never committed sin. But he knew my sin much more
intently than I've ever known my sin. You see, I'm used to
sin. You're used to sin. We're born
sinners. Sin doesn't really bother us. All the time, I'm scared
to death. I'm becoming too desensitized
towards sin through the hardness of my heart. I don't know much
of the evil of sin the way I ought to, but he came to know everything
there is concerning sin in his holy soul. except for the commission
of it. But he knew all the shame of
it, all the guilt of it, everything associated with sin. Paul came
down and embraced this man and enveloped him and comprehended
him and knew him altogether. Christ Jesus on Calvary's tree
when he came down and when he lived that life of perfect obedience,
fulfilling the righteousness of the law for me. And then he
embraced me on Calvary's tree when he was nailed to the cross.
There was a reason all of my sins became his sins. He bore them in his own body
on the tree and he put them away. And then what does he say? And Paul went down and fell on
him. and embracing him, said, trouble
not yourselves, for his life is in him. Now I have no doubt
that he's talking about his life from the dead, but more than
anything else, he's saying his life is in him. When Christ,
who is our life, shall appear. His life is in him. Christ in you. The hope of glory. He was raised from the dead. 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,
even to the break of day." Now this is interesting, this sermon
that had started that evening and it got broken up for a bit
at midnight, but as soon as that man was brought to life, they
continued the sermon. And I bet their hearing was kind
of energized at this time, after this took place. They were able
to hear and Paul kept on preaching until the break of day. And I
like, Luke's understatement, and he does this a lot, verse
12, and they brought the young man alive and were not a little
comforted. Oh, how comforted they were.
They were so upset when this young man died, maybe he broke
his neck, I don't know what happened, and how comforted they were when
this man lived. Now turn with me to Isaiah 40.
The comfort of the gospel. When he says they were not a
little comforted, it means they were greatly comforted. And I
want us to close this message before we take the Lord's table
with considering the comfort of the gospel. Verse 40. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people. Save your God. Now, a couple
of things I want to point out about that. Who is to be comforted? My people. God has a people that
are his people. Remember Matthew 121, thou shalt
call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. It's talking about the elect
of God. It's talking about those God chose before the foundation
of the world. This is talking about those that
Christ died for. Comfort my people, but the next
thing I would want us to zero in on and comfort my people Do
you know every message if you if you hear a message and you
go away just feeling guilty and Feeling that there's I need to
try harder. I need to do more. I need to I just I just need
to be better and Either the preacher didn't preach
the gospel or you didn't hear the gospel. Every message, without
exception, even if there is chastening, even if there is rebuke, every
message is to be comforting. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,
saith your God. Verse two, speak ye, comfortably
to Jerusalem and cry unto her, make sure she hears this, say
this out loud. And he gives three things that
comfort. Tell her, her warfare is accomplished. That her iniquity is pardoned. For she hath received of the
Lord's hand double for all her sins. Now, what am I going to
say or what's the Lord going to say that ministers comfort
to his people? Well, here's the first thing,
your warfare is accomplished. Now that is comprehended by the
Lord's words from the cross. It is finished. There's nothing for you to do. It's already been done. You can't
get any more saved. You can't get any more sanctified.
You can't get any more justified. You can't get any more well-pleasing.
You can't get any more accepted than you are in Christ Jesus. Tell her, cry it. Make sure she knows this, that
her warfare is accomplished. It's all over. She is perfect
in Christ Jesus. Now we'll look at the next thing. Tell her first that her warfare
is accomplished. Tell her secondly that her iniquity
IS PARDONED! Believer, your sins ARE forgiven,
and the only way you should ever THINK of your sins is as FORGIVEN
sins. You see, when you hear Forgiveness,
what you find out is that you've been forgiven. Tell her, tell
her all your sins, your past sins, your present sins, the
ones that you have on your mind right now, future sins that you
haven't even committed yet, they're all forgiven sins. Blotted out, put away. You tell her that her warfare
is accomplished, you tell her that her iniquity is pardoned,
for she hath received of the Lord's hand. Now notice it doesn't
say she will receive, she hath received. She hath received of
the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Now, they were all punished already,
But here's the double, not only have your sins been punished,
you've been justified. You stand before God right now
without guilt, eternally without guilt, without sin, sinless,
justified. Not only was she not sent to
hell, she was made a son of God, an actual son of the living God. Not only is she not guilty, she
has the best life ever lived, the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
She hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. And that is the comfort of the
gospel. Now when they took this man up,
scripture says they were not a little comforted. And we are
not a little comforted. We're greatly comforted by how
God gives dead sinners life and the comfort of the gospel. And when we partake of the Lord's
table in just a few minutes, may the Lord enable us by his
grace to realize what this table is saying is the warfare is accomplished. It's accomplished. This is something
to celebrate. It's not a time of sadness. It's a time of joy. Her warfare
is accomplished. Your inequity is pardoned. It's
gone. It's put away. You have received
of the Lord's hand double for all your sins. Let's pray. Lord, how we thank you in Christ's
name that you give dead sinners life, that your son came and
took their sin upon himself and died on Calvary's tree, putting
them away. and causing all your people to
have their warfare accomplished, their iniquity pardoned, and
receiving of thy hand double for all their sins. Now bless
this time together. Enable us to do this in remembrance
of you. And Lord, we would ask for your
blessing on our time together for the graduates that you'd
bless that time as well for Christ's sake. In his name we pray, amen.