The Bible Study Hour

Announcer: The Apostle Paul was a man of great empathy. He readily identified with those to whom he ministered as he visited the churches of the ancient Near East, and at times that empathy spilled over in the form of tears shed for the people he loved.

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. As Paul prepares to depart from the leaders of the church he established in Ephesus, we find him ministering to them in the most intimate and personal way. Join Dr. Boice as he explores the depths of the apostle's feelings for his people and his testimony, his words, and his challenge to the elders of Ephesus.

Dr. James Boice: To anybody that has any interest at all in the Apostle Paul as a person, the 20th chapter of the book of Acts is a delight. That's because we see him here in two different functions. We see him in public life, at Troas, leading the worship of the church in that city. There we are told of a meeting that began probably at the end of the work day on a certain evening and which contained a large amount of preaching on Paul's part, perhaps four or five hours, assuming it began around 7:00 at night and went to midnight.

They had an observance of the Lord's Supper after that, and then there was a time of informal dialogue and fellowship that went on to dawn. That's an interesting service, the middle of the night, a service of 10 or 12 hours in which the Apostle Paul was very active and in which his spirits apparently did not flag, though the spirits of Eutychus did.

Then in the second half of this chapter, we see the Apostle Paul in quite a different setting. Not in public this time, leading the worship of the people of God, but in private, as it were, in Miletus, a little town about 20 or 30 miles from Ephesus to which he had called the leaders, or the elders, of that Ephesian church community. In that passage, we see him ministering to them in the most intimate and most personal way.

Now this farewell to the elders, because it is generally known as that, Paul's farewell to the Ephesian elders, this farewell has three parts. The first part concerns Paul himself; it's Paul's testimony before the elders. The second part is his specific words to them, and that is his charge to the elders. Then finally, at the very end and in much briefer language, we have a reference to his prayer on behalf of the elders. I'd like to look at each one of those in the time that we have.

The first is his testimony to them. You find it in this chapter in verses 18 through 24, and then it's interrupted while he gives them his charge, and then he picks up again in a more personal vein in verses 33 to 35. This is a great passage for any minister of the Gospel to read, or any aspiring minister. It's a good passage for seminarians to study and to meditate on because here Paul, now at the end of his time of ministry among these people, people whom he loved, looks back over his life and his time among them and points not in any way of self-exaltation, but rather in an honest way at those things which had characterized his life and ministry among them and for which he was quite willing and happy to praise God.

These are the things that should be in the life of any minister. If that is true of those who exercise what we call an ordained capacity in the church, it should certainly be true of other Christians as well. Look at some of these things. The first thing he mentions in verse 19 and following is humility. He reminds them that while he was with them, he served the Lord with great humility.

It's interesting that he should mention this because when Paul comes to write, as he later does in the pastoral epistles, 1 Timothy and Titus, giving the qualifications for the eldership, although he touches upon the things that are to characterize those who are leaders in the church and some of those things might just possibly have bearing on this matter of humility, he doesn't actually mention it there. As a matter of fact, there is no other place in all his writings that he mentions this of himself.

Yet here as he looks back over his time among them, he reminds the Ephesian elders that while he was there, he was there in great humility. That's important, of course, because this opposite danger, the danger of pride, is a very great danger for those who are in visible positions within the church. I suppose pride is a danger for all of us, but it's particularly a danger for those who stand up and talk, at least if they are effective in any way, because people will always come up afterwards to say, no doubt meaning quite well, "Oh, that was a wonderful message," or "Oh, I was greatly blessed by that."

Now I don't want anybody to misunderstand what I'm saying. If you feel like telling me that something I say has blessed you, don't hold back by any means. But what I want to say is that that very situation, as valuable as it is in some ways, also at the same time presents a great danger. Because the danger is for the minister to think that indeed he is rather wonderful because, after all, he has indeed himself been a source of such great blessing, and forget that any blessing that comes to people at all comes from the Lord and that the Lord himself should be glorified. A minister, if he is to be effective in the ministry, has to learn early on to deal with this matter of pride and grow in humility. I don't think that means that ministers will always be talking about it, and certainly Paul didn't talk about it. As I said, it's the only time he mentions it. Nevertheless, something like this has to be there.

George Whitefield was one who developed a little technique for dealing with it. Whitefield was the most popular preacher of his day, probably the most popular speaker of his day, whether political or otherwise. He was a spellbinder. Whitefield was brilliant. Everybody who talked about him talked about his mastery of language and his control over the emotions of an audience. Not in a wrong way, but in a right way.

Moreover, he lived in a day where there wasn't the kind of competition that ministers have today through television and other media. When Whitefield came to town, why, everybody just literally streamed to hear him from all of the areas round about. The second they would hear that Whitefield was coming, people would drop their plows, drop their hammers in the blacksmith's shop, drop what they were using at the loom, and they would rush off to hear Whitefield.

He spoke to thousands upon thousands in his day. He would speak to as many as 20 or 25,000 people at a time. Today we wonder how in the world he could do that. As a matter of fact, Benjamin Franklin, who was his contemporary, wondered about that. He thought it must be exaggerated. So when Whitefield came to Philadelphia, Franklin went to hear him. He started up front and then gradually he worked his way back away from Whitefield, seeing how far he could get away and still hear his voice.

As he did that, he counted his paces, which allowed him to figure the radius from Whitefield at the center of the circle, and he calculated how many square feet there were and he gave so many square feet to a person, and he found out that Whitefield could indeed be heard by 25 or 30,000 people if they gathered around in close array. This is the kind of man Whitefield was.

Well, you can imagine that if a man like this preached effectively to those large numbers and people were blessed, as they obviously were, that when he finished preaching, people just flocked around him and said, "Oh, Mr. Whitefield, you were so wonderful. Your words were so eloquent. Why, I just don't know what I'm going to do." And Whitefield, as I said, developed a technique for handling that. Whenever anybody would come up to Whitefield and say to him, "Mr. Whitefield, you were just wonderful today," Whitefield would say, "I know, the devil just told me that as I stepped down from the pulpit."

I remember in that same connection the story of another young preacher, a young Scottish preacher, who was quite taken up with himself, very self-confident. When he had his opportunity to preach, he literally bounded up into the pulpit, filled with self-esteem. Unfortunately, it was something that he wasn't fully able to handle. He lost his way in the midst of his address, he became quite confounded, he forgot what he was trying to say, and he came down from the pulpit quite humiliated, very crestfallen.

An old Scottish elder who was present in the church said to him afterwards, "Young man, if ye had gone up the way ye had come down, ye would have had a chance of coming down the way ye had gone up." Well, Paul was one who had obviously come down properly because he had bowed down often before the Lord. He knew that he was nothing different from anyone else; he was a sinner saved by grace. If he had gifts that God used in the ministry, well, they were gifts that had been given him by God. As he said to those who were under his care, writing them about their gifts, if it's a gift, why should you boast about it as if you hadn't received it? But rather, if you've received it, then give honor to the one from whom it came.

So that's the first thing. The second thing he says about himself in this testimony before the elders is that as he served the Lord among them in humility, he also did so with tears. Paul mentions it at one other place in this same passage. It's there in verse 19, but you also find it in verse 31. He repeats it later on, so it obviously was something of great importance to him.

As far as I know, this is not said elsewhere, and I don't think it really means that Paul was what we would call a weepy kind of person. We know people that are like that, people that for one reason or another are emotionally inclined to burst into tears. I have generally found that that is not terribly effective in working with other people.

As a matter of fact, in all my life, I've only known one person who really did that, and that was during my years in high school. I still remember his name, but I won't mention it out of deference to his survivors; he's now dead, no doubt of heartbreak. This man taught romance languages in high school, and he was so moved out of his compassion for the boys in the particular school that I attended that he would literally break into tears about us quite frequently. We remember him crying in chapel, tears running down his cheeks as he tried to speak to us. Our general reaction was that that was not terribly effective. That's not the way you generally communicate effectively with boys, or for that matter, with anybody else.

I think as I say that, when Paul says that he served the Lord in Ephesus with tears, he does not mean necessarily that he was given to frequent outbursts of emotion. But it does mean something, and it may well mean that he had tears at times. What it does mean, if it means nothing else, is that he was what we would call a man of great empathy. And as he learned to identify with those to whom he ministered.

We're told in the Old Testament that we're to weep with those that weep and we're to rejoice with those that rejoice. Paul was like that. If somebody was happy, he was happy with them because he was happy for them. If somebody was weeping, Paul could weep with them because he identified with them and to some extent could live himself what they were going through.

I know that Francis Schaeffer in his writings has made a great deal of this. Francis Schaeffer is one who spoke often of speaking the truth in love. He's one who recognized the need at times of separation, but Schaeffer always said, if we separate, it must be with tears, and if we speak the truth in love, it must be at times with tears. He was absolutely right in that. He meant we have to empathize.

I learned an interesting lesson, I think, when I was growing up, and it was due in part to something my mother told me and something that I was taught by my aunt. Teenagers are always very sensitive, you know, and many of us remain sensitive, very sensitive sometimes throughout our lives. I would be particularly worried or shy about something. I know you find it very hard to believe that I was ever shy. But I was in those years and sometimes I would say to my mother or my aunt who lived in our home, "Oh, I'm afraid of what they'll be thinking of me." And these two wise women in my life always said to me, "You would learn a great deal if you would just realize that most people aren't thinking about you at all."

Well, I think I learned that. That, as I look back on my life, is one of the early lessons I really think I did learn. Maybe I learned other lessons besides and maybe I learned more important lessons besides, but that at least is one I remember, and it helped me through a lot of very difficult situations to learn that other people basically just aren't thinking about you at all. So you don't have to be shy in front of them; you can be yourself, and I think that helped me in the process of growing up.

But I mention that here to say that while that is valuable wisdom, it is essentially no more than the wisdom the world can easily give. Someone who is a perfect non-Christian can tell other people that as well as a Christian. They can say, "Look, it's just a psychological fact that people are wrapped up in themselves, they're not thinking of you, and you'll do very well in life if you can just remember that." You see, as Christians, we go a step beyond. It is true we learn that other people are not thinking about us, but that is not Christianity. Christianity is to do the opposite thing, which is, namely, to think of them. And to think of them as Christ thinks of them, and so identify with them in whatever it is they're going through.

You ever ask the question why the Apostle Paul was so effective as he went throughout the Greek and Roman world of his day preaching the Gospel, establishing churches and leaving behind bodies of Christians which grew and thrived and prospered over many, many decades long after Paul was gone? Was it his preaching? Yes, of course it was his preaching; we're going to come to that in a moment. He taught them the whole counsels of God, and God blessed them through his word. But I sense that it also had a great deal to do with the empathy that he had for them. He really did weep with them when they were weeping, and he rejoiced with them when they were rejoicing. He struggled with their struggles, he grieved with their griefs, and they remembered that, and they recognized in him there was something of the character of Christ that they did not see in the world around them, and so the church prospered.

So Paul mentions those two things: his humility and the fact that he was with them with tears. Now here's the third thing: it's his diligence in preaching. Now he says a great deal about that, and rightly so, because that's what he was chiefly called upon to do. As I look at this, I see at least five things that he has to say about his preaching. I'll treat them briefly. First of all, he reminds them that he was engaged in public preaching. We know that because earlier in the book of Acts, we saw what he did when he was in Ephesus. He rented this hall of Tyrannus, and there he lectured every day from what one of the marginal references tell us is from 10:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the afternoon, six hours every day. That's a lot of teaching, and he did it publicly.

Not only did he do it publicly, he says that in verse 20, he also did it privately. That is, he went from house to house with his message. Some commentators have studied this and have said, well, when Paul says from house to house, what he's probably talking about there is house churches. And that may well be. Certainly there were gatherings of Christians in the houses in that day; it's where they could meet. So in addition to these public lectures that he gave or public worship services like the one we saw at Troas, Paul also went to places where these little gatherings of Christians were. And there he ministered to them in a much more intimate fashion. I suppose that is true, but at the same time, as I read this, I can't help but sensing that when he says from house to house, what Paul really says is that he also engaged in personal house-to-house visitation.

There was an interesting book that was written many years ago now in England by a man named Richard Baxter. It's called The Reformed Pastor. But it's not, as you would think, a book about Calvinism, though certainly Baxter was a Calvinist, but rather it's a book about methodology for the minister. Baxter's chief point in that book, something that he had developed in his own ministry in a rather backward and desolate section of England, was the ministry of literally going from house to house visiting his parishioners and what he called catechizing them, that is, taking them as a family and particularly the children through the questions of the Westminster shorter and longer catechisms that were the theological basis of his church.

Under Baxter's ministry in that community, the church prospered, it grew, and he said there came a time when as he walked through the streets of the city, in any city street in that particular town in England, the majority of the people were professing Christians because he had administered to them in that way. Well, Paul says he did that. I don't know exactly how that can be well done today in churches which are large and with communities that are scattered. Certainly it's one thing to do that in a relatively small town in England where everybody knows everybody and to do it in a large city like Philadelphia or New York or Los Angeles or Washington.

But if this says nothing else to it, it at least says this: that Paul was not above doing that. Paul did not say to himself, "Well, I am the great preacher. I'm the one who has to stand up and lecture to the masses. Why, it would be beneath me to take my time and visit in somebody's home and try to help them on a one-to-one basis." All of the great people of God have always recognized that what happens one-on-one or in small groups is sometimes, quite often in the province of God, far more important than what happens in the large mass meetings.

David Brainerd, a missionary to the Indians who got tuberculosis and died at a young age and whose biography was written by Jonathan Edwards, when he was on his deathbed, ministered to a small young Indian child, teaching him to read. And he said he counted it a great blessing from God that if he was laid aside from his preaching, he at least was able to do this: he was able to teach one of God's children to read so he could read the Holy Scriptures. Now Paul had that attitude and God blessed it.

The third characteristic of his preaching is that he preached everybody. He mentions it in verse 21. He declared the counsels of God both to the Jews and to the Greeks. We remember, and in case we don't remember, Paul says it in this very paragraph, that the Jews gave him a very hard time. They gave him a hard time everywhere he went, and they particularly gave him a hard time at Ephesus. And yet he ministered to them. And the Gentiles? Well, they weren't much better. You remember there was a great riot at Ephesus, and it wasn't the Jews that were rioting in the great amphitheater shouting "Great Diana of the Ephesians," it was the Gentiles. And yet he ministered to them as well. The Gospel he had, you see, was a universal Gospel, and the Savior he served was a universal Savior, and so he spoke about the Lord Jesus Christ to everybody.

I see something else in verse 21. Do you see it? Not only did he speak to all people, he spoke pointedly to all people. I see that because he tells that his message was this: that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in the Lord Jesus. Repentance from sin, turning from it, and faith in Jesus in whom alone you have salvation. That's pointed preaching, you see. Some preaching is so general and some references to sin are so indirect that hardly anybody can be offended. If they can't be offended, they can't turn from it because they don't even recognize that they're guilty of it. Paul wasn't like that. Paul was pointed in his preaching and God blessed it.

I notice in the fifth place that Paul's preaching was also comprehensive in the sense that it embraced not just what we would call a simple Gospel or an evangelistic message or a four-point shortening of God's counsels, but rather, as he says in verse 27, the whole will of God. We say in Christian theology "the whole counsels of God," and that's exactly what Paul preached. Paul preached it in Ephesus. We have a summation of it in the book he later wrote to that city, that church, a great, great book that has to do with the sovereignty of God in salvation and the nature of the church and spiritual warfare and many other things besides. He preached the same message no doubt that he embodied in his letter to the Romans, that great letter that takes the counsels of God all the way from our rebellion against God to God's redemption of his people and preservation of them through this life to their glorification, and then applies all of that in very practical terms for the living of lives in this most wicked world. That was Paul's Gospel. So as he speaks about himself, he shows how diligent he was in his preaching.

He talks about priorities as well. That's the fourth of a number of things. Not only did he speak in humility and with tears, not only was he diligent in his preaching, he also had right priorities. Verse 24 speaks about it. There he is talking of his task and he says that as he looks at his task, he counted even his life of no account in order that he might finish his course proclaiming the Gospel of God's grace to everybody. When I read that, I think quite naturally, I'm sure you do as well, of that other place in which he gives a similar personal testimony, namely the third chapter of the book of Philippians. There he says that he had made it his goal to forget the things that were behind—the failures and the achievements, the temptations, the weaknesses, all of those things, whatever it may be—to forget the things that are behind and to press forward to the things that are before, that is, that he might do what God gave him to do and so at the end attain the prize to which God had called him in Christ Jesus.

One reason why many of us aren't more effective in our Christian lives is that we don't have our priorities in order. Isn't it true that most of us value our life far more than our witness? We value the praise of men far more than the approbation of Almighty God. Those things are true. We know that that is true of us, and it's no wonder that our testimony is so weak.

Well, there's one more thing Paul says about himself, and that is that he labored among them without greed and that he demonstrated it by hard work, not only in the work of the ministry, but even in earning a living there in Ephesus. This is what he brings back in in verses 33 to 35, saying, "I have not coveted anyone's silver or gold or clothing, but rather I worked to supply my own needs and the needs of my companions." I don't mind saying it: one of the great problems with the ministry is that so many ministers are lazy. If there was ever a job on earth in which one can be lazy, it's the ministry. And that's because, generally speaking, at most churches, you don't have anybody to supervise you, or at least not supervise you well. What you do with your time is between you and God, and if you're not thinking about God and are not answerable to him, well, it is very easy to waste a great deal of it. Always interruptions, always things you can do, always the easy way to take rather than laboring hard. I think it would be a great thing in many cases if those who are in the ministry, in addition to laboring in the ministry, would actually labor physically with their hands the way Paul did, because at least they would be working. Out of the work would come a sense of the value of work and the preciousness of time, and the ministry would be commended in the lives of many people.

Well, that's the first part of this study: Paul's testimony before the Ephesian elders. The second part of it is his charge to them. You find that in verses 25 to 31. I say Paul's charge to them because Paul's charge is singular. There are different ways he puts it, but when you analyze what he's saying, it all boils down to one thing. He says to them, "Keep watch over the flock within your charge." "Oh," he says, "be diligent." He says, "Watch out for enemies." He says, "Take heed to the wolves," but basically what he's telling them is one thing: keep watch over those who are committed to your care.

It's interesting that in this connection, the word he uses for the elders is not the word elder, word *presbyteros* in Greek, which literally means older people, the elder, elder ones, the spiritually older ones of the congregation; not that word, but the word overseer, which you have in verse 28, which is the word *episkopos*. Now that's an interesting word. *Episkopos* is the word that has given us our word bishop. You can almost hear how that has come: ep-is-kop-os, pis-kop-os, pis-kop-as, bishop. That's how we got our word bishop. A bishop is an overseer. But the way Paul uses the word here is not the way the word bishop is generally used in churches that have a hierarchy as the basis of their organization. He's not speaking of a single man who has responsibility for a church or even for a district. Rather, he's speaking of the elders, all as bishops.

Why is he speaking of them as bishops? Well, because he's not thinking about the later liturgical tradition of the church. Paul's day didn't even know about that. But rather because that word *episkopos* means overseer. It's composed of two parts: *skopos*, which is from the verb *skopeo*, which means to look out for or look over, and *epi*, which means over. So the word means to look over, keep watch upon, or be careful for. That's what it means. Paul says, "Look, if you are overseers, you who have been elected to responsible positions in the church, then make sure you do that for which you've been elected."

He begins to spell it out. If they had said to him, as perhaps they may have said on one or more occasions, "What is it that we're to look out for?" He said, "First of all, you have to look out for yourselves." You're made one who is to look out for the church. He says, "I'm going to talk about that in a moment, but before you can look out for others, you have to look out for yourself. You have to keep your life upright. You have to keep your relationship to God strong." And then, secondly, he says, "Once you have done that, be sure you look out for the flock."

This matter of a flock and shepherds over the flock, which he uses here, is not a strong image in Paul's writings. You find it in other places. It was a great image of Jesus Christ. Jesus spoke about himself as the shepherd. He said, "I am the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep." It was Jesus' image, and it's there in the Old Testament as well, and the Lord undoubtedly built upon it. But it wasn't strong in Paul. And yet here as Paul gives a charge to these elders, he says to them, "Look, when I begin to think of your responsibility, there's nothing that really occurs to me in any more forceful way than this: you have committed to your care a little flock of God's people, lambs and sheep that belong to God. And your task is the task of a shepherd, which is to take care of those sheep, not to let them wander away, to watch out for their health, to defend them from enemies, to do all those things."

And the reason you're to do that is because that flock is not your flock, it's God's flock, and it's a flock that is so precious to him that he shed his own precious blood in order to redeem it. Elders have to remember that, of course, we all do. The Lord Jesus in the New Testament is called a shepherd in three different ways. When he spoke of himself, he said, "I'm the good shepherd because I give my life for the sheep." He speaks of himself that way in John 10. And then in the book of Hebrews, he's called the great shepherd because he's the shepherd who died but who rose again. And then in 1 Peter, in the fifth chapter, verse 2, the Lord is called the chief shepherd, and the reason he's called the chief shepherd is that he is the chief shepherd over other shepherds. The other shepherds are the elders and the ministers in the church. And as Peter writes, as he does there to those who have positions of leadership in the church, he says, "I want you to be shepherds. I want you to take charge of the flock. I want you to be responsible as you deal with those who are God's people. But as you do, I want you to remember that you're nevertheless only under-shepherds. Jesus is the chief shepherd, and he's the one ultimately to whom you must answer and with whom you have to do."

He may well have had in mind what he says explicitly: that when dangers come, they will come not only from without—he refers to those who come from without as wolves—but also, as he points out quite clearly, from within. The dangers from within are those dangers that come largely from those who are leaders in the church, those who because they are leaders in the church say to themselves, "Well, I'm a leader in the church, that means I know better what should be done. Everybody has to do what I say." And when people won't do what they say or follow the particular shade of doctrine that they've invented, they say, "Well, I'm going to take those who believe as I do and who therefore are obviously led by the Holy Spirit. I'm going to go my own way." And so the church experiences divisions. Isn't that what he's saying in verse 30: "Even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them."

So what are they to do about that? What they're to do is exactly what he said at the beginning they're to do. In verse 29, he says, "Keep watch over yourselves and the flock." When he gets to the end, he says in verse 31, "So be on your guard," and it is exactly the same thing. Watch out, he says. Make your calling and election sure. Be an overseer so that those without and those within will not damage the flock for which Jesus Christ shed his own blood.

I said as we began that there's a third part to this farewell to the elders, and it's Paul's prayer for them. We don't have in so many words the essence of his prayer; we're only told verse 36, "When he had said this, he knelt down with all of them and prayed." But if you look back carefully over the preceding paragraph, probably you have there the gist of what he prayed, certainly part of it. Because what we're told in verse 32 and following is that he committed them to God and to the word of his grace. How did he do that no doubt by praying for them?

He would say, "O Almighty God, I now commit into your care these men who are the leaders of the flock, and the flock that is committed to their care. And I commit them to your word, the Scriptures, by which alone you speak to the church and through which you have chosen to operate. Do bless them, do keep them from these dangers, preserve this church from dangers within and dangers without. Grant that it might be strong, fill it with people who know your word, and because they know your word, live with you in close fellowship and grow in grace. And so instead of succumbing increasingly to the temptations of the world, become increasingly strong in the knowledge of who you are, your person, your will, and your ways, and who in the power of the Holy Spirit determine with all their might to obey you and walk after you." And do you think God heard his prayer? I do. I think God heard that prayer and answered it and blessed that church because it survived for many, many decades.

How do you conclude a study like this, a farewell in which the Apostle Paul gave his own personal testimony, in which he charged those he was leaving behind, in which he prayed for them? Well, I think there's a suggestion here. Because in verse 32, the beginning of the final paragraph he spoke, at least as that's recorded for us in Acts, he reminds them that there is an inheritance that God has prepared for them and all those who are sanctified.

That's a good conclusion. It's a conclusion that we should keep before our minds. An inheritance. An inheritance not laid up here on earth, as some lay up an inheritance, where thieves break through and steal and moths break in and corrupt, but rather an inheritance that's laid up in heaven where thieves do not break through and steal and where moths do not corrupt.

I suppose as I look at that, that that is why Paul goes on in what seems at first glance to be an unexpected way to speak about himself. You see, he's already given his testimony in the earlier portion of the charge. Then he's spoken directly to the elders. Many commentators have said at this point, verse 33, that it is very strange that Paul at this point once again begins to talk about himself, saying, "I have not coveted anyone's silver or gold or clothing." Well, it may be strange, but it's not hard to understand how he gets there. He's spoken to them, saying, "God can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified," and then as he speaks to them, he reminds them that what he is telling them is no less true of himself. And he says, in effect, "You know, I have not tried to build an earthly inheritance. I've not coveted silver or gold. I haven't been in this business of religion to make it wealthy." Oh, perhaps he could have; certainly people have down through the centuries and are doing it in our own time. "No, no," he said, "I didn't do that. And the reason I didn't do that, you see, is that I have my eye set upon that inheritance laid up for me by God in heaven."

Oh, what a difference it would make in the church if we would really learn to think like that. I know it's hard. The world just literally bombards us constantly with its values and the philosophy that says you only go around once, now is the time to make it. If you don't lay it up now, you're never going to have it. But the word of God says you can lay it up now, and when you die, it is gone, and it has gone forever. It is literally true that you can't take it with you into heaven.

The only thing that's going to be there waiting for you in heaven is the treasures you lay up in heaven now, and those are spiritual treasures. That which is material does not inherit heaven; only that which is spiritual. But oh, compared with spiritual treasures, that which has to do with the eternal well-being of the soul, eternal felicity in the presence of God forevermore, basking in his glory and enjoying his favor, compared with that, the things for which we sell our souls are worse than trifles. They are nothing; they are the disgusting wealth and refuse of the world. If we would be like Paul, we must learn to think like Paul, and we must fix our minds on heavenly things.

Let us pray. Our Father, that's what we want to do. We confess that it is hard, and we confess that we haven't done it, that we do think like the world. We do treasure that which we can see and feel and count and lay up here. But oh, our Father, teach us to think like Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him resigned it all and went to the cross, counting it joy to achieve our salvation. And help us to think like Paul, who willingly gave up these things in order that he might one day in heaven have a vast company of those who had found salvation through his witness. Our Father, help us just to be spiritual, for Jesus' sake. Amen.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to this message from The Bible Study Hour, a listener-supported ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. The Alliance is a coalition of believers that hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and who proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today's church. To learn more about the Alliance, select the appropriate link at thebiblestudyhour.org. Write to us at 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17601. Your financial support makes our broadcasting, publishing, online, and event ministries possible. Please consider making a gift at our websites, by phone at 1-800-488-1888, or by mail. Canadian listeners can reach us at PO Box 24097, RPO Josephine, North Bay, Ontario, P1B 0C7. Thank you for your prayers and gifts and for listening to The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.

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