Scott Brown's sermon, 'Delivering the Whole Counsel of God,' delves into the critical role of delivering the entire message of the Bible, as demonstrated in Acts 20. Brown emphasizes the importance of expository preaching, which involves teaching scripture book by book and verse by verse, to convey the whole counsel of God. He warns of the grave consequences, including blood guiltiness, for church elders who fail to deliver this comprehensive message. The sermon highlights Paul's journey to Jerusalem with companions from various churches, who are taking an offering to aid the suffering church in Jerusalem due to famine and persecution. Brown recounts Paul's experiences in Ephesus, where his preaching disrupted the local economy reliant on idol production, leading to tumultuous reactions from the locals. The passage underscores Paul's dedication to teaching both publicly and house to house, and his commitment to declaring the whole counsel of God with humility, tears, trials, and a readiness for action. Brown calls for a return to biblical elder leadership, characterized by humility, courage, and the commitment to teaching the gospel in its entirety. The sermon concludes with a call for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as the foundation of Christian life and ministry.

Please open in your Bibles to Acts chapter 20 Now we we are in a passage of scripture That demonstrates how serious it is To deliver the whole counsel of God in the Church of Jesus Christ There's a massive danger that awaits those elders in the church who do not deliver the whole council of God. So it's a great warning, it's a very sobering message that's here in this passage of scripture. And of course, we believe that the best way to do that in the church is to engage in the practice of expository preaching where you go book by book, verse by verse, attempting with all your heart not to avoid what would be easy to avoid or what you might not be interested in, but try as best you can to give the whole counsel of God. We just completed a conference on expository preaching. We desire to encourage the practice as much as we can.

One of the stunning things about this passage of Scripture is that we are confronted with the possibility of blood guiltiness if we do not deliver the whole counsel of God. And of course it's absolutely true among elders in churches, but I also believe that it's also true in evangelism as Paul was an evangelist and he was faithful to deliver the whole council of God to those that he was speaking with. Now We catch Paul on a journey to Jerusalem. When we hit Acts 20, Paul is with some of his brothers. There is a Salpacher of Berea.

There's Aristarchus and Secundus. And all these characters are with him from the particular churches that he's been to. They have with them an offering to take to the suffering church in Jerusalem. Churches are helping another church in another town. The brethren love one another.

And they have with them funds to take, because there's a famine in Jerusalem, plus the persecutions have just devastated So many families lives that they need help so Paul is with these men and they're traveling on their way Back to back to Jerusalem they go last week we saw how Paul's journey back to Jerusalem took him to the city of Troas and there they celebrated the Lord's Supper and there was teaching way on into the night And one of the boys in the church who was not at the pizza party, he was not at the lock-in, he was not in the Sunday school class, he was there hearing the teaching, and he fell asleep in the windowsill and he fell out and he died. And God was merciful to him and he was resurrected that night by Paul. And Paul preached long into the night and into the morning, and on his way, in the morning he leaves and begins again to move about. And then he ends up in Miletus, on the beach in Miletus, and that's where we pick him up here in Acts chapter 17, or Acts 20. Look at verse 17 with me.

From Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called for the elders of the church. So the Apostle Paul goes to Miletus, pulls into port there, and then he calls for the elders of Miletus. So In this passage of Scripture, Paul is reminiscing about the teaching and the life that he had in Ephesus. The elders of the church are gathering to him, And from verses 17 to verse 25, it's a reminiscence of what happened when he was in Ephesus. Paul is recounting his own life story in Ephesus.

He repeats his manner of life in Ephesus and we don't really understand why Paul is saying any of this until we get to verse 26 you don't know what the point is what is the point why are you sharing all these details about what happened in Ephesus. Verse 26 tells us precisely, and verse 27, why he's saying all these things. Don't go there yet. We'll get there in a minute. And so all of this reminiscing is revealed.

Now, what we know about Paul's time in Ephesus, he spent three years there, he was three months in the synagogue and he was finally, things got so bad he was finally thrown out of the synagogue and he went and taught in the school of Tyrannus for the remainder of the three years. And it was a time of tumult in Ephesus because people were coming to Christ and it was wrecking the local economy. The local economy was based on the production of idols and people's magic books and they were they were actually burning them. The gospel always should have an impact on your books and your pocketbook and those are the two things that we see that were affected here. Imagine the effect on the American economy if people would quit buying self-help books and if they quit buying movies and they quit buying music that was defiling to their ears.

Well, these are the idols of our day, which lead us to the doctrines of demons that pervert our souls and harm us so much. Well, the people in Ephesus were doing nothing any different. They were just taking their books and their idols and they were burning them. And the big problem was you had guys like Demetrius the silversmith who had a business making idols. And it was very bad for him.

His bottom line was plummeting. And so there's this massive outpouring of hatred against Paul and the apostles and the church there. And we find that at one point it got so tumultuous that there were 20, maybe 25, 000 people in the theater there in Ephesus, you can go to the theater today, there's still remnants of it. And they were shouting out, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. People had gone mad, they'd gone crazy.

And the passage that we were in last week says they didn't even know why they were there. A lot of them, they were just there chanting and yelling, yay, yay, Artemis of the Ephesians. They had no idea what the significance of it was, which tells you how crazy idolatry can make you. So in verses 7 to 27, you have reminders of Paul's life. We're going to get to read this in just one second.

But I want you to see from 17 to 25 reminders of Paul's life, And then there's a summary statement in 26 and 27. And then after that are commands to the elders in the church. That's how Acts 20 breaks out. Now, in order to understand what Paul is trying to say here, we have to see, we have to understand the structure of it. And that's why I want to spend a little bit of time on this.

So if you begin in verse 17 and begin reading, I want you to notice three different stopping points. First, there's a particular word in verse 26. It's the word therefore. What that means is that everything that Paul said before that is related to that right there. So to understand why Paul is saying any of these things, you've got to jump down to the therefore.

And then he interprets. He tells you why he said it. Verse 28, there's another therefore. And then in verse 31, there's another one. And so those are the markers that help us understand what Paul is trying to communicate It's always important for us not to figure out ourselves what we think all this means, but what did the author mean?

What was the author really trying to say and to understand that you have to you read slowly and carefully You know often we shoot ourselves in the foot in our interpreting scripture because we go too fast, we assume too much, we don't see what's really there. You know, I read recently that there was a jet that was testing in Nevada and it shot off its rockets, the jet was going so fast that it passed the rockets and the rockets shot down their own plane. We often do that with Scripture. We're going so fast we're not looking at the signposts and the markers. But here the markers are very clear.

You've got you can't understand this passage and unless you get verse 26 So now let's read it beginning in verse 18 because we already we've already read verse 17 And now the elders are coming and when they had come to him he said to them You know you yourselves know from the first day that I set foot in Asia How I was with you the whole time serving the Lord with all humility and tears and with trials which came upon me through the plots of the Jews, how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly testifying both to Jews and to Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies in every city that chains and afflictions await me. But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to me, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I receive from the Lord Jesus to testify solemnly to the gospel of the grace of God.

And now, behold, I know that all of you among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will no longer see my face. Therefore I testify to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God." So I trust you see the importance there of the word therefore and how it helps us to interpret what is being said. Now in the first several verses we see Paul is recounting his time there. It's not a sentimental journey. This is not a creative memory party without a purpose.

It's a creative memory party with a massive purpose. It's to tell one thing in particular and he is creating memories here for the Ephesians to help them understand why he did what he did when he was there. That's what it's all about. They are memories with a tremendous purpose, and he's communicating it that way. The first thing that we see is Paul calls for the elders of the church.

This presents us with the idea that there were elders in the New Testament church. Now, it took about three days round trip for a messenger to get to Ephesus. Paul arrives there in the port, and he dispatches a messenger. And it's going to take him a day and a half and a day and a half back three days to make the loop Paul's waiting there in on the beach Paul's going to the trouble it's a lot of trouble to meet with the elders why would he do that Why would he go to such difficulty to meet with these men? Hey, they had to take a lot of time out of their schedule to do this.

This was no small time investment. And I just believe that the reason he did that is that the health of the Ephesian church hinged upon what those elders did in that church. It mattered a lot. It really matters what happens in your church. It matters how elders conduct themselves.

It matters what we do with our time and with our lives because there is tremendous result from it. Now one thing we notice here is that it was a plurality of elders. It says, he called for the elders of the church, not the elder, not the kingpin, not the main man. No, they didn't call for the main man. There was no main man among the elders in the early church.

There was a plurality of elders. It was a collegial body of men who collaborated together and worked together in unity. And so these words here that are used are very critical. Paul didn't call for the senior pastor of the church of Ephesus. Why?

There was no senior pastor at Ephesus, and there weren't any senior pastors in any of the other churches. There are three words in Acts 20 that give us the idea of this. In verse 17, there's the word elders, presbyterio. In verse 28, we see it again, episcopoi. It's translated pastors there.

And then in verse 28, at the end of it, overseers is the translation of the word Episcopoi. These words, pastor, elder, overseer, they're all synonymous. Acts 20 just demonstrates that so clearly that when you see these words, there isn't a bishop who stands over all as a single man. No, there are these synonymous words that are used to describe the way that the church is to be led. So, eldership in Ephesus was consistent with the pattern in all the churches.

In the book of Acts there were elders in Ephesus. All the churches that Paul founded had elders in them in Jerusalem, in Crete, the churches of the dispersion of the Roman Empire. It's clear that that is true. We learn that in James chapter 5. We learn it in Hebrews chapter 13.

In the Pauline churches, leadership was by a plurality of elders. We see it in Derbe, we see it in Lister, we see it in Iconium, we see it in Antioch. If you want the references to these, I have them with me. But Barnabas and Saul gave an offering for Judea's poor to who? Not the senior pastor.

They didn't bring a check to the senior pastor. They brought their check to the elders of the church because that's the biblical pattern. Paul says to Titus, for this reason I left you in Crete that you might set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you. This is just the biblical pattern. We see it everywhere across the New Testament church.

So oversight of the church is to be conducted by males who are leaders. They are shepherds, pastors, teachers, they are elders, and they look after the spiritual welfare of the church. By the way, I don't know how many Baptists we have here, but the practice of eldership is a historic Baptist practice. It has, for the last 50 or 100 years, it's gone out of style among Baptists, but it's coming back in style. Well, I think it's coming back in style because people are preaching the word in particular places and so wherever that happens, then people think, well, maybe we should do that and that's exactly what's happening.

So we see the reality of elders, then we see Paul's manner of life in Ephesus. This is the second major issue that is in this passage, and that is his manner of life that accomplished something really important, and his manner of life allowed him or it created the opportunity for him to declare the whole Council of God. It was his personal life and the way he conducted it that was wide open for everyone to see and it was that kind of life that caused him to declare the whole council of God. His whole manner of life was for one purpose, and that was to declare the whole council of God. I'm going to point out that Paul remembers 11 things about his ministry.

Paul's going to tell us 11 things about himself. You know, if we did that, you know, we would be embarrassed to say it, but here we get to look into Paul giving us 11 great qualities of his life there in Ephesus, but every one of these qualities allowed for a really wonderful thing to happen in the church of Ephesus. So the first is humility and lowliness, verse 19. He said that he demonstrated a lowliness. This means that Paul was a particular kind of man.

He was not wise in his own eyes. Lowliness is the equivalent to being yielded. Lowliness is an attitude of the heart that doesn't rise up, but it puts oneself down under authority. It puts on the yoke. It puts itself under.

It orders itself under another. The quality of humble or low people is that they are they're grateful people they're thankful they don't feel they don't they don't feel that they have absolute rights in life but that they're but all everything comes from God and they accept it. You know, we know when high-mindedness has overtaken us, when we become obsessed by our own rights. You know when humility is robbed when you're feeling offended. That's true with me and that's true with most people.

If you're offended, you have lost something and you think it's your right to have it, and so you get bitter about it. And so a humble, lowly person is the opposite of an offended person. In Ezekiel, we read that this happened to Israel. In Ezekiel 7, Ezekiel says, behold the day, the rod has blossomed, pride has budded. That happens all the time in us.

Pride buds and it doesn't make us humble at all. It makes us proud and it makes us angry and it breaks our relationships as a result. And so when lowliness is not governing our hearts, then we think more highly of ourselves than we ought. We lose a thankful spirit. We lose sight of the value of another human being made in the image of God, yet imperfect.

Pride says, I'm important. Humility says other people are important. Why is Paul recounting his humility? Doesn't it cause you to just take pause if somebody says that they're humble? I'm really a very humble person.

I mean, that's really hard to hear. If someone says that, you know they're not humble, because no one can say it if they really are. But Paul actually breaks that mindset and he says, no, I was there in humility and lowliness. And it was the only way he could teach the whole council of God. It was the only way, and it's the only way that any elders are ever able to communicate the whole council of God, is if they are ordering themselves under the authority of God.

If they're obsessed with themselves, if they like themselves a lot, if they like their own ideas, the whole council of God won't come out. Paul said, I was humble, I was lowly, and I did it therefore to deliver the whole council of God to you. You know, elders are not kings, they're servants. Elders are not creators of this wonderful world. Elders are deliverers of the word of truth.

They set themselves under the word, not above it. They're not even above one another. And so why all this humility? So that he would be innocent of the blood of all men, verse 26, for I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God." Everything that Paul says above verse 26 and 27 was found in its fruitfulness in his not shunning to declare the whole council of God. So the first thing that Paul did to share the whole council of God is he ordered himself under the authority of God and he was humble.

The second thing that Paul did to declare the whole council of God was that he endured tears and trials, verse 19. Now these were tears and trials that came upon him by the plots of the Jews. You know, tears come when the heart is excessively burdened. We weep for a number of different reasons. We weep for sin that's happening.

We weep for the ravages of sin that we see that are going on. And here Paul says in verse 31 later on, he says, I did not cease to admonish you night and day with tears. Paul had tears for the people. You know, I don't know how often any of you men cry, probably not that much, but here we see that there are times when men shed tears. Being an elder should involve being involved in people's lives at a level enough to where there's tears being shed for the sufferings of the people and also tears for the way that sin is working itself out.

You know, sin was working itself out in these persecutors of Paul and it caused grief and tears. You know, Could it be that we could become more like Paul? You know, is it possible we could become more like Job? Job who said, have I not wept for the one whose life is hard? Or do we just have hard hearts toward those that have a hard life?

We can have tears for those of the hard life or we can have hardness for them. But Paul was not that way at all. There was resistance, there was rejection, there was controversy, there were disappointments, there were attacks, lack of expectations being met, all manner of difficulties, fatigue, and Paul is weeping not for himself, but he's weeping for the people and the problems that are there. So why all the tears? Because of the structure of the chapter, it's clear that the tears and the trials were there so that he could communicate the whole counsel of God.

You will not be able to communicate the whole counsel of God without experiencing trials. You know, if the goal of your life is to have a trouble-free life, you'll never communicate the whole counsel of God. You'll never be willing to go through the trials that are necessary, because the whole counsel of God rubs people the wrong way. And if anyone would desire to give the whole council of God to their unbelieving friend or their unbelieving father or mother or even son or daughter, then they would have to endure tears and trials to do it. A lot of people, they keep their mouths shut because they just want a nice trouble-free life.

They don't want any hassle. And Paul was not that way at all. He endured the tears and the trials so that he would be innocent of the blood of all men. And that's why he did not shun to declare everything that was profitable and the whole counsel of God. So the third thing Paul did to declare the whole counsel of God was he was courageously poised for action.

He says in verse 20, I did not keep back anything that was helpful. So he didn't hold anything back. That's the idea. He wasn't retiring. He didn't hold it in.

He wasn't a sensitive 90s male who just kept everything inside. He had something to say and he said it. And he was bold. He was bold with it. So, instead of, here's a certain kind of man.

Boys, look at me right now. If you want to be a real man, then look at what Paul was. He was not a man who held back. He gave what was valuable. He wasn't shy.

Shy is usually sin hiding behind the word shyness. God is not calling men to be shy. God is calling men to be bold and clear, and not to hold things back, not to stay in their own little world, but to venture out. That's exactly what Paul did in Ephesus. He entered the fray.

It was readiness. Why? It was readiness for profit, to give profit to other men. I regret, I regret years of my life, I even regret yesterday of my life, in the times when I perhaps did not give as much as I had or could have, that I held back. I've determined before God that I would not live the next 50 years of my life holding back like I have in the previous 50 years of my life.

I trust that God will help me to be more like Paul and less like me. And a good elder does not shrink back, he does not pull back, he does not hesitate or retreat, he doesn't look for the path of least resistance or the easy road. The good elder is courageous, he's ready for action. And instead of pulling back from tough subjects or tough situations, He resists the temptation and he's fueled by a humble freedom to go and give what God would have him to give. And he steps forward.

You know, if you look at the different translations, the different versions of the Bible, you see the word shrink, shrank, shrunk. So don't be that. Don't shrink, don't shrunk back in any of the context that you're in. That's what God would call little boys to be and their fathers as well. And of course I always have three fingers pointing back at me in any of these times like this.

So you know everything in the Bible is not immediately comforting to everybody. Many things the Bible teaches make us squirm because they challenge our sensibilities. They upset our pet ideas about ourselves. We say, God's not that way. I'm not going to worship a God like that.

That's because we have an idea of God that's totally wrong. The idea of God that's right is in this book. And so we shouldn't shrink back from it. We should embrace it, try to understand it, and humble ourselves enough not to think that we are so wise. In Acts chapter 4 we read that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the Word of God with boldness.

That's a mark of the Holy Spirit. There's a mark of the Holy Spirit, and then there's the mark of the shrinking, shrunk, shrank spirit of man, which doesn't. Well here's the truth of it. Shrinking back is a national pastime in America. It's the mark of the American chicken.

It's something that our national spirit, there's something in our national spirit that wants us to be genteel and not entering in, but to let things happen. Let it be. Let it be. That's kind of the way that we think it should be. But that's not manhood at all.

I had a fascinating time, our family did over at the Vestals this last week. We were having dinner there. And the conversation we had there just made me think, hey, where were the Todd Beamers at Virginia Tech two weeks ago? Where were they? Tommy was telling us about this situation where this gunman, this lone gunman killed 32 people.

And so we're having this conversation. Tommy's saying, down at the police department, the guys are dumbfounded. They don't understand this at all. I said, what do you mean by that? He said, well, down at the police department, everybody's saying, one or two people could have taken this guy out if they'd just thrown some things at him or screamed or ran at him.

There might have been some injuries or some deaths, but maybe only one or two people would have died instead of 32. And so they were just dumbfounded down at the department. He said, you know, he remarked that there were no less than three bullets in every victim. And he said it just indicated a really unusual level of passivity among these people, particularly the men. They just laid there.

They were just apparently passive in all of this. They didn't rise up at all. And he said that this kind of shot control and shot placement, it's only possible when you have a totally compliant group who won't rise up or do anything. And they were not courageously poised for action. They were not courageously poised, like men should be poised, to rise up against when things are happening that are bad.

It's a national pastime. It's the national culture. It's all part of us. None of us are exempt from it really. And we're often, like those men in that room, we do not oppose the gunmen that are among us.

We do not oppose the false philosophies that are there. We just say, let it be, let it be. Everything will work out fine. We're not courageously poised for action. The officers down at Tommy's police department were absolutely amazed that these university students, these young, vigorous men, were bailing out the windows while a 76-year-old man was holding the door.

What's that all about? That was what they were saying. It appears there was not one single young man who opposed this gunman. And they were wondering, where were the real men? What were the real men in this university campus?

They say, no, they're just cowards. They're just serving themselves. They had no mental preparation at all to protect other people. And why did this happen? Why did this happen?

It happened because we happen to live in a culture, and we've drunk from it so freely that it has created really a deplorable condition of manhood in the country. And that deplorable condition is demonstrated in homes, it's demonstrated in church life, it's demonstrated in the entertainments that's out there. Men are not real men, at least Not like this man who's in Acts chapter 20. We could talk about a bunch of things. We could talk about the college culture that coddles passive, unprincipled, self-centered men.

They're cowering students. They have no moral capacity to stop something bad. You know why they don't have a moral capacity? Because they've been taught that there are no morals. They've been taught that there's nothing wrong with anything.

Do your own thing. I learned that in 1968. But the college itself possesses no moral authority. If they try to exert any moral authority, guess what happens? Two problems happen.

It affects their pocketbook. Two ways. They get sued by the ACLU. Secondly, they lose students. Those are two really bad things.

You know what? The gospel will always affect your pocketbook. It always will. But, you know, why do we have students like this that won't rise up? I mean, consider, Here's a possibility.

Students may not have stopped this, because they let immoral things happen all the time. They watch immoral films. They watch violent things all the time. By the time they're 22, 23 years old, they've seen tens of thousands of people slaughtered in the movies and in the television shows and in the things that they listen to as they see it in their own mind's eye. These colleges, they nurture relativism, they totally destroy a student's moral gyroscope, so they don't rise up against anything.

They're not courageously poised for action. So, you know, we need to pray for men like Paul. We need to pray for men like boys like David, Who when a wild animal came against the flocks he took his bare hands and he and he took care of the problem We need to pray that when those little boys grow up even right here in this room, but they do what Todd Beamer did You know 9-eleven he took action. He did something he said hey, let's roll. Let's let's go take care of this Those are the kind of men we need.

Paul was just exactly like that. He says, I did not shrink from declaring the whole council of God. Why did he do that? He did not want to be guilty of the blood of men. And That's why he did not shun to declare the whole council of God.

He believed that he would be blood guilty if he did not rise up. Men, we need to have that same sense about us. We really do. You know, What has happened to us as a culture to lose it? Well, we live in this culture, and we're so affected by it.

There's not a man in this room, including myself, who hasn't sinned grievously in this area. What do we need? I mean, we need the grace of Jesus Christ. We need the filling of the Holy Spirit. We need a fresh wind of God, of courage, to preach the gospel with boldness.

We so do need it. And Paul communicated courageously. Also, at the end of verse 20, look at this. He communicated what was profitable. Do you see that?

He communicated what was profitable. Be a man like Paul and even you young ladies, be young ladies with the same quality. You have sisters in the Lord, You have sisters in your household. Be this kind of person who communicates what's profitable and what's really good. A good elder doesn't just make his own decisions about what he's going to teach.

He does what's profitable. He's not looking out for what's popular, he's looking out for what's profitable. And there's often a big difference. He cares for their welfare, he cares for the flock, and so he gives them something profitable, even if it might even grate at them a little bit. And he does it, of course, with mercy and kindness.

He does it with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But he does it, and he does it for their profit. You know, good shepherds don't beat the sheep, they feed the sheep. They nurture, they care, they give them stuff that will help them, and they give them something that is profitable. The fifth thing that Paul does to declare the whole council of God is that he proclaimed.

This is kind of a word, it's the word Angilelo, and it has, it's more than teaching. It's more than just maybe what you might call this, where we're teaching through scripture. This is a, I mean, this is a declaration. This is Proclaiming in a vigorous, really clear way, in a passionate way. This is a passionate word right here.

Teaching accomplishes one thing, proclaiming accomplishes another. Teaching kind of unfolds the details and the connections between things and it helps us sort life out in a rational particular way. Proclaiming is more like preaching where there's just an emphasis on a challenge. It's kind of like what I was doing just a minute ago when I was just challenging us, you know, as much as I possibly could with all my heart to say, let's be men of courage. Yes!

That's proclaiming. And then there's this teaching. He's here. He proclaimed with this vigorous method. And why did he do it?

He did it so that he would be innocent of men's blood and so that he would not shrink back from declaring the whole council of God. Well, the fifth thing that Paul did was he taught like we just talked about. He was teaching. And there are two kinds of teaching that he did. This is really great.

Publicly, kind of like this, and from house to house. It wasn't just one way, it was everywhere. Here when Paul was in Ephesus, if you count up the hours, your mind kind of spins. First of all, he was working the whole time. He was making tents.

We know that. And he was teaching in the school of Tyrannus. And he was teaching publicly and from house to house. When did the guy ever take a nap? Did he ever take a nap?

What happened? Well, whatever it was, it was a vigorous life. And he was teaching publicly and from house to house. When did the guy ever take a nap? Did he ever take a nap?

What happened? Well, whatever it was, it was a vigorous life. And he was teaching publicly and from house to house. You can think of it like this. Public teaching and personal teaching.

Those are two kinds of teaching that we need to be doing. So there should be eyeball to eyeball, woman to woman, man to man, and it should also be public teaching. That's what elders ought to do. And then why did he do that? He did it so that he would be innocent of the blood of all men, so that he would not shun to declare the whole Council of God.

That's why he taught publicly and from house to house. And then the seventh thing that we see him doing is he's testifying with intensity. Testifying, the word is dia marturion, okay, through martyrdom or through testifying. We get our word, martyr, from this word, dia, through martura manon, through testimony. Now this is a kind of, a type of communication.

It's a style. What's the right style? Well, there are a lot of different styles. You can have a very winsome, communicative, open, wonderful style. There's this other kind that's intense, it's grave, it's serious.

There's a place for gravity and seriousness. Often when I'm preaching, there will be times when I'm either, I don't know if it's too serious or just something not right and my wife will give me the signal, Scott, this is just too harsh, you know, this is something like that. But I don't think it's exactly like this kind of gravity, but there is an appropriate time to warn with gravity, You know, that we don't fall into the trap of ending up talking about really important things with a sense of just sort of, who cares? No, we take the important things, and we give them the grave sense that they really have. Somebody said it like this, don't talk of important things with an air of unimportance.

No, don't be that kind of man. Speak of important things with an air of importance. And that's man, that's godly manhood that we see displayed here. Well, the eighth thing that Paul did to declare the whole council of God was to testify with a sense of priority. He wasn't just saying any old thing.

He wasn't just coming up with any old message. There was priority in his message. There were certain things that were way more important than other things. And we learn what that is right here. He said that he testified with a sense of priority and there were two things in verse 21.

Do you see that? There were two things that he did. He urged them to repentance toward God, that's the first thing, and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Those are the two big priorities. Why?

Well, they're probably, I think there's really just one reason. It's because that covers every problem that we have. You have a marriage problem, you know what? You know what the root of it is? Sin.

It's repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. You have a problem in your household? Guess what? Guess how you get to the problem. Don't go to a psychiatrist for 10 years and spend $30, 000.

Forget that. Repent now. Repent toward God. Stop sinning against one another. That's how you fix your marriage.

That's how you fix your relationship with your children, is you repent. There's a great story that Jason Dome tells. He was meeting with a friend, had a very grave issue on the table. Jason said, right up front I want to tell you, here's where I want to end up with this conversation. Let's set the end point now." And he said, when this conversation is over, I'm going to hope to be used of the Holy Spirit in your life to encourage you to repentance toward God.

In other words, you would identify the sin that's there, that's causing this problem, and then that you would have faith in Jesus to fulfill it. That you wouldn't lose hope, but that you would have great hope. And those are the two things. You know, if you have repentance, You will have hope. You will have faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.

If it's fake repentance or if it's some kind of a thing that falls short of it, you will have no hope at all. Our only hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ and his ability to deliver us from our sins. And so that's what Paul, he had priority. The priority was repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, if you want to be a good counselor to your friends, do just what Jason did.

Get down to the priorities that really make a difference in life. And I don't know how you improve on this. You can talk to people about all their problems in the past, all the different influences, their bad father, their bad mother, their terrible friend, what the church did to them, you know, what the school did to them. Forget that. The root of the healing of every issue in life, the beginning of it, is repentance toward God and simple childlike faith in Jesus.

That's how the Kingdom of God works. It's a childlike faith. The Kingdom of Heaven is very childlike in that sense. Well, the ninth thing that Paul did to declare the whole Council of God was he delivered impartial teaching in verse 21. Why do I say it was impartial?

Well, it was both the Jews and the Greeks. Paul wasn't into one target market. He wasn't just ministering to the rich, not just to the poor, not just to the Asian, not just to the white boys. He ministered to every – he didn't care. He was impartial teaching.

And Paul was all things to all men in this sense and he loved all people and he worked to communicate with them. Why did he do that? He did that so that he would be innocent of the blood of all men and that's why he did not shun to declare the whole council of God before them. And then the tenth thing, remember there are eleven things, we're on number ten now. The tenth thing that he did is he was obedient And he had an obedient and trustful disposition toward the future.

I love this point here. These verses from 22 to 25 are so comforting to me. They're such a helpful example. I don't know if anybody needs these verses today where your confidence is shattered because of things that are going on. There are things crumbling around you that you don't know how to fix or anything like that.

Well that's what was happening with Paul. He says, and see now I go bound in spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there. He had no idea. He said, except I do know that the Holy Spirit is testified in every city that chains await me when I'm coming. And then he says this, I absolutely am so grateful for this language.

And I hope this language might rest in some of your souls. Maybe some of your souls need it. He says this because he's trustful. He said, but none of these things move me. None of these things move me.

I'm not a puppet of the world. I'm not a puppet of circumstances. I believe in my God who loves me and He will carry me to the end. He says, None of these things move me, nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy and the ministry which I receive from the Lord Jesus, to declare the gospel of the grace of God. And indeed, now I know that you all among who I have gone preaching the kingdom of God will see my face no more." Oh, Paul.

Paul, he knows he's at the end of his life. Hey, everything's falling apart in a lot of ways. The Lord is making it so clear that what awaits Him? Trials, tribulations, chains. We finally know that His life does end.

But here's what he says, and here's what I hope every one of us can say this morning. Can you say it in your heart with confidence? Before the Lord Jesus, with peace in your heart, can you say with Paul, none of these things move me. My God loves me. I have confidence in Him.

He will take me to His eternal kingdom. He's covered all my long-term liabilities. He loves me with an everlasting love. He's taking me to heaven. He's praying for me now from the right hand of God.

He's interceding for me. He's sending His Holy Spirit. He's sending His angels to take charge over me. He loves me. Can you say that in your heart?

Would you say that? Would you? Let me appeal to you to say that none of these things move me for God is Almighty. He's beautiful What problems do you have are they moving you around? No, God will move them He rolls away this the stone that no one can roll away He lifts the weight that no one can lift and he always does it in his own time.

He always though seems to do it in the nick of time, doesn't he? Isn't that amazing? He waits. He waits. The suffering seems unbearable just like the apostle when he was in Miletus the last time.

And now he's in Miletus again. And who knows that when he says, none of these things move me, he's thinking of the man from Macedonia. He said, come over here and help us. He knows God is faithful. He knows he's in the vice, he's in the grip, but he understands the loving kindness of God and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, Paul was obedient and he had a trustful disposition about the future. And he says, I do not count my life dear to myself. Why did he do that? He did that so that he would be innocent of the blood of all men, that he would be free to preach the gospel, the grace of God. He did it so that he would not be tempted to shun, to declare the whole council of God.

That's why he did it. We know that's true from verse 26. That's why He did all these things. And then the 11th, the 11th thing, He was innocent of the blood of all men. Because of His lifestyle, He was innocent of the blood of all men.

You know, why was he innocent? He was innocent. He was innocent because he declared the whole council of God to those that were before him. He was faithful to his master to say it, to deliver it. You know, Have we been faithful to our Master, to deliver the whole council of God, to our unsaved relatives, the people in our lives?

I will have to tell you that I have shrunk back. I've shrunk, shrank, shrunk so many times. God help me not to do that. And so Paul declares, therefore I testify to you to this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men for I did not shrink to declare to you the whole counsel of God. Can we say that?

I know none of us can say that. Not a one person in this room can say that with confidence before God. All of us have sinned in this area and what is the remedy? The remedy is the outpouring of grace by the Lord Jesus Christ. We can't go forward in this unless we confess our sins in this area and then trustfully move forward.

And we can move forward. He desires to move us forward. He says He's gentle and humble at heart. He can take us forward on this. We don't have to live in the darkness of it.

Now, there are a couple of things here that really need to be marked. One is that verse 26 makes it clear that we can be guilty of the lostness of another person. Now maybe that offends you. Maybe you don't like that idea. You might have rejected that idea all your life, but that's not true.

That idea is a lie. We can be guilty of the lostness of other people. There's no question about it from this verse. Under what conditions might I be responsible for another person's not gaining eternal life? Under what conditions?

There are certain conditions. We see one of those conditions in Acts chapter 18 verse 6 where the Jews rejected the gospel and they would not let Paul share the gospel. And the text says, And when they had opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads, I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles. There are times when you are not responsible for the blood of those, and that is when you declare the gospel.

We must declare the gospel. You know, their hearts were so hard that they would not hear it, and their blood would end up on their own heads. That's one condition in which you are, in which the blood of those who reject the gospel is not upon you. This phrase, the Apostle Paul retrieved out of the storehouse of his heart from Ezekiel chapter 33, verses 6 through 9. We read this before when we were back in Acts 18.

We'll read it again. Paul was thinking about this eternal principle that was true in the Old Testament days and was true for him in the New Testament days. And that is that God places watchmen in the world. By the way, who are the watchmen? We are the watchmen.

The elders of the church in Ephesus were the watchmen, but it's not just professional clergy who are watchmen. We're all watchmen. But particularly, the elders of the church must be watchmen because they'll be held to an account, they'll be judged more harshly, and will suffer more humiliation at the throne of God. We certainly will suffer much humiliation before the throne of God. Ezekiel 33 reads like this, When I bring a sword upon the land, and the people of the land take a man from their territory and make him their watchman.

When he sees the sword coming upon the land, if he blows the trumpet and warns the people, then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be on his own head." That's why Paul said this. The sword is coming, the sword of judgment is coming, the reaper is coming to take, to reap and take the sheep and the goats and put them in their particular places, and if the watchmen don't stand up and say that the judgment is coming then there will be blood on their heads. He sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet. And the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes away any person from among them. He has taken away in his iniquity, but his blood I will require from the watchman's hand." This is so sobering.

I just have to tell you, this is very difficult. We have bumped into this passage of Scripture for a purpose. I believe I have bumped into this passage of Scripture for a purpose. Our church here has bumped into it. You men who are visiting us, guess what?

A holy God has placed you here to hear these solemn, very difficult words. They are for all of us here, to heed them. And Paul was there to give them to the elders in the church of Ephesus so that they would not be liable for the blood of the souls in Ephesus and to motivate them to declare the whole council of God, to do it with vigor and completeness in all of its glory. The church is precious to God, but it's also very vulnerable. And the church needs protectors.

The church needs evangelists. And this is a call here for this. Now let me give you some applications as we wind to the end of this. First of all, are there situations where right now at this moment we're guilty of the blood of others? Are there?

If there are, dispatch. Let's go. Let's roll. Let's understand that we can do something about it. What does the blood stand for?

It means somebody who is eternally lost. That's what it stands for. So Are there situations where elders are guilty of the blood of others? I say this to myself, I say this to my fellow elder, I say this to every really man in our church. We all must stand together in this.

And are we guilty of the blood of others? And then we ought to take action. We should not be just hearers of the word, but doers as well. And then secondly, I really believe that we should be kind of stopped in our tracks with the seriousness of this issue of delivering the whole council of God, knowing that the whole council of God gets people to heaven. Do you see that here?

It's the whole council of God that gets people to heaven. And it may, if we don't deliver it. You work this out. God is sovereign in salvation. But we cannot miss this.

God has also called us to open our mouths even though He is perfectly sovereign in salvation. If His sovereignty causes us to shut our mouths and not love our brother but hate him by not preaching the gospel to him by saying God will take care of him, then we have missed Scripture. We've disobeyed it so much. We have misunderstood the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. I do believe that God is perfectly sovereign in salvation.

I also believe that God is perfectly clear that He has called us to declare the whole council of God to all who adhere and that there is a consequence of blood guiltiness if we do not. So the third is this, and this really is really for the church in a particular way, how serious it is to have a hunger for the whole counsel of God. It is so critical that we have a hunger for the whole council of God that we are involved in acquiring it Through the preaching of the word through making ourselves available And there is preaching and teaching going on in the church and that we do it in our homes. How important it is for your children that you deliver the whole council of God in your household when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You know, it's really interesting.

A couple of weeks ago I did a comparison of the charges to elders and pastors to deliver the whole council of God, do you know that it's really actually clearer to fathers? It's more devastating and clearer to fathers, that God has called them to preach the Word of God, to preach the gospel in their houses and to be heralds and to speak of the great deeds of God at all times. You may never be an elder of a church, but you are a father. And how serious it is. Do you know that the souls of your children, the souls of your children could be lost forever if you do not preach the gospel to them?

That's what this means. It's absolutely what this means. And then fourthly, just an appeal to myself and all of us together to participate in the work of the Holy Spirit in the church and in the community. Acts 20 shows us the work of the Holy Spirit in the church. The mind of God is at work and working through the Apostle Paul to preach the whole council of God.

God is caring for the church here and we just need to be a people who are participating in the spread of the gospel in our community. I know there's no amount of guilt that anybody, that I could heap up on anybody to make this happen. I know that's not true. I know that only a work of love for God, compassion for people who are lost. You know what?

It was two days, The night before last, I came over from the conference, and I went up on that hill, and I prayed, and I cried out to God. I said, God, do I have no love in my heart for the lost people in this town? Is that what it is? Has my heart grown cold? Is that what it is?

Is that why I haven't shared the gospel with my friends downtown where I am all the time? Is that why? Yes, that's exactly why. There's no love in my heart. It's grown stony cold.

And how wrong that is of me. And then we need to also understand that if this does not happen in the church, that devastating things happen. What happened to the church in Ephesus? Do you know what happened to the church in Ephesus? They lost their first love.

That's what happened in the church in Ephesus. After all the good examples and everything like that, at the end of the age, the Lord Jesus Christ comes to the church in Ephesus. He says, I know your works. I know your labor. He says, I know your patience.

And you cannot bear those who are evil. I know that. He says, you've tested them. You've dealt with false doctrine. You've been doctrinally sound.

But you've left your first love. That's what happened to the church in Ephesus. Did the elders fail? Did they not heed the warning? I think they didn't heed the warning.

I think that's what happened in Ephesus. There isn't any way to know for sure. But it did happen where they lost their first love. That can happen to me and you. That can happen to this church right here.

In 20 or 50 years, we could lose our first love because we got all wrapped up in the things of the world. And we had no love for the lost anymore, but just our own comforts and the promotion of our own life that we love so much. Well, here's the last thing by application. It's a question. You know, have you experienced repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ?

The Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed His blood for our sins so that He would draw us into mercy. He said, Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. God calls those who are not saved to be saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And a person is saved when they repent toward God and have faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Isn't it easy to have faith in everything else, faith in yourself, faith in that stupid book that you read ten years ago, faith in that dumb movie that you quote that's really so silly it absolutely has no eternal value at all.

We place our faith in all these silly things, but the Lord Jesus Christ comes to us at certain times and we know when He's calling us, we know when the door of our heart would swing open by His mercy. If that's happening to you this morning, it's because God has come to you by His sovereign grace. He has come and He has opened your heart. When you could not open it yourself And he opens the heart to repent if there's if there's desire to repent it means that the Lord Jesus Christ has chosen you for salvation if your desire is to trust and have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, except instead of yourself. It means that you've been chosen for eternal salvation.

And what a wonderful thing if that's what's happening. Cry out to God for help. Drive the stake deep in the ground that Jesus Christ is now your Lord, that you desire to follow Him with all of your heart. Well, we've just spent an hour in a passage of Scripture that demonstrates how serious it is that we teach the whole counsel of God in the church and how we restore this practice in us, publicly and from house to house. And we are confronted with blood guiltiness if we do not proclaim the whole counsel of God.

We've been confronted here with a very sober teaching. And how do you deal with this burden? You know, how do you deal with a responsibility like this? And our only hope is to preach to ourselves what Paul preached to the elders in Ephesus, and that is to have repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. This is how God saves us first of all, and guess what?

This is how God refreshes us and grows us up from being children. He is our only hope, and yet what a wonderful hope he is. If you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you can know for certain that it is a sound faith. It is certain. His Word is established for all eternity, and all who place their hope in Him will never be disappointed.

Let's pray. Oh Lord, this is a very arresting Set of words that you've given to us. I pray that you would pour your spirit out upon us in times such as these in Jesus name Amen