I invite you to turn to acts chapter 20. The context is Paul returning toward Jerusalem

after the third of his missionary journeys and while passing near Ephesus calling for the elders of that city so that he might remind

them of his ministry there and exhort them about the days to come.

We'll pick up the text at Acts 20, verse 17 and read to verse 21. And from Melitis he, Paul Paul sent to Ephesus and called to him the elders of the church.

And when they came to him, to him he said to them,

You yourselves know how I lived among you all the time from the first day

that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which befell me through the plots of the Jews.

How I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying

to both Jews and Greeks of repentance to God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. of the gospel spread throughout the Roman Empire during those first 30 years after Jesus

rose from the dead. But every now and then, Luke who wrote this book stops and he gives us a sermon that somebody preached.

And so really the Book of Acts does two things for us.

Lisa does two things for me.

I think it's meant to do these two things.

It inspires us with a fast-moving, exciting successful account of how the kingdom is advancing

throughout the world from Jerusalem to Judeus, Mary, and then on to the reaches of the kingdom.

And it also stops long enough to get into some sermons that are intended, I think, to tell

us what the theology and the preaching and the leadership behind that

advance looked like.

We've got one of those here in Acts Chapter 20, one of those pauses to look at what is causing

this amazing advance of the kingdom. I want to step back and give you a little historical settings. So let's go back to chapter 18,

verse 23. And we'll just walk right up to where we're going to start the message this

morning of exposition. In Acts 1823, he leaves Antioch,

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