The Urgent Tempo
Most scholars agree that Luke the physician wrote the book of Acts, and I can't help but think he would have make a great novelist, too. This book plays out almost like a movie; the action ramps up near the end, and I couldn't stop after just one chapter.
At the beginning of Acts 20, Paul is leaving Ephesus, and then in rapid-fire succession through the next few paragraphs, he travels through Macedonia, arrives in Greece, considered heading to Syria by boat, decided against it because of a plot from the IJ's - the Inevitable Jews, and then heads back through Macedonia, arrives in Troas, and all this happens in the first paragraph.
Urgency drips from the narrative. Paul has a mission and he's got to accomplish it. There's a steady tempo of hurry, hurry, hurry in this chapter.
In Troas, Paul preaches until midnight and puts a guy to sleep. It's not just a nodding-off sleep, it's a deep sleep. Paul resurrects that same guy from the dead after he falls out of a third-story window... and then he keeps on preaching until morning. That account always amuses me, like: Paul, can you take a hint?
But it also serves to underscore the urgency of the foregoing paragraphs: there was no time to release the people to go home. He had a purpose to fulfill, and nothing was going to stand in his way to fulfill it, not human convention (a la: the service starts at 10:40 and goes to 12:00; please stick around for coffee and doughnuts in the reception hall afterward if you like). The Lord gave Paul a message, and he doubled-down on it. Nothing was going to keep him from doing what Jesus asked of him.
That urgent mission from the Lord was underlined in the rest of this chapter... and the next... and the next... and the next... until I had to stop reading at chapter 24, because the day was advancing, and I had to get my family up and moving. But the mission still wasn't done, even at my stopping place. It's tense!
Have you ever seen the movie The Never-Ending Story? It was my absolute favorite movie when I was a kid. If you haven't seen it, it's about a boy who found a book in a bookstore, entitled appropriately: The Never-Ending Story. He "borrowed" it and skipped school to read it in the attic of his school building. As soon as he began to read, he was transported to a world of adventure and danger and excitement, and while he was reading, things happened in the "real" world that were happening in the book, so the two worlds crossed over a little bit. Anyway, all that to say, at all the most exciting moments throughout the book's narrative, something would happen in the "real" world that would pull his attention away from the book, but he couldn't quite pull himself out of the story, even when he wasn't reading it.
I feel a bit that way in this part of Acts. I'm not reading it, but I'm still sort of standing there on the witness stand in front of the Sanhedrin next to Paul, and he's looking right at them, lambasting Ananias the High Priest for being a white-washed tomb, and then sarcastically backtracking: "Oh, I'm sorry, you weren't acting like a High Priest, so I didn't recognize you." (Or maybe it was poor eye-sight that kept him from recognizing Ananias. My footnotes were undecided).
So while that may seem like a rabbit trail (and maybe was just a tiny bit), I think it's not really. Paul was urgent, because he had a job to do before he ran out of time to do it.
Same for us. We have a job to do. Ephesians 4:11-13 gives us a nice list of some of those jobs: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, etc, all for the purpose of building up the church to unity in the Spirit. Only the Father knows how much time we have left before we run out of time to do our jobs.
In Troas, Paul preaches until midnight and puts a guy to sleep. It's not just a nodding-off sleep, it's a deep sleep. Paul resurrects that same guy from the dead after he falls out of a third-story window... and then he keeps on preaching until morning. That account always amuses me, like: Paul, can you take a hint?
That urgent mission from the Lord was underlined in the rest of this chapter... and the next... and the next... and the next... until I had to stop reading at chapter 24, because the day was advancing, and I had to get my family up and moving. But the mission still wasn't done, even at my stopping place. It's tense!
Have you ever seen the movie The Never-Ending Story? It was my absolute favorite movie when I was a kid. If you haven't seen it, it's about a boy who found a book in a bookstore, entitled appropriately: The Never-Ending Story. He "borrowed" it and skipped school to read it in the attic of his school building. As soon as he began to read, he was transported to a world of adventure and danger and excitement, and while he was reading, things happened in the "real" world that were happening in the book, so the two worlds crossed over a little bit. Anyway, all that to say, at all the most exciting moments throughout the book's narrative, something would happen in the "real" world that would pull his attention away from the book, but he couldn't quite pull himself out of the story, even when he wasn't reading it.
So while that may seem like a rabbit trail (and maybe was just a tiny bit), I think it's not really. Paul was urgent, because he had a job to do before he ran out of time to do it.
Same for us. We have a job to do. Ephesians 4:11-13 gives us a nice list of some of those jobs: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, etc, all for the purpose of building up the church to unity in the Spirit. Only the Father knows how much time we have left before we run out of time to do our jobs.
So... no holding back. No shy "maybe laters." There might not be a later. Paul told the Ephesian elders that he didn't think he'd ever see them again (turns out he did, but he didn't expect to at all). He lived his life with the idea that he would do all he could the most he could as best he could.
There was a Civil War general from the Confederacy named Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Tennessee guy. He was pretty unorthodox in his methods (he considerably confused General Sherman-of-the-march-to-Atlanta-fame with his methods), and Forrest's "great war strategy" was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but seemingly pretty effective. He was known to tell people that: "I always make it a rule to get there first with the most men."
What if our "war strategy" was along those lines? Our weapons and war are in the spiritual realms, but "arriving first and being ready" ("Stand firm, then..." not half off-balance, not panting and out of breath... take a firm stance and be ready). "With the most" (with the forces of the Lord outnumbering the enemy's, like when Elisha prayed for his servant's eyes to be opened, and he saw the hills full of the horses and chariots of the Lord, dwarfing the enemy's previously-seen-to-be-enormous armies).
I do kind of wish we had a count-down calendar to the Day of the Lord when He comes again for His church. Deadlines are a powerful motivator, and I'm a procrastinator to the nth-degree. In college, I gave myself white hairs while I enjoyed days in the sunshine, frisbee on the quad, movie marathons with friends... and then sweated out nights of paper-writing in the lab, because I'd put it off. That's not how we should be fighting this war. Urgency means that every minute, we should be considering how best to meet that deadline when all bets are off and we see the skies roll back like a scroll.
Every minute, looking to Jesus, "the Author and Perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2).
What if our "war strategy" was along those lines? Our weapons and war are in the spiritual realms, but "arriving first and being ready" ("Stand firm, then..." not half off-balance, not panting and out of breath... take a firm stance and be ready). "With the most" (with the forces of the Lord outnumbering the enemy's, like when Elisha prayed for his servant's eyes to be opened, and he saw the hills full of the horses and chariots of the Lord, dwarfing the enemy's previously-seen-to-be-enormous armies).
I do kind of wish we had a count-down calendar to the Day of the Lord when He comes again for His church. Deadlines are a powerful motivator, and I'm a procrastinator to the nth-degree. In college, I gave myself white hairs while I enjoyed days in the sunshine, frisbee on the quad, movie marathons with friends... and then sweated out nights of paper-writing in the lab, because I'd put it off. That's not how we should be fighting this war. Urgency means that every minute, we should be considering how best to meet that deadline when all bets are off and we see the skies roll back like a scroll.
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