The Legacy You Will Leave

Introduction

Acts 20:17-38 records Paul’s farewell speech to the Ephesian elders at Miletus — a farewell so moving they wept, knowing they would never see his face again. Revd. Mark Fletcher traces the legacy Paul left there: integrity, unity, and the conviction that it is never too late to become the person God made you to be.

Have you ever thought what your legacy will be? What you will leave behind when you’re not here anymore? What people perhaps will say about your life?

The great comedian Spike Milligan, I don’t know if you know, has on his grave written the words, “I told you I was ill.”

Sir Christopher Wren, the great architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, on his grave is written, “If you seek a monument, look around you.”

Sir Isaac Newton, wonderfully actually, perhaps the greatest scientist of all, said, “I have been like a child on a seashore, finding beautiful pebbles while the great ocean of truth lay before me.” And Elizabeth I said, “All my possessions for one more moment of time.”

So we are thinking about ending well, and we’re coming to the end of this series in the Acts of the Apostles, and for Paul this is the beginning of the end, as you heard in our reading, he is on his way to Jerusalem, not knowing what faces him, only that the Holy Spirit warns him that prison and hardships face him in every place. And so what we have here are something really precious, because it is some of Paul’s last words to one of the churches that he loved the most. So this is the church in Ephesus. It’s another of the kind of great early churches of the ancient world. It’s in a beautiful and strategic location on the coast of the Aegean Sea. Ephesus is still there. Some of you may well have been. It’s a remarkable place to go and discover. And it was clearly very dear to Paul. He chose it as a base and spent three years there teaching and building up the church. And in this passage, Paul says farewell to the leaders of that church, knowing that he will not see them again in this life. And it’s a very moving scene. Verse 36 said, “When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. And they all wept as they embraced him and kissed him.” And what grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. It’s an important picture, and it reminds us of the quality of this man, Paul, or the quality of the man that he became, because of course he wasn’t always that way. As we know, by the grace of God, he became someone who gave himself for others, who employed his great intellect in the service of the people of God, and who in return inspired great love and loyalty because people could see something of Christ in him. And so his legacy was in that love, that faithfulness that he instilled in God’s people. And I think if you take nothing else from the sermon this evening, take this. It is never too late to become the person that God made you to be. Our ambition in this life should always be to reflect something of Jesus Christ, and our legacy should be one of love and generosity and selflessness.

Did you also see that we saw a really interesting detail about Paul’s ministry, and that was that he never made a penny from his work. Verse 34, he said, “You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions.” Now, that’s interesting, because elsewhere he’s very clear that the labourer is worthy of their wages. But he, throughout his whole life, has made this very powerful and deliberate statement. And it’s about integrity. It turns out that in the ancient world, there were this whole category of kind of travelling teachers who would have appeared on the surface not unlike Paul. But they would travel around and find places where people would give them a hearing. And they would choose the places where they could earn the most money. They were called sophists. And they would sort of seek out wealthy and important people and sort of try and get them on side. And in doing so, they would end up teaching what people wanted to hear. And Paul is categorically not that. And so he has also, he was always worked with his hands. You know, he was a tent maker in order to support himself. And there’s such an integrity to that. And so therefore, it means that rather than teaching what people want to hear, verse 26, he says, “Therefore I declare to you that I am innocent of the blood of any of you, for I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God.” There is always, I think, a great temptation for churches and for church leaders to sort of fine-tune the message to that which is palatable in order to gain the biggest following or to be acceptable to the wider culture. As Paul says in a letter to a young Christian leader, he says, “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, they will gather around themselves teachers who say what their itching ears want to hear.” And that is such a danger for us. In a world of so many voices, so many opinions, so many podcasts. Our responsibility is to seek out people who will challenge and teach us faithfully. Our responsibility at church is not to say that which is popular, but that which is faithful to the whole counsel of God. And we should be seeking out not those who entertain us or teach us what our itching ears want to hear, but the ones who are faithful, even if that is uncomfortable. And Paul says that’s a real danger, and it simply isn’t the case for everyone. He said in verse 29, “I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in amongst you and will not spare the flock. And even from your own number, men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after themselves.”

He’s worried about the legacy of that church in Ephesus. He knows what can happen. An undefended flock will always be vulnerable to predators. And so for all of us in positions of leadership and responsibility in various ways within the church, we need to take seriously this responsibility to defend the people of God from those, did you hear, who would distort the truth in order to gain a following for themselves. The people of God need trustworthy shepherds in the likeness of Jesus who will protect the flock from those who would lead people astray for their own personal gain. Beware of those who are seeking a following for the sake of having a following. Those who cause division in order to gain disciples.

I think unity matters far more than we allow it to. You know that for the first thousand years of the history of the church, there was only one church. You would go to a town, there would be a church, you would go to the church. There weren’t options, you didn’t have choices, there was just the church. And then the Great Schism, which was a real tragedy in 1054, meant that there were two churches for the first 1600 years of the church. And then, within 100 years of the Reformation, there were 200 denominations or churches. And now there are something like 20,000. When did we come to accept division as an acceptable thing? Richard Baxter, the great Anglican divine, said, “Another sin that the ministers of the church are sadly guilty of is undervaluing the unity and peace of the whole church.”

The church needs to be guarded and protected. It needs Christ-like, trustworthy shepherds who are accountable to others. If you think that you can do faith by yourself, you are playing a risky game. And authentic church communities are wonderful, gentle places. They are welcoming and loving and serving, but as such, they’re vulnerable, and they need to be protected. Church matters because we all need people to whom we are accountable, who will be responsible for us and to us, who can sustain us and protect us. We need people around us who will challenge us and pray for us. So that brings us to Paul’s last words to these Ephesian church leaders. He says, verse 32, “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance amongst all those who are sanctified.” I’m struck that the mark of a trustworthy shepherd, and Paul is just that, is that they will help us grow more deeply and into greater maturity in our relationship with God. They will not make us dependent on them, but will point us to Christ. And us growing in strength and maturity means learning to put our trust in God with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength, to trust in the one who is faithful and the one who is our shield and our defenders. And we do that by committing ourselves to the scriptures, as Paul calls them, committing ourselves to the words of his grace, which is the thing which will continue to challenge and inspire and correct and encourage, which will build us up and give us an inheritance amongst the saints.

What is the legacy that you will leave in your life? Who is the person that you’re becoming that people will remember? Because it needn’t be great monuments or many possessions; the legacy that we leave needs to be one of love and of faithfulness and of selfless service for the sake of others, and we need to commit ourselves to travelling this road well, and that means not travelling it alone. We do it together. This life can be very hard, and what it means to be God’s people is to grow to maturity together, that at the last we need have no regrets, and we, like the great apostle, are able to say in confidence that we have finished the race. We have completed the task that the Lord Jesus has set for us, and we have left a legacy not in monuments or possessions, but in this great inheritance as part of the people of God and amongst the saints in eternity.

The last words of the great St. Paul to the church in Ephesus speak to us today. Who is the person that you’re becoming? What is the legacy that you will leave? Amen. Let’s be quiet together, shall we?