For Teaching

Acts 20: What the Passage Says

130 claims across 38 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Acts 20 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

After the riot in Ephesus, Paul travels through Macedonia to Greece, and when a plot is laid against him he doubles back through Macedonia toward Jerusalem. At Troas he talks until midnight, a young man named Eutychus falls from a third-story window and is picked up dead, and Paul goes down and reports that he is alive. Sailing on, Paul stops at Miletus and sends for the elders of the church at Ephesus. He reviews how he worked among them, says the Holy Spirit warns him of chains and suffering ahead, warns of wolves from outside and of men rising from their own number, and tells them they will not see his face again.

Claim by Claim

20:1
- The uproar ceased.
- After the uproar ceased, Paul sent for the disciples.
- Paul exhorted the disciples.
- Paul embraced the disciples and took leave of them.
- Paul departed to go into Macedonia.
20:2
- Paul traveled through those regions.
- Paul gave the people there much exhortation.
- Paul came into Greece.
20:3
- Paul stayed in Greece three months.
- The Jews laid a plot against Paul.
- Paul was about to sail into Syria.
- Paul decided to return by way of Macedonia.
20:4
- Sopater of Berea accompanied Paul into Asia.
- Aristarchus, of the Thessalonians, accompanied Paul.
- Secundus, of the Thessalonians, accompanied Paul.
- Gaius of Derbe accompanied Paul.
- Timothy accompanied Paul.
- Tychicus, of Asia, accompanied Paul.
- Trophimus, of Asia, accompanied Paul.
20:5
- These men went on ahead.
- These men waited for the narrator's company at Troas.
20:6
- The narrator's company sailed from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread.
- The narrator's company came to the others at Troas in five days.
- The narrator's company stayed at Troas seven days.
20:7
- On the first day of the week the disciples came together to break bread.
- Paul preached to them.
- Paul was ready to depart the next day.
- Paul continued speaking until midnight.
20:8
- There were many lights in the upper chamber.
- They were gathered together in that upper chamber.
20:9
- A young man named Eutychus sat in a window.
- Eutychus had fallen into a deep sleep.
- Paul was preaching a long time.
- Eutychus sank down with sleep.
- Eutychus fell down from the third story.
- Eutychus was taken up dead.
20:10
- Paul went down.
- Paul fell on Eutychus.
- Paul embraced Eutychus.
- Paul said not to be troubled.
- Paul said Eutychus's life was in him.
20:11
- Paul went back up.
- Paul broke bread.
- Paul ate.
- Paul talked a long while, until daybreak.
- Paul then departed.
20:12
- They brought the young man alive.
- They were greatly comforted.
20:13
- The narrator's company went ahead to the ship.
- The narrator's company sailed to Assos.
- They intended to take Paul aboard at Assos.
- Paul had so appointed it.
- Paul intended to go on foot.
20:14
- Paul met the narrator's company at Assos.
- They took Paul aboard.
- They came to Mitylene.
20:15
- They sailed from Mitylene.
- The next day they came opposite Chios.
- The next day they arrived at Samos.
- They tarried at Trogyllium.
- The next day they came to Miletus.
20:16
- Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus.
- Paul did not want to spend time in Asia.
- Paul was hurrying to be at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, if it were possible for him.
20:17
- From Miletus Paul sent to Ephesus.
- Paul summoned the elders of the church.
20:18
- The elders came to Paul.
- Paul said to them that they knew how he had been with them the whole time.
- Paul said this was from the first day he came into Asia.
20:19
- Paul said he served the Lord with all humility of mind.
- Paul said he served with many tears.
- Paul said he served amid temptations that befell him.
- Paul said those trials came by the plots of the Jews.
20:20
- Paul said he kept back nothing that was profitable to them.
- Paul said he had declared it to them.
- Paul said he taught them publicly.
- Paul said he taught them from house to house.
20:21
- Paul said he testified to the Jews.
- Paul said he testified to the Greeks.
- Paul said he testified of repentance toward God.
- Paul said he testified of faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ.
20:22
- Paul said he was going to Jerusalem bound in the spirit.
- Paul said he did not know what would happen to him there.
20:23
- Paul said the Holy Spirit testified to him in every city.
- Paul said the Spirit's message was that bonds and afflictions awaited him.
20:24
- Paul said none of these things moved him.
- Paul said he did not count his life dear to himself.
- Paul said his aim was to finish his course with joy.
- Paul said his aim was to finish the ministry he received from the Lord Jesus.
- Paul said that ministry was to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
20:25
- Paul said he knew that all of them would see his face no more.
- Paul said he had gone among them preaching the kingdom of God.
20:26
- Paul called them to record that day.
- Paul said he was pure from the blood of all men.
20:27
- Paul said he had not shunned to declare to them all the counsel of God.
20:28
- Paul told them to take heed to themselves.
- Paul told them to take heed to all the flock.
- Paul said the Holy Spirit had made them overseers over the flock.
- Paul told them to feed the church of God.
- Paul said God purchased the church with his own blood.
20:29
- Paul said he knew that after his departure grievous wolves would enter in among them.
- Paul said those wolves would not spare the flock.
20:30
- Paul said men would arise from among their own selves.
- Paul said those men would speak perverse things.
- Paul said their purpose would be to draw away disciples after themselves.
20:31
- Paul told them to watch.
- Paul told them to remember that for three years he did not cease to warn every one.
- Paul said he warned them night and day.
- Paul said he warned them with tears.
20:32
- Paul addressed them as brethren.
- Paul commended them to God.
- Paul commended them to the word of God's grace.
- Paul said that word is able to build them up.
- Paul said that word is able to give an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
20:33
- Paul said he had coveted no man's silver, gold, or apparel.
20:34
- Paul said they themselves knew that his own hands had ministered to his necessities.
- Paul said his hands had ministered to those who were with him.
20:35
- Paul said he had shown them all things.
- Paul said that by so laboring they ought to support the weak.
- Paul said they ought to remember the words of the Lord Jesus.
- Paul said Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive.
20:36
- Paul finished speaking.
- Paul kneeled down.
- Paul prayed with them all.
20:37
- They all wept greatly.
- They fell on Paul's neck.
- They kissed him.
20:38
- They sorrowed most of all over the words Paul had spoken.
- Paul had said they would see his face no more.
- They accompanied Paul to the ship.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1: The uproar was the riot at Ephesus described in the previous chapter, when the silversmiths who made silver shrines of the goddess Artemis started a mob against Paul. "Disciples" is simply the ordinary word in Acts for followers of Jesus, the members of these young congregations, not a narrow inner circle.
20:2: "Those parts" means Macedonia, the Roman province covering northern Greece, with the cities Philippi, Thessalonica and Berea. "Greece" here means the southern province, Achaia, whose chief city was Corinth.
20:3: Syria was the Roman province on the eastern Mediterranean coast; Judea was administered under it, so a ship for Syria was the normal way to travel toward Jerusalem. When Luke writes "the Jews" in passages like this he means the particular group of Jewish opponents in that city, not the whole people: Paul, his companions and most of his converts at this stage were Jews themselves.
20:4: "Asia" in the King James Version never means the continent. It is the Roman province of Asia, occupying the western end of what is now Turkey, with Ephesus as its leading city. Berea and Thessalonica were in Macedonia, Derbe in the interior of Asia Minor: the group is a delegation drawn from the regions where Paul had preached.
20:5: Notice the shift to "us." At several points the narrative of Acts switches from "they" to "we," and these stretches are usually taken to mean the writer was himself traveling with Paul at those times.
20:6: The days of unleavened bread were the seven day festival attached to Passover, when Jewish households ate bread made without yeast in memory of leaving Egypt in haste. The detail fixes the season: spring. Philippi lay inland, so they boarded at its port, Neapolis, about ten miles away.
20:7: "The first day of the week" is Sunday. Jewish days were counted from sunset to sunset, so by that reckoning this gathering would have begun on what we would call Saturday evening, which fits a meeting that ran past midnight and ended at dawn. To "break bread" is a plain Semitic expression for sharing a meal; among these believers the shared meal also carried the remembrance of Jesus' last supper with his followers.
20:8: The lamps were small clay oil lamps, each giving little light, so many were needed. A crowded upper room with many lamps burning would grow hot, smoky and close, which is part of the scene the writer is setting for what happens next.
20:9: Windows had no glass. A window was an unglazed opening in the wall, sometimes with a wooden shutter, so a person sitting in one was sitting on the edge of a drop. The "third loft" is the third story; in ancient cities ordinary people lived in the upper floors of tall tenement blocks, and the fall would have been twenty five feet or more. Note that Luke says flatly that he was picked up dead, while Paul's words in the next verse have been read both as a statement that life had returned and as a claim that he was never truly dead. The text does not settle it.
20:10: Stretching himself over the body and taking it in his arms repeats, gesture for gesture, what Elijah and Elisha do when they revive dead boys in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 4. A reader of the Hebrew scriptures would hear the echo at once.
20:13: Assos was about twenty miles from Troas by the road across the neck of the peninsula, while a ship had to sail the long way around Cape Lectum. Paul could therefore walk and still reach the port before the ship did.
20:15: These are the islands and harbors of the Aegean coast, worked southward one stage at a time. Coasting vessels normally sailed by day and put in at night, which is why the voyage is counted off in single days. Miletus lay about thirty miles south of Ephesus.
20:16: Pentecost is Greek for "fiftieth." It was the Jewish harvest festival held fifty days after Passover, one of the three feasts at which Jews were expected to come up to Jerusalem, so the city would be packed with visitors. Counting from the unleavened bread of verse 6, Paul had roughly seven weeks to get there.
20:17: The Greek word is presbyteros, literally "older man," used for the recognized leaders of a congregation. The office was borrowed from the synagogue, where a board of elders governed. Verse 28 calls the same men "overseers."
20:19: In 1611 "temptations" meant trials or testings of any kind, including hardship and danger. It did not carry the narrower modern sense of enticement to do wrong.
20:20: There were no church buildings. Believers met in private houses, so teaching "from house to house" means teaching in one household gathering after another, not door to door canvassing.
20:21: "Repentance" translates a Greek word meaning a change of mind that turns a person around, a reversal of direction. It is about turning, not primarily about feeling sorry.
20:22: "Bound in the spirit" is genuinely ambiguous in Greek. It can mean compelled or constrained by the Holy Spirit, or bound in his own spirit, that is, inwardly under a compulsion he cannot shake off. Translations divide on it.
20:23: "Holy Ghost" and "Holy Spirit" are the same words in Greek; in 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit, and the King James translators used both forms. "Bonds" means chains or imprisonment, and "abide me" means await me.
20:24: "Finish my course" is an image from the footrace: to run the assigned distance to the end. "Gospel" translates a word meaning good news, the announcement a herald makes. "Grace" means favor freely given, not earned, which is why the rendering spells it out.
20:25: "The kingdom of God" means God's reign or rule, the fact of his being king, rather than a territory with borders. Preaching the kingdom means announcing that this reign has arrived.
20:26: "Pure from the blood of all men" is an idiom taken from the Hebrew prophets. In Ezekiel 33 a watchman who sees danger coming and fails to sound the alarm is held answerable for the deaths that follow, while one who sounds it is clear whatever happens. Paul is saying no one's ruin can be charged to his silence.
20:27: "Shunned" here means shrank back or held back through fear. "The counsel of God" means his plan or settled purpose, not advice he gives.
20:28: "Overseers" translates episkopos, one who watches over, the word that later became the title "bishop." These are the same men called elders in verse 17. "To feed" translates a verb meaning to shepherd, covering everything a herdsman does for a flock, not feeding alone. The last phrase is doubly uncertain: the manuscripts differ between "the church of God" and "the church of the Lord," and the Greek behind "with his own blood" can equally be read "with the blood of his own," that is, of his own Son.
20:29: Wolves and flock are the standard imagery of shepherding, used throughout the Hebrew scriptures for leaders and the people in their charge. "Grievous" in 1611 meant savage or ferocious, not merely distressing.
20:30: "Perverse things" renders a word meaning twisted or bent out of true. The picture is of straight teaching pulled crooked, not of moral depravity.
20:31: Acts 19 gives Paul about two years and three months at Ephesus. "Three years" is a round figure in the ancient manner of counting, where any part of a year could be counted as a year.
20:32: "I commend you to God" means I hand you over, entrust you to his keeping. "Inheritance" translates a word meaning an allotted share, the same term used in the Hebrew scriptures for each tribe's portion of the land.
20:33: Clothing belongs in this list because in the ancient world good garments were a real store of wealth. They were expensive to make, they were handed down, and they were given and received as valuable gifts.
20:34: Paul worked at a trade, tentmaking or leatherworking (Acts 18:3), to pay his own way and that of his companions rather than live on the support of the congregations. "Ministered unto my necessities" simply means supplied my needs.
20:35: This saying of Jesus appears nowhere in the four gospels. It is one of the few sayings attributed to him that survived outside them and was quoted from memory in the churches.
20:36: The usual posture for prayer among Jews was standing. Kneeling marked prayer of unusual urgency or feeling, so the detail signals the weight of the moment.
20:37: "Wept sore" means wept hard and openly. Falling on someone's neck and kissing him was the ordinary greeting and farewell between friends and family in that world, exchanged between men without the least romantic sense.
20:38: Escorting a departing guest all the way to the ship or the edge of town was the expected way of honoring someone you respected. Letting a person leave unaccompanied would have looked cold.

Read Acts 20