Encouraging One Another

The way Luke describes these events gives the impression that this was simply the norm for churches. Several ancient documents also describe how early Christians gathered on Sundays to celebrate Jesus’s resurrection. Each time they did, they were reminding one another that the tomb is empty and the heavenly throne is occupied. This congregation in Troas met in the evenings. Sunday mornings became the more popular gathering time as culture and leadership changed.

There’s something special and significant about assembling together. There’s always more going on at a church gathering than meets the eye (cf. Heb 12:18-24). They give us a glimpse of the great gathering to come (Rev 4–5). And we never know what might happen at a church service! Imagine, for instance, how wonderful it would have been to attend the meeting at which Paul spoke and one of the guys in the youth group got raised from the dead! Meeting together for worship encourages us, and it reminds us that our greatest problem has already been solved: death has been defeated.

Yet there remains a spirit of indifference to weekly gatherings among many professing Christians. Many feel they’re too important to make time for Jesus Christ and his people. They think they should invest their time elsewhere. But gathering with the church is the best investment of time you could possibly make! If you aren’t prioritizing the assembly of the redeemed, beware! It may indicate that your relationship with Jesus isn’t what it should be.

Understand that there’s a vertical and horizontal dimension to our Christian meetings: both have tremendous benefits for the individual and for the crowd. Every believer needs the encouragement that comes not only from the risen King (vertical) but also from the King’s people (horizontal). The writer of Hebrews says,

And let us watch out for one another to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching. (Heb 10:24-25)

You have a role to play in the weekly assembly. You come not to be entertained but to encourage and receive encouragement. For the good of your own soul and for the good of the souls of your brothers and sisters, protect corporate worship times.

Luke mentions the Lord’s Supper in the same way, as a common event in the life of the gathered church (see 1 Cor 11:17-34, “when you come together”). It was probably shared in the context of a meal. John Stott says, “Word and sacrament [the Lord’s Supper] were combined in the ministry given to the church at Troas, and the universal church has followed suit ever since” (Message of Acts, 321). Let’s consider three aspects of the Lord’s Supper.

The Privilege. Paul was able to remember Jesus’s substitutionary death through the Lord’s Supper with individuals who couldn’t have been Christians for long. It must have been an encouraging experience to see former pagans take the bread and the cup. It must have also been an incredibly joyous experience for the believers in Troas to take the bread and the cup with the apostle Paul. He had sacrificed so much for the cause of the gospel.

Imagine a modern missionary’s joy at serving Communion to new believers in his area of outreach. How much excitement would fill such a person’s heart as he held out the emblems of the Savior’s death to repentant believers? Just thinking about it reminds me of the missionary John Paton (1824–1907), who took the gospel to the people of the New Hebrides islands. After many trials and difficult seasons, Paton reported the unspeakable joy he experienced when he served the first Communion to a group of new believers at Aniwa:

For years we had toiled and prayed and taught for this. At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces. I shall never taste a deeper bliss till I gaze on the glorified face of Jesus himself. (John G. Paton, Ch. LXXIII)

Every time I read this story, I feel tears pool in my eyes. What a powerful picture it paints! What a privilege to memorialize the Lord’s forgiveness in the Lord’s Supper and to share the meal with other believers. Each of us was dead in sin and unworthy to take the Table until God made us alive in Christ. May we never get over the wonder of the gospel—the wonder of taking the bread and the cup, reminders of the Lord’s torn flesh and precious blood shed on our behalf.

The Pattern. So how often should we take the Lord’s Supper? It seems the early church took the Lord’s Supper weekly. After the church spread out from Jerusalem, became more stabilized, and began meeting weekly for worship, the Lord’s Supper became a weekly experience. John Stott says, “The disciples met on the Lord’s Day for the Lord’s Supper. At least verse 7 sounds like a description of the normal, regular practice of the church in Troas” (Message of Acts, 321).

Allow me to mention a few leading biblical scholars on this subject. Ray Van Neste says of Acts 20:7,

The breaking of bread is the term used especially in Acts for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper (2:42; cf. 1 Cor. 10:16), and this passage is of particular interest in providing the first allusion to the Christian custom of meeting on the first day of the week for the purpose. . . . This passage need not mean the Lord’s Supper was the only purpose of their gathering, but it certainly is one prominent purpose and the one emphasized here. The centrality of communion to the weekly gathering is stated casually without explanation or defense, suggesting this practice was common among those Luke expected to read his account. These early Christians met weekly to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. (The Lord’s Supper, 366, kindle)

Similarly, James Hamilton says,

I would suggest that Acts 20:7 (with 1 Cor. 10:16, 11:23-24) indicates that the celebration of the Lord’s supper was central to the early Christian gatherings—look at it again: “On the first day of the week, when we gathered to break bread . . .” (Acts 20:7). They gathered to break bread (Paul also preached all night, so the gathering probably started in the evening, 20:7-11), and the gathering happened on the first day of the week. . . . Everywhere the apostles went to make disciples, they planted churches. They always baptized new disciples into membership in those churches, and those churches met on the first day of the week to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus, looking for his return, by partaking of the Lord’s supper. (“How Often Should a Church Take the Lord’s Supper?”)

Hamilton applies this to us today:

This means, I think, that if we become convinced that the earliest church took the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day—and if this was so widespread that when Paul and Luke are traveling from one place to another, they know that if they find a church gathered on the Lord’s day that church will have gathered to break bread—if we become convinced that the earliest church in every place took the Lord’s supper every Lord’s day, we will want to do the same. (Ibid.)

And finally, Van Neste concludes,

From these passages, a clear pattern emerges of a weekly celebration of Communion in the NT. . . . [T]his is the pattern in the NT and therefore would be the best practice. (The Lord’s Supper, 367, kindle)

I agree wholeheartedly.

My experience, and the testimony of many others, is that regular Communion is more meaningful, not less meaningful, than periodic observances. Charles Spurgeon believed this as well:

My witness is, and I think I speak the mind of many of God’s people now present, that coming as some of us do, weekly, to the Lord’s Table, we do not find the breaking of bread to have lost its significance—it is always fresh to us. . . . Shame on the Christian church that she should put it off to once a month, and mar the first day of the week by depriving it of its glory in the meeting together for fellowship and breaking of bread, and showing forth of the death of Christ till he come. They who once know the sweetness of each Lord’s-day celebrating his Supper, will not be content, I am sure, to put it off to less frequent seasons. (“Songs of Deliverance”)

I don’t want to be overly critical on this matter. To be fair, in Scripture we don’t find an explicit command to take the Lord’s Supper weekly. If we did, I’m sure most Bible-believing churches would be doing so. Nevertheless, this does seem to be the pattern of the early churches. And it’s a wonderful privilege to enjoy!

The Power. The Lord’s Supper is powerful in its reception. While we shouldn’t go so far as to view the elements as transforming into the actual body and blood of Jesus, it’s also wrong to minimize the experience of the Table. Many Christians grow up only hearing what the Lord’s Supper is not. In hearing such negativity associated with it, they tend to have a low view of the Supper, assuming nothing special happens when we take it. In truth we should experience profound delight and deep joy when we come to the Table. We should take it repentantly, prayerfully, gratefully, and joyfully. J. I. Packer notes, “At the Holy Table, above all, let there be praise” (cited in Van Neste, Lord’s Supper, 363). Yes indeed. May we take Communion with holy praise to the Lamb!

The Lord’s Supper is also powerful in its proclamation. Sermons preach to the ear. The Lord’s Supper preaches to the eye. And the preached Word has great power. In the Lord’s Supper people get to see and hear the gospel proclaimed through the explanation of the elements. We shouldn’t minimize this fact.

When my youngest son was only six years old, I asked him about the worship service. He couldn’t remember much about my sermon, but he could remember the presentation of the Lord’s Supper. I was thrilled because what he remembered was the gospel!

The Lord’s Supper is also powerful in its unification. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul speaks much about the call for unity at the Table because the “haves” weren’t treating the “have-nots” appropriately (1 Cor 11:17-34). At the Table we Christians confess our unity in Christ. The Lord’s Supper is a powerful way to build community within the church because it illustrates that we are all one in him. We all come as repentant sinners, having placed faith in the same Savior and thus sharing the same hope. In Jesus we’re family. There are no distinctions. Skin color doesn’t matter. Paycheck size doesn’t matter. What matters is Christ’s blood, reconciling us to God and one another. Consider this powerful illustration of unity:

At the end of the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia, on the Sunday after Appomattox and the surrender, a worship service was held in the historic Episcopal church there. It was an old church that had a balcony where the slaves of the owners had sat for many years, with their masters and their families sitting downstairs. The practice in this church had been to have two calls for the Lord’s Supper, one first for the whites downstairs, and then one for the slaves upstairs. But on this given Sunday at the first call to communion an older black man, a former slave, began down the central aisle, right after the call. Naturally enough there was surprise and shock downstairs, but what was even more of a shock was when an elderly, white, bearded gentleman got up, hooked his arm in the arm of the former slave, and they went forward and took communion together. That man was Robert E. Lee. There was forgiveness and healing and reunion at the Table that day, and thereafter there was no more segregated communion. This is indeed one of the functions of communion—the receiving and sharing of forgiveness. Jesus sacrificed himself so that our sins might be forgiven and so that we might be forgiving as well. (Witherington III, Making a Meal of It,132)

What a powerful picture of grace, forgiveness, and togetherness at the Table!

This togetherness is also a powerful sign of what’s to come. The Lord’s Supper is the sign of the messianic reign and a foretaste of the future, for in the Table, we’re proclaiming the Lord’s death “until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). Soon we will feast with the King and all the redeemed (cf. Matt 8:11).

The church in Troas also gathered to hear the apostle Paul teach. Paul “kept on talking” until midnight (vv. 7,9), and then he “talked” with them until daybreak (v. 11). The first part of the evening may have been a lecture, an argument based on Scripture that could have included some questions and answers, whereas the latter address was more of a casual conversation. Regarding the latter, John Stott says, “It was clearly more free and open than a formal sermon” (Message of Acts, 321).

Obviously this was a unique event. But we should see from this text (and the rest of the Bible) that the preaching and teaching of God’s Word is to be taken seriously. Paul gave Timothy this instruction about corporate worship: “Until I come, give your attention to public reading, exhortation, and teaching” (1 Tim 4:13). Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones underscored the importance of preaching in his classic book on the subject:

Is it not clear, as you take a bird’s eye view of Church history, that the decadent periods and eras in the history of the Church have always been those periods when preaching has declined? What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching. (Preaching and Preachers, 31)

However, we should not draw from this text that a speaker should preach ten-hour sermons! John Newton wisely said, “When weariness begins, edification ends” (in Hughes, Acts, 270).

How, then, should you listen to a sermon? Here a few pointers:

Remember, too, that it’s important to get adequate rest before corporate worship. Prepare for corporate worship as you would prepare for other important events.

In summary, Acts 20:1-12 illustrates the ministry of Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered encouragement. We may encourage people in personal meetings, through financial offerings, in gospel partnerships, and in our weekly worship assemblies. In all things let’s commit ourselves to building up one another. And let’s be thankful that we have the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, with us, in us, and working through us for this ministry.

After all, we have the greatest news in the world to share. Our God raises the dead! The living Christ gives us power to persevere in the faith, to advance the gospel in the midst of persecution, and to sing in days of discouragement. Keep pointing your brothers and sisters to Jesus Christ, the resurrection and the life. The gospel message is not only for the unrepentant sinner but also for the redeemed saint.