Awakening Spiritual Vigilance: Lessons from Eutychus

And we also know that it was Paul's custom when he would go to these various cities that he would first go into the synagogue where he would teach and preach the things of Christ. And it is very possible that the first Christians celebrated the Sabbath both on Saturday and on Sunday; that is, they attended the Jewish observances on the seventh day, but they came together on Sunday to break bread to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and they called Sunday, "The Lord's Day," not because it was the day that the Lord rested from His work of creation, but because it was on the first day of the week that Christ was raised from the dead. [00:07:00]

And so, the early church celebrated the new covenant based on the resurrection of Christ on Sunday rather than Saturday. And the first record that we have of that switch is in the text that I just read to you a few moments ago, where we read in verse 7, "Now on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight." [00:07:52]

Now the people gathered, obviously here, on Sunday evening. Sunday was not a holiday. They didn't have weekends in the ancient Roman culture. And most of the Christians had to work during the daylight hours of the day. And so, they would come together at the evening time for their worship and for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. And, of course, "they gave themselves," as Luke had told us earlier, "to the study of the teaching of the apostle." [00:08:38]

And here the Apostle Paul is preaching and teaching until midnight. So, if we go a few minutes over this morning, I am not going to worry about it because we have a precedent here established in the early church. Well, Luke tells us of an interesting episode that takes place during this gathering time of worship, but that it took place on Sunday is obviously by apostolic sanction. [00:09:24]

And so, we have apostolic authority as the basis for the church's historical shift of corporate worship from Saturday to Sunday, and that is why it is virtually a universal practice among Christians even to this day. But on this occasion we are told that it was evening and the Christians were meeting on the third story of a building there in a land that is basically desert. [00:09:40]

It is very warm outside. And in order for the service to take place, the room had to be illumined. And they, of course, did not have electricity and the room would be illumined basically by torches. So, you have a gathering of people in close quarters in a room with limited oxygen where the people are breathing the oxygen, and not only are the people using up the supply of oxygen but the torches that light the room are sucking the oxygen out of the air. [00:10:00]

And with this depletion of oxygen and this lengthy message that the Apostle Paul preaches, this poor young man who is sitting in the window seat is overcome by sleep, falls out the window three stories down and is killed. That he is dead is confirmed by Luke the physician, who is the author of this particular incident. [00:10:59]

Calvin, when he wrote his great work on prayer in the sixteenth century, wrestled with the same problem. He talked about the fallen heart of the creature is so wicked even after conversion, that when we pray, our minds will wander, we will start off focusing our attention on the glory of God and engage God in conversation, and as a few minutes pass, we will begin to think about the tasks that lie before us for the next day. [00:19:15]

And then, pretty soon we become drowsy. And there while we are in the midst of conversation with our Savior, we fall asleep, almost ready to hear what Jesus said to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Can't you watch with Me for one hour?" While our Lord was going through the worst moment of His passion in preparation for the cross, every one of His disciples fell asleep. What is wrong with us? [00:20:00]

Well, what is wrong with us is sin. And sin so clouds our minds, that many times we find the Word of God boring. Now, there are some people who could sleep any place; in a football stadium, in a movie. My wife is like that. My wife, if she is sleepy and needs some sleep, all she has to do is go to a movie, because as soon as the screen credits are done on the screen she is out. [00:20:46]

And yet when we had the greatest revival that America ever experienced in the eighteenth century in New England under the preaching of John Wesley, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, we experienced what the historians called, "The Great Awakening." Isn't that an interesting metaphor for a revival, "an awakening"? Because even though people were biologically awake, they were spiritually dormant. [00:22:33]

Their souls were asleep. And people could go to church in New England and sit through sermons that were three hours long without nodding off, and yet in their souls they were sound asleep. What a terrible thing to go through your whole life hearing the words of God as a sleepwalker, never being awakened to the sweetness of the truth of God, never having that sense that drove Christ, whose meat and His drink was to do the will of the Father. [00:23:24]