The Chosen Key Word in this Chapter is “Overseer” it comes from the Greek Word “episkopos” which means “overseer, bishop.”
Paul says goodbye to friends he knows he’ll likely never see again, and a young man falls asleep in a dangerous place. Welcome to Bible Life Basics Chapter Reviews, I am Chris and this is Acts 20.
After the uproar subsides, Paul travels through Macedonia and Greece, encouraging believers along the way, before a plot against him forces a change in his travel plans back through Macedonia. In Troas, gathered together to break bread, Paul preaches long into the night, and a young man named Eutychus, sitting in a window, falls into a deep sleep and tumbles three stories to the ground, taken up dead. Paul goes down, embraces him, and declares, “his life is in him,” and the young man is restored alive, bringing no small comfort to everyone present.
Sailing toward Jerusalem, Paul stops at Miletus and sends for the elders of the Ephesian church, delivering an emotional farewell address, reminding them how he served the Lord among them with humility and tears, teaching publicly and house to house, and declaring, “I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.” He warns them that he knows he will likely never see their faces again, and warns of coming “grievous wolves” who will rise up even from among their own number to draw disciples away, urging the elders, “overseers,” “episkopos” in Greek, to watch carefully and feed the church of God, “which he hath purchased with his own blood.”
Paul reminds them of his own example, working with his hands rather than being a financial burden to them, and quotes Jesus’ own words, not recorded elsewhere in the Gospels, that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” After kneeling and praying with them all, there is much weeping, as they embrace and kiss Paul, sorrowing most of all over his statement that they would see his face no more, before accompanying him to the ship.
Paul’s farewell wasn’t sentimental nostalgia. It was a serious, urgent warning about real dangers still ahead, paired with a clear reminder of his own consistent, humble example among them. Genuine spiritual leadership, this passage shows, prepares people to continue faithfully even after the leader himself is gone.
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