Acts 20:17-35
The Whole Counsel of God

I. The Problem With Seeing Only One Side
1. Ever thought you understood something only to realize you were only seeing one side of the story?
2. Two men in one side of a parking lot looked like they were starting a fight. But they were actors.
3. Everything I saw before was true, but I couldn’t interpret it correctly until I saw the whole picture.
4. Micah’s speech therapist saw airplane disappear into the side of one of the World Trade Center towers.
5. She was an eye-witness to a terrorist attack but she couldn’t interpret it correctly because she didn’t see the whole picture. You respond in exactly the wrong way, unless you get the whole picture.
6. There are many preachers who are just preaching one side of the story.
7. A half-truth presented as a whole truth is a complete untruth.
II. What Is the Whole Counsel of God?
A. What Is It?
1. We’re focusing on the advice he leaves for the church, as we look at the pillars of a Biblical church.
2. A pillar of a truly Biblical church is that it is committed to “the whole counsel of God.”
3. “Whole” means all, the entirety. The Bible is the counsel He has given us, which is “of God”.
4. We proclaim everything and it is all profitable because that message of the gospel is in all of it.
B. How Important Is Declaring the Whole Message of Scripture?
1. Paul reminds them, “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable.” (20:20).
2. He never flinched from declaring everything God has said. He didn’t whisper the unpopular parts.
3. In Ezekiel the watchman is held accountable for warning, not winning. We must warn.
4. Faithfulness to the whole message may mean losing people who can’t accept certain teachings.
5. If we have to make a choice between warning or winning, we had better choose warning. If we hold back any part of the message and people continue to head toward disaster, we will be judged.
III. How Do We Get he Whole Counsel of God?
1. It’s not something we can leave up to following our preferences, our tastes, our whims, feelings.
2. What we need is a disciplined regimen of going through all of scripture.
3. If we really want to the leading of the Spirit, then let’s follow the book whose every letter He led.
4. True humility bows before the Word and admits that God was right all along. He led the Word.
5. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly by singing: singing Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.
6. We need to talk about it. To see the whole picture, we need the whole Body.
7. We still need preaching. Paul preached publicly. That means you need to listen to preaching.
8. In expository preaching the main point of a passage of scripture is the main point of the message.
9. We experience it. We need to experience the sweetness, savor the meat, of all of God’s Word.
10. Twice, Paul mentions his tears. He experienced God Himself, especially God the Holy Spirit.
IV. Why Do We Do We Need the Whole Counsel of God?
1. Without it, we become badly nourished, like someone who only eats sweets.
2. Only hearing the “sweet” themes we naturally prefer is like only eating sweet foods we crave.
3. When we miss some of what God has revealed, we will be vulnerable to wolves.
4. Paul was passionate in his care for the church, the “flock.” Here he calls us to have the same care.
5. “The Church of God which He obtained with His own blood” (20:28). Shows Jesus’ divinity.
6. It is God’s blood which bought the Church because Jesus is God. Jesus died for the church.
7. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)
8. The Word of God incarnate spent His blood to purchase us, the flock, the church.
V. Invitation: The Lord Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” and He gave His blood because He cared for the church. The Word of God in the flesh commends us to the Word of God in scripture; to the “Word of His grace,” to nourish us, to defend us, a pillar to hold us up, to give us our inheritance: the salvation He spent His blood to buy. So, don’t you want to know the Word?