“You Yourselves Know”

Leader notes and discussion questions. The questions in the blue boxes are the ones to ask aloud. Printable copies:

The Spine of the Study

Driving question: If this were your last hour with men you had poured three years into, what would you spend it on? Paul had exactly that hour, and he spent it establishing what it had cost him to be able to say “I am innocent of the blood of all men” (v. 26), and handing that same burden to the men in front of him (v. 28). The question the study walks toward: could any man in this room close three years the way Paul closed these?

The farewell is not a series of topics. It is one argument. Paul establishes a standard by pointing at his own three years (vv. 18–21), states the verdict that his conduct earned him (vv. 26–27), and then hands the identical burden to the men in front of him (v. 28). Verse 18 exists to make verse 28 unanswerable. Track the tears and you can see the argument move: his tears in v. 19, his tears in v. 31, and finally their weeping in v. 37. Three times, and by the last one the weight has changed hands.

What Paul does not do is as instructive as what he does. He does not review doctrine; that work is finished and stated in the past tense (v. 27). He does not appoint a successor; he commends them to God and to the word of His grace (v. 32) and leaves nothing in his own place. He does not soften the hard news. He tells them chains await him (v. 23), that they will not see his face again (v. 25), and that from among their own number men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples (v. 30). And he does not leave them without hope: he commends them to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified (v. 32). When they weep, he does not take any of it back. He prays and boards the ship.

What he wants them to have when he is gone is not information. It is vigilance grounded in cost: his cost (three years, tears, plots, hands) and Christ’s cost (purchased with His own blood, v. 28). Both prices are named to make the same demand: guard this.

Frame Before Reading (5 minutes)

Read v. 16 first, on its own, before anything else. Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend time in Asia; for he was hurrying to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

He sailed past Ephesus to save days. Then he stopped at Miletus anyway and sent thirty miles up the road for these men, and waited for them to walk it. A man in a hurry, who already knows that bonds and afflictions await him (v. 23), spends days he does not have in order to say goodbye. Nothing in this passage is casual. Every word after v. 17 was purchased with time he was desperate to keep.

The lobby flyer poses the opening question below, plus two more; some men will arrive already carrying them.

The Six Movements

Movement 1: “You yourselves know” (vv. 18–21), 12–15 min

Paul opens by putting his own conduct into evidence and inviting cross-examination from the only men on earth positioned to contradict him. You yourselves know, from the first day that I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time (v. 18). Three years, and he will stake the entire account on their memory of it. Almost no one can do that. The verse does not argue; it simply stands there.

Notice the order of what he lists. Not content first; character and cost first: serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials which came upon him through the plots of the Jews (v. 19). Only then the content, and even then it is framed by what he refused to do: I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable (v. 20). The verb (hypostello) is a word for drawing back, withdrawing, shrinking away: the picture of a man who does not flinch from a thing he would rather not say. And the scope: publicly and from house to house, to Jews and Greeks alike (vv. 20–21). No audience exempted, no venue skipped, no topic withheld.

Movement 2: The course and the ministry (vv. 22–24), 6–8 min

And now, behold, bound in spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me (vv. 22–23). He does not know the details. He knows the category. That is worse, not better: a man walking toward a certainty whose shape he cannot see.

Then v. 24: But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus. The image is athletic: teleiosai ton dromon, to complete the race, to bring the course to its end. He will use it again when he actually gets there: I have finished the course, I have kept the faith (2 Tim. 4:7). A man who measures his life by whether an assignment gets completed has already answered most of the questions the rest of us are still negotiating.

Movement 3: Innocent of blood (vv. 25–27), 10–12 min

Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God (vv. 26–27). This is the verdict Movement 1 was building toward, and the language is not Paul’s invention. It is Ezekiel’s watchman (Ezek. 33:1–6): the man on the wall who sees the sword coming. If he blows the trumpet and the people ignore it, their blood is on their own heads. If he sees the sword and stays silent, his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.

Read the ground of Paul’s innocence carefully, because it is easy to misread. The “for” in v. 27 gives the reason, and the reason is I declared, not they listened. The watchman is not judged by the response. He is judged by whether he blew the trumpet. That is enormously freeing and enormously binding at the same time: you are not responsible for the outcome, and you are entirely responsible for the warning.

Then the phrase to work: the whole purpose of God (pasan ten boulen tou Theou). Whole. Paul’s claim in v. 20 was that he withheld nothing profitable; his claim here is that he withheld nothing at all. Which raises the question the room will feel immediately: who decides what is not profitable to say? Because in practice, every man who has ever gone quiet on a hard subject has told himself it was not the right time, not the right audience, not profitable just now.

Movement 4: Shepherd the flock (v. 28), 12–15 min

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. The densest verse in the chapter, and the center of the study.

First, the three words. Paul sent for the elders of the church (presbyterous, v. 17). He tells those same men the Spirit made them overseers (episkopous) in order to shepherd (poimainein, the verb behind “pastor”) the flock. One group of men, three terms, one verse apart. Elder speaks to maturity, overseer to function, shepherd to the work itself. There is no hierarchy here and no fourth office; the New Testament uses these interchangeably (cf. 1 Pet. 5:1–2, where Peter does exactly the same thing: elders… shepherd… exercising oversight; and Titus 1:5–7, where Paul appoints elders and then describes the overseer). If the room wants to work this, it works cleanly and quickly.

Second, the order. “Be on guard for yourselves” comes first, and the flock second. Not humility for its own sake: v. 30 explains why. The threat is coming from inside this group. A shepherd who is not watching himself is the thing the flock most needs watching for.

An example in one scene. Peter was one of those “who were reputed to be pillars” (Gal. 2:9). At Antioch he ate with the Gentiles, until certain men came from James. Then “he began to withdraw and hold himself aloof, fearing the party of the circumcision” (Gal. 2:12). He did not stumble alone: “The rest of the Jews joined him in hypocrisy, with the result that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy” (Gal. 2:13). Paul “opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Gal. 2:11), and he spoke to Cephas “in the presence of all,” because they “were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14). This is why the order in v. 28 matters. When the man the flock watches stops watching himself, the flock follows him. And it is Peter who later writes, “I exhort the elders among you, as your fellow elder… shepherd the flock of God among you” (1 Pet. 5:1–2).

Third, the appointment. The Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Not the congregation, not Paul, not seniority. Whatever process appointed them (and there was one: Titus 1:5; Acts 14:23), Paul attributes the office itself to the Spirit. That cuts two directions: it dignifies the work beyond any human mandate, and it means the men cannot treat the position as theirs to define.

Fourth, the ground. Why shepherd? Not because you hold the office. Because of what the flock cost: the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. Paul does not motivate them by duty, authority, or reputation. He tells them what the sheep are worth by naming the price. Everything in the verse turns on that clause.

Movement 5: The wolves are you (vv. 29–31), 10–12 min

I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them (vv. 29–30). Two threats, and the second is the one that should stop the room. The wolves from outside are expected. The wolves from among your own selves (from this group of elders, standing at Miletus, hearing this sentence) are not.

Read what Paul names as the motive, because it is not what most men assume: to draw away the disciples after them. Followers. Not error for error’s sake: the perverse speech is the instrument, and a following is the aim. That distinction matters enormously and it is the most practical thing in the passage. A man can be wrong and not be a wolf. A man can be right and be one, if what he is building is a following rather than a flock. The test Paul gives is not primarily doctrinal; it is about where the sheep end up standing: behind him, or behind Christ.

Then v. 31: Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. The tears return a second time. And notice each one: three years of individual, personal, night-and-day warning, man by man. This is what it costs to be able to say v. 26.

Movement 6: The commendation and the ship (vv. 32–38), 8–10 min

And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified (v. 32). This is Paul’s entire exit strategy, and it is worth pausing on what is not in it. No successor. No structure. No plan for staying in touch. He hands them to God and to the word, and says the word is what is able to build them up. He is leaving and putting nothing in his own place, because nothing needs to go there.

Then his hands (vv. 33–34): I have coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my own needs and to the men who were with me. “You yourselves know” again: the same phrase that opened the address, now closing it. The evidence bracket is deliberate. He began with what they watched him do and ends with the same appeal, and this time he holds up his hands as the exhibit.

And then a saying of the Lord Jesus that none of the four Gospels records: remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (v. 35). The last thing Paul quotes to these men is a sentence of Christ’s that no evangelist recorded. It survives because Paul said it at Miletus.

Then he knelt down and prayed with them all. And they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again (vv. 36–38). The third time, the weeping is the elders’. The weight has changed hands. What grieved them most was not the wolves and not the chains. It was the face.

Landing the Study

Do not resolve it into a lesson. The passage does not. Paul prays, and gets on a ship, and the men walk thirty miles home to do the work he handed them.

If you want one sentence to leave in the room, it is the driving question turned around: Paul could say “you yourselves know” because for three years, night and day, with tears, he did not shrink back from anyone, in any venue, on any subject that was profitable. That is the price of being innocent of a man’s blood. It is the same price now as it was then.