An Open Door and an Aching Heart

Imagine a preacher with an open door. The city is Troas. The Spirit Himself has opened the way. People are listening. Opportunity is sitting right in front of him. And the preacher cannot rest.

That is not a hypothetical. That is the apostle Paul in verse 13. An open door in front of him, and an ache inside him he could not quiet. So he closed the door himself. He said farewell to Troas and pressed on to Macedonia, looking for news from a brother he was worried about.

We have a picture in our heads of what faithful ministry looks like. It looks like peace. It looks like a settled spirit and a steady voice and a man who is sure of what he is doing. There is truth in that picture, but it is not the whole picture. Sometimes faithful ministry looks like a tired apostle leaving a wide-open door because his heart is too heavy to preach through it. Faithful ministry and easy ministry are not the same words.

Paul takes us somewhere with this. He starts in restlessness, and by verse 14 he turns a corner so sharp it almost catches you off guard. He thanks God. He pulls out an image from a Roman victory parade. And he tells the Corinthians, and us, what ministry actually is when the door is open and when the door is shut, when the spirit is rested and when it is not.

The Door He Walked Away From

Look at what Paul tells us in two short verses. He went to Troas. He went there for one reason. The gospel of Christ. He was not on vacation, nor was he simply passing through. He came on purpose, with the message of the cross on his lips and the burden of souls on his heart.

When he got there, God opened a door. Paul says it plainly. A door was opened for me in the Lord. That is not Paul's metaphor for a vague sense of opportunity. He uses the same image in 1 Corinthians 16 and again in Colossians 4. For Paul, an open door is a real situation where the Spirit has prepared hearers and the preacher has access to them. Troas was ready, the conversation was open and the work was waiting.

Then verse 13. I had no rest for my spirit, not finding Titus my brother.

This is the apostle Paul speaking. The man who would write from a Roman prison that he had learned to be content in any circumstance. The man who sang hymns at midnight after a Philippian beating. He says, with no shame and no qualification, that his spirit had no rest. Why? Because Titus was not there. Paul had sent Titus to Corinth with the painful letter we read about earlier in chapter 2, and Paul was waiting for word. How did the Corinthians respond? Did they repent or did they harden? Did they receive the rebuke or did they reject the apostle who delivered it? Titus was the messenger who would bring back the answer, and Titus had not arrived.

So Paul made a decision that should get our attention. He left Troas. He walked away from an open door. He said farewell to a city that was ready to hear him, and he pressed on to Macedonia hoping to meet Titus on the road.

Those were the days before phones, before text messages, before any of the ways we now keep track of one another. The concern, though, was the same one we still feel. When someone we love leaves town, we still say, call me when you get there. Text me when you arrive. Let me know you made it safe. Paul wanted that word from Titus, and the word did not come.

Sit with that for a moment. We tend to think that a faithful minister, given an open door, walks through it no matter what. We tend to think that if God has opened the way, our personal state of mind is irrelevant.

Some today would call Paul weak for what he did. The hyper-Calvinists and the high critics of our day would say a man fully committed to the gospel walks through the open door no matter what. No matter who is missing. No matter what aches inside. But this is the apostle Paul. He was a Calvinist before there was a Calvin. He trusted the sovereignty of God in everything. He still went looking for his brother.

Paul knew better. He knew that a heart torn in two cannot give a city its full attention. He knew that an anxious spirit cannot pour itself out for souls the way the gospel deserves. So he did not pretend. He did not push through. He went to find his brother, because the brother mattered, and the news mattered, and a heart at rest mattered more than another opportunity seized.

Some of you are carrying something today that has stolen your rest. A child who is far from the Lord. A relationship that has gone cold. A diagnosis you have not told the church about yet. Hear this from the apostle himself. The presence of unrest in your spirit is not the absence of faithfulness in your walk. Paul had an open door and an aching heart on the very same day, and the Spirit of God did not rebuke him for it. The Spirit recorded it for us, so that two thousand years later we would know that the great apostle was a man, and that the work of the gospel is carried by men whose spirits sometimes have no rest.

Thank God for the faithful men who walk into pulpits week after week, year after year. They deserve more thanks than most of them ever hear. But you need to understand what a pastor carries when he steps up to preach on a Sunday morning. A sick child at home. A marriage in the church that is falling apart. A phone call from Saturday night that he cannot get out of his head. A text that arrived five minutes before the service began. He stands in front of his people and he preaches. Sometimes the sermon lands because the Lord carries him through it. Other Sundays a faithful man knows in his own soul that he is not bringing what the people need, because he himself has no rest. Paul knew what that felt like.

The Bible does not set the expectations that we sometimes set for our pastors and our missionaries. It is right for a pastor to take a Sunday off. It is right for a missionary to take a furlough. It is right for Paul to walk away from an open door because Titus is missing. The average age of a pastor and the average age of a missionary both run lower than the average age of most other men in the church. The work is heavy. That is not a complaint. It is a call for the saints to pray for the men who carry it.

To those who serve in any capacity in the church. There will be weeks when the door is open and your spirit is not at rest. Do what Paul did. Be honest about it. Seek out the brother or the sister you need. Do not paper over the ache with a performance of peace you do not actually have.

And to those of you who are watching a faithful minister or a faithful friend walk through a season of unrest, do not assume something is wrong with their walk. Sometimes the most faithful thing a servant of Christ can do is admit that his spirit is heavy and go looking for a Titus.

The Turn at Verse 14

Paul leaves Troas troubled. Verse 13 ends with a man on the road to Macedonia, still without his brother, still without his rest. Then verse 14 begins. Watch what happens. Paul does not finish telling us the story of Titus. He does not pick up the narrative until chapter 7. Instead, right here in the middle of his unrest, he stops and lifts his eyes. What he sees changes the whole tone of the chapter.

But thanks be to God.

That is the hinge of the whole passage. Paul has just told us he was restless. He has just told us he walked away from an open door. The very next word out of his mouth is thanksgiving. Not because the situation resolved. Titus is still missing in verse 14. Macedonia is still ahead of him. Paul has not yet heard the news he was waiting for. Right there, in the middle of unrest, he lifts his eyes and he thanks God.

Why? Because he sees something larger than his own circumstances. He is not the first to do it. Job worshiped in the dust before the dust had settled. The men of God who lived these moments learned to lift their eyes to a horizon their grief could not reach. That is what Paul does at verse 14. He sees a procession.

The Procession

We have to slow down here, because the picture Paul reaches for is one his readers would have seen with their own eyes. The Roman triumph. When a Roman general won a great victory in the field, the Senate would sometimes vote him a triumph, an enormous public parade through the heart of the city. The general rode at the front in a chariot, dressed in purple, crowned with laurel. His soldiers marched behind him. Then came the spoils of war, gold and silver and treasure carried on display. At the rear of the procession came the captives. Conquered kings and generals and soldiers in chains, paraded for the whole city to see, and most of them marched to their execution at the end of the parade.

All along the route, priests swung censers of incense. The smoke filled the streets. The air was thick with it. To the victors, that smoke smelled like glory. To the captives, that same smoke smelled like death.

Look at what Paul does with that picture. He does not place himself in the chariot. He does not place himself among the soldiers. He says God leads us in triumphal procession in Christ. Paul puts himself, and Timothy, and every minister of the gospel, and by extension every believer, among the captives. We are the conquered. Christ is the conqueror. We have been captured by His grace, bound to His chariot, displayed as the trophies of His victory at the cross.

As we are led along, something happens that no Roman captive ever experienced. The aroma of the knowledge of Christ rises through us into every place we go. The captives have become carriers. The conquered have become the means by which the conqueror is made known.

Three Things About the Parade

Notice three things Paul says about this procession.

God leads it. The verb is active and the subject is God. We are not the strategists. We are not the generals. We are being led.

He leads us always. Not on the good days. Not on the days when the door is open and the spirit is at rest. Always. Paul thanks God for a procession he is part of right now, in his restlessness, on the road to Macedonia.

The aroma rises in every place. Troas. Macedonia. Corinth. Wherever the captive walks, the fragrance rises. That means there is no such thing as wasted ground for a believer in Christ. The kitchen where you raise your children, the boat where you fish, the office where you work, the hospital room where you wait. Every place becomes a place where the aroma of the knowledge of Him is manifested through you.

You Are the Censer, Not the Fire

Think of a censer in that Roman procession. A small bronze vessel, hanging from a chain, swinging back and forth as the priest walks. The censer does not produce the fragrance. It does not invent the incense. It cannot light its own fire. It is a carrier. The fire was lit by another hand. The incense was placed there by another hand. The censer's only job is to be present in the procession and to let the smoke rise.

That is what you are. That is what I am. Christ is the fire. The Spirit is the wind. The incense is the knowledge of Him. You are a small bronze vessel hanging from the chain of His sovereignty, being carried along the route He has chosen, and the fragrance rises whether you feel impressive or not.

This changes how you walk into Monday morning. You are not the source. You are the carrier. The pressure to produce the fragrance was never on you. Christ produces it. You carry it.

Some of you have been wearing yourselves out trying to be the conqueror in your own home, your own workplace, your own evangelism. Trying to win the argument. Trying to manufacture the result. Trying to be the general at the front of the parade. Stop. Look at where Paul places himself in the procession. He is in chains. He is in the back. And he is thankful, because the King at the front of the parade has already won.

For the husband who has been praying for an unconverted wife for ten years and feels like nothing is happening, hear verse 14. God always leads us in triumphal procession. Always. The aroma is rising in your home whether you can smell it or not.

For the mother teaching her children at the kitchen table, the aroma is rising in that kitchen. For the believer at the cash register on Saturday, the aroma is rising over the conveyor belt. In every place. Paul means it.

The aroma rises. Through Paul, through us, through every faithful witness in every place. The next question is what happens when that fragrance reaches the people who breathe it in. That is verse 15, and it is the subject of the next article.