Acts 20:7

We do not know if Paul or someone else planted the church in Troas (cf. Acts 16:8-9; 2 Corinthians 2:12-13). This is the first clear reference in Scripture to the early Christians meeting to worship on the first day of the week rather than on the Sabbath, the seventh day (cf. John 20:19; John 20:26; 1 Corinthians 16:2; Revelation 1:10). This day has continued to be the generally preferred one for Christian worship. They selected Sunday because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ arose from the dead. This group of believers met "to break bread" (Gr. klasai arton).

"The breaking of the bread probably denotes a fellowship meal in the course of which the Eucharist was celebrated (cf. Acts 2:42)." [Note: Bruce, Commentary on . . ., p. 408. Cf. Acts 20:11; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:17-34.]

"In the early Church there were two closely related things. There was what was called the Love Feast. To it all contributed, and it was a real meal. Often it must have been the only real meal that poor slaves got all week. It was a meal when the Christians sat down and ate in loving fellowship and in sharing with each other. During it or at the end of it the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was observed. It may well be that we have lost something of very great value when we lost the happy fellowship and togetherness of the common meal of the Christian fellowship. It marked as nothing else could the real homeliness, the real family spirit of the Church." [Note: Barclay, pp. 162-63.]

"Breaking bread is not merely the occasion for the Eutychus story, as Acts 20:7 might suggest. Because Paul is departing, the community’s breaking of bread becomes a farewell meal, resembling Jesus’ farewell meal with his apostles, when he ’took bread’ and ’broke’ it (Luke 22:19). The echoes of Jesus’ Jerusalem journey and its consequences that begin in Acts 19:21 and continue thereafter may suggest that this resemblance has some importance, even though it is not developed." [Note: Tannehill, 2:250-51.]

Luke did not record when Paul began his address, but the apostle kept speaking all night. Probably some of the Christians present would have been slaves or employees who would have been free to attend a meeting only at night. Luke’s references to time are Roman rather than Jewish. For him days ran from sunrise to sunrise, not from sunset to sunset (cf. Acts 20:7; Acts 20:11).

"I tell congregations very frankly that I’m a long-winded preacher. I’m known as that. I love to teach the Word of God. I have a system of homiletics that I never learned in the seminary. I picked it up myself-in fact, I got it from a cigarette commercial. This is it: It’s not how long you make it but how you make it long. I believe in making it long; my scriptural authority for it is that Paul did it. He spoke until midnight [really until daybreak, Acts 20:11]." [Note: McGee, 4:602.]