Acts 17:1-15 - Students of the Gospel

You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,

Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the

Book of Acts. I'm going to kind of introduce the message.

This has been a particularly difficult week. I got some news this week, and it was bad news.

And I mean, it was really, really bad news. We lost one of our own here at church to suicide this week.

And so this has been a week of trying to prepare a sermon, coming back from vacation with a lot of heaviness, a lot of difficulty, a lot of wrestling.

But I decided to press on into the Book of Acts. I was preparing a funeral, working through all of these emotions and all of this, and I said,

I'm not going to divert my attention from the course. I could be preaching a sermon on suicide.

I could be preaching on grieving. I could be preaching on anything. I just decided to move forward in the Book of Acts. And it's been amazing to me to just see how

God's Word can comfort us in the strangest places, how we can just pick up God's Word and find comfort, find encouragement, find solace in it.

Even in the nooks and crannies of God's Word, we're going to see a text this morning that has a lot of little nuances and details about three dudes traveling around in Greece.

And it's like, well, what's that got to do with encouragement for where we live, with the hardships and the difficulties that we face in real life?

And I have drawn significant encouragement from a reminder that God's Word is just stuff full of encouragement, challenge, and sufficiency.

But I also want to say something in introducing this topic, and that is just the encouragement that God's people have been to me this week, and hopefully to the family as well.

Because I had an opportunity to see you step up and use your gifts and your abilities and your talents and just serving and bringing food and comfort and encouragement and giving and giving and giving.

And I want to commend you, Recast, for that. That has been a blessing to me. I'm sure it's been a blessing to the family as well for the opportunity to just see you stepping up.

So I commend the church for being there for those who are hurting, and I want to encourage you to keep it up.

Because that's what it means to live in community together, right? So that's been encouraging. In our text, we're going to see three dudes,

Paul, Silas, and Timothy. And where I received bad news this week, where we received bad news, we're going to see

Paul, Silas, and Timothy proclaiming good news. Anybody like the thought of getting some good news today?

We need good news, don't we? We're a church that's been hurt this week, and we need good news.

And this isn't good news like the Tigers made it into the postseason, or good news like the

Lions won a game. You know what I'm saying? Or all four.

Sorry. This is good news that speaks to the darkest of our life circumstances.

The hardest that things can get. This is good news that has the power and the potential to shed light into the darkest reaches of our human experience.

We're going to meet four types of people in the text who respond to the good news in various ways. We're going to see those who are proclaimers of the good news.

Paul, Silas, and Timothy. We're going to see those who are persuaded by the good news, who hear it, think about it, weigh it, and are persuaded to join it.

We're going to see those who outright reject the good news. And then, fourthly, we're going to see those who become students of the good news, who study it to know it and deeply apply it in their lives and become students of it.

But these four groups we're going to study this morning are not the point. Their response to the good news isn't the point.

The good news itself is the point. At the center of our text stands the one who is the good news, and Jesus Christ is his name, and he is the good news.

It's not just simply merely that we have a message about Jesus. Jesus is the message, and we're going to see that in our text this morning.

Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One. He has carried me through the sorrow of this past week.

He is the one who gives hope when all hope seems to fade. He is the one who comforts.

He is the one who gives meaning in this crazy, mixed -up world. Ultimately, he is the one.

And so I'd encourage you, as we come to worship this morning, we're going to read the text first, and then the band's going to come and lead us. I want you to get your mind focused on worshiping the only one who is worthy this morning, the only one who provides comfort, the only one who provides meaning, the only one who can sustain us in these dark times.

So open your Bibles, please, to Acts 17. We're going to read the first 15 verses. That's page 793 in the

Bible that's in the seat back in front of you, 793. And again, if you don't own a

Bible, I'd encourage you to take that Bible with you. We want everybody to have a Bible, and those who are put in that seat back to be taken.

Again, I say this every once in a while, but not to be sold on eBay, but you can have that one for your own use.

Acts 17, 1 through 15. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, I can never pronounce that one right, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the

Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the

Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, this

Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined

Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

But the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd.

And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king,

Jesus. And the people in the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the

Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the

Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few

Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowd.

Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted

Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

Let's pray. First, let me catch you up to where we are in the book of Acts.

I know some of you kind of came in mid -stride here. And then again, it's been a little while since we were in there.

So the book of Acts is a book that's written by a guy named Luke. It's an accounting of how the church first spread after the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ was here, lived a real life, a sinless life, died on a cross, raised again three days later, and ascended in the presence of his followers.

People saw him actually rise up. Can you imagine being there? That would be kind of crazy. Any of you want to admit that that would be just bizarre to see?

They saw this with their own eyes, eyewitnesses to it. They're writing these things down. Luke was writing this down at the beginning.

And so how did the church spread from there? What happened? And so we saw at the beginning of Acts, 120 people were gathered in a room in Jerusalem, praying, asking for God's direction and guidance.

The Holy Spirit fell on them. And that day, they went out into the town of Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem, and preached.

And by the end of that day, 3 ,000 people believed and chose to follow Jesus Christ as their

Savior, asking him for forgiveness and recognizing him as Lord. Now, can you imagine that? Okay, so our church here, the capacity, the number of seats here is about 150.

So you're talking about 120 people. Can you imagine going out into Matawan today and coming back with 3 ,000 new people who are followers of Christ?

Can you imagine that? This is 150 seats here. So to put that in perspective, how many of you would say that would be pretty miraculous?

That'd be an amazing increase. And then where would we meet next week? We'd have all kinds of logistical problems, wouldn't we?

But that would be an awesome logistical problem. So the message of the good news of salvation and forgiveness through Christ is spread.

It spreads throughout Jerusalem. They get in trouble. And the local authorities don't like that because they're Jewish and they're like, we're not recognizing

Jesus as our Messiah. Their persecution begins. It spreads out into the district, out into widening circles of areas until finally a guy named

Paul is called out. Paul and Barnabas, these two guys are called to take the gospel kind of cross -culturally to what is modern -day

Turkey, to Asia Minor. So they head out there. Eventually, the gospel spreads into Europe, whereas modern -day

Greece, and that's kind of where we left off. So we left off with the very first church being started in modern -day

Europe in a place called Philippi in Greece. And if you were here for Rob Knoll's message, a couple of weeks, was that just, that was just last week.

It seems like it's been a month ago. Since those of you who are here got a chance to hear him speak about the

Book of Philippians, which is a letter written to this first church that we're talking about here.

And then they got in trouble in that town. They were beaten. They were imprisoned, asked to leave town.

And everywhere Paul goes, he gets a strong response of the gospel. Do you notice that in the Book of Acts? It's really a strong response.

And either you're going to believe the gospel is true in that day and age. You encounter Paul, and there's something about his personality.

Either you believe him, or you want to kill him, okay? And so he gets all of these really...

I think he's kind of like a magnetic lightning rod. He draws people to him, but lightning seems to strike him all the time.

And so that's kind of bringing you up to where we're at.

So they started in Philippi, and they traveled one day in our text right at the beginning. Now, when they had passed through, where are they coming from?

They're coming from Philippi immediately. So that was the text right before. So they travel through this town called

Amphipolis, likely spending the night there, then on to Apollonia the next day, spending the night there.

And then on the third day, they enter Thessalonica, which is the capital city of the providence of Macedonia, a large town about 140 miles to the west of Philippi.

This town was one of the largest in Greece at the time. And now, even today, you can just Google this,

Thessalonica is the second largest city in the country of Greece. So it's still a very large town today.

And second only, obviously, to Athens. So it's a very large town. Paul visited the synagogue first.

That's his MO. That's just kind of how he rolls. So he goes into a new town and he stops in the synagogue.

Because the Jews, the understanding in that time was, okay, if you're Jewish, you're looking for a Messiah. Jesus is that Messiah.

So let's go to the Jews and tell them who their Messiah is, right? Here he is. He's already arrived. And he's been here and he's provided salvation.

So that was the logic, but behind the way that Paul rolled. So he would go into a town, go to the synagogue first.

And it says in our text that he spent three consecutive weeks there in the synagogue. He was like a guest speaker. And here we see the first category of people.

That is, those who proclaim the Good News. Those who are out there speaking it and declaring it. Ministers, if you will, or people who are out sharing it.

And all of us, all of you who have the truth are called to be a minister of some sort to declare the

Good News, to proclaim it. And the verbs are important that we see here in our text.

What it means to be a person who proclaims or heralds the Good News. Do you know the word proclaim?

We used to call in, like if you were to look at King James Version English or something like that, it would be herald.

To proclaim. What did a herald do in ancient times? Like when King James was translating the

Bible, there were literal heralds who, you know, you didn't go buy a newspaper, right? So when there was news of the day, a guy would literally be paid to stand out in a street corner and proclaim the headlines.

Okay, that's a herald. And that's what proclaiming, heralding the Good News means.

It's like somebody who declares. Now, don't get that confused with that guy at Western with the bullhorn who stands there and proclaims the

Good News. Do you know the guy I'm talking about? Anybody know who the guy I'm talking about? Western Michigan University. He stands up there by the flags.

Nobody's seen this guy? You got to go to campus just to see him sometime, okay? He stands there, hellfire and brimstone, bringing condemnation down on everybody.

That's not really good news. Would you agree with that? That's not the whole picture. Like, okay, you're going to go to hell.

Good news. No, okay. That's not good news, okay? There is good in the

Good News that needs to be proclaimed. But we see these kinds of verbs. So Paul reasoned.

Look at the text. He reasoned with the Jews in the synagogue. Now, to reason means that he sought to make sense of the

Good News. Okay, he's seeking to connect with them where they live so that it makes sense to them.

There's some enculturation of the message here, some contextualization that's going on.

Making sense of it in a way that they were able to grasp. Does that make sense? Like standing on a street corner, screaming at people is not necessarily a way that people in our culture grasp the

Good News. Would you agree with that? Not necessarily where we are. But he wanted them to get it.

He wanted them to understand it, to apprehend it, to hold on to it. So he's not forcing it on them, not even just wanting them to agree with him.

Do you see the difference? Do you know the difference between trying to convince somebody, trying to reason with them versus trying to get them to just agree with you?

Can you kind of see a little bit of difference in what your end goal is? Do you care for their soul or do you just want them to see it your way?

Have you ever been in that conversation where somebody just wants you to see it their way but they're not really concerned with your heart? That's not helpful, is it?

Is that beneficial? Does that give you warm fuzzies? Not necessarily. He is wanting the message to make sense.

And reasoning is different than arguing or even just convincing. The Greek word is where we get the

English word dialogue. As a matter of fact, it's dialogue in Greek. And so it's this idea of a discussion with direction and persuasion, but there's a back and forth in this idea of reasoning with somebody.

Have you had conversations like that with anybody recently? Were you concerned for their heart? Were you concerned for where they stand in regard to Christ?

And there's genuine... I'd encourage you to look for opportunities to reason with people. How many of you know there's a lot of hurting going on in our culture and our society?

Anybody here see somebody who's hurting on a regular basis? Maybe at your workplace or a neighbor or someone?

Opportunity just to reason with them and talk with them and provide the only source of comfort that we really know, right?

You think of any other place of ultimate comfort other than Christ? I can't. I haven't found anything else that gives ultimate peace and comfort.

And so let's reason with people about that. Paul also, though, it says, took it a step further. So he's reasoning with them.

He's dialoguing. But he's also explaining and proving the text tells us. You see, these are getting strong.

Now, these words are getting stronger because he is an educator at heart. He's opening up the truth and backing up the validity of claims with evidences and things like that.

So he's said to be explaining and proving. Now, he's not calling. And the point of this is he's not calling people to blind faith.

And he wasn't asking them just to take him at his word. He wanted them to see and become convinced for themselves.

And so he's taking them to Scripture and Old Testament, the Scriptures that he had at the time. And he's giving evidences and walking them through the good news.

And that's where we get to the heart of the good news here in verse 3. Explaining and proving that it was necessary for the

Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead and saying, this Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the

Christ. He's showing them from the Old Testament that Jesus is the Chosen One. He is the

Messiah, which means the Anointed One of God. The One chosen to take away the sins of the world.

The One of whom all the prophecies spoke. And those prophecies in the Old Testament showed that He must suffer and die for the sins of humanity.

You can go through chapters like Isaiah 53 where it's very clear that He would be the suffering servant.

The One who would come and by His stripes, by His wounds, we are healed.

John the Baptist had the privilege of being the One. The One. I mean, can you imagine? Think about it.

Maybe you have different nuances of thought about who John the Baptist was or whatever. He had the privilege of being the

One in all of history to proclaim the coming of the Messiah. He's like, I get to herald the way.

I get to be the One who stands and proclaims the Messiah is here now. And introduce Him and baptize

Him and start His ministry off. Pretty significant. And he could have introduced Jesus in a multitude of ways.

He could have used all kinds of titles from the Old Testament. All kinds of things to explain who

Jesus is. But he chose one simple word illustration, a word picture for us.

And he chose to introduce Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Why a lamb? What were their Scriptures at the time? The only thing they had was the Old Testament.

And the Old Testament was full, full and just complete and overflowing with this concept of sacrifice, of lambs being offered as a temporary solution to our sins.

Because for whatever reason in the cosmic scope of things, death is the result of sin.

And so something else was taking the penalty for their sins. And they were bringing a lamb into the sacrifice, into the temple and it was being sacrificed to cover, to expiate, to atone for their sins.

And he says, no, no, no. This is the Lamb of God. And not just the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the one who brings that lamb into the temple because in the

Old Testament system, you each had to have your own flock. You're not going to take one from my flock to pay your sin, right?

Everybody had to have their own flock. Everybody had to bring their own lamb. No, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Whoa, this is significant. One lamb for the whole world? Jesus Christ.

That is the good news that Paul is proclaiming there in the synagogue. That there is forgiveness.

There is freedom to be had in Christ. Is that good news? That is really good news.

That is good news that I needed to hear this week. That I need to be reminded of and I need to be saturated in and I need to take this in.

Because that is good news. That is hope. There is forgiveness.

There is a lamb who has been provided on our behalf. The good news is simple and yet very profound.

Jesus the Son of God came to earth. He took the punishment for our sins by suffering on the cross.

And He rose from the grave victorious over death. Over sin and death. And He is the

Lord and the King, ascended to the right hand of God the Father. And anyone who believes this, anyone who believes this and puts their trust in Jesus to save them, and asks for His forgiveness, receives

His forgiveness. And not just forgiveness, but a new life in Jesus.

Righteousness reckoned to our account. Where it's like all we have in our bank account is crud and filth and junk and the mess that we've made of our lives and He like wipes that clean.

How many of you would like that? Just going back to zero is like cool, right? But He doesn't just take our account and put it to zero, but it's like He puts a bazillion dollars in there too of righteousness.

The righteousness of Christ. That's a technical amount. I see some people laughing about my bazillion there.

He puts righteousness in the place of our crud. Can you say that's an awesome exchange?

Is that a bargain? Is that a good deal? Some of you shop coupons and you know a good deal when you see one.

That's a good deal. The righteousness of Christ accredited to us.

Oh man, I feel so unworthy of that and yet that's what He did for me. Praise God.

Anyone, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, no matter your history, your past, the way you were raised, the thoughts that you had, and how many of you would like to have your thoughts played on a player for everybody to see?

Ew, I don't like that. All of your thoughts, did you know God sees those?

That's uncomfortable. And He forgives us anyway. There are some who get this, who understand it, who embrace it, and then can't do anything but proclaim it.

Like Paul and Silas and Timothy, and we see them out sacrificing life and limb. To go through Asia Minor at this time was dangerous and they've been beaten and abused and had rocks thrown at them and kicked out of town and threatened.

We're going to see him escaping in the middle of the night here in just a minute. And he's putting his neck out because he has understood and grasped that this is the way of salvation for all.

This is the way that's been provided. So there are some who get it and they proclaim it. But in the text, there's another group of people that are just coming on the scene and they are on the receiving end of the gospel and they're hearing it and they're hearing it from those who are proclaiming it and they are persuaded, the text tells us.

So we see people in Thessalonica. It's really interesting how prominent women play a role in this.

Do you see how clear in our text it is that women and men are both believing? And not just some women, but it says prominent women, businesswomen who are in that community are giving their lives over to Christ and recognizing who

He is. The early church, sometimes we can think it was just a man thing. We can get to the point where we see in the

Bible like it's just all about men. No, it's not. If we lived then and there, we would see something very different.

They were persuaded and they joined Paul and Silas. They came to realize that the message is true and it's worthy of their lives and they changed allegiance from whatever they had been following, pagan gods, themselves, whatever, money, materialism.

They had turned from their allegiance from that to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

But often in the same crowd, there were those who were persuaded in the crowd.

There are those who are haters in the crowd who reject this message and it seems like they reject with quite intense hostility.

And in verses 4 -6, we see how hostile the Jews get and they actually rile up a mob and go after Paul and Silas who apparently had been staying at a dude's house.

And how many of you know, sometimes bringing the good news isn't well received? Have any of you experienced that before?

Had it poorly received? Okay, and I mean even at that. Okay, so that could be scary, right?

I don't know if I want to say this to a friend or I don't know if I want to tell my co -worker because what if they hate me? What if they don't like me?

Has anybody ever been hit for proclaiming the gospel? Has anybody ever been struck physically?

Had a gun held to you for that? I mean, you know, think about it. What's the worst that's going to happen? And what's the best that could happen?

They could come to understand the truth and be set free from their bondage to sin.

Something worth thinking about. So these guys stormed into the church and stormed the house of a dude named

Jason. Okay, this is real genuine persecution. And by the way, Jason, like finally a name that we can pronounce, right?

Like, okay, there are some normal people back there. I mean, not that Paul and Silas, Timothy, I don't know.

Silas, yeah, that's a little old, but that's where Paul and Silas have been staying with this guy named

Jason. And they don't find Paul and Silas there. We don't, we're not told in the text where Paul and Silas are at the time, whether it's miraculously they got wind of this and, you know, hit or whatever.

But they end up dragging Jason and friends to the judge, to the town center, and they accuse them of insurrection against Caesar.

Just ludicrous claims right off the bat. They are accused of insurrection and say that they've turned the world upside down.

Awesome phrase because that's really kind of what's happening. The mob kind of had that right.

The world would never be the same after God is spreading His church. The world's not going to be the same after these events.

But the accusation is still a bit funny because they say, well, Jason has housed people who are claiming that there's a new king named

Jesus, and we know that Caesar is the only rightful king. Because the worship of the emperor in Rome at the time was necessary, required.

And so they say, no, these guys are proclaiming another king. But it's clear that the

Gospel is not about a new earthly government, right? Do you guys get that? I don't get up and preach politics up here.

But if you do, ask me to sit down. Okay, this is not about a political campaign. It's not about getting the right people into government so that we can just take this nation by storm and become a

Christian nation again. That's not what it's about. Okay, we become so quickly misguided into these avenues of, you know, the

Gospel is what it's about. A kingdom of people that crosses all kinds of political opinions, all kinds of races and creeds and languages, and it crosses political boundaries.

And it's something that God is doing in this world. Not through just a little group of his favorites.

And yet that's what they're being accused of. That's not what they're doing, but it's what they're being accused of. But they're following this king,

Jesus, and they're going to overthrow Rome or something crazy like that. But if we're honest, we've bent the truth a little bit.

So let's cut them some slack. So the city leaders are concerned because at this time in history,

Rome was clamping down on dissenters. As a matter of fact, there is a little bit of a clamping down in the city of Rome that had happened right around the time that this was going on.

So word would have spread that Rome was having dissenters, particularly among Jews. A bunch of Jews were put down in Rome right around the time of this.

So word is spreading throughout the Roman colonies. Watch out for the Jews, okay? They're going to rise up and take over.

So they're taking this seriously. The city leaders hear this. But fortunately, it's not like they don't kill

Jason or put him on trial. All they do is they make him pay pledge money, which is a guarantee. Ultimately, this is common practice in Roman colonies.

He has to pay like earnest down, like money down so that he basically declares, with this money,

I pledge that I will do my best to stop this disturbing the peace that's going on.

Common practice, but likely entailed equally a promise as he puts that money down saying, next time you see

Paul and Silas, tell them they better get out of town. And then that's what we see is going to happen next. So Jason puts the money down, and immediately they sent

Paul and Silas away to Berea town, 50 miles south. And they sent them by night, which is showing how urgent this was.

So where do they go? They go down to Berea, 50 miles. And what's the first thing they're going to look for when they get into town?

A synagogue. And where does the text tell us they go? To the synagogue. And we find a third type of people.

The Bereans proved themselves to, I'm sorry, a fourth type of people. The Bereans proved themselves to be students of the good news.

Verse 11 says that they were more noble because of their eager examination of the good news.

They were eager to know more. They were searching it. Now, how many of you know that there's an intellectual honesty that is found in thinking about the deep things of God?

That there are questions that everybody should answer, and if you don't, you're loafing? Okay, like questions about what is life about?

How many of you would say that maybe as humans we should have an inkling? We should actually start to pursue that and understand that.

And there's something noble about trying to figure out why do I exist? Would you agree with that? There's something noble about that.

There's something lazy about not pursuing that. Okay, trying to figure out, you know, just kind of not even answering the questions.

I mean, you're going to answer the question by your lifestyle at least. Do I live to just accumulate stuff or what, right?

So we kind of answer it by our lifestyle, but not to think about it. There's something noble about the Bereans who are actually saying,

I'm going to look into these things. I'm going to figure it out. And so they exhibited that by examining the

Scriptures daily, it says, to see if Paul's claims were true. How many of you know if they're checking

Paul, the apostle who wrote the most, the majority of the New Testament, you guys ought to be checking me.

Like if they're checking Paul, I want you to be checking me. I want you to be studying this. I want you to be knowing it and figure it out.

There's a book called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Have any of you ever heard of this book? I recommend it.

It's by a guy named Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In it, he suggests,

I'm going to kind of ruin the storyline for you, but it's still worth reading. He suggests that the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there isn't one.

There isn't one. Now, he's not just simply stating that all evangelicals are ignorant or that we're buffoons or whatever, but ultimately that we have bought into the wrong notion that faith is the absence of thinking.

So that the more you think, the less you must have faith. And the more faith you have, the less you must think.

Do you see how that puts us in a little awkward situation as Christians? Right? Like thinking is taboo.

Ooh. That's become an unfortunate reputation for us.

Do you guys agree with that? That's unfortunate? Engage your mind recast.

Let your study, let your understanding of God's Word, let your study of the world around you, let those things fuel your understanding of God.

Let them fuel your faith. Do you understand what I'm saying? That we take things into our mind, we wrestle with them, we chew on them, we meditate on God's Word, and then let that knowledge of God fuel our emotions.

So often we get the cart before the horse, right? And we get all riled up and emotional about things that we haven't even really studied or known.

We haven't made it our own yet, and we're celebrating it. A person who doesn't engage their mind and their faith is in danger of one of two things.

Either being duped by others. Do you see what I'm saying? If you've got a shallow faith and you're just ready to follow whatever emotional appeal is out there, you're in risk of just going off to a cult or something like that, right?

Anybody's going to just rope you in with your emotions. Or, at best, you're going to have a shallow faith that cannot stand the storms of life.

And there are significant storms in life. Getting rooted in God's Word.

Thinking deeply about these things. Answering these questions. Wrestling with it. Not just riding on your parents' faith, or wrestling with it yourself.

Coming to understanding. So many people from various walks of life had believed in Thessalonica.

The same thing occurs in Berea. But the dissenters from Thessalonica showed up. So, Paul just can't get a break.

He just can't get away from these people. They follow him from town to town to town. They show up at Berea. They agitate the people there against Paul and Silas.

So, once again, we see Paul on the run. He went by way of sea to Athens while Silas and Timothy stayed behind.

Apparently, they were able to blend in. He was the spokesman. So, they were able to just kind of ride in the crowd and hang around and encourage those who had believed.

When Paul gets to Athens, the text tells us that he sent word to Silas and Timothy to please join him in Athens as soon as possible.

And so, where we leave off at the end of this week is Paul is left in Athens at the end of our text.

We're going to pick up again next week and see what Paul does while he's hanging out in Athens. You know, does he just go to the resort?

Or hit 18 holes? Or what's he going to do while he's in Athens? So, we'll see that next week.

But Silas and Timothy stayed behind in Berea. Two new churches since the beginning of our text.

Two new churches have started. One in Thessalonica. One in Berea. And the good news has been shared and has spread and people have believed.

So, there's four ways of responding to Jesus Christ, to the good news that stands before us.

Number one, we can choose to reject Him outright. Number two, we can accept

Him. Number three, we can become His students learning from Him. And four, we can proclaim

Him as Lord and King. I want to point out, these are not mutually exclusive. You've got to pick one.

Obviously, one of them stands out as being pretty much exclusive. If you reject Him, then you're probably not going to become a student of Him.

But I would encourage everyone. I'd encourage everyone to think about this pattern, this process of accepting

Him, of studying the gospel and proclaiming Him. All of us, wherever you're at.

And some of you are here and you have yet to accept Him. And some of you are here and you've accepted

Him, but you aren't studying and you aren't learning and you're not growing. And I'd encourage you to study Him, to know.

And we need to hear. How many of you know you need to be reminded of the gospel? I need to be reminded of the gospel.

I like to preach the gospel because I need to be reminded of it. Because that is the center of our faith. It's not just our, it's not like some initiation into the faith is like, okay,

I accepted the gospel. Now what? It's all the gospel. It's all grace. We keep reminding ourselves of that.

That's where pride seeps in, is when we get away from the gospel. You know what I'm saying? Do you experience that in life?

Where I would dare say that as a believer, if you've given your life to Christ, you've accepted Him, you've recognized His authority in your life and you've asked

Him to forgive you, I would say that your arrogance comes in the distance between you and your understanding of the gospel, in the distance between you and how much you've studied.

Does that make sense? Are you understanding what I'm saying about that? If you are not preaching the gospel to yourself, if you're not remembering the cross, the cross is the place where we are all level.

We're all sinners. We are all in need of a Savior daily.

But those of us who have thrown ourselves at the mercy of God and been forgiven, we just gotta keep remembering that.

We gotta live that, that humility. It is just by grace and by grace alone.

I haven't done anything to deserve this. Anybody in here done anything to deserve it? Thank you for not raising your hand even if you were thinking it.

That would have taken guts. So accepting

Him, becoming students, learning from Him, reminding ourselves of the gospel, and then obviously to proclaim

Him as Lord and King and Savior, to proclaim Him. And I like the words that were used earlier because Paul was gentle.

He was dialoguing with people. He was giving evidence. He wasn't just asking for a blind step of faith off of a cliff.

He was giving evidences, but at the same time, he was just dialoguing. How many of you can have a conversation with somebody?

Can you have a conversation with somebody? Can you talk? Three of you can have a conversation with people. I don't know what all that chatter was going on.

It must have been just three of you talking loud during the connection time because it was pretty loud in here. So I think you know how to have a conversation, and we're just talking about having a conversation about what

God has done and who Christ is and how you have found hope, how you have found hope and talking with others about that, that they can have that too.

The gospel is good news in the midst of our darkest times. There is a place of forgiveness. There is a place of hope beyond the grave.

There is a love beyond our earthly relationships. Jesus Christ is the good news.

So come to Him. Come to Him for forgiveness. Come to Him for comfort and come to Him for hope.

Here at Recast, we take communion. We do it every week. Even at the risk of it becoming routine, we still do it every week because that is the center place of our faith that He is the sacrifice for us.

Jesus died on our behalf. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. If you are in with Christ and you've asked

Him to forgive you and recognize Him as Lord, then I encourage you to come to the table. There'll be two lines up here and one in the back as Dave comes to play a song.

If you're not in with Christ and you're still at that stage where you're kind of like, I haven't accepted Him yet. I haven't rejected

Him yet. I just don't really understand and I'm trying to work through that. I'd encourage you to just remain seated. We're not taking attendance or roll call or recognizing who gets up and who doesn't.

You know, people are kind of mixing it up during this time anyways. I encourage you to sit back and take in this message to consider the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ died on the cross to cover your sins.

And if you, if anybody is here and is not at that place yet, I'd encourage you to consider that even today, you don't need me.

You don't need somebody else sitting with you. You don't need a priest to anoint you with holy water. You don't need anything other than Christ.

And you can sit in your chair right now and say, Jesus, I'm a sinner. I've busted up my life and it is just in pieces and I need you to put the pieces back together and forgive me.

It's just that simple. If you do that, I'd love you to come and talk with me about that afterwards. But for those of us who are coming to the table as people who have been forgiven and have already asked for that, remember

His body that was crushed for you. Take the juice and remember the blood. That was shed for you.

Let's pray. Father, I praise you for your good news. I don't think

I could have gotten through this week without it. And so Father, I pray that as we consider and think about this awesome, awesome message of hope,

I ask that you would work in our hearts. Those of us who need that reminder of humility to come back to putting our feet on the ground and putting our knees to the ground at the foot of the cross and recognizing what great news, news that we weren't worthy of.

And then Father, if there's anybody here who has not accepted you, Father, that you would appoint this day for a time of reconciliation with you, a time of mending that broken relationship and healing and forgiveness.

Thank you for your sacrifice. I thank you for the blood that was shed and for Christ's body that was crushed in my place.