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 Tigers, I mean 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. Okay, 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.

Paul Proclaims the Christ from the Scriptures

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.

The Church Spreads Through Suffering and Witness

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, where is 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 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. Okay, 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 traveled 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 entered 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 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, 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. 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, 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 gotta 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 gonna 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 onto 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 as 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. An 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 prophecy 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, maybe you have just 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. 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?

Well, 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. That 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. 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 wipes that clean.

How many of you would like that? Just going back to zero is 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? Like is that a bargain?

Is that a good deal? Like 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.

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? I don't like that.

No.

All of your thoughts. Did you know God sees those? That's uncomfortable. And He forgives us anyways.

Wow.

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 like sacrificing life and limb. But you know 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. 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, right? 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 through 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, well, you know, and I mean even at that. Okay, so that could be scary, right?

It's, oh, you know, 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 storm 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. 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.

Well, 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 was common practice in Roman colonies.

He has to pay like an 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 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 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 suggested 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.