To Have the Mind of Christ (Acts 17:1-15, Jeff Kliewer)

You can guess which president of the United States wrote this letter. He was writing to his father-in-law. And of all places he published it, it was the Washington Post recently that discovered this letter.

It was in the president's wife's collection of things. And this letter from the president was discovered. Dear Boyle, I hope you'll forgive me for this, but I've been wanting to write you ever since we.

Talked on the phone.

I am aware of the strain you are under, and believe with all my heart there is help for that. Boyle, I know of your feeling, your doubt, but could I just impose on you a little? Some 700 years before the birth of Christ, the ancient Jewish prophets predicted the coming of a messiah.

They said he would be born in a lowly place, would proclaim himself the son of God, and would be put to death for saying that. All in all, there were a total of 123 specific prophecies about his life, all of which came true.

Crucifixion was unknown in those times, yet it was foretold that he would be nailed to a cross of wood. And one of the predictions was that he.

Would be born of a virgin.

Now, I know this is probably the hardest for you as a doctor to accept. The only answer that can be given is it's a miracle. But, Boyle, I don't find that as great a miracle as the actual history of his life.

Either he was who he said he was, or he was the greatest faker in Charlatan who ever lived. But would a liar and a faker suffer the death he did when all he had to do to save himself was to admit he'd been lying?

The miracle is that a young man of 30 years, without credentials as a scholar or priest, began preaching on street corners. He owned nothing but the clothes on his back, and he didn't travel beyond a circle,.

Less than 100 miles across.

He did this for only three years, and then was executed as a common criminal. But for 2 ,000 years, he has had more impact on the world than all the teachers, scientists,.

Emperors, generals, and admirals who ever lived,.

All put together. The Apostle John said, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. He proceeds to go on to encourage loyals to believe and to tell God that you put yourself in his hands.

Signed off, Love, Ronnie. Ronald Reagan. Wrote this to his father-in-law just before Loyal Davis died. Found that quite amazing that the Washington Post.

Published that this week.

But what I love about Ronald Reagan and what he writes in this particular letter is that he witnesses from arguments, logical arguments. In fact, did you notice he begins with prophecies, and he cites all the prophecies that.

Foretold the coming of Christ.

That's my favorite argument for the deity of Christ and his work being true. He also goes to the Lord Liar Lunatic argument. That's a classic, right? Who came up with that one?

C .S. Lewis.

Oh, okay.

C .S. Lewis, I believe it was.

Lord Liar Lunatic.

So he's doing apologetics here. Then he goes to the idea of an obscure street preacher who becomes the most famous person in the history of the world. After preaching for only three years and being crucified, yet he has, he in fact says that this Jesus is more important than all the other leaders of the world put together.

Put together.

None has had the kind of influence that Jesus has had. Next, he mentions John 3 .16. The classic Bible verse that sums up the whole idea of the Bible. That God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

And then he appeals for faith. Arguments for the Christian faith are not a bad thing. In fact, did you guys know that arguments are not bad in and of themselves? Arguing can be good or bad depending on how you do it.

There can be a bad way of arguing.

And there can be a good way of arguing.

But an argument is only something that you're proposing and defending as being true and trying to help someone else.

Understand that thing.

And that's what Ronald Reagan was doing here. Ronald Reagan in this letter was demonstrating the mind of Christ. The mind of Christ. Having the knowledge of the son of God. His eyes were open and he was helping someone else come to faith.

All of us have loyals in our lives. Somebody that we know doesn't know the truth. And let me just say this to you. If the President of the United States in 1983 could take the time to write a letter to an unbelieving relative, are you too busy to do the same?

Could you take some time, take a day, and write a letter to someone that you know isn't saved and tell them about the prophecies of Christ and the person of Christ, the miracles, and all that Jesus has done and implore them to believe in the gospel?

Would you take time?

Would it be worth the time? Maybe there's someone that the Lord.

Would put in your mind right now.

That you need to write an evangelistic letter to. Well, today we are in Acts chapter 17. And the word for the day is apologetics.

Apologetics.

Not just because we have a conference, but there are entire apologetics ministries named after this chapter of the Bible. David Wood, Acts 17, apologetics. Why is that? Because this chapter deals very much with the idea of apologetics, which means making a defense of the faith.

First Peter 3 .15 says always be ready to give a reason, an apologia, an apologetic, a defense for the hope that you have. There's some people that think.

That they're smarter than the Bible,.

That they know better than the Bible,.

But they've never encountered the true arguments.

For the word of God. Apologetics.

The mind of Christ is given to believers. Let me adjust my volume a little bit so I can get a little feedback. The mind of Christ is given to believers at conversion by enlightenment, but powers of discernment must be trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5 .14. So in the book of Acts, as we come to chapter 17, we're on Paul's second missionary journey. It's kind of like we're traveling with him only 2 ,000 years later. We're following along in Acts chapter 15 where Paul and Barnabas have a falling out.

They butt heads because Paul does not want to take Mark with them on the mission trip. So Barnabas sails away to Cyprus and Paul heads up by land to the north.

Heading out for Antioch.

He's told not to go into Bithynia or Mysia. The Holy Spirit speaks through a vision and he knows to go to Macedonia and that's how last week we saw that he arrived in Philippi. Now remember the events at Philippi.

He goes down by the river and leads Lydia to Christ and then as he's going along his way, there's a demon-possessed girl that says,.

These men are servants of the Most High God.

Telling you the way to be saved and Paul is annoyed by this demon-possessed girl so he casts the demon out of the girl and sets her free in Jesus' name. But the owners of the girl are not happy about that,.

Are they?

Instead, because they've lost their chance to make money, they take Paul and Barnabas and they strip them of their clothes and they beat them with rods and they throw them in prison.

And he's put them in a prison.

And shackles on his legs, but God, but God.

They are content there even though they're beaten and hurt. They are content because they have true life, a true treasure that's greater than this life.

They are willing to be beaten.

They're willing to lose everything.

They have joy.

If you're lacking joy, let me tell you why. You don't know the treasure. You're looking for it in this world and you're not willing to sell the field to sell everything. You have to buy the field that has the treasure.

The treasure is Jesus Christ. If you have this treasure in jars of clay, it shows the all-surpassing power.

Comes from God and not from you.

If you have Jesus, you have everything you need.

And you will have joy.

You will have contentment.

As they're praising God in the prison, God sends an earthquake that looses their shackles, opens the prison door. The jailer's about to kill himself, but Paul stops him and says, no, don't do that. He says, what must I do to be saved?

Paul says, what?

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. That simple gospel message, believe, that night in the middle of the night, the jailer and his whole household were baptized. Come back to prison before sun comes up and Paul demands that they escort him out because he was unjustly thrown in jail, unjustly beaten.

He does that for the sake of the believers. And now as we go into Acts chapter 17, they're moving on from Philippi to the next town. Now as you read that, it seems like, okay, he passes from Amphipolis to Apollonia.

Realize, Acts chapter 17, verse one, as they come to Thessalonica, that's a hundred mile walk. After having been beaten with rods and thrown in jail and mistreated, I was playing soccer with my son on Sunday and I made him move no more difficult than this and I threw my back out and I had a back spasm that lasted the whole week.

That's how out of shape and wimpy I am compared to these guys. These guys took a beating and the next day they get up, they walk a hundred miles to Thessalonica.

And here they go again.

What are they gonna do?

Preach the gospel knowing full well they will be persecuted and resisted and mistreated. Let's read it. Acts chapter 17, you'll want to follow along. Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica.

They traveled a hundred miles along the Hungarian way.

It's a big Roman road, paved,.

It has lightning, torches alongside it. There they went to a synagogue of the Jews, verse two, and Paul went in as was his custom. And on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scripture, 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 in silence.

As did a great many of the devout Greeks.

And not a few of believing women. Let's stop there and notice a few things. Number one, in verse two, it says this is Paul's custom. He does this. This is kind of just like what he does. He goes to a new town and he goes to a synagogue.

Now what are your customs? What is it that you do by force of habit because you're used to doing it? Well, evangelism will not be included in that list unless you learn to do it by actively forcing yourself out of your comfort zone.

It's Paul's custom to initiate an opportunity for the gospel before you ever have a chance to reason with someone, to tell them the truth about Jesus Christ. You have to initiate a conversation. This has to become customary for you that you would go while you're at the gym and you're talking to somebody about basketball to turn to them and say, hey, what do you believe about that?

That's a hard, in fact, this is the hardest first step of evangelism. Everything else is easy after that. Once you get in a conversation and once you begin to talk about spiritual things, it just flows naturally.

But the hardest thing to do is to speak up and initiate a spiritual conversation. For Paul, it's become customary. I'll tell you this. The more you do this, if you'll break the ice on those kind of conversations, the easier it gets.

It's one of the reasons I encourage you to come out with us when we go witnessing Saturday at 2 o 'clock. You might not even say anything that first time out, but when you realize that it's not really as scary and as hard as you think it is, it will create a new habit in your life.

And while you're at the workplace,.

While you're at the dentist's office, and you're just waiting for him to work on your mouth and you're talking to the person who's taking care of you,.

You turn it to spiritual things.

It's a new custom you'll have to build.

It takes time.

Second, I want you to notice this. In verse two, he reasons with them. In fact, in verse three, not only is he reasoning, look at these words, explaining, proving. At the end of verse three, he's proclaiming.

And in verse four, they're persuading. This is the language of people who believe in absolute truth. Now, our postmodern culture will tell you that everybody's interpretation of things.

Is equally valid.

Whatever religion you want to follow, that's good for you as long as you sincerely believe it. That's what this culture will tell us. But the scripture says the opposite. We can be persuaded by the truth.

Truth is not something that comes from me. I'm telling you that Jesus is the Christ. That is not true because I'm saying that, because I'm trying to convince you of it, because I was told that by my parents and their parents.

No.

It's true because it's true. It is absolutely true, 100 true. And anybody who denies it is a liar. And any religion that's built on any other foundation.

Is a sham.

There is one way to the Father.

It's through the Son. Not because I'm dogmatic and bigoted and narrow-minded, because God literally sent His one and only Son into the world to die for sinners like us and to open a new and living way by His blood.

So we must learn to reason. I'm afraid that this postmodern thinking even creeps its way into the church sometimes. Have you ever been to a Bible study? And the teacher just opens it up and says, read this text, and each person shares what they think it means.

And the teacher doesn't ever say that anything is wrong. The scale goes from excellent to interesting. Interesting is not where you wanna be on that scale,.

By the way.

If you have a dead-on answer that's exactly what the text is saying, the teacher will affirm, excellent, great job. But if you have totally butchered and distorted and twisted the text and said the very opposite of what it says, all you're gonna get is interesting.

The truth is the truth. Now, we don't wanna be mean in how we correct somebody. But listen, when we study the Bible, we need to believe in plenary verbal inspiration, that every word, plenary, meaning all of the verbs, the very words themselves, come from God.

And if they come from God, what He meant to say.

Is the meaning of the text.

It's not open to private interpretation that whatever it is that you see there is necessarily valid.

No, if you're importing meaning that you want it to say,.

It's not the Bible that you're believing. It's what you already believed and you took it to the text. We need to come to the text with humble hearts. And we need to say to the text, to the Word of God, what does God say to me?

What is this about? And learn within the context of the flow of the text, what is the meaning of this text? This is being lost across the churches, even in America. So many teachers are proclaiming interpretations that do not match what the author originally intended.

So here we have reason, biblical reason. And so let's do this, let's do an exercise in reasoning. If you look at verse three, we're told that Paul was explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer.

And rise from the dead.

Here's my question.

Logically, remember Jesus, the Word, the Word is the logos from where we get logic.

Reasoning is good.

It's good to reason together. In fact, what does Isaiah 118 say? Come, let us reason together. Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be white as snow. Though they're crimson, red, they will be like wool.

It comes from reasoning. 2 Timothy 3 .15, the scriptures are able to make you wise unto salvation. You need to reason, you need to use the mind that you were given.

Here's the question.

Why was it necessary for the Christ to suffer?

Two reasons. Number one, forgiveness of sin requires.

The shedding of blood.

If God is to be just, if he is to be righteous, a judge who administers justice,.

He cannot just wink at sin.

He cannot just willy-nilly forgive sin. Why is that? If you had a relative that was murdered and the judge who put him on trial said, you know what, I forgive you. How would you feel as one of the relatives.

Of the victim of murder?

You would recognize that that judge is not just. He just forgave sin without a punishment. Every sin requires a punishment.

The wages of sin is what?

Death.

But here's the problem. If God gives you and you and me what we deserve, we will die. Not just a physical death, we will die a spiritual death. We will go away from God for eternity because our sin is not just against another man.

It is against the holy God of the universe.

In whom there is no darkness at all,.

No impurity, nothing but pure light. And when we turn our backs on God and we live according to our own desires, our own lusts, we are offending the holiness.

Of the living God.

And so the problem is we'll go to hell. We will not just die a physical death, we'll die a spiritual death and we will be punished forever. The wages of sin is death. But here's the good news. That this God who created us still loves us even though we're sinners.

And so he made a way to justify a dead, wicked sinner like me without himself becoming an unjust judge. And that is by punishing his one and only son Jesus.

In my place.

You say, how is that fair?

Because of union with Christ. God has seen fit that we would become united with Christ.

That's why in Ephesians chapter one,.

You have that little phrase in him, in him, in him.

Repeated over and over again.

God has seen fit to unite Jesus and each one of us in such a way that we are now in him and he is in us. So here's what happens in the punishing of the father. When he punishes the son, my sin is imputed to Jesus Christ.

It's credited to him.

And he punishes my sin in Christ, thereby doing away with my sin. You still reasoning with me? But his righteousness being that he is holy and perfect and just in every way. His righteousness is imputed to me.

It's credited to me because I'm united with him. And that is how he is both just and the justifier of the wicked. Reason with me. There is no other way for sin to be forgiven but that God would pour out his wrath upon the substitute lamb of God, Jesus Christ.

Muhammad can't carry your sin away. Buddha can't do it. All the atheists in the world who say there is no God,.

They have no answer.

There is only one savior. The God-man who bridges the divide. Who takes my sin away and gives me his righteousness.

This is the good news of the gospel.

The second reason, there's two reasons why it was necessary for Jesus to both suffer and to rise from the dead. The first is so he could justify sinners and still be just. The second is so that he would fulfill prophecy.

Because for more than a thousand years, he foretold that the Messiah, Christ means Messiah, would have to suffer and would rise from the dead. David, the descendant from Abraham, who comes from the kingly line of Judah, Genesis chapter 49, who's promised that one of his descendants would always sit upon the throne,.

Second Samuel chapter seven,.

Suffered greatly at the hands of wicked men. He describes those sufferings in Psalm chapter 22. But the description of the suffering that David would undergo does not match the literal details of his life.

David was writing figuratively. When he's being persecuted, he feels like a wild mob is surrounding him. He feels like his hands are being pierced. He feels like his tongue is sticking.

To the roof of his mouth.

And so he writes poetically in Psalm chapter 22. But he's not writing about himself. David, who wrote Psalm 22, was writing about the Christ, that it was necessary for him to suffer this way. And if you don't catch anything else that I say, listen to this.

All of the sufferings of Christ were foretold by prophets hundreds of years.

Before they happened.

Read Psalm 22 and you will see that this is not just what Christians say. This is what God has said from before the beginning of the world. It's foretold that he would be pierced through his hands and feet, that none of his bones would be broken, that his shoulders would be put out of place, that soldiers would gamble for his clothes.

At the foot of the cross.

He'd be surrounded by wild dogs. All of these things refer to his suffering. And Psalm 16 refers to his resurrection from the dead. So mark those two things, Psalm 22 and Psalm 16. It was necessary, it was foretold that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead.

Let's go on because the reaction in the text is not reasonable. Here we are reasoning together in the church. And we've just heard testimony given that if the same thing happened in certain other parts.

Of the world, you wouldn't have the freedom.

That we're having right now. You would be persecuted, you'd be running for your life in many places. Look what happens in verses five to nine. 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 him 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 and 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. As Christians, who have the Bible as a foundation, we have a basis from which to reason, to be logical.

It starts with God.

There is a God who is logical in and of himself, and he speaks. And that speech of God is called the Bible. And so we have a way of knowing things. If you don't have a foundation.

That begins with a God who speaks, all you have is stardust.

All you have is planets spinning mindlessly with no purpose and no meaning. All that our brains are are chemicals and matter that are firing signals meaninglessly. How do you say that? Meaningly, meaninglessly.

There can be no meaning apart from a God who reveals.

Is that right?

If there is no God, you have no basis for reasoning. Even what you think you know could mean anything else, because all you are is the product of stardust, evolution. And here is the reason for what you see in the text.

Those who reject Jesus Christ as Savior cannot stand to reason. They cannot refute the prophecies, which Reagan said was 127. I think there's over 300 of them that I've said. They cannot refute that. They cannot refute the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument.

You know what they can do?

They can form mobs to attack you. They can attack, they can distort what we say, twisting it and burn down that straw man. And they can extort money and persecute. And that's what we see in the text.

They have no argument.

Romans 1 .20 says they have no apology. They're anapologetus, you see in your notes. In Romans 1 .20 it says, they see clearly made the things that God has done. It's obvious. The eternal power and divine nature of God is clearly seen by the things that are made so that men are without apology, without excuse.

That word, anapologetus, means they have no reason. I'll say to you that after you've spent time in the scripture and you see how the whole thing fits together and comes from God, when you become strong like Paul, anapologetus, no one can stand up to you.

They have no basis to reason with you. There's nothing for you to fear. We are the ones who have the truth and we need to get this straight in our heads. If we get strong in the scripture, we'll realize there is nobody who can bring an argument against the word of God.

They will resort to attacks and distortions. They will twist our words, but there's no one who can stand and reason against the word of God.

No one.

Finally, verses 10 to 15.

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, mark this, this is one of my favorite verses in the Bible.

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. That's one of the great apologetics verses in the Bible.

Many of them therefore believed.

Hey, if you do that, if you actually examine the evidence, many of you therefore will believe. I know many of you are afraid. If you're not believing yet, you haven't yet been baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You're just sort of listening and taking things in. Maybe listening online, you're not quite sure.

You've never examined the scriptures.

In fact, I'll share this story. There's a guy named Dennis Prager, who I love because of his reasoning. He reasons morally and biblically about political things. But I saw him one time up in Princeton.

And I went up and talked to him afterwards.

Now recognize, this is a man who wrote the rational Bible and denies that Jesus is the Son of God. I went up to talk scripture with him to point him to the Christ, and he had never read Psalm 22, which I just talked about this morning.

He had very fuzzy or little understanding of Isaiah 53.

I don't want to bash him.

I want to tell him, if you actually read what's in the Old Testament of the Bible, the Hebrew Bible, you will come to faith in the Son of God. It was all written ahead of time. Verse 12, many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as many.

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 the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there.

Guys, sometimes we have to just go where the door is open. We can't force the conversation. We have the truth, but we wait on the Lord. We push on doors to see if they'll open, but we can't break them down.

And here, the door was no longer open, so they go. They leave Thessalonica, and then Berea. Here, they leave Berea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Verse 15, 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. This verse, this section, is one of the most important sections in the Bible for each of us to hear, because we live in the internet age.

The proliferation of teachers, it is now possible to listen to a million different sermons with a variety of interpretations and different paths of knowledge. We need Acts 17 .11, not only to hear and receive the word eagerly, but to examine what people say to see if it is so.

Acts 17 .11, we need to become Bereans. Not Thessalonians, but Bereans, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things are so. So, in closing, the main idea today is that the mind of Christ is given to believers.