Acts 17:1-9
You may be seated. Turn in your copy of God’s word
to Acts chapter 17. Today we will be looking at verses
one through nine. Paul and Silas are making their
way from Philippi to Thessalonica. It is believed that they left
Luke. the physician, the writer of Acts, and Timothy, the young
disciple of Paul, back at Philippi to continue to strengthen the
church. And so as we pick up in 17, Paul and Silas are on
their way to Thessalonica. Before we read God’s word, though,
let’s seek his help and blessing in prayer. Pray with me. Our
God, we thank you that you have put in the minds, the hearts,
and the hands of holy men of old to write down these things,
which would be for our instruction, our edification, our knowledge
of who you are and what you have done, and for our growth in grace. We pray that your word would
do its work, that it would make good on its errand, and that
it would not return void, but that it would be planted deeply
in each of our minds, our hearts, our lives, that it would be watered,
and that it would produce even a hundredfold in every one of
us. Lord, comfort and build up your saints in our most holy
faith, but also convince and convert sinners unto salvation.
We do pray in the name of Christ, amen. This is the word of the
living God from Acts chapter 17, beginning at verse one. Now, when they had passed through
Amphipolis and Apallonia, 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 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. Amen. This is the word of the
living God for us. When I was a kid, a little kid,
my dad served a yoke to pastorate. Usually what that meant is out
in the country, two smaller churches would share a preacher. And so
early in the morning, he would go to the Drake’s Branch Church
in Southside, Virginia and preach and then make his way back to
the village church where we lived. And he would preach the same
sermon, do the same ministry during the week. He would make
those pastoral calls to both the churches. Some of you may
have experienced living in an extremely rural area where maybe
four or five churches shared one preacher. Maybe the Methodist
had churches one Sunday, the Baptist had church another, the
congregational, or so on it could have been. We are privileged
in our day and age to live in a city and to have churches innumerable
at our disposal. We can go somewhere every week
and worship God, be with his people and hear the word of God
read and proclaimed. But imagine, imagine if you only
had Paul for three Sundays. Imagine if you only had him for
three Sabbaths, you do the math and maybe he was in Thessalonica
for about 16 days. And of course, it’s more ideal
to have church every week. It’s more ideal to have a pastor.
It’s more ideal to have a weekly worship and preaching. But isn’t
it amazing to take note in this passage that under the power
of God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, the work of the
apostles at the command of the risen and exalted Christ in three
Sundays and three Sabbaths, I guess it would have been Saturdays.
In three Sabbaths in this little Jewish synagogue, the church
at Thessalonica would be established. And it quickly fell under Jewish
opposition and persecution. It quickly fell under Greek or
Roman opposition as well. Now, Paul would write them two
letters. And those two letters would be first and second Thessalonians
written maybe around 51, 52, probably not many weeks or months,
and definitely no more than years after the events we read of today.
And he would write to this little church and he would say to them,
you are my glory. and my joy. He so loved the people
of God at Thessalonica who listened to him reason and prove and argue
and lay out from the scriptures the necessity of Christ and his
suffering and rising from the dead and his being the Messiah
of God Almighty. And he spoke to them as his glory
and his joy. Now, as we think through this
little church at Thessalonica, we must remember Paul and Silas
have just left Philippi. Remember, the wind was at their
backs as they sailed from the mainland to Macedonia. They go
to the place of prayer. They quickly see Lydia and others
converted. A house buds and builds up in
her home and many converts for many days come to faith in Jesus
and are nurtured. Now there was opposition we read
of last week and not only was the wind at the backs of Paul
and Silas, but also the rods, the beating of the Roman authorities. And you can imagine as they make
their way from Philippi where they were treated shamefully,
Paul recounts their backs healing from these wounds as they make
this hundred mile trip from Philippi, passing through the two little
towns with the A names, Amphipolis and Apollonia. They make their
way to the capital, to the great city, the twin city, the city
along the big highway, Thessalonica. We’re told this city was quite
influential, about 100,000 people in its metro area. That’s big,
right? We live in a town of about 57,000,
so that’s double us. But back in those days, with
the populations still beginning to grow in the young world, this
was quite a place, quite a city. And they had gone to the place
of prayer in Philippi because there was no synagogue. Now they
find a synagogue, an establishment, of God’s people gathering on
the Sabbath to read the word, to hear the law and to have someone
potentially a visiting rabbi like Paul to explain what the
word meant. And so we read in our passage
that Paul spent three Sabbaths, three Saturdays, three weekends,
three weeks of ministry in this synagogue proving and proclaiming
that Jesus Christ was the Messiah, the son of the living God. Now,
we’re not given here the content of his message word for word
or where he took it from. There’s no quotations or allusions
of what parts of scripture. But but exercise your mind for
a moment. Exercise your. Oh, your your
your pious imagination. Maybe he spoke of Genesis. And
he spoke of Adam and Eve in the garden and God’s probation to
Adam. You can eat freely of all the
trees of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, you shall not eat upon pain of death. Well, we know
how that story went. Adam and Eve took the fruit.
They ate it. Satan had lured and enticed them. He had lied
to them and deceived them. They believed him. They believed
their own eyes. They took and ate and God told them the results
of their sin. They lost fellowship with him.
They were cast out of the garden. Their life was east of Eden.
They lost fellowship with one another. Their children that
would come after them would not only bring them great pain and
sorrow, one would murder the other over how one is to worship
God rightly. And so life east of Eden, no
longer in the garden, but in the jungle was a difficult life. And you catch a little phrase
in the book of Acts, don’t you? They’re accused of turning the
world upside down. No, Adam did that. God made the
world and everything in it a wonderful place, a beautiful place. Everything
was right with the world. until sin came. And so we have
to see that whatever Paul and Silas were preaching about Jesus
Christ was actually meant to turn the world right side up. We sing at Christmas just a few
months back. We sing joy to the world. The
Lord is come. Let earth receive her king. He
comes to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found. And on and on Paul may have gone
about King David and how King David was a glimpse of what the
greater David, Jesus would be an eternal King. He might’ve gone on about maybe
Joseph providing for people in Egypt and how God and Christ
has provided for his people through his own son, the Lord Jesus.
He may have spoken of Moses as the great redeemer and how Christ
has brought us out of a greater enslavement. He may have spoken
of the Psalms like Psalm 22, we read earlier and how the Christ,
the Messiah must suffer and die at the hands of men, probably
Isaiah 52, Isaiah 53, Daniel chapter seven on through the
old Testament, Paul would have read it. He would have proclaimed
it. He would have proved it. He would
have argued it. And over those Sabbaths. Uh, it says some became
persuaded, persuaded that this God, this Jesus is the Messiah,
the son of God and the savior of sinners. And I want us to
stop for just a moment. You know, we, we live in the
South. Everybody’s a Christian in the South. Well, at least
they used to be that’s over with. Um, but, but we think that way,
right? There’s a church on every corner.
Everybody’s, Everybody’s just churchy. We could be exactly
like the folks in this synagogue. We’ve gone through the rituals.
We sit in our seat. We pay our tithe. We keep our
rules. We straighten our tie. We don’t
let anybody sit in our seat. We do all the things that we’re
supposed to do right in church. Complain about the preacher.
What else do we do? All those things. And we may not have heard
about Jesus. And so let me ask you to consider
well this hour, are you persuaded that Jesus Christ, not only is
he the savior of sinners and the true Messiah, but is he the
savior of your sins? Has he paid for your sins? Have
you put your faith, your hope, and your trust in him? Do you
see yourself as a sinner in God’s sight and that you justly deserve
God’s wrath and curse due to you for your sins? And do you
believe in him? in his work, his finished, completed
work, that his work at the cross has bought you redemption. Something
you ought not to leave here today without considering, without
taking to heart and praying that perhaps God might bring you into
an estate of salvation from your sin. And so as Saul proves and
proclaims that Jesus is the Christ, it says that some were persuaded
It speaks of the people persuaded. It was rich. It was poor. It
was Jew. It was Greek. It was, as he says
in Galatians, it was slave and it was free. But not everyone’s
persuaded. Not everyone comes to faith in
Jesus Christ at the sound of God’s word. You know, we live
in a multimedia world. We can throw lights at it. We
can throw sound at it. We can throw effects at it. We
can throw music at it. We can make it as palatable as
possible by taking out the offensive language of the cross, right?
And we think that we can save the world by our cleverness.
And Paul, you’ll remember to the Corinthians and in other
places says he believes in the foolishness of preaching. He
believes in the folly of the cross. And he believes that when
some hear the gospel, it’s a fragrance rising up into their nostrils. And it’s a pleasing fragrance
that they receive with joy. But to others, it is a stench
of death. It points out to them, it reminds them that they are
still stuck in their sins and trespasses. And that apart from
Christ, they do not have the forgiveness of sins. And that
continues to this day. Our ministry of the word in this
church and in all churches ought to either be a stench or a fragrance.
That’s just the way God cuts the cards. That’s just the way
it is. And so our passage tells us that
there are some, It’s Jewish opposition from the synagogue. You know,
we don’t want to disrupt the status quo. We don’t want to
have a new person sit in our seats or we, we, we don’t want
a change in our religious life. That’s a Presbyterian joke, right?
The no, I steal our seats. You can sit where you like less
than I tells you to move, but they prevented them from the
gospel. They prevented them from preaching
and proclaiming and from people hearing and receiving. And a
persecution broke out. And it begins to sound like our
evening newscast in this passage, doesn’t it? There was a mob.
There was a public outcry. There were false accusations.
These people are preaching that there is a king other than Caesar
and his name is Jesus. Boy, you want to you want to
get somebody kicked out of town. Just just just. give them a political
accusation, you know, bring up one of the hot topics of the
day. And it was the same way back in Philippi. And so this
persecution broke out and we don’t know where Paul and Silas
went. The people came looking for them. They came to Jason’s
house. Jason must’ve been like Lydia. He must’ve been a man in the
town whose heart was changed by God. And not only did God
open up his heart, God opened up his mind and God opened up
his home and his purse. And so he gave hospitality to
this little church at Thessalonica that Paul would say is his dear
glory and joy. And the people, the persecutors,
the powers that be came and said, give us these men. They’re turning
our world upside down. Nowhere to be seen, nowhere to
be found. And it’s decided, well, we’ll let them go for bail. So
Jason gives them a little money. I want us to think though, as
we end our look at this passage about something that Paul says,
uh, to the Thessalonian church in his letter, he says it a couple
of different times and in a couple of different ways, but here’s
the gist of it. He says to the Thessalonians who Henley sees
for these three Sabbaths, He says to them in his letter, we
came to you and we presented the word of God as our passage
says, they proved, they proclaimed, they reasoned, they argued. We
came to you and you received our preaching, our message as
it really is, as the word of the living God. And we rejoice
because it came not with our human wisdom, our human cunning,
our human abilities. It wasn’t Paul’s power of persuasion.
It wasn’t his abilities to argue that mattered. It came through
the power of almighty God. And it rested in each of those
Thessalonian Christians. What a wonderful thing it is
brothers and sisters to be part of the body of Christ with the
message of the gospel, a message of hope to the world that God
can take everything that is upside down. Upside down because of
sin, upside down because of broken relationships, upside down because
of Satan and his deception and his temptations, upside down
because of the world itself and its wisdom, its worldly wisdom. But even our own sin, our own
remaining flesh, God can take all that’s upside down And through
the power of the gospel, through the power of his word and a life
of being in the church, he can begin to make things right side
up. One of the things he’ll write to the Thessalonians, and he’ll
do it in both letters, is he’ll say, you know, some of you aren’t
thinking right about death and about the afterlife. And he begins
to tell them of the hope. that we have in Jesus Christ.
God is going to come make all things new. Death is not the
final answer. Death is not the final judgment.
Death is not the final word because no, in Christ Jesus, in Christ
Jesus, we have been raised up from the dead in this Jesus,
the Messiah. And so that same hope that God
through Paul gave to the Thessalonians, God, through his servant today,
gives that to you. And let us rejoice in God’s goodness
and be persuaded without a doubt in our minds that Jesus is the
all-sufficient Savior. Let’s do pray together. Our great
and mighty God, we thank you for showing us who you are, what
you have done, and also giving us a glimpse of the promises
that are yet to be fulfilled but are Already, yes, and amen
in Christ Jesus. Lord, our worlds are upside down,
our lives are topsy-turvy, and we need your help and grace to
fix what is broken, to repair the ruins of the fall. Our minds,
our hearts, our lives, our relationships, our everything. And we thank
you that your gospel is sufficient and powerful to do these things.
Lord, we give you thanks for this hope and we praise you in
the name of Jesus. And it’s in his name we pray,
amen.