This morning we come to Acts chapter 17. If you'll take your outline there, we will see that where we are and where chapter 17 fits within the context of the book of Acts. On the first page we have the outline of the book up to the point in which we concluded last week. We're in the section that deals with the witness of the church to the Gentile world. the taking of the gospel beyond Jerusalem, beyond Judea, beyond Samaria, to the uttermost part of the earth. We've looked already at the first missionary journey that was carried out by Barnabas and Paul in chapters 13 and 14. This opening of the door of faith to the Gentiles led to the controversy over whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised if they were to enter the Christian church. And so the Jerusalem Council was called to decide that controversy and the essence of that decision was no. It also spoke of certain things that they asked the Gentiles to observe in terms of the scruples of the Jews to try to lessen the difficulties of the intercultural, interreligious interaction between them and to promote unity in the church. But the main answer there was no. The Gentiles do not need to be circumcised. Circumcision no longer has any covenantal significance. All that matters is the circumcised heart. That is regeneration through the Holy Spirit by faith in Jesus Christ, confessing him as Lord and Christ. Then we came to the second missionary journey, and that is where we are at now. Consider the prelude to that missionary journey that Paul and Silas undertook. We looked at the opening phase of that second missionary journey. And then the Macedonian vision and the mission to Philippi. If you'll take your map that I gave to you, so color coded it for you to help follow these missionary journeys. And if you don't have that, most Bibles have maps of Paul's missionaries journeys in the rear of the Bible, your map section, you can turn there if you would. But let's just trace what we have here thus far. On the far right hand, corner, in about the middle of the page, we see Antioch. Antioch in Syria. This was the home base of the missionaries. They left from here. And the orange line or the solid line indicates this second missionary journey. They left from there and they went North up into Cilicia, passed through Paul's hometown of Tarsus and then continued through the mountain passes to the city of Derbe and then to Lystra, Iconium and Pisidian Antioch. These are the churches of Galatia. These are the churches to which the book of Galatians was later written. And so they begin their first missionary journey by going to the churches that were established in these cities, Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and Pisidia, Antioch, during the first missionary journey. Paul was always concerned that the believers continue in the faith. It was not just enough for him to see them saved, but he wanted them sanctified. He wanted them to become strong in Christ Jesus and that the churches would be witnesses, vibrant centers of kingdom life and testimony and witness to a lost world. After they got to Pisidian Antioch and finished their time of encouraging the believers there. We were told that they were minded to go into Asia, which would have meant they would have gone west. And they were probably headed toward the major city of Asia, which was Ephesus. However, the Holy Spirit said, no, do not go that direction. But he didn't tell them where to go yet. So they decided they were gonna go north up toward Bithynia. If you've traced the line up there. to Bithynia, and when they got up into the region of Dorylaeum, they assayed to go into Bithynia. But again, the Spirit of God forbade them and said, no, you're not to go into Bithynia. Again, perhaps somewhat confused as to where they should go, they set forth toward the west to Mycenae. And when they came to Mycenae, they entered the city of Troas. And you can see that there on your map. And it was there in Troas that the Macedonian vision was given to them. The Macedonian vision was a vision given to Paul as they were praying, Lord, where do we go? Who do we preach the gospel to? A man appeared to Paul in a vision and said unto him, he was a man of Macedonia, come over and help us. And he said, They said, the missionary team said that we knew now where the Lord wanted us to go. And so they crossed the Aegean Sea by boat, and they came to Amphilius and Neopolis, but they continued on from there. They did not make their stop there until they came to Philippi. Here we find them in the continent of Europe, the first bringing of the gospel of Jesus Christ to that continent of the world in specifically the region of Macedonia, modern day Greece. And they were there at Philippi, and this is what we considered in our last two sermons, the mission to Philippi. We had a description of Philippi in verse 12 of chapter 16. We learned of this Sabbath prayer meeting that was taking place there. There was no synagogue in Philippi. There did not appear to have been really much of a presence of Jews at all. And so Paul and his team found out about this prayer meeting of God-fearing Gentile women. And so they went to there, and the story continues by this account of the first convert in Macedonia, and this was a woman by the name of Lydia, who then opened her home to become the base of missionary labors and work in the city of Philippi. It became not only the place where the missionary team was housed, fed, and taken care of in that respect, but it also became the meeting place for this infant church. As Paul and Silas ministered there, there was a damsel who was possessed with the spirit of divination, if you remember that, and Paul delivered her from this satanic oppression, this demonic oppression. possession, and this caused a stir to the men who owned this slave girl and who made their money by her fortune-telling. But when her ability to tell fortunes left with the spirit of divination that was driven out of her by the name of Jesus, Jesus Christ, they became enraged And persecution set in against Paul and Silas who were drugged before the Philippian magistrates, beaten savagely, thrown into prison, into the inner prison, into the dungeon as it were, put fast in stocks. And then God opened the doors of the prison with this earthquake. Then we have the conversion of the Philippian jailer. This was followed by the release of Paul and Silas by the Philippian magistrates, and then they left Philippi. And that's where we come to at the end of chapter 16. This leads us to chapter 17. If we'll open up your outline then to the middle section, we come to the mission to Thessalonica. And this is recorded for us in chapter 17, one through 10. So let's look at our map again, though. Hope you didn't put that away yet. From Philippi, they go to Thessalonica. And you can see that is highlighted there on your map. from Philippi to Thessalonica. Interestingly, we receive important background to three of the epistles, or we will receive the third one today. We've received two of them, the Churches of Galatia, the Book of Galatians. We know what churches they were written to. We know what kind of people they were, what the circumstances were of their founding as a church. And now we've looked at Philippi. And the book of Philippians, of course, was written by Paul later on to the Philippians. And we've learned about that and its founding. Now we come to Thessalonica. And there again, we have the background to the epistles of Paul, two of them. to the Thessalonians. And as we read in Acts about the things that took place in the foundings of these churches, and we learn about that, you know, when we read in the epistles themselves, we can learn other things about the foundings of the church that aren't mentioned by Luke. And so the two work together to help us get a bigger and better picture of what was taking place. So we're now coming to the church Thessalonians. Now let me read this account. Chapter 17. Now when they had passed through Amphibolus and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica. Where was the synagogue of the Jews? And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them. And three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead, and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. and some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas, and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. But the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also, whom Jason hath received. And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there was another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people, and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. And when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea." So there's the account, brief, but important account of the founding of the church in Thessalonica. The first thing we're told here as we seek to give to you in our outline is this journey to Thessalonica. Now remember, they had to leave Philippi because of persecution. And they had to leave as men who were bruised and battered. They had been beaten severely by the magistrates there. And so in other words, they had aching bones, bruised feet, ankles from the shackles, and so on. And we're told here that they leave then Philippi, and they begin to go forward. Paul always has a mission in mind. The door has now been closed to him in Philippi by the providence of God. He moves on to a new field, and he sets his sight upon the city of Thessalonica, a very important city. of Macedonia. It was a city that was on the Ignatian Way, a very well-known famous Roman road. Remains of that road are still visible today. The Romans knew how to make a road. So this was a very good road. The reason why they made these roads was that it would facilitate the legions moving throughout the Roman Empire to uphold the authority of Rome and so forth. But what's interesting about this is these roads that were made to facilitate the Roman Empire became tools in the hands of Jesus Christ to facilitate his empire. And so this was a time in history in the ancient world where the ability to move from city to city was greatly improved. But as we look at this here, it says that they left. and they went to Thessalonica. As one writer put it, it's so brief and it's so offhand in the way it is stated, it sounds like they went on a leisurely stroll from one city to the next. Well, if you look at your map there, you will see that the distance between Philippi and Thessalonica, the total distance is well over 100 miles. So this was a journey of over 100 miles of these men who had been beaten. Now, they say that a person walking very deliberately and with a stride that fits that deliberation can walk about 25 miles a day, more or less. And so if we're talking here about a trip from Philippi to Thessalonica, we're talking about probably about four days at the brief. They did not stop at these other cities. Why didn't they stop there? Were they not concerned about the gospel going to the cities that are mentioned here? No, that is not the case. Paul had a missionary strategy. He would go to particular strategic cities, and from that point, He would plant a church and then from that church planted there and the work of the believers in that church, the gospel would spread throughout the region. It's interesting that in the very epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul talks about from the Thessalonian church, the word of truth went out into all the region. So it was not that he was ignoring these cities, but he was moving on in a strategic purpose. Another reason why he went to Thessalonica was because of the synagogue, an important and large synagogue. was there, or maybe even more than one synagogue, though it's only one as mentioned here, because the Jews had a very strong presence in the city of Thessalonica. And as we've been talking throughout our studies here, this was Paul's strategy. So let's pick it up here when he says, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews, a meeting place. where the Jews gathered together on the Sabbath day to hear the scriptures read and then to be expounded. Every Sabbath day, Moses is read, as James told us in the Jerusalem Council. His voice was read throughout the Roman Empire in these synagogues. Now, there was a deliberation in Paul in going here, and it says that explicitly, and Paul, as his manner or custom was, went in unto them, that is, those who were in the synagogue. And he went there because he believed that he had a mission that included this call to the Jew first. The Jews were those of the ancient people of God to whom the promises had been given. And as they went out to proclaim the gospel, we remember this ultimately was fulfilled as the gospel began in Jerusalem, and it was first preached in Judea, and then Sumerian, Galilee, and so on. But even as they went into the missionary work, this was a priority. And this priority was based on not the fact that they were still the chosen people, but that they had been. that they were not the chosen people anymore. The chosen people were those who were chosen in Christ Jesus. He is the chosen one. He is the seed of Abraham. And now to be a part of the chosen people, whether you be a Jew or whether you be a Gentile, as Paul makes so explicit in the book of Ephesians, it has to do with your faith in Jesus Christ, for he is, Galatians 3, the seed of Abraham. And if you're in the seed of Abraham, you, by virtue of that, become the seed of Abraham yourself. And so they had this role in the past. And as the gospel is now being preached, they are given the invitation first. There's another reason why this invitation is given is because time is running out. AD 70. And the awful judgment of God upon the Jewish people, the Jewish nation that was prophesied by Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse was rapidly moving to its issue. We are right now in Thessalonica about 50 AD, okay, about 50 AD. The Jewish war began in 66, 67 AD, culminating in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. So time is of the essence. And in other words, repentance and salvation is being offered to them. Even though their people had rejected the Messiah, God in his mercy was giving them this opportunity. That's one reason. But there's another reason, very important reason. In the synagogues, in the Gentile world were groups of people who had been gathered of the Gentiles who had become disillusioned with paganism and its philosophy and its crudity and its sensuality and all the things that went along with pagan religion. And they were attracted to the monotheistic faith, the creation faith of the scriptures of the Old Testament. They attended the synagogue, they heard Moses read, and they were attracted to that. And they left paganism and became seekers. Some of them went further. If you take your hand out there, the identity of certain people, groups, and acts. I'll just remind you of this again. Very important to understanding Paul's custom. In the book of Acts, we have five different groups of people. We have the Hebrew Jews, These are the ones we first encountered in Jerusalem and Judea in the early parts of the book. These were ethnic Jews who were born in and or resided in Palestine. In other words, they could have been born in Palestine, but they had moved later. But these were ethnic Jews. They spoke Aramaic and they would have used the Hebrew scriptures. Secondly, we have the Grecian Jews. These are mentioned specifically in Acts 6.1, 9.29, and 11.20. Grecian Jews were ethnic Jews who were born in or resided in Gentile lands. Therefore, they spoke Greek as their primary language, and they used the Greek scriptures, that is, the Septuagint, not the Hebrew scriptures. These were among the Jews. But we also have Gentile proselytes in the Book of Acts. You can see that if you look up chapter 2, 10, 6, 5, and 13, 43. These were ethnic Gentiles who converted to Judaism and were regarded as Jews, religiously speaking. Why? Because they submitted to the full yoke of the law. They received circumcision and they bound themselves to keep the whole Mosaic law, including the ritual laws, the laws, the food laws, ceremonial cleanliness laws, and also the traditions of the elders. They were called proselytes of the sanctuary and they were admitted into the very temple courts that were only permitted to Jews, Gentile proselytes. Then there were the Gentile God-fearers. These were ethnic Gentiles who were attracted to Judaism and attended services in the synagogue regularly. They had generally renounced paganism, and they're sometimes referred to as devout Greeks, even as in our passage here this morning, 17.4, devout Greeks are mentioned. These were not full converts to Judaism, but they were seeking the true God through the only mechanism available to them at that time, and that was the synagogue. It was among these Gentile God-fearers that Paul found his most fertile field as he began to plant churches in these places. And so he had a people there, Gentiles, whom he was the apostle to, who were already prepared for the gospel. They knew of the Messiah. They knew of the promises and so on. And they were ready. And when Paul came into the synagogue and began to preach salvation in Jesus Christ, no difference between Jew and Gentile, God used this preaching and the preparation that had already taken place to lay the foundations of the church. And then it was through these Gentile God-fearers that a whole network of associations and contacts were opened up to the apostle and to the whole church, because they would go and tell their family and friends who were all Gentiles, And so this was a strategic move on the part of the Apostle Paul. These people understood creation. They understood sin. They understood the need for a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin, and so on, and so they were prepared. And this is why Paul, as his custom was, went in to the synagogues. Of course, the final group is the Gentiles, who were ethnic Gentiles who had no connection with the Jews or their religion. They were ones who followed the pagan religions around them, the pagan morality, and all of the philosophies of the day. They hated the Jews, and the Jews hated them. It was a very enmity. expressed to one another in that circumstance. So this, reminding you again why Paul goes to the synagogue, and there's where we find him. So he goes into the synagogue here to them, not only in concluding Jews, but Gentile proselytes, and even more importantly, Gentile God-fearers. He goes there and he begins his message after his manner. And then we're told this. Now again, looking at your outline, we have Paul's ministry in the synagogue of Thessalonica. The length of his ministry is first told us here. He was there in that synagogue three Sabbath days. He went into the Sabbath. Remember in Acts 13, we have an example of him in Antioch, Pisidia. We have a sermon that he preached there, and this type of sermon that we have recorded for us, Luke gave us a sample of one of his sermons, and he's not going to repeat everything that Paul says in all of the other places, but we should assume that basically what he taught in Antioch of Pisidia is what he did there. And as he comes into the synagogue, like in Antioch-Besiddia, the rabbis, the ones who are in charge of the synagogue, recognize he and Silas as learned men from Jerusalem. This was a very unexpected thing to have a rabbi like Paul, who had been trained under Gamaliel, the great And so they say, Paul, do you have some words to say to us? And Paul has his open door. And so this is how he is able to speak. He's invited to speak by the rulers of the synagogue. He's a personage of knowledge and power. And so for three Sabbath days, he is allowed to minister and no longer, because we will see by that time the decision had been made by the ruling powers of the synagogue that they had had enough of this man, the apostle Paul. But let's look at the conduct of his ministry there. Notice his method and his message. His method and his message. This is a paradigm for us. This is a paradigm for us of how we are to serve the Lord. We are to have a method and we are to have a message. And though Paul was in a unique state as an apostle, Though maybe a pastor or preacher is in a unique state in their role, but each one of us as a Christian should pay close attention to this in our witness for Christ when we are given the precious opportunity to speak the truth into the lives of others and the gospel. Let us understand his method. We're told in verse 2, he went into the Sabbath three days and reasoned with them out of what? The scriptures. He reasoned with them from the scriptures. These would have been the Old Testament scriptures, that is the Hebrew or the scriptures of the Old Covenant. And so he took these scriptures and he began to reason from them. The basis of what he had to say was directly from the scripture. Now the word reason here, interestingly, is the word from which we get our English word dialogue, It shows the idea of discoursing argumentatively, making points, seeking to persuade people by logical argument, and also allowing and inviting questions in a dialogical situation. So he is giving a discourse. with a particular point in view, he is reasoning from the scriptures. But then he goes on further to explain what he was doing when he was reasoning from the scriptures. He was opening and alleging some things. Now the word opening here means expounding. And so he reasoned from the scriptures, but how he did that is he expounded the truth of the scripture. He looked at the text of the scripture. They're in the synagogue. He read it, and he began to expound its meaning. And by that method, he was seeking to convince them of the message of the gospel. Because that's what the word alleging then means that follows there. He was seeking to demonstrate. And so reasoning from the scriptures, logical argumentation based on the word of God as his foundation, he expounded the text in their context. And his ultimate goal was to demonstrate from the scriptures to these Jews that Jesus was God. the Messiah. More specifically, here's what he was seeking to demonstrate and convince them of, opening alleging that Christ must needs have suffered. Christ here being the translation of the Hebrew word for Messiah, the anointed one of God, the Messiah, the one chosen of God for redemption and the kingdom of God to raise up the kingdom of David. So he was opening and alleging through the scriptures that Christ, the Messiah, was ordained to suffer. the Old Testament prophets, Moses, the greatest of them, taught that when the Messiah comes, he must suffer. Now, this was a great stumbling block to the Jews because they saw by this time in history that the Messiah would come as their military deliverer to cast off the yoke of the Gentiles, and that would have meant Rome at that time, and establish Israel as the great people of the earth, that he was a delivering, powerful, King Messiah. But the fact that this Messiah would suffer and die upon a cross was a great stumbling block. Paul says that in 1 Corinthians. The cross is a great stumbling block to the Jews. And so this message of salvation, which is centered in a crucified Messiah, has to be shown to be exactly what God predicted. And so he went to these scriptures, We're not told what scriptures they were, but almost every commentator rightly points out that he would have gone to Isaiah 53, which is the clearest of the Old Testament prophets speaking of the suffering Messiah, who would be cut off. But we also have Daniel, who uses those very words, that the Messiah would be cut off. And we look at the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament. And Paul probably went to those and argued from how can the blood of bull and goats take away human guilt? The only thing that can take away human guilt is another human who dies in their place. And so he would be arguing through all the old covenant scriptures concerning this fact that he must suffer. Secondly, that he must rise again from the dead. You see that there. And as we've labored to show the gospel is not that Jesus Christ died for our sins. Stop there. That is no gospel. What is the gospel is Christ died for our sins and rose again. The third day, Paul is so bold to say in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ be not risen, our gospel is in vain. Your faith is in vain. We're all still in our sins. The resurrection is the sign. It is the culmination of a sacrificial death of a sinless son of God. He could not stay under the penalty of death. And if he did, there is no gospel to declare. Because everybody, we die, we stay under the penalty until, if we're Christians, the day of resurrection. Though our souls right away enjoy the victory, our bodies remain in the grave. And so he goes and he preaches on that. And we saw in his Acts 13 sermon in Antioch-Besidia that he went to Psalm 2. And he said that when God said there to the Messiah, this day have I begotten you, it was a reference to the resurrection. He went to Psalm 16, we will not leave your holy one to suffer corruption. And he argued from those and other passages that the Messiah must die and rise again. Well, who is this Messiah? That's the next thing he preached. He said, and that this Jesus, this Jesus of Nazareth, whom I am preaching to you right now is the Christ. He is the Messiah. And so he fits the prophecies. He died for our sins. And the cross should not be our stumbling block, it should be our glory. For Paul said also in the book of Galatians, God forbid that I should glory in anything. but the cross of Christ. And glory there means to boast, to boast in circumcision, to boast in my own righteousness, to boast in my Jewishness, to boast in this, to boast in that. God forbid I would ever hang my destiny on any of that, except my destiny rests alone in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for my sins and rose again the third day. So this is his sermon summarized. You can see, as I said, Acts 13 gives an example of more detail of how he did this. Christ must suffer, Christ must rise from the dead, and that this Jesus of Nazareth, whom Paul was preaching, is that Christ. Three weeks he carried out this ministry. Paul's method, reason from the scriptures. Use the Bible as your basis of witness and testimony, both in evangelism and in helping other Christians grow in their faith. We reason from the scriptures, not reason from our own thoughts, our own understanding, from maybe what someone else wrote or said, but we ground ourselves in the scriptures. of the Old and the New Testament. We reason from them. We think through them. We build logical arguments based on the truth revealed in them. We do exposition. We own to understand what this actually means. You cannot just take a passage and string together a number of proof texts. That's not exposition. Exposition is understanding the scripture within its grammatical and historical form, what it meant when it was first written to the people that it was written to. And building from that, we reason from the scriptures. And using exposition with a goal of demonstrating truth And our message is always Christ Jesus, always. Paul says, I preach Jesus Christ, beginning and end. That's my mission. Everything is found in him. And the gospel message is Christ must suffer because we're sinners and we need a substitute. Christ must rise from the dead because if he doesn't, then he is just like us and he's still under the power the penalty of death, but he's broken the bands of death and therefore has secured for us salvation. And he ever lives to make intercession for us. He ever lives to make sure those whom he has saved will make it. And then who we preach is Christ Jesus. Now what's the results of his ministry? Three weeks. Verse four tells us the results. And they went through the, I'm in chapter 16, here we are in verse 17, four. And some of them believed. Some of the Jews believed. Because there's a distinction made between that and that would have included full Gentile proselytes who were considered religiously Jews. Some believed. Doesn't take a whole lot, does it? No, I don't think there were, because of what he goes on to say. Some of them believed. Some were convinced. Some of the Jews were convinced by Paul's method and message. And when it says they consorted with Paul and Silas, it means they joined themselves to them and became the foundation of this new church with them. But then we're told, and of the devout Greeks, the God-fearing Gentiles, the Greeks. Notice, a great multitude believed. A great multitude of those God-fearing Gentiles who were in the synagogue, or those three weeks, believed. So they're Gentiles. And then we're told of the chief women, not a few. This is an expansion of the devout Greeks. Among those devout Greeks were honorable women, that is women of stature and social standing, important women in the city of Thessalonica. It's interesting, as we have noticed in this missionary work, in Macedonia, the role of women within the early church. And they're specifically mentioned here that a great many of the important women of the city, Gentile women who had attended the synagogue believed. Now it is from the basis of those Gentile God-fearers that the gospel spreads throughout the whole city of Thessalonica. For as we read the book of Thessalonians, it appears as he writes to what he's writing mainly to those who were Gentiles. There were not many Jews in that congregation, but there were some, as we have just said. So here's the results of the ministry. Well, another result now comes about in verses five through seven. What about the Jews who didn't believe? Did they just accept this and move on? No, they were enraged with what they heard and the results that Paul achieved. Here's what we're told. but the Jews which believe not." They rejected the reasoning from the scriptures, the exposition and alleging that were made from the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. They refused to believe it. And moved, this is the thing that moves them, that motivates them, that gets them up to do this terrible thing that they're about to do, moved with envy. Now the word envy here, its base means jealousy, jealousy. And this is the same reaction we saw in Antioch and Pisidia among the Jews there during the first missionary journey. They were jealous, they were envious. And there's two things I think that are at work here. Number one, they were jealous of their chosenness and that they were above all other peoples. And that when Paul said Jew or Gentile, it doesn't matter. It's only faith in Jesus Christ. And when you put faith in Christ, all are equal in the church, Jew and Gentile. What did this do? It removed their specialness and their status, and they were jealous of being the chosen people. And of course, we hear that all the time today as well. They're jealous of that, and they don't wanna think of the Gentiles as being of equal rank before God. But this is the situation. The other was, they were jealous of the fact that these trophies of theirs, these Greek god fears, were taking a different message to heart. They were losing these folks to Paul. Put it in modern terms, they were envious and jealous of Paul. They said, he's sheep stealing. And thank God he was because the shepherds that were over them, you don't want them. So these were sheep who were taken out of their hands and they were infuriated by the message that this carpenter from Nazareth who was murdered or died I should say, executed by the Romans under Pilate is the Messiah. They were deeply stumbled, deeply upset about this. And so they go to work. That's their motivation. Their method was to use disreputable men to stir up the city. But the Jews which believed not moved with them. We took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. To me, that is one of the most priceless descriptions found in the King James language of people who are not reputable. Have you ever known a certain lewd fellow of the baser sort? Well, this is who they went to next. Who were these people? Rachman explains it very well in his commentary. He says, in the absence of any legal grounding for indicting Paul and Silas, the only method was to adopt the tactics practiced at Philippi and stir up the populace. This was not a hard matter. The center of life in a Greek city was the agora, or the marketplace. and there would generally be found in it a crowd of idlers ready for any excitement or mischief. So numerous was this class that they had a name. They were the market men. Out of these, the Jews selected for their confederates those who were especially conspicuous for their moral obliquity And our sober historian can hardly contain his disgust at these lewd fellows of the baser sort, the authorized version, or vile fellows of the rabble, the revised version. With their aid, it was easy to set the city in an uproar. And when a sufficient mob was collected, the Jews led them to the house of Jason. They burst in and searched for Paul and Silas to carry them before the assembly of the people. Paul and Silas, however, could not be found, and in their place, the mob dragged Jason and some other Christians to the civil authorities. It was a repetition of the scene at Philippi. On their way, the Jews and their accomplices kept shouting out the cause of the tumult. The men who have turned the world upside down have come hither also, and Jason has harbored them. And so what did they do? The Jews, in a Greek city, realized that they themselves cannot lead this commotion against the apostles since they go into the marketplace and they find certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. And they enticed them, probably paid them off, to start a riot. to start a tumult about these men. These idlers could care less about the message of the cross that Paul and Silas were teaching. It was a time for some excitement, a time to get paid, to stir up a riot. And so this is how they go about it, a very disreputable The only thing I can say is that it shows that the people who were stirring up them were also certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. To go to such people, to stir up such people against men of character, conviction, and truth like Paul and Silas. So this is what they do. And as we then see, after stirring up the crowd, getting the city in an uproar, as it says there in verse five, an uproar of the city, they go to the house of Jason, who apparently was a Jewish convert where Paul and Silas were staying. And they went there to get Paul and Silas, but they didn't find him there. God in his providence had them somewhere else. And so they drew out Jason and other certain brethren, new Christians, to the rulers, and on the way they were crying out, These that have turned the world upside down have come here also. This word literally means that, to turn something upside down. It meant, though, in the context of the day, something like to upset the public peace. Here it's the public peace of the whole Roman world that's being spoken. A little bit of hyperbole probably, though to some degree that did become true later on. But they were stirring up the Roman world. And to know exactly what this meant, here's what they said. And these do contrary to the decrees of Caesar saying there's another king, Jesus. And so this is a political charge. This is a charge of treason. So they're upsetting the city of Thessalonica as they did at Philippi and as they're doing throughout the Roman world by proclaiming a rival king to Caesar. And they're disregarding the laws and the commandments of Caesar. And so they're being charged with political revolution, overthrowing the Roman authority. Now it is true that the effect of the gospel in the good sense of the term, revolution, was a very true thing. And in some way, this is a compliment. A revolution comes from the word to turn again, to go back or go around. Here we have this idea of the turning of the world upside down. I'll tell you this much, when I became a Christian, my world was turned upside down. It was revolutionized at that time. And Christianity has this effect. And when the world looks at it, they see it as subversive. We see it as salvific. They see it as subversive. This was a political charge, that there's another king. It's also interesting to note that the church and Paul must have been talking about the Lordship of Christ in their preaching. We know to the Philippian jailer it said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. We know they use the book of Psalms 110, that he's been exalted to the right hand of God and made Lord of all. In other words, Lord over all. everyone. Psalm 2 was also preached by them. It was used for the resurrection. And Psalm 2, after it talks about the resurrection of the Messiah, talks about the kings of the earth and the judges and rulers being wise and kissing the sun and submitting to his authority. And so they were preaching that Christ is over the kings of the earth, including Caesar. And this could not be tolerated. Ultimately, this is why the Christians were martyred by Rome. It was not because they had a different religion than other people, but they had a testimony that there was a Lord over Caesar. There was no other name given under heaven whereby men must be saved. Only in Christ Jesus. do we find the kingdom of God. Rulers in the ancient world, and even today, see them as the representation of divinity on earth, that their word is law, that they have the power to control history and the rise and fall of nations, and they're filled with hubris, they're filled with pride. And when the church says humbly, not in a confrontational in an evil confrontational way, but say that you are under the authority of Jesus Christ, and you are his minister, and you're responsible to submit to him and govern in the light of his glory and of his commandments. The world doesn't like that. Kings do not like that. But the main thing here is the Jews are using this as a political charge. It's very interesting. The Jews are all of a sudden, again, the great defenders of Rome. just like they were when Jesus was crucified. They hated Pilate, they hated the Romans, and yet they became ones who declared on oath, we have no other king but Caesar, thus sealing their doom by Caesar, who destroyed their nation and their temple in AD 70. And so here they are again, the defenders of Rome. against these godly men who are preaching the truth. R.C.H. Lenski in his commentary on Acts says, the New Testament is full of the records of the moral obliquity of the Jews who spurned the gospel. They consistently resort to foul, vicious, criminal means in order to crush the heralds of the gospel. Their Judaism never even makes them hesitate. This great historic fact ought to receive more attention. Men who spit upon the gospel are morally vicious, and as soon as the occasion offers, are ready to prove it. Piously, they sat in their synagogue in Thessalonica, Sabbath after Sabbath, and now they plot and execute a regular riot against Paul and Silas. No, not against pagans and idolaters, but against two former Jews who were telling them of the Messiah for whom their nation had hope for such a long time. Their motive was of the basest kind, jealousy," end quote, from Lenski in this regard. Okay, these men are taken before them. We look at their motivation, jealousy, their method, start using disreputable men to stir up the city. Their violence, they break into the house of Jason and drag the Christians before the magistrate. Their charges, the Christians are agitators against Rome and Caesar. They've turned the world upside down, the Roman world, and they're disloyal to Rome and disobedient to her laws, which the church was not. Any of the laws of Rome that were not in conflict with the law of God, they kept and taught their people to keep them. Read Romans 13. Read what the New Testament, how it approaches these things. The problem came when Caesar said, you must declare that Caesar is Lord. And the Christians couldn't do that because Jesus was Lord. But the magistrates in Thessalonica are much more prudent than those at Philippi, who just instantly took the apostles and beat them and threw them into prison. Of course, they don't have the apostles in their hands, but still they act very prudently here. They understand the nature of this situation. They probably see this rabble who's leading this. They see these Jews who are all of a sudden very zealous for Rome's glory and power, and they realize that we have got a difficult situation. We also realize that when someone is accused of treason, they as magistrates had better take it seriously. But they don't beat Jason. They don't throw he and the other brethren into prison. Rather, they take security of them. That is, they take a monetary pledge backed up, I mean, take a pledge backed up by a monetary security to do such things which we're not told what they are told to do. Some have suggested the security was that he would, they would ask Paul and Silas to leave. which we next see in the verse that they did leave. But they took the security and they let them go. And this dispersed the crowd in Thessalonica. And then we have Paul and Silas departing from there. And then they move on to go to Berea. Verse 10, looking at your outline, the departure to Berea, and then picking up the ministry in Berea, 10 to 14. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night, lest they cause a stir, be found and drugged by these lewd fellows, backed by the Jews, by night unto Berea, about a 30-mile journey. who come there went into the synagogue. There was another synagogue there and here they go. This is Paul's custom. He goes into the synagogue. Now, we see here an entirely different response by these Jews than the ones we saw in Thessalonica. And these, these in the synagogue were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily whether those things were so. Therefore, many, many Jews and full Gentile proselytes, many believed. And also the honorable women, which were of the Greeks and of the men. So here's our two groups again, the Jews and the Greeks, but also honorable women are put forward here even before the men, meaning that they may have been of the majority of the Greek proselytes in the synagogue who believed. Not a few of them, so many of the Jews believed and not a few of the Greek men and women believed. Now it's interesting, one commentator has said, the account of Thessalonica and Paul's ministry there tells us how the word should be preached. argumentation based on the scripture, exposition, preaching for a verdict, alleging certain truths. That's how you preach. They said, the same commenter said, this section tells us how you ought to receive the preaching. In Thessalonica, we see how you should preach, how you should share the truth. Here, we see how you ought to receive it, how the audience should respond. What do they do? They received the word that Paul preached with all readiness of mind. This is the idea of an open mind, an eager mind to listen to what was said and to then consider it. They were eager to hear the word preached. And then it says this though, they heard what Paul said in the synagogue where he, what did he do? The same thing he did at Thessalonica. He opened and alleged that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. They eagerly heard this message and his reasoning and his biblical expositions. But after hearing them, they realized that they needed themselves to search the scriptures and it says they did it daily. We have a Sabbath meeting one day a week, but the rest of the week, what were these honorable Jews doing? They were searching the scriptures every day to see that whether what Paul was actually teaching lined up with the scriptures. Whether these things were so, and you know what many of them found? These things were so, and they believed. because they approached the scriptures in this humble, submissive way. These were men and women who had an eagerness to hear the word and then to search it out to see if it was true, because they had to confirm it themselves. Christians who are eager listeners to the Lord's Day exposition and preaching of the church are on the right path, but they haven't gone far enough yet. They need to then take that message. They need to go to the scriptures and see whether the things that they heard from the pulpit, from the lectern, from wherever the man was standing, they need to see, is this really what the scriptures teach? That's what you need to do about today's message. You need to go back and read over it. You need to say, is this really what Luke is writing here? Or has he fabricated things? Because as you do that, you become yourself one who is in the word and the Holy Spirit. Using the teaching ministry, here it was of Paul, but then your own searching, the Holy Spirit brings those two together and you find the truth. as it is in the scriptures. And so they searched the scriptures. And the word search there is, we could use the word study. They studied the word. They probably went to Isaiah 53, if that was in truth, one of the passages Paul had given exposition of, and they read that over, and they searched it out, and they looked up the words, the definition. They looked for cross-references and strong concordance. Oh, wait a minute, there wasn't any strong concordance yet. But they sought to understand the truth as it was presented there. And here's the wonderful thing. The result of that spirit and attitude in that synagogue was that many of them believed. If you approach the scriptures in this way, Change your mind. It will change your life. And so Christianity and Christian discipleship is not one day a week Christianity. It's not one time to go and hear what the preacher has to say. Yeah, you should hear what he has to say. You should receive the sermons and the preaching with all readiness of mind, but then you need to search the scriptures yourself to see whether these things are so. You know, and I think Paul was not worried about that. He encouraged it because he knew he was speaking the truth. It's those who don't speak the truth that don't want you in your Bible. That's why the Bible was essentially banned in the darkness of the Roman Catholic era. And to even have a scriptures in your own language, which nobody really knew Latin, the common people did not know Latin, which was the whole language of the church and the Bible. If you had it in your own language, you could be punished even in some places to death. Why didn't they want the people reading the Bible? because they feared it. But those who have the truth from the scriptures do not fear to challenge people to study it. And we challenge you to study the word of God. And we see again, many believing. But what happens in verse 13? But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came thither also and did the same thing. Luke is an economy of words. They probably did the same thing. The Jews of Thessalonica probably found some compatriots of the Jews who didn't believe. Not all of them were of a noble mind. And they probably said, let's go into the marketplace. Let's find certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. And let's set the city on uproar like we did at Thessalonica, where we were able to expel those pestilent men, Paul and Silas. So they do the same tactic here. have them expelled. Well, they tried to have him expelled, Paul. The Jews, it says, of Thessalonica had knowledge. Okay, where are we at here? Okay, preached by Paul, Berea, they came to the Roshan, served the people, and then immediately the brethren sent away Paul. They sent him away. As soon as they saw the riot beginning, they said, Paul, you need to go. But it's interesting, Silas and Timothy stayed behind. This is an example where who are they trying to stop? They're trying to stop Paul. The riots are over Paul because he was the man of the hour. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was the gifted man who was preaching the word with such power. In the book of Thessalonians, Paul has a word to say. After he had left Thessalonica, and wrote to them later probably, I think it was from Corinth, we'll clarify that in the future. But here's what he says about his experience both in Thessalonica and also Berea about the Jews. For you brethren became followers of the churches of God which are in Judea in Christ Jesus. For you have also suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and have, here it is, persecuted us, this missionary team, Paul and Silas, and they please not God, and are contrary to all men. forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved. And what is this result? To fill up their sins always, for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. but we brethren being taken away from you in a short time, and then he goes on to talk about that. But here he's describing what he experienced. The ones who killed the Lord Jesus Christ and their own prophets are now persecuting us. In so doing, they please not God. In so doing, they are set against all mankind because they're trying to stop mankind from hearing the gospel that they might be saved. Therefore, they're filling up the wrath of God upon them always, leading to this coming horrible judgment that is about to break upon them in the days to come, the one our Lord prophesied. And so they leave Berea, and then, Lord willing, Next week, we will continue the thrilling story of the second missionary journey as we go into Paul's work in Athens with one of the most important sermons preached to pagans. In other words, we have examples of Paul preaching to the Jews. Here we're going to have an example of him preaching to the philosophers of Athens, a great sermon. Read that passage ahead of time. to be thinking it through and preparing for the message next week. You see, we not only want you to go home and study the scriptures after the sermon, we want you to read it before! We want you to be thinking about this text before you even come here. And we gather together to study the word of God. And so they leave Berea to go to Athens. And remember, there's a number of things to take with us today, but the two primary ones that I would remind you of is the story of the Jews in Thessalonica is the story of how excuse me, the story of the Jews in Thessalonica and what happened there is the story of how the word of God is to be preached to the lost, how Paul was to speak, how he reasoned from the scriptures, he opened and exposited the scriptures, and he sought to demonstrate from the scriptures the truth that is therein concerning Jesus Christ. Here's how the word is to be taught, preached, and shared. Berea is where we learn how the word is to be received with all readiness of mind, eagerness, attention, and then followed up by a sincere reading of the scriptures, studying the scriptures to see if these things would be so. You know, one of the other ways we could translate readiness of mind would be an openness of mind, an openness to be taught. When people are locked into a particular view and refuse, even when someone seeks to give an exposition of the text grammatically and historically grounded, cross-referenced and backed up in that way, that we refuse to open our minds to even consider for a moment that teaching because we already know it all. That is not the mind. that will lead to a dynamic Christian in their life. So how's the word to be preached? It's to be reasoned from the scripture. How are you to share it with people? Reason from the scriptures, open and allege from the scriptures the truth therein. And how is it to then be received by those who hear the word of God with all readiness of mind, searching the scriptures daily, whether those things, were so, amen. Thank you, Lord, again for this opportunity to go through the stirring tales, the history of the early church, the courage of the Apostle Paul. Bless this study to our hearts. May we not just forget about it now and go on our way, but search the scriptures daily from this Lord's day to the next to see whether these things are so, what they mean to us, and how we ought to live. In Jesus' name, amen.