What is it about the bad that seems much more tantalizing to us than the good? Mark Twain said that a lie could travel halfway around the world while the truth was still putting on its shoes. And the old maxim is that while good news travels, bad news travels fast. The mainstream media has been much maligned over the last several years because it sure seems as though it delights in telling us all the bad things going on in Iraq, with little seeming interest in reporting the good. What is it about the bad that seems much more tantalizing to us than the good? I think it’s a reflection of our fallen nature as human beings, created in the image of God, but fallen into sin, marred to our core by our sinfulness. And we’d rather hear a juicy bit of gossip than something good and wholesome; we’d rather find out the bad about someone—and spread it—than to share something good. We’re prideful and sinful and all of those things—and thus, bad news travels fast! But good news travels, and that’s exactly what’s happening in today’s narrative, the gospel—which means “good news”—traveling to two different cities and finding different receptions in each!
Paul and Silas are again traveling in territory that is unfamiliar to us; hopefully, the PowerPoint slide will give us a little grasp on where they are as they make their way through what we know as eastern Europe. One town the Bible mentions is Amphipolis; here’s a statue that was standing in Amphipolis when Paul came through; chances are his eyes gazed on it as do ours now. But we don’t have record that they missionaries did any evangelizing in either Amphipolis or Appolonia; rather, they passed on through to get to Thessalonica. Thessalonica was the capital of the province of Macedonia, the largest and most prosperous city in all the region. It lay almost exactly 100 miles southwest of Philippi. By the time Paul got there, it was a city of perhaps 200,000 people, a diverse cultural center much like Atlanta, attracting people from varying nationalities. Since it was a center of commerce and an influential city, Paul and Silas must have considered it to be strategic to planting the gospel of Christ on the entire Balkan peninsula.
As was their custom, they went to the Jewish synagogue, and the Bible says that for three days there, they told the story of the Good News Gospel of Christ. Note
An Upside-Down World marginalizes Jesus, but
I. The Gospel Centers on Jesus Christ
:1-4
They told the story of Jesus, and they further used what we call the Old Testament to attempt to persuade their Jewish listeners of this truth: the Messiah, for Whom you’ve been looking, is Jesus. These predictions, these prophecies, made hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ, were fulfilled perfectly in Him alone.
• Isaiah 53
We read earlier the prophecy of Isaiah regarding the Messiah.
• Psalms 16:8-11
8 I have set the Lord always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.
9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
or let your holy one see corruption.
11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Jesus used a similar apologetic:
Luke 24:25-27
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Question for the Jews: if not Jesus, Who? Sadly, most Jews who are devout today are still looking for that Messiah, still waiting for the One promised by God.
Look at the words used for what Paul did: “reason”, “explain”, “prove”. Proclamation and persuasion are the two elements of good preaching.
Table Talk
What is the difference between proclamation and persuasion; more importantly, what are some criteria that we should use, when sharing Christ, to help determine how persuasive we should attempt to be?
“Proclaiming” Jesus involved telling the story of His life from beginning to end. Then, he connected the dots, from the Old Testament prophecies to the life of Christ.
But the closer Paul got to Athens, the more society was influenced by Greek philosophers, and the more a different method for sharing the gospel was needed. Paul didn’t merely tell the truth, but he reasoned the truth. He fielded questions; he engaged in back-and-forth, in give-and-take, and as such sought to persuade his hearers. “Persuasion” is based upon the conviction that what we believe is true, that other approaches to God are not, and that there are eternal consequences to the decisions that we make. Some shy away from persuasion; they evoke images of intolerance and even disrespect of others in the minds of some. And yet, think about it: persuasion is at the heart of 10,000 messages we see each day; persuasion goes on all around us. As I was preparing this message, I sat in Atlanta Bread Co. There was a card on the table with messages all over it. “Put down your salad fork”, said one, urging me to indulge in a chocolate chip cookie, or a caramel brownie, or a sweet cinnamon roll, or a slice of fresh Key Lime pie. Another panel attempted to persuade me to grab a specialty coffee drink, or a 100% fruit smoothie. There was a banner trying to persuade me to purchase an Atlanta Bread Co. gift card for someone. The sports newspaper sitting on the hearth suggested that a book autographed by Richard Petty was a “must have racing collectible”. Again, an attempt to persuade! And if I know that someone who will live forever in either heaven or hell is clinging to some false belief, a belief that will send that person to hell, then persuasion is appropriate. Sure, we need to be wise and loving as we go about it, in a way that reflects respect for the person and his current belief system, but at the bottom of things, persuasion is necessary, and if I care about a person, a simple, “here’s the facts, take ‘em or leave ‘em” approach simply will not do. I want, as I share the Word with you week to week, for your mind to be changed, and for your heart to be changed, and for all of you to be changed, and for me as well; “the story will be told in the lives that are changed”, and we are seeing that very thing take place here at Red Oak, and I couldn’t be happier!
Proclaiming and persuading, the point of it all is Jesus! He is Himself the Good News; He is the message, the point of it all. And a few Jews believed; many God-fearing Gentiles did, and specifically, some of the high-standing women came to faith in Christ. Jason was probably also a Jewish convert, albeit one who had taken a Greek name. But, in what by now was becoming a pattern, the Jews were incensed by the preaching of Christ, ready to haul the missionaries out and have them arrested.
An Upside-Down World reacts against threats, so
II. The Gospel Provokes a Strong Response
:5; 13-15
The center of life in a Greek city was the Agora, or the marketplace, and as such, there would be a certain element of idle miscreants who would spend their days “hanging out”, including some of the sailors in between jobs on the high seas. And thus we read of “wicked men of the rabble” being aroused to go after Paul and Silas. That term isn’t one we use ordinarily; I thought I’d see how other translations handle it:
KJV – “lewd fellows of the baser sort”
NKJV – “evil men from the marketplace”
NLT – “worthless fellows”
NIV – “bad characters from the marketplace”
A.T. Robertson – “bums”
RVR – “hombres malos”. Just in case.
The point is that here in Thessalonica, just as we saw previously, the gospel of Jesus Christ caused a violent reaction. In this instance, though, Paul and Silas were hidden away. We see a similar reaction if we read :13-15; some of these same folks who opposed them in Thessalonica sent men to Berea to do the same. We come to understand their response when we get their perspective; we read that in verse 6: “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.” This leads us to point out:
An Upside-Down World doesn’t realize it’s Upside-Down
III. The Gospel Turns the World Right-side Up
:6
The charge being leveled, that they had “turned the world upside down”, indicated the radical social upheaval which the message of the gospel produced. In other words, the message that these missionaries were preaching turned everything topsy-turvy. But this points us to another truth, one that’s so easy for us to miss because we are accustomed to the world as it is, but the fact is that the world is, in its current status, upside-down! But upside-down looks rightside-up if it’s all you’ve ever known, and thus these men, from their perspective, make the charge: Paul and Silas are turning the world upside down.
The world is upside-down because of sin. This is a fallen and warped world.
• We are upside-down people.
o Our bodies are prone to sickness and death.
o Our minds are confused, and we use only a fraction of our brain capacity.
o Our emotions are twisted; we love the wrong things and hate the wrong things.
o We choose sin and death when we are offered life.
• Our institutions are upside-down.
o Government, a God-given institution, is broken; can we agree on that? Governments always promise more than they can deliver, because they tend not to see human nature as it really is.
o Marriage is increasingly seen as outmoded.
o The family has become whatever one wants it to become.
o All are God-given, but our sin messes them up.
We could think of a lot more things that are upside-down about this world, but here’s the point I want to make: the church is here on mission to turn an upside-down world rightside-up again by the proclamation of the gospel of Christ and the making of more and more committed followers of Jesus.
I keep coming back to Gary and Esther Smith, and what they are doing is literally turning the world upside down for the Dinangat people. Anthropologists might argue that that is a bad thing, but what if it’s true that the Dinangat culture is upside-down? What if the Dinangat people have lived their entire cultural existence believing lies, and need someone to come and set their world right-side up? This is why Gary and Esther are there; this is what they’re doing.
Distractions from the mission of turning the world upside-down:
• Politics
I have my views, and you have yours; I try to ground mine in what I believe God would have me to; hopefully, you do the same. And there’s a place for Christians to be involved in political affairs, to be sure. In his new book, They Like Jesus, But Not the Church, Dan Kimball surveys the 20-somethings in our culture and finds the title of his book to be the truth: Jesus is great, but we’re not so sure about this thing called “the church”. When asked why, a number of answers were given, but the first Kimball mentions is “the church is an organized religion with a political agenda”. But when asked in the same survey, “what would you like to see church be like”, one of the key responses was, “we wish the church taught more about.. Jesus.” Just stop and think about that for a minute…
• Doing good
There’s nothing wrong and everything right about doing good works but the point of any and all good works we might do is that we might see changed lives. Cleaning up trash on PS Road is done to serve the community but also for the community to see that Red Oak cares, that we might in a variety of ways establish a reputation for caring, that in turn we might have opportunity to tell others about the One Who alone forgives sin.
We could think of other distractions, but the point of it all is this: the world is upside-down, and it’s the gospel of Christ that alone can turn it rightside-up.
An Upside-Down World follows the wrong gods, but
IV. The Gospel Demands First Allegiance
:7-9
OK, so they couldn’t find Paul; they’d instead grab his accomplice, a man named Jason, whom they charged with harboring revolutionaries, men who were proclaiming that there was another King, another besides Caesar to Whom allegiance was due. This charge, colored with truth (but missing the point at key points) was serious, akin to treason, and would have ruined many a man.
Paul avoided the use of the words “king” and “kingdom” in his letters to the different churches, likely because of the easy possibility of misconstruing just what was involved with Christ. Yes, you’d better believe that He is a King, and that His is a real kingdom; no, in the sense of political overthrow, the followers of Jesus were not part of that kind of kingdom. Still, when it comes to allegiances, the followers of Christ must be clear: we are not first Americans, but we are first followers of Jesus, citizens of a Kingdom that transcends geographical boundaries and political allegiances. We will elect a new President this year, and each of us have our own ideas about who the best person for the job might be. There are undeniable political implications to the preaching of the gospel, the very first and foremost of which is that as Christians, we live under the rule and reign of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, and we first and foremost pledge allegiance to Him, not to this or any other country. At the same time, Paul makes it clear in Romans 13 that we have an obligation, under normal and ordinary circumstances, to obey the laws of the government under which we live, that civil government exists under the sovereign rule of God, and that we should expect punishment from that government if/when we determine not to live according to its laws.
Jesus is King, whether the rebels in Thessalonica understood that correctly or not. If we get the right king, everything else will fall into place.
We must applaud the authorities in Thessalonica for their restraint in this situation. They could only go so far; the men, Paul and Silas, who were accused of causing the trouble, were nowhere to be found! Basically, the magistrates made Jason post bond to guarantee that there’d be no recurrence of this trouble; Paul had to leave the city, and Jason and friends had to guarantee that he’d not come back, at least as long as those particular magistrates were in office. Perhaps this is what Paul is referring to when he writes the book we call I Thessalonians, where he refers in I Thess. 2:18 that he desired to go back to Thessalonica and visit the church there, but that “Satan hindered us”. Paul didn’t hesitate to attribute the works of Satan to people who stood in the way of the gospel, but that’s not unusual; so did Jesus, when He said to Peter, “get behind Me, Satan!”
The good news is that, though the fledgling church at Thessalonica was subject to subtle persecution and not-so-subtle hostility at times, it continued to flourish, and was for Paul a source of joy. On to Berea the missionaries go, where we find
An Upside-Down World is filled with doubt, thus
V. The Gospel Invites Honest Questions
:10-12
Berea, though having a sizeable population, was nonetheless considered to be a town of less importance, and off the beaten track. But the Bible says that the gospel received a far different reception from the Jews who lived in Berea. Here’s a portion of the Via Egnatia, traveled by Paul between Thessalonica and Berea.
“More noble” signifies an open-mindedness, a teachability, that the Bereans had; they were willing to listen to the gospel with open minds, but at the same time, this did not preclude critical questioning. They didn’t just take what they heard merely at face value; they searched the Scriptures to determine if the message being preached stacked up with what the Bible actually said. In fact, the word translated “examining” in :11 is a word used of judicial investigations; it’s the same word used of Herod making an investigation into the person of Jesus. It implies integrity and an absence of bias, a genuine determination to get at the truth of a matter.
Now and again, you’ll see the name of a church taken from this city: “Berean Bible Church”, or “Berean Baptist Church”, or what have you. The reason is that these people set a tremendous example for us to follow: instead of prejudicially pushing away the gospel and the teaching delivered to them by Paul, they pulled out the Scriptures that they had and searched them to determine whether or not Paul’s words matched up with what they knew God had said.
Arguably, one of the most disconcerting things about the contemporary evangelical church is our unwillingness to follow the example of the Bereans. Influenced by our “American Idol” society, many evangelicals make heroes of this preacher or that teacher, this author or that radio personality, and swallow hook, line, and sinker what is said, irrespective of its correlation to Biblical truth.
John Stott comments upon the seriousness and the diligence of both Paul and his hearers. He says that “what is impressive is that neither speaker nor hearers used Scripture in a superficial, unintelligent, or proof-texting way.” In other words, Paul didn’t just toss a little Scripture in here or there to make his point, but diligently explained it and took it seriously. Nor did he say, “just believe this, without asking questions”. To the degree that we as evangelicals have ever come off that way, we’ve been wrong. There is nothing wrong with questions; nothing. Jesus said to “count the cost” before becoming His disciple, and one of the costs that needs counting is this: can I commit myself to this gospel, because I believe it to be true?
A common caricature of Christian faith is that its appeal is mainly limited to the poor and uneducated members of society. The very first pagan author who took Christianity seriously enough to attack it, a man by the name of Celsus who wrote in the second century, made this very charge, that Christians were poor, ignorant people from the lower strata of society.” This is simply not true, and it has really never been true. Yes, the gospel of Christ is good news for the poor, as Jesus said it would be, but both in Thessalonica and in Berea, we see prominent citizens committing themselves to Christ. The fact of the matter is that the gospel of Christ has historically been embraced by rich and poor, by educated and poorly-educated alike.
These are people who recognize their need to get the Word of God into their lives, to read it and to listen to it and to allow God to work in their lives through it.
Reading in general is undervalued today. Statistics tell us that 58% of the U.S. population will never read another book in their lives after graduation; that’s astonishing to me. But for Christians, here’s a sobering statistic: 65% of Bible-believing Christians have never read the entire New Testament. Not the whole Bible, mind you, but simply the New Testament. Can I suggest that a fine and fitting goal for you this year is simply to read the New Testament, particularly if you’ve never done that? We are looking into a new way to encourage getting the Word into the lives of people here at Red Oak, but one way or another, if Value 1 is to be real and meaningful to us, being “Bible-Centered”, we will need to find a way to emulate the Bereans and allow the Word of God to get into our minds, our hearts, and our lives.
Table Talk
• The Bereans examined the Scriptures to compare what Paul was saying with what the Bible taught. Why is an “examined faith” better than an unexamined one?
• Why do you think sometimes Christians seem to give the impression that asking questions about faith is wrong, or “faithless”? Do you believe the cause of Christ would be helped or hindered if we encouraged more people to ask questions? Why do you feel as you do?
