It’s interesting that we think of Paul as someone who stands out on his own. He’s the great apostle to the Gentiles, a man who stands head and shoulders above the rest. Yet in reality he was a man who loved to work as part of a team. He started out with Barnabas, then joined up with Silas, then he invited Timothy to join them and somewhere around Troas, Luke appears to have joined them for a time. So Paul was far from a solo agent. In fact by the end of this section we find him alone, but urging Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.
But we begin the chapter with Paul, Silas and Timothy travelling from Philippi to Thessalonica, about 160km south west of Philippi. It was a port and capital of Macedonia, so a centre of trade and therefore a strategic place for preaching the gospel.
When they got there, despite having decided he’d now go to the Gentiles, Paul still goes first to the Jewish synagogue. As we saw last week in Philippi, Paul obviously took the approach that if he wanted to preach the gospel the place to start was with those who were already on their way to knowing God. So he starts at the synagogue. And what did he do there? He did three things.
First, he "argued with them from the scriptures, 3explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead."
That word "proving" means literally to lay alongside. That is, he laid the Old Testament Scriptures alongside the events of Jesus birth, life, death and resurrection. And in a moment we’ll think about what it was that he might have pointed them to.
Secondly he proclaimed Jesus. See v3: "This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you." He would have both taught them about Jesus life and teaching, his miracles, his ministry, and about the fact that he had died but then had risen again. In a sense Jesus was the sole content of his proclamation. As Peter said back in Acts 4: "there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."
But thirdly, Paul proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ. The Jesus of history is the Messiah of the Old Testament Scriptures. This of course is what the Jews in the next town, Berea, spend their time checking out. Look at v11: "11These Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so." Luke describes these Jews as more receptive. In fact you could say it’s even more positive than that. They don’t just come on the Sabbath to hear Paul. They come every day to listen and study the Scriptures that point to Jesus as the Christ.
Now what was it that they might have studied? Well, it’s interesting to remember what Jesus did on the first Easter Day when he met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Do you remember? He said "how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures." Later, when he appeared to the disciples in the upper room he said: "’These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you -- that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, ’Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’" But still that doesn’t exactly answer the question does it? So perhaps we can look at 1 Cor 15: Here’s what Paul wrote to the Corinthian church: "Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, ... 3For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 4and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve." This was the core message of the gospel that he proclaimed wherever he went. Jesus, the historical Jesus who died and rose, who was seen by countless witnesses, was the one the Scriptures point to as the one who would come to take away our sin. So you can imagine him opening up Isaiah 52 and 53, to the so-called ’servant song’ and showing how it referred to Jesus: "52:14Just as there were many who were astonished at him --so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of mortals-- 15so he shall startle many nations; kings shall shut their mouths because of him; ... 53:3He was despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces he was despised, and we held him of no account. 4Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted." Or he might have referred to the writings of Zechariah: 9:9: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth." Or 12:10: "I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn." 13:1: "On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity." We could go on and on. If you were here on Easter Day you’ll remember that we spent the whole sermon that day looking at a series of Old Testament passages that had a parallel in Jesus’ life.
And notice that they studied these texts in detail. There’s no sense of proof-texting here. One of the great dangers in the church today is when someone pulls out a proof text to support their case without any contextualisation, without any reference to the setting in which the words were used originally.
I was at a seminar last week where the speakers were talking about the rise of the religious right in America and this was one of the criticisms they raised: that so much of the rhetoric of the Christian right in America (and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s creeping in here as well) is addressed to Christians on the basis of proof texts that are often taken quite out of context and used for a purpose that the original writer may well have cringed at.
But Paul, here in Berea, argues from the Scriptures over a period of days as his hearers debate and study it for themselves until they’re convinced. You know, there’s an element in the church that looks down on an intellectual approach to faith, as though a reasoned out faith is a second rate faith. Sometimes this comes out of the belief that it’s intellectuals who have created the liberal stream of Christianity that in the end has given up much of the core of Christian belief. But here we can see that Paul encourages his hearers to use their minds in examining his claims for Jesus as the promised Messiah and in the end it bears fruit.
Mind you, it may take people with open minds like this group in Berea before we’ll see those minds being changed. We certainly see a contrast between Thessalonica and Berea don’t we? In Thessalonica, some were persuaded to join him while the majority were not. But in Berea many believed, including, again, a number of leading women.
Just like Lydia in Philippi, Luke points out that the first converts in Thessalonica and Berea include a number of women of high standing. Luke seems to have a particular interest in the way the gospel brings a change to the way women are considered in the life of the Church. In his gospel account of Jesus’ ministry he interleaves encounters with men and encounters with women. Here again in Acts he goes out of his way to tell us that women were an important part of the early Church.
Now it’s interesting to reflect on the possibility that this was in response to Paul’s own awareness of the changed status of women in the church. Despite the fact that he gives strict instructions to Timothy that women are not to have authority over men in the church at Ephesus, which may have been due to particular social or religious issues there, elsewhere he’s much more inclusive. For example, in the list of his fellow workers in Romans 16, nearly a third of those he mentions, including prophets and at least one apostle, are women. In Philippi, he has no hesitation in sharing the gospel with Lydia or accepting her offer of hospitality for him and his companions and then for the new church that’s just sprung up there.
So it’s just possible that Luke’s interest in the role of women in the church derived from what he learnt from Paul himself. What’s more, as we’ll see in a moment, Timothy, who’s now accompanying Paul on his missionary journey, came to faith largely through his mother and grandmother.
In any case, numbers of people were converted until the opposition of the Jews became such as to force Paul to move on.
As has happened before, the Jews in Thessalonica become jealous of Paul. He’s far too popular for his own good. He receives far too much attention as a result of this new and refreshing approach he takes and particularly this news of the Messiah. So they stir up the locals until a mob forms, led by a bunch of ruffians who have nothing better to do than to start a riot. In the end they can’t find Paul, but instead bring out Jason to face the city magistrates.
The charge against Paul is interesting, isn’t it? "These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also." The charge is that Paul is a revolutionary. His message is such as to cause radical upheaval to the social order.
It’s interesting to reflect on the fact that over 20 centuries the Christian message has changed from being a revolutionary message that governments might be concerned about to one that supports the social and cultural norms, that can be used by political leaders to support their social and political agenda even if those agendas have nothing to do with the love and compassion and grace of the gospel. Do we need to rethink what constitutes a Christian worldview today? Do we need to be more radical in our voicing of Christian values and in the way we live them out?
Anyway the upshot of this trial is that Jason is put on bail. This probably means that he’s made to give an undertaking that Paul will stop his revolutionary teaching. So the believers decide to send Paul and Silas off to Berea before anything else happens to them. The same thing happens in Berea except that this time Paul goes off to Athens on his own, leaving Silas and Timothy to continue the work of teaching the new believers. And the chapter ends with Paul sending a message for them to come and join him.
Well, finally, I want to think for a moment about the role of Timothy in this missionary enterprise. We know a little bit about Timothy from here and from Paul’s letters to him. Paul writes to Timothy, probably some 15 years later and addresses him as a young man. So when these events took place he may well have still been a teenager, maybe 17 or 18 (30 was the age of an adult). Yet Paul takes him along with him as a partner. He was spoken of well by his fellow Christians in Lystra and Iconium, so Paul obviously saw him as a young man of potential. His father was a Greek. That is, he was probably a pagan, and at this stage was probably dead. His mother and grandmother, though, were Jews who had become Christians. And they’d taught him well. In his 2nd letter to Timothy Paul reminds him "how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." (2 Tim 3:15) [Notice, again, the role of women in the building up of the church.]
So here was a young man, who had been taught well by the two women in his life, ready to go off with Paul to learn how to preach the gospel. And Paul takes him under his wing. This is a great example for us, I think. Paul could have said he was too young, that he needed more time to mature. In fact you get the impression reading his letters to Timothy 15 years later that even then Timothy was still in the process of maturing. Even then some people were saying he was too young. But still, he takes him with him.
His model, of course, is Jesus himself, who chose 12 very average people to be his disciples and who bore with them despite their inability to understand the simplest things, despite their immaturity or their lack of faith, because he knew that God would give them the gifts they needed when the time came.
We live in an age when professionalism is seen as the most important thing. There was a time when certain roles in society were fulfilled by trained practitioners, people who’d done an apprenticeship or on the job training of one sort or another. But now, unless you’ve done a university degree you’re not qualified. And that sort of thinking has crept into the church as well. In some churches public ministry is restricted to those who’ve completed a certain level of training. Of course training is important, and for some roles, some positions, within the church you do need the right qualifications. But we need to be careful that we don’t exclude people with gifts because they fail some artificial criterion. Paul might well have excluded Timothy on the grounds of age. Jesus might have excluded half his disciples on the grounds of education. But we need to allow the space for people to grow into ministry, to discover their gifts. That’s one of the things I love about the way our children’s and youth ministries are conducted here. Young people are encouraged to exercise their gifts and to discover what they’re good at; and to grow in ministry as they do it, just as Timothy did.
Well that’s all I want to say today. What we’ve discovered is that Paul centres his message on the historic Jesus, arguing from Scripture that he’s the Messiah. He persuades people by careful argument, opening the Scriptures to allow people to discover the truth for themselves. And he works as a leader of a team, including in that team both the experienced Silas and the youthful Timothy. And, as a result, men and women are converted and the church continues to grow.
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