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  (ACTS) REASONING FROM THE SCRIPTURE
  by Brian Brodersen
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Summary: Paul's message of the Christ's suffering and resurrection was
met with both persuasion and persecution in Thessalonica.

Duration: 51:40 Topics: "Biblical Authority", "Evangelism Strategies"

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DESCRIPTION
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In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of following the
example of the Bereans in studying and seeking the Lord. He encourages
the congregation to not be intimidated by the increasing intolerance in
the world towards the Christian faith. The speaker emphasizes the need
to focus on the Word of God rather than getting caught up in worldly
wisdom and political debates. He highlights how Paul strategically chose
key cities to spread the gospel, knowing that people passing through
would be influenced by the solid church communities established there.
The speaker also mentions the significance of Christ's suffering and
resurrection, which the Jewish people should have known but missed.

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CONTENT
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Let's open up tonight to Acts once again, this evening to the 17th
chapter. And as we come to chapter 17, we're just right back in the
thick of all the excitement of Paul's second missionary journey. And so
let's have a quick word of prayer and then we'll jump into it.

And now, Lord, again, as we come to this exciting adventure that you've
had penned for us of the life of Paul and those things that were
happening during that time, the churches that were being planted and how
the gospel was being spread. Lord, we pray once again tonight that you
would inspire us and Lord, that as we behold these men and the activity
and what they were doing so long ago to remember and to realize that,
Lord, that work still being carried on today by us. And so, Lord, move
us tonight, speak to us, challenge us.

Lord, all those things we want you to do by your spirit this evening, we
pray. Amen. Amen.

So chapter 17 of Acts, Paul has left Philippi. And there in Philippi, as
you remember, perhaps if you were studying with us, they encountered
some pretty intense persecution, ended up being beaten, ended up being
thrown into prison. But yet we saw how the Lord's hand was in it and how
God used even their imprisonment to bring the Philippian jailer and his
family to the Lord.

And then, of course, there was that beautiful work that began there in
the house of Lydia. So having left now Philippi, actually having been
requested to leave by the magistrates, they are heading now southwest in
an endeavor to come to the city of Thessalonica. And so we read in verse
one of 17, chapter 17.

Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to
Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Remember, in
Philippi, there was no synagogue and therefore they went to the
riverside where there were a few Jewish people who were having a time of
prayer. But because there were evidently not 10 men in the community,
there was no synagogue.

But Thessalonica was a different story. Thessalonica had a thriving
Jewish community. And so there was a synagogue there and that's the
first place the apostle Paul would stop.

So then Paul, as his custom was, he went into them and for three
Sabbaths, he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and
demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the
dead. So Paul goes into the synagogue and he reasons with them from the
scriptures. You know, that's what's to be happening in a church, a
gathering together of God's people, a place of worship.

The scriptures are to have a prominent place within the worship service
of God's people. And of course, we do have that here. And that's, I
believe, one of the main reasons why God is so blessed.

The work of Calvary Chapel right here at Costa Mesa and all throughout
the world, because we are honoring the word of God, because we're
setting forth the word of God as the priority within the life of the
Christian. And we're seeking to expound it and to meditate on it and to
understand it and to obey it. And that, of course, is what the Lord
desires and that's what he blesses.

So Paul reasons with them from the scriptures. He doesn't reason
philosophically with them. He doesn't talk to them about the political
situation there in Thessalonica.

He doesn't get caught up into that sort of thing, which is an easy thing
sometimes to get caught up in. And there's a big temptation at times for
church leaders to sort of, you know, get off on tangents and be talking
about everything else you've probably noticed as you know, those of you
that come to the study here on Saturday night with me or maybe you come
out on Monday night, you've probably noticed that I don't get a whole
lot of or I don't get involved a whole lot in current events and
statistics and politics and those kinds of things. Sometimes we'll make
references to those sorts of things.

But the way I figure it is that if you want information about that
stuff, you can turn on the news. You don't need to come to the church to
get my perspective on it. But I figure if you're coming to the church,
you're not coming to get a news report.

You're coming to get fed the word of God. And so that's what we aim to
do, to stick with the scriptures and to unfold them to you, because
that's where life is. You know what I mean? You can get all this
information, you can get human wisdom and philosophy and you can get a
political perspective and all of that, you know, but at the end of the
day, it just what what does it do? It doesn't have that transforming
power.

And sometimes I like to get in political debate and things of that
nature. But yet when I do that, I find that, you know, I if I walk away
from it without interjecting something about the Lord, I walk away from
it feeling like what a waste. I might have just proven that my point was
better than their point.

But what what's the difference? What does it really matter? And so the
scriptures, that's where we want to stay focused. So that's what Paul
was doing. And he was explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had
to suffer and rise again from the dead.

Now, you see, this is something that the Jewish people should have
known. But yet they missed it and they missed it because. They didn't
really want to see it.

They were looking for something else from God, they were looking for God
to take care of all of their problems on an external level, but they
weren't necessarily all that concerned about their own personal
spiritual condition. And so when they studied the scriptures and when
they, you know, would gather together, it was all, you know, pretty much
about how this can help me get on better in life or how this can help me
to prosper among the Jews. There was really in some way sort of a
prosperity doctrine.

They believe that if God's blessing was upon your life, it was indicated
by material prosperity. And they saw that as being directly connected to
your faithfulness to keeping the law. And there were there were certain
promises in the scriptures that would have led them to draw those kinds
of conclusions.

But there were also many other things that the scriptures were speaking
about that they were missing. They were overlooking the scriptures, were
speaking about the bigger issues of sin and separation from God and
impending judgment and how that was all going to be resolved. And that,
of course, was the message that was woven into the Old Testament about
the Messiah, that the Christ, that he would come and that he would
suffer and that he would rise again from the dead.

So to people that you would have expected to know this stuff, Paul has
to go back to the scriptures and show them, look, this is what our
scriptures really teach about the Messiah. You see, because their view
of the Messiah was reduced to he was pretty much a political savior. He
was someone who was going to come and overthrow the Roman yoke and set
up an everlasting Jewish kingdom and they were going to rule the world.

And that was that was what they were anticipating. But Paul comes and he
says, oh, no, you don't understand. Let me show you from the scriptures.

And he goes back to the scriptures and he shows them how the Christ had
to suffer and to rise again from the dead. And then he continues on
saying this, Jesus, whom I preach to you, he is the Christ. So really he
had a twofold objective.

First of all, to convince them that the scriptures taught that the
Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. That was his first
objective. And secondly, it was to show them that Jesus of Nazareth had
fulfilled the requirements of the Messiah laid down in the Old Testament
through his life.

And so Paul would go through and rehearse the life of Jesus. He probably
would have began with the birth of Jesus, how he came through the Virgin
Mary, how he was part of the tribe of Judah, the tribe through which
redemption would come, how he belonged to the Davidic line. He was part
of that kingly heritage and really the heir to Israel's throne.

And then he would have gone on to talk about his suffering that was
prophesied in Isaiah, but fulfilled through his crucifixion and so
forth. And so this is what Paul spent his time doing there in the
synagogue in Thessalonica for three consecutive Sabbath days. And some
of them were persuaded and a great multitude of the devout Greeks and
not a few of the leading women joined Paul and Silas.

So after three weeks of ministering in the synagogue, there were some
positive results. There were some among the Jews that were persuaded,
but a great multitude of the devout Greeks. Now, remember, in the
synagogues, it was obviously, you know, initially and predominantly a
Jewish environment.

But there were many Greeks or non-Jews, Gentiles who had become
disillusioned and discontented with their various religious expressions,
the Greek religions, the Greek philosophies, the Roman religions, the
Roman philosophies and all these things. Of course, like the equivalent
today, these things don't answer the deeper issues within the human
heart. And so there were many Greeks that were attracted to the
synagogue because of this message of the one God.

And they were embracing that and they were generally the ones who were
the first to lay hold of the message when the apostles would come and
preach Jesus. And so a great multitude of the devout Greeks and also a
large number of the leading women. The leading women in the community,
they also joined themselves to Paul and Silas.

Now, just to back up for a second, the city of Thessalonica was really
the the key city of that area of Macedonia. It was a free city and it
was the leading city in that particular area. And one of the very
significant things about it is the main road known as the Via Ignatia
that ran from the Middle East all the way into deep into Europe, passed
right through Thessalonica.

And so Thessalonica was one of those sort of crossroad places. It was a
place where people from all over the world would pass through. And so
Paul.

Would often go to a place like that, he would try to get into key places
where he knew that if he could have an influence in that city, the
influence would quickly spread beyond the city because of, you know,
this sort of a situation that people are going to be passing through.
And if there could be a solid church developed in that community, then.
What a great opportunity for the word to be spread out from there all
over the world, because people are going to be passing through, they're
going to stop in at the church, they're going to get a solid witness
from people in the community, and then they're going to go back to where
they came from and they're going to take that with them.

And I really I like that perspective that Paul had, and I tend to agree
that that is an exciting sort of an opportunity to be able to establish
a ministry in a place like that. That was much the case for us when we
were pastoring in London, having people from all over the world and, you
know, many, many times having people come and be there for a period of
time. And then I remember several occasions where people would come
after months and months of studying with us and they would say something
like, well, I've been here in London, I've been working and in the
course of my time here, I discovered your church and God has really
touched my life through the Bible.

And now I'm going to go back to my nation and I want to take this
message with me. And that was always so thrilling to hear that sort of
thing. That's what Paul was seeking to accomplish as he went into
Thessalonica.

So there's there's a good response after these these sessions in the
synagogue. But. As was often the case, the Jews who were not persuaded,
becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace and
gathering a mob, they set all the city in uproar.

This would happen quite often. As Paul would go from place to place, he
would generally find that there would be a warm reception from the
Gentiles, but a lot of opposition and resistance coming from the Jews.
And now here we find that the Jews who didn't believe they became
envious.

You see, in this sort of a community, these Jews in the synagogue, they
they did have a bit of a prestigious position. Among those Gentiles who
were seeking after truth and would come and join themselves, they would
come into a synagogue and the Jews, of course, would be highly respected
by them. Because after all, they learned that that the Jews were the
chosen people.

And so many of the Gentiles would would look up to the Jews and admire
them and make large contributions to their synagogues and things of that
nature. But now Paul and Silas come into town and a lot of these
prominent Greeks, they're now leaving the synagogue. They're going with
these guys because they're hearing a message that is telling them that
they can have a relationship with the God of Israel, not on a, you know,
sort of a second class citizen basis like they were as proselytes in the
synagogue, but they could have a direct relationship.

And so they were leaving the synagogue to go and worship with the
apostles, and this made the Jews angry and caused them to become
envious. And so they took evil men from the marketplace, the loafers,
the those guys that would just hang around looking for trouble,
basically. And in well, you can find this anywhere, I guess, but, you
know, in places even today where there is sort of a marketplace or a
central part of the community, a lot of times you'll you'll see these
kinds of people just loafing around, doing nothing, really just looking
for excitement and quite often looking to get in trouble.

And, you know, if there's any sort of. Dastardly thing that they can get
involved in there, they're quick to do it, and that was the case back
then as well. And so they gathered a mob and they set all the city in an
uproar and they attacked the house of Jason and sought to bring them out
to the people.

So Jason evidently was someone who was housing the apostles and probably
there was some Bible study and that sort of thing going on in his home.
Somehow they identified Jason with them, so they attacked his house.
This mob did.

But when they did not find them, Paul and Silas, they dragged Jason and
some of the brethren to the rulers of the city. So they come in to
Jason's house, they ransacked the place looking for Paul and Silas,
they're not there. And so they dragged Jason off to the magistrates, to
the rulers.

Now, just on an incidental side note, the word rulers here. Is an
interesting word from the Greek, it's polytarchs. And the interesting
thing about this is.

It rarely occurs. It doesn't occur at all again in the New Testament,
but it rarely occurred even in the literature of the day. Now, as I've
mentioned before, in our study of the Acts of the Apostles, like many
other books of the Bible, there have been the critics who have attacked
it and they've often tried to show that Luke didn't really know what he
was talking about, or perhaps the author of Acts was somebody who lived
at a much later date.

And they try to discount the validity of the book of the Acts. And
interestingly, this one word had caused many of the skeptics to say, oh,
you see, we knew all the time that this was fraudulent. Luke refers to
these polytarchs there.

That was not a title by which any of the officials would have gone at
that time and in that region. That's what they would say. But as is so
often the case with the passing of time and with archaeological
discoveries and so forth, they have found that that's exactly the title
that the rulers in Thessalonica went by in Thessalonica alone.

The other the other areas, the other cities, no one would use that
title, but in that specific place, they would use that title. And so far
from Luke being inaccurate, not knowing anything that he was talking
about, Luke proves to be totally accurate and shows that the skeptics
don't know what they're talking about. So they were brought before these
polytarchs, these rulers, and they were crying out as they brought them
forward.

These who have turned the world upside down have come here to these who
have turned the world upside down now. That is the translation that
we're familiar with, those of us who have been reading the Bible for a
while, we've we've heard that term many times, those who have turned the
world upside down. But, you know, actually, that is not the best
translation of what they said.

And it's important to bring this out because there was something very,
very serious that was going on here, something that could have resulted
in the condemnation of the apostles. Had these rulers been of a
different mindset, this could have led to the arrest and execution of
the apostles. Because what was actually being claimed here by the
leaders of the mob was that these men were inciting revolt against the
emperor.

They were accusing them of treason and treason, of course, was
punishable by death. So it wasn't really that they were acknowledging
that they had turned the world upside down or right side up, as we have
often thought would be a better way to look at it. But what they were
really doing was saying these who have upset the civilized world.

These who are causing political insurrection, they have come here to us
now and they are seeking to do that here in our midst, so they were
trying to get these guys arrested on the charge of treason, which would
have resulted in their condemnation, which would have resulted in their
death. Now, Jason, they went on to say, has harbored them and so they're
wanting to implicate Jason in the whole thing. And these are all acting
contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king,
Jesus.

So now remember, the Jews are behind this, these these disgruntled Jews
who have lost their some of their key supporters out of the synagogue.
They are wanting to get these guys killed. And so they're basically, you
know, seeking to convince the magistrates that that these guys are
trying to overthrow the empire.

They're revolutionaries, they're trying to bring in a new government
under this king, Jesus. You know, it's interesting that back. At the
very trial of Jesus, we find similar kinds of things being said by the
Jewish leaders at the time.

They they were saying this man, he's making himself a king and they were
seeking to pit Jesus against Caesar even back when Jesus was on trial
there. And perhaps you remember as Pilate was trying Jesus and as he
was, you know, really seeking to release him because he knew he was
innocent and he knew that it was only because of envy that they had
delivered him up. He at one point he said, you know, he presented to he
presented Jesus to them and he was seeking to appeal to them that they
might have some sort of mercy because he had been beaten.

He'd been he had been severely whipped and been crowned with the thorns
and all of that. And he was trying to appeal to some mercy. And he says,
look, behold, the man.

And, you know, he and Pilate says, this is your king. And they began to
chant. We have no king but Caesar.

That was under the direction of the high priest. That's how wicked the
leadership of Israel had become at that time. And we see here these
leaders of the synagogue are doing the same thing here.

They're basically pitting Jesus against Caesar. And so they troubled the
crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So when
they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

So the magistrates, these politics that we mentioned earlier, the
rulers, they thank God, were much more rational about the whole thing.
And rather than buying into this lie that that they were trying to pass
off regarding the apostles, they simply took a financial deposit from
Jason and said, look, these guys that are staying with you need to get
out of town. And if we find them, you're out the money.

So he probably had to put down a substantial amount of money. And that
was a guarantee that this kind of activity would not continue on in the
community. That's basically how they dealt with it.

And so the brethren then immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night
and they went then to Berea. Now, a question arises that I think is
somewhat interesting, and therefore we ought to quickly address it. The
question arises, how much time did Paul spend in Thessalonica? There's
the reference to the three Sabbath days.

And because of that, some people have concluded that all of this took
place in a three week period of time. But it doesn't seem to me that
that would really be the case. Luke is famous for being very, very brief
and passing over sometimes long periods of time in one sentence.

He will cover sometimes a couple of years. And I would think myself that
it was probably more like six months to a year that the apostles
ministered in Thessalonica. But initially there was this three week
stint in the synagogue.

Luke doesn't go into detail about what they did after the three weeks in
the synagogue, but there are a number of reasons why I believe that it
was a longer period than three weeks. Reason number one is because the
Philippian church on two occasions sent support to Paul while he was in
Thessalonica. It would have been difficult if that for that to even
happen in a three week period of time.

It would have been impossible. It was a hundred mile journey between the
two places. And so yet the Philippians sent to Paul, Paul mentions it in
his epistle to them on two different occasions.

Also, Paul, in writing to the Thessalonians later, he referred to the
fact that he supported himself while he was there through manual labor.
So Paul evidently got a part time job while he was in town. And so he
gets support from the Philippians.

He's got a part time job that, of course, is not going to fit into a
three week period. And then thirdly, as we go into the letters of Paul
to the churches of of the Thessalonians, what we find ultimately is that
the majority of converts were Gentiles from an idolatrous background.
And yet that connection with the Gentiles isn't even really mentioned by
Luke here in his account of the ministry there in Thessalonica.

And so it was probably a longer period of time, six to nine months,
maybe even about a year, perhaps. But a couple of other side points,
Paul, in ministering to. The believers there.

Or, you know, establishing this church and teaching them, one of the
interesting things that comes out in the Thessalonian epistles is that
Paul taught them a lot about the end times, he taught them a lot about
the second coming of Christ. And actually, the first and the second
letter to the Thessalonians are our key. Bits of information for us in
the New Testament regarding the events of the last days, we have
teaching regarding the rapture, we have teaching regarding the coming of
the Antichrist and his ultimate destruction, teaching regarding the
second coming of the Lord.

And the thing that I find intriguing about this is that. That would have
been itself somewhat of a risky thing to do at the time, you know, the
Roman emperors, like most rulers, were paranoid, they were very paranoid
about somebody coming along and usurping their authority. Remember back
at the birth of Jesus, Herod was the king of Judea at the time, and
these wise men come from the east and they come to Herod.

And do you remember the question they asked him? They said, can you tell
us where he that is born the king of the Jews might be? And that sent
Herod into a total fit. He was the king of the Jews, what are they
talking about? But in his paranoia, you remember, he kind of played
along with it because he wanted to find out more about this. And later
on, he would send his soldiers into that area of Bethlehem to slay all
the all of the male children two years old and under seeking to protect
his own throne.

And the same was true with the emperors. Augustus and Tiberius both had
given decrees. That you could not speak in a predictive manner.

About any sort of coming kingdom or anything like that, that was
actually a decree from Caesar, Tiberius stated that if a person were to
speak predictively, that person was to be executed. So Paul, he was very
bold. He went into these places and he did preach predictively.

He did preach that there was a coming kingdom. He did preach that there
was a king besides Caesar. And these, of course, would be the things
that would have eventually gotten the Christians into the big trouble
that led to the great persecutions.

But, you know, it's still true today in the communist countries. There
is no freedom to teach the scriptures or to proclaim another kingdom or
another king. One of the first things that they would begin to forbid in
totalitarian countries was the teaching of the prophetic books of the
Bible.

It would start with that and then eventually, of course, it would just
go to a prohibition against teaching the scriptures at all. But often it
would start with those prophetic books. Because of the threat to, you
know, that particular regime that was established, so that's what Paul
was involved in doing.

Another thing that was. Common at the time was that the the political
leaders and, of course, many of the religious leaders greatly frowned
upon any attempt to bring people from one religion to another
proselytizing was greatly frowned upon. They felt that you ought to just
leave everybody to their own religion and because, you know, when you
start interfering, then you start creating the possibility of social
disruption and things of that nature.

And so they were very much much against that kind of thing going on.
These guys, the apostles, had to go against the tide of the culture.
That's the point that I'm making to you.

And we're finding more and more that that kind of thing is happening
today. History just repeats itself over and over again. But we're
hearing so much about that today, this whole thing of proselytizing that
that is a bad thing, that you should just let people believe what they
were brought up believing and you shouldn't disturb that or challenge
that.

And we need to just be quiet. And they're actually hoping to pass laws
that would prohibit people from spreading their religion and presenting
their religion as as, you know, better than another religion or that
sort of thing. Can you believe it? People in our country are
contemplating those kinds of things.

Politicians, people in power, they want to see those kinds of laws
enacted. Where no one can say that Jesus is the only way to God, they're
actually discussing that in some political environments, getting rid of
that sort of thing. So things haven't changed, but like the apostles of
old, we we have to just go against the tide so much of the time.

And we can't be swayed by public opinion, we can't be pressured into
compromising, but I'm afraid that many times that is what happens even
with Christian people. I was standing out in front of the office
yesterday, a lady came up and told us a quick story about how she's been
put on sort of involuntary leave from her job two or three different
times without pay because she has dared to interject her Christian faith
into her workplace. And then which, you know, that was unfortunate, but
she seemed to be pretty resilient, she wasn't all that concerned about
it.

But the the more troubling thing was when she was telling us that her
superiors, her immediate superiors are Christians as well. And they're
the ones that are writing her up and they're the ones that are bringing
this kind of discipline against her. Although they're professing
Christians.

They're they're going with the the politically correct party line,
separation of church and state, they say, oh, you can't talk about Jesus
on the job. You know, this is where as Christian people, we have to
realize that we have a higher allegiance. Our allegiance is to be to God
and for the most part, we certainly are to obey the laws of the land.

Christians are to be lawful people. But when the laws begin to come into
conflict with the commandment of God, that's when we have to draw the
line. And some people say, oh, but you don't know, I if I if I did that,
I might lose my job and I've got all these bills I need to pay and all,
you know, this responsibility, I can't afford to be out of work.

I I've got to I've got to just toe the line in this area. I can't let my
Christian faith come in and interfere with my job. That's the person
who's not trusting God, don't you think that God can take care of you? I
would be willing to bet that God had even a better job for you if you
got fired from one for standing up for him.

The Lord's not going to let you sink, he's going to take care of you,
he's going to bless you, he'll move you on to something else. But a lot
of times we let those kinds of things intimidate us and hold us back and
keep us from speaking out when we should speak out. There's a lot of
pressure in our culture today to be quiet, isn't there? Just, you know,
don't rock the boat.

Don't say anything that's going to upset anybody. Don't, you know, don't
give the impression that people need to take Jesus seriously. But we
have to do that, that's what we're called to do, that's what this whole
thing is all about.

And sometimes you end up in trouble when you do it. Paul was always in
trouble, but, you know, he just seemed to go with the flow, he seemed to
roll with the punches. And so they took him and they basically kicked
him out of Thessalonica.

We don't know that Paul ever made it back. He wanted to go back, he
wrote them and expressed his deep desire to return and visit them. But
he said an interesting thing.

He said, you know, we've many times sought to come back to you, but
Satan has hindered us. And I think Paul saw through that whole thing
that had gone on there and the decisions that came down from from the
rulers and probably there was a legal decision that was made. These guys
were probably banned from the city.

It was a legal ban that they couldn't alter. But Paul looked at that and
saw that as as Satan's work, keeping him out. But the Lord still did a
great work in that place.

And if you read, I'd encourage you to read the Thessalonian letters,
because Paul goes on to talk about even though they were in the midst of
persecution. The believers there suffered after the apostles left, that
their testimony went out in a powerful way to that entire region. But
they were sent away from there and they went by night to Berea.

Now, when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews once
again into the synagogue. Now, Berea was a considerably different kind
of a place where, as we've been saying, Thessalonica was, you know, sort
of a cosmopolitan, the whole world passing through there. Berea was more
of a, you know, off the beaten path kind of a place.

But that's where Paul ended up, probably because he was aware of the
fact that there was a synagogue there. And so they went into the
synagogue and they began to speak to the Jews. And notice what it says
in verse 11.

It says these were more fair minded than those in Thessalonica in that
they received the word with all readiness. And search the scriptures
daily to find out whether these things were so. So he commends the Jews
in Thessalonica, in Berea, he says they were actually more fair minded.

You see, what Paul is saying is that these guys were not going to make a
decision before they had heard the facts. What what he's implying is
that in Thessalonica, many of them had already made up their mind and
they didn't want to be confused by the facts. You know, we meet people
like that all the time, don't we? People that they just don't want to
know, they don't want to hear it.

And instead of listening and considering, maybe they're wrong, maybe
their position is wrong, maybe their view about Jesus Christ, the Bible,
Christianity, maybe maybe they've got it wrong. They don't want to know.
They don't want to hear anything.

They're just completely closed minded. That's tragic. It's unfortunate.

It's sad. There are a lot of people like that, though, but these in
Berea, they were not like that. They weren't gullible, they weren't
ready to just take anything the apostle said, it just say, OK, well, if
you said it, that's it.

And we're not even going to question it. They weren't like that, but
they were willing to listen to what he said and then to go back and
research it and see if this guy was telling the truth. And that's the
way a smart person approaches these kinds of issues.

The wise person listens and considers, and before that person makes a
decision, they research it themselves, they look into it, they find out,
are these things true? I wonder how many people we could find if we were
to go out searching. How many people we could find that have dismissed
the claims of Christ. The message of the gospel without ever giving it
any serious thought themselves, I would imagine we could find thousands
upon thousands of people.

They just take everything on hearsay and, you know, you run into this
all the time. You meet people that when they find out you're a
Christian, they say things like, oh, how can you believe the Bible, man?
Don't you know, it's full of contradictions and you say, well, can you
give me an example? Oh, well, there's lots of them, you know, I you
know, well, I know. But could you just give me one? Well, no, you know,
and then the more you talk, the more you find out they don't they've
never looked into it.

They don't know if they've just heard somebody say that. And so they'll
make these kinds of claims, all the Bible's scientifically inaccurate,
it's been proven really. Well, can you give me some evidence for it? Oh,
well, there's tons of it out there, you know.

Well, can you just give me like one example? Well, you know, and no, you
can't because it's not. But people go with that, and I think you could
do that with a number of things, I would imagine, but this is the one
thing you can't do it with because your eternal destiny is in the
balance. You can do it with it, but it's surely a stupid thing to do.

This is the one thing that you really need to consider, because if the
claims of Jesus Christ are true. Then he's the one person in the
universe you need to be mostly concerned with. If they're not true, then
you can just dismiss it and go on your merry way.

But you ought to really make sure they're not true if you think they're
not before you dismiss it. And that's what these people in Berea did.
They were fair minded, they were they weren't unreasonable.

In other words, they received the word with all readiness and they
searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Now, of course, they found out that they were so. They found out that
what the apostle was saying was exactly what the scriptures had said.

And when a person takes the time to do the research, that is indeed what
you find, that the scriptures are trustworthy, that the Christian faith
is viable, that it's historically verifiable, that it's a completely
reasonable proposition. There's nothing unreasonable about it at all.
When you look at what's said, when you look at what the scriptures
declare and you look at the results of it and all those things, I mean,
to me, the Christian faith is the most reasonable proposition in the
world.

And I just can't believe that anybody would reject it. It just seems to
me that you have to put your reason on the shelf to take that position.
One of the things that I think it's important to point out.

Is that. These Bereans were allowed to challenge the apostle, they were
free to question. That's the mark of true religion.

A characteristic of true religion is that it allows itself to be
examined. That is not true of the false religious systems, you can't
examine them, you can't question them. If you were a Muslim and you went
into one of the clerics.

And you began to question the Koran. Oh, this would be very, very
troubling. You can't question you must take the word of the leaders and
they speak with absolute dogmatic authority.

That this is the word of God and there is no questioning it, period. And
that's true. Of the various religions of the world, it's true of the
cults.

You can't have honest inquiry, you can't really have questions, you
can't challenge, you can't look and say, well, wait, you know, I don't
see that that seems wrong to me, that doesn't seem to hold water, that
argument or or that seems to contradict this. You're not free to do
that. The different groups that go from door to door and want to get you
to join their organizations, they do not allow their people to actually
let you challenge them.

They teach their people as long as they have the platform, as long as
they're doing the talking, they should stay and talk. As long as they
can, but once you start doing the talking, once you start challenging,
once you start interjecting, once you start debating with them, they
often will discourage them or don't go back there. Because they don't
want anything to come in and challenge the indoctrination that they have
given to them.

Because they're insecure that people are going to leave. You see, we
don't have that fear. You want to challenge the Bible here, I'll give
you one, take it home, read it, come back.

We can discuss it. We're not afraid, we're not worried at all because we
know. That God can hold his own.

We know the veracity of the word of God, we don't have those kinds of
insecurities, we don't have to keep people in the church by threatening
them with death if they leave. You see, to me, that's a very insecure
religion. Isn't all able to keep people without threatening to kill them
if they leave? I mean, you know, come on, but that's the way it is.

But you see, it's this it's this inability to challenge that to me
proves the falsity of these different systems. Paul was happy to have
them challenge him because he knew that he was secure. He wasn't worried
about them searching the scriptures.

You know, for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church kept the Bible out of
the hands of the common people. You know why they did that? Very simple
reason. They knew if the people read the Bible, they would realize in a
heartbeat that the whole system was bankrupt spiritually and contrary to
the biblical revelation.

And so they did everything they could to keep the Bible out of the hands
of the people. When the Bible was being translated into the common
language, the translators became the greatest adversaries of the church.
They would hunt them down, torment them, torture them, kill them,
anything they could to keep them from translating the Bible to get into
the hands of the people because they were afraid that if people got the
Bible, that would be the end of their system.

And to some extent, that's what happened back in the Reformation period.
Once the Bible got into the hands of the common people, the church lost
the death grip it had on Europe. But we're not afraid to take the Bible
and to let it speak for itself.

We're not saying anything other than what it says. And so many of them
believed and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as
men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned.

That the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also
and stirred up the crowds, then immediately the brethren sent Paul away
to go to the sea. But both Silas and Timothy remained there. But those
who conducted Paul brought him to Athens and receiving a command for
Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, they departed.

And so once again, success mingled with opposition. And Paul is not able
to stay as long as he would have liked to. So they move on and he will
travel now to Athens.

And we will pick up in our next study here where we left off. Actually,
we'll come back next week and look more specifically at verse 11 and
kind of look at just the great example that the Berean set for us and a
pattern that we can emulate as we seek the Lord ourselves. Lord, we do
pray now as we adjourn this evening that you would, Lord, go with us as
we go, fill us, Lord, with your spirit, strengthen us.

Lord, we're going out into a world that is becoming increasingly
intolerant of anything that goes against the party line, the politically
correct view of things. And yet, Lord, help us not to be intimidated by
that. Help us not to be afraid.

Help us not to hold back our witness for fear of losing a job or for
fear of someone saying something about us or anything like that. But
help us, Lord, to be bold and help us to know that you're with us and
that you will protect us, that you will be with us, that you will
provide for us. Lord, that we can trust in you, Lord, may we follow the
example of these great men of faith that we're reading about, may we
follow in their footsteps and may we see many like they did in
Thessalonica and Berea come out of darkness, turn from idols to the
living God and to wait for your son from heaven.

Lord, may we see many turn to you in these days. Use us, we pray in
Jesus name. Amen.

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Audio: https://sermonindex1.b-cdn.net/11/SID11291.mp3
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/brian-brodersen/acts-reasoning-from-the-scripture/
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