Clough Acts Lesson 44

Social Effects of the Gospel – Acts 17:1-9

 

We continue in our studies in Acts and we continue out theme of developing the points at which Christianity collided with the pagan culture of Europe.  The reason for doing it this way is because these isolate areas where we can predict, if we are Spirit led Christians, we can predict that these are precisely the same areas of confrontation in our day.  It will just be a simple repeat, same old pattern, same old problem. 

 

In Acts 16:16-24 we had the economic collision.  This economic collision was brought about by many areas, many reasons; it was brought about largely because when people become Christians they no longer produce the same goods in some cases, in some cases they quit and move to other jobs.  The second way it’s produced is because when people become Christians they buy different kinds of products and they don’t buy other kinds of products and there’s a shift in market demands. 

 

Verses 25-34 we showed point of collision, this is the point of collision in psychology, the fact that people have the human viewpoint way of solving their problems but then there is God’s divine viewpoint way of solving the problems.  Suicide is a common option; it’s easy for the Christian who is very greatly depressed, having no hope apart from the Scriptures to just simply go into a suicidal response, sort of grand tantrum, and take their life.  This was the state of the Philippian jailer, Paul authoritatively challenged that.  Biblical solutions begin with acknowledge­ment of personal responsibility; though that may seem to add to your hopelessness it actually is your salvation.  After all, if you are the way you are because mama dropped you on your head there’s not too much that you can do about it, but if you are the way you are because of your own choices there’s lots you can do about.  So it is not depressing, really, to acknowledge human responsibility for situations, it’s the way out.

 

In verses 35-40 we said the third point of collision between Christianity and paganism involved the law.  And here the law was used illegally against the Christians, and Paul gives us an example of what it means to turn the other cheek, and turning the other cheek does not mean to become the world’s biggest doormat.  Turning the other cheek involves not seeking personal vengeance, but when there’s a principle, which, if you neglect to stand up for and then because you failed to stand up and be counted on that principle, other people are hurt because the principle and the precedent is created whereby injustice is now tolerated officially; then you’ve done no service to anyone, including yourself.  So there is a good Biblical illustration of the application of turning the other cheek. 

 

Today we start with the fourth collision and that occupies the entire 17th chapter of the book of Acts, and that is the social collision between Christianity and paganism.  To get a little bit more of a background on this, the social collision, we want to go back and talk about a few words.  Words are always important because they’re handles on ideas.  A favorite word in Christian circles is the word “conservative.”  Now you and I know basically what that means and why we use it, but then there’s another reason why maybe we ought not to be so quick at using the word “conservative.”  Conservative means I preserve the status quo, but now that the status quo has become pagan is the Christian any longer a real conservative?  Not at all.  In such a case a conservative now has become a radical, hasn’t he?  Isn’t Paul, when he invades Europe undercutting its economics, undercutting its psychology, undercutting its law?  Isn’t that more of a radical position than a conservative position?  And indeed so.  So as America becomes increasingly pagan the Christians should become increasingly less conservative and more radical.  We become like Paul, invaders of paganism.  We overthrow to the foundation because we impose the Word of God with its absolutes and everything must bow before the absolutes of the Word.  Said another way, we are religious imperialists, we invade and we dominate as Paul invaded and dominated Europe.

 

Of course we have to be careful, one little point of application in all this, and that is we don’t become too socially functioned, too socially conscious and think just in terms of the other guy, just in terms of the other people, just in terms of that group of pagans over in Athens or some where else because the real radicalness of Christianity begins with me, it begins with the heart where Jesus Christ is the radical who undercuts all of the human viewpoint that has been accumulating in that heart.  So if we start with the most painful place of all, which is a lot more painful, incidentally, than spending a night in this dirty filthy Philippian jail and enduring the scourge of the lictors and a few of the other physically painful things.  It is a lot more painful to undergo the modification of  your conscience and heart.  That’s the most painful area.  Men will oftentimes pain themselves physically to avoid the spiritual pains of getting rid of pride through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ than they will all sorts of things. 

 

So if we understand that the radicalness of Christ begins with the human heart and then like ripples radiate out from that point to our marriage, to our homes, to family, to the community, then we’ve got it in the right perspective.  So don’t think of this just in social terms but it comes to us in social terms in Acts so that’s why we’re looking at it that way here. 

 

Now in Acts 17 Paul continues his journey, he continues westward and like we have seen before he continues along the great highways in the Roman world.  This time he continues along the east-west highway, along the Aegean Sea, called the Egnation Way.  He has invaded Europe at Philippi, a Roman colony.  You see all these towns bunched together on the coast of Greece, Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica, and Berea.  It is to Thessalonica that he comes in the first 9 verses of Acts 17, the next town on Paul’s itinerary of the invasion of Europe.  Thessalonica is still there; it’s not called Thessalonica in Greece today, it’s simply called Salonica, but the town goes back many, many centuries and it was to that town that Paul came and at the day that Paul came to Thessalonica… it’s interesting, the population equaled that of the present city of Lubbock, Texas. 

 

And maybe we can get a little more appreciation for these 9 verses to visualize what it would be like to have a lone Jew drive in Route 84 and speak to the small Jewish synagogue over on Avenue Q, and speak only for three weeks in that little synagogue on Avenue Q and at the end of those three weeks we have a major riot in front of the city hall.  Now that will show you how fast one lone Jew, coming to the city of Lubbock, could set in motion vast forces, not by his own oratory, not because he was an impressive personality, but by the sheer content of what he said.  It was that powerful a stuff that Paul dispensed that he could influence in only three… and possibly only lecturing three time… only lecturing three times, for there’s evidence that’s all he did in this particular situation.  Only lecturing three times at one small synagogue in a city of 200,000 caused a major riot.  This shows you why Christianity was so potent and why Paul was such an effective orator and why he was such an originator of the early Christian church.

Thessalonica is on the Egnation Way with another colony of Rome, another city, actually it goes back before Rome because this was one of the capitals in this area of northern Greece, then called Macedonia.  It was the government capital and so it’s a city that Paul goes to the seat of power and there at the seat of power dispenses the Word of God.  Paul is not intimidated like so many Christians today, who tiptoe around lest they (quote) “make waves.”  Paul was a man who enjoyed making waves; that was his profession, he was a professional wave maker.  This was his job as the apostle.  He wasn’t one of these (quote) “good old boys” that goes along in utter peace with everyone.

 

To show why Paul spoke only, apparently, three times, and apparently did not lecture every time like he did at Ephesus, turn to 1 Thessalonians 2.  In 1 Thessalonians 2 we have a short biographical note; it tells us the answer to a question I’m sure some of you’ve been asking.  Remember the first missionary journey in the early part of the book of Acts we said the mission was financed by Barnabas.  That’s all nice; what happens when Barnabas quits, which he did before the second missionary journey began.  Who financed the second one?  The answer we get from Scripture: Paul.  But Paul didn’t have any money; precisely!  How did Paul finance the missionary journey if he had no money of his own, no cash?  Simple, he had a profession that was movable, was portable, he could take from point A to point B; it was the profession of tent making, and so he would take, everywhere he could find materials and Thessalonica on the main Egnation way was a commerce point; this also, by the way, shows you why he had to stick to the major cities and centers of commerce.  Paul had to bring his materials or at least buy his materials from profits he had made before, he kept his tools which is a small tool kit, and he would make tents during the five or six days of the week.  He’d sell those; he had all the problems of a business and on top of that he was the apostle of Christ.

 

Here in 1 Thessalonians 2:9-11 he tells about it: “For ye remember, brethren, our labor and travail; for laboring night and day,” apparently he means he taught during the night time, during the evenings and during the daytimes he had to work, “because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”  Paul refused to allow new Christians to support him; he refused to depend in any way upon new believers.  He refused to use new believers, or misuse new believers.  New believers in Scripture are said to be spiritual babes; you don’t have to be a parent to know that you don’t get too much use out of a baby for the first ten years of its life.  So you don’t put new physical babes at work and you don’t do spiritual babes, it’s the same… but yet, isn’t it interesting in evangelical circles all around us what happens when someone becomes a Christian?  What immediately are they asked to do?  Go out and (quote) “do the Lord’s work.”  Now did the Lord ask them to do His work as spiritual babes?  I don’t find that in Scripture.  And I don’t find it in apostolic precedent either, and here’s one of those cases; the babes are not asked to support any Christian work.  Christian work exists to give, not to receive at this point. When Christians are mature fine, but not the new ones. 

 

Verse 10, “You are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and unblamably we behaved ourselves among you that believe, [11] And you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you, as a father does his children.  [12] That you would walk worthy of God,” and so on.  So this describes the labor he had and maybe gives you a greater appreciation for the fact that this man kept on, day and night, on this second missionary journey, tremendous strain on him personally. 

So he comes to Thessalonica, back to Acts 17, and he comes to the synagogue of the Jews.  At the synagogue of the Jews Paul begins to witness; it shows once again that Paul followed the principle that wherever there are Jews you start there, then go to Gentiles. We said in the earlier studies of Acts there’s a good principle for your own discipline out of this, and that is the principle that if you can train yourself to speak the gospel clearly and intelligently to the people that make the most demands of you spiritually, then you can speak the gospel to anyone less than that.  And that’s the principle; prepare yourself to witness to an articulate Jew and you have automatically prepared yourself to witness to anyone else.  And so it’s a good training rub off to keep holding to this, even though you never might witness to a Jewish person in your life, train as though you would and be prepared and then you’ll be prepared for everyone else.

 

So Paul went to the synagogue and there it was an orderly service, for three Sabbaths it says, [2] “And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, [3] 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.”  For three weeks he went every Sabbath.  Now it doesn’t mean that he broke the service up. That word, “reasoning” and discussing there means that apparently after the service was finished the people would break out and then there would be a discussion afterwards; those who had to go home because they had a steak in the oven at 11:00 o’clock or something, they left and then the people that had a serious question or two that could stay around would discuss with Paul.  And that’s what that word “reason” means, it means a two moving flowing discussion, both ways.  And that’s where he did what he did in verse 3.  He may have spoken but most of his work was done in discussion.


Now that is another extinct point.  Paul had two kinds of style; he had an oratorical style, a preaching style, but then he also had a one on one reasoning style, and this is often the affliction of new believers who hear some teacher teach the Word of God, I’m sure people do this here in Lubbock Bible Church, they see and they hear me teach the Word of God when I’m in a situation like at present, with say 200 people, and I have to teach it a certain way because there are 200 people here and there has to be more of an eye contact, there has to be shooting out in the spectrum of different needs, and so on.  And you just more or less have to shotgun it before a group of people.  But they take a preaching style because they see the Word of God taught that way all the time, then they sit down into a one to one situation and begin to preach.  But you don’t preach in a one to one situation, you discuss in a one to one situation.  So it’s a completely different style, you don’t do it the way you see it done in the pulpit.  I don’t sit down on a one to one and act with an individual person like I do up here.  I have to entertain, do all sorts of things up here, but when I am sitting doing a one to one situation it’s another story.  There’s a give and there’s a take, there’s a communication, I want to find out what the person is thinking; I have an opportunity to do that in a one to one situation.  In a one to one situation what you do is find out what they think before you start to impress the Word of God.  You can afford to do that.  So it’s an utterly different; don’t mimic a pulpit style in a personal one to one witnessing situation; the two can’t be compared. 

 

All right, this reasoning, the verb here, dialoguing, that was a different style Paul used.  And what is described in verse 3 is the results of what he was doing.  Two things are emphasized that Paul used here.  First, it says that he gave a profile of Messiah; when you see the Christ here don’t read it as though it was Jesus’ last name.  Just mentally in your head say Messiah, and what he’s saying is the Old Testament Messianic profile, he lists two things in that Messianic Old Testament profile.  One thing the Old Testament Messiah had to do was die; next thing the Old Testament Messiah had to do was rise from the dead.  Two elements in the Old Testament profile.  Then Paul said Jesus of Nazareth is that because His profile fits that profile.  And that’s the way he witnessed.  That is a complete exposition of the strategy of Pauline witnessing.

 

Now there’s some elements we want to stop here and look at, see if we can make these a little more practical for our own application.  Paul, first, because he went back to this Old Testament profile, refused to allow the conversation to be pulled outside of the divine viewpoint framework.  He always kept the conversation rooted to his, not someone else’s, his presuppositions.  Now that’s hard to do, I haven’t mastered it and I’ve met few people who have come close to mastering this; it’s a very, very difficult thing to do because words are deceptive and you can get pulled off base very quickly.  But if you can visualize a process of… like a tug-of-war where your at a situation here, just an old classic case, and you’re pulling this way and the non-Christian is pulling that way and there you go, and there’s a line in the ground.  If you let go you’re going to be pulled over to their side and you’re going to start looking at the whole conversation through their eyes.  So it becomes a test, and it doesn’t have to be rude or crude but there is a contest, a fierce contest that is going on to see whose worldview is going to dominate the conversation.  And that’s why it takes so much energy in one of these conversations.  If you’ve ever been in one of these things you know after 30 minutes you feel completely washed out.  And this is why; it’s as though your spirits are pushing and pulling against one another to determine who controls.

 

Now there are various ways of trying to explain this and I’m going to use a diagram which I’ll call the diagram of the enclosing frame. We’ll draw two pictures of two ways to handle a situation; two ways which are possible, Paul used one of these.  Inside the two squares I’ll draw two smaller squares.  The one on the left we’ll let be when the divine viewpoint rules; the one on the right when human viewpoint rules.  I should have reversed them but nevertheless, that’s the way it is.  The large view will be the one that dominates.  Now let’s watch Paul work.

 

When Paul worked, whenever the non-Christian would operate the non-Christian and his viewpoint would be swallowed up by Paul’s viewpoint.  Paul’s view eats up the non-Christian’s view.  Here’s an example.  They’d say, but Paul, Jesus died on the cross; Paul would say of course, read Isaiah 53.  Now what would he do?  Instead of looking at the unbeliever’s problems and say oh gee, you know that is a problem, how are we going to explain that, we simply say look, our view explains your problem.  Let’s take a little more extreme position, one more pertinent to our own day.  Somebody says why I don’t believe the Scripture, there’s not enough evidence to prove God exists.  Now at that point you can respond one of two ways; you can respond by saying gee, you know that guy’s right, how do we prove God exists.  God’s evidence isn’t really clear, is it?  We’ve got to dig around, maybe he’s right, maybe it’s true that you can be neutral.  Maybe there is a point in the universe where God’s face is not clearly shining, maybe that’s correct, and if that’s the situation, hmm.  Well, if that’s the way you think, already you’ve let the unbeliever swallow you up and now you’re even asking the question he’s asking, and you’ve slipped; you’ve allowed yourself to be pulled over the line. 

 

On the other hand, suppose Paul was to receive that question, well I don’t believe this Paul, sorry, there’s just not enough evidence that God exists.  Do you know what Paul’s answer is? Romans 1, in Romans 1 Paul says yes friend, there is plenty of evidence that God exists, the problem is in your eyeball and you see, you are a depraved individual and you’ve dropped your lens in Eden and haven’t picked it up yet, so because you have a wrong pair of eyeglasses you can’t see the evidence that is there, and so the problem is not in the evidence, the problem is in you and I explain your objection in terms of my doctrine of total depravity.  So now whose viewpoint has eaten whose viewpoint up.  You see, Paul at that point has eaten up his opponent’s objection by his own position.  Now that’s what I’m talking about, the law of the enveloping frame.  It’s whose framework envelops whose framework.  Which framework dominates at the most basic point. 

 

And that is the whole argument, the whole spiritual conflict that goes on in a conversation.  That is always present in every conversation.  Think, for example, as a Christian counseling another Christian.  Here another Christian comes in spiritually beaten, bloody, bruised and depressed, a mess, and you exercise compassion and you’re trying to encourage them, trying to get them up on their feet again.  And it becomes a contest once again, you’re pulling them over to hope and they’re pulling you over into their depression.  And that’s the story and until you can break and haul them across the line in some way, by exhortation and not to make you be pulled back on their side, because once you start feeling sorry in the bad sense of the word for them, you say you know, gee, God has been pretty rough with that individual, maybe God isn’t really operating fairly in this situation.  Now who’s won who?  Now the depressed Christian, who has been totally in bondage at this point, he’s brought you into bondage to his depression, and the conversation’s been lost and once that line is crossed kiss off the counseling because it’s ruined at that point.

 

All right, so there’s the tug of war that goes on; whose framework is going to dominate the discussion, and it comes in a multitude of ways, I know of no way, I know of no book written on this, so if some of you want to read… one of the best books written on it is Dr. Cornelius Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, and that’s mostly theoretical, there’s no practical guide to this, you’ve just got to learn the skill and you ought not to be afraid trying to learn.

 

Well, Paul uses this and Paul is going to pull these people over so that the non-Christians are going start looking at the world through his eyes.  Now for the sake of argument, only for the sake of argument, you can agree sometimes formally in a conversation and say okay; okay, let’s come on over here to your position and let’s look at the world through your eyes.  Now as I understand it you believe that the universe basically has gone on and on and on and on and on, there’s not such a thing as an external, ex nihilo fiat creation, it never began at a point in time, it just kind of got into existence; okay, I see the world from your point of view.  Now from this point of view how do you explain the significance of man?  Where does value come from?  Why does man differ from a rock?  Why is this necessary?  Why do I hunt animals but when I use a gun on a man now it’s suddenly called murder?  Why do we make this division at this point?  How do you explain it, I can’t see how this works out from your position?  So if you want to do that, that’s okay.  That’s not any violation of the principle, but allowing  yourself to be sucked over here where you become the helpless victim enmeshed in this… 

 

If he comes at you in another way, you may be mentioning the claims of Christ and then someone says well that’s good, Jesus had his opinions, but you know Buddha had his and Confucius had his and then there were a lot of Hindu gurus that have theirs, and even offer it for free.  Now all of these viewpoints in the world, the cafeteria of ideas, you kind of go in and pick one, don’t you.  Well, then if you’re not careful you’ll still slide back into that thing and say yeah, you know that’s right, let’s see, what reasons can I give as go into the cafeteria to pick the Christian dish.  Well, immediately you’ve shot yourself down right there because what happened was that they got you looking at the world through their relativist eyes where all truth claims are relative, there’s no such thing as an absolute truth claim any more, and so we’re back in Eden, like Eve was, facing Satan who said on the one hand Eve, God says the tree is lethal, on the other hand Eve, I say the tree is okay, and so Eve neutrally contemplates the cafeteria of options; shall I pick this one or shall I pick that one.  Eve is already in trouble, the moment she looks at the universe with those eyes because she has doubted the implicit authority of the Word of God.  Now in this situation the person has basically got us in a position where two plus two is four in everything except religion and then two plus two is whatever a person says it is.  So we suddenly lost rationality and we’ve lost absolute truth.  So that’s the idea of the enclosing frame. 

 

Now let’s watch in detail how Paul applies it.  This is what he’s doing, how does he do this?  What tools does he use to hold himself inside his own box and to keep from getting sucked out of it by his opponent?  All right, he goes back to the divine viewpoint framework.  He says so right in this passage and we’ll see him use this in a magnificent way toward the end of Acts 17 because there he’s got to deal with the Athenian philosophers and there he’s going to walk into the intellectual heart of Greece, which in turn forms the intellectual heart of the west.  And he’s going to have to take on the champions of human viewpoint philosophic thought and he’s going to whip them, and he’s going to do it by the method of arguing from presuppositions. 

 

All right, Paul begins with these people in the Thessalonican synagogue.  He knows they’re orthodox Jewish people so he knows he has no problem with one, two, three four.  Up to that point in the framework they already hold to it, so that’s why in this particular message he doesn’t go back to creation; you don’t see any message of creation here.  But if you look down to verse 24, when he goes to address the Athenian philosophers, look how he shifts the game there, the ballgame is being played by another book here, Acts 17:24, “God, who made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands,” etc. etc. etc.  What is he referring to in verse 24?  Look at your divine viewpoint framework; what is he doing?  He’s going back to creation, isn’t he.  Why does he go back to creation in verse 24?  Because he’s dealing with pagans and pagans don’t understand creation; they never have and they never will, whether they’re pagans in 20th century America or pagans in 1st century Athens, it doesn’t make any difference; pagans always are screwed up in the area of creation.  They could be pagan educators, like the city of Dallas, and worry about textbooks. 

 

So we have four things in the divine viewpoint framework that Paul does not bother with with the Jewish audience but that he does bother with with the Gentile audience.  For example, notice verse 26, “He has made from one all races of men,” do you know what that is?  That’s the Noahic Covenant, and he’s doing that to establish the principle that all culture is under absolute law.  You see, verse 26 is important because unless you go back to the Noahic Covenant you can’t get around what they call the ethnocentric predicament of each culture, that each culture looks at its own views and values its own way.  That’s not true from the standpoint of the origin of the cultures.  Cultures originated from Adam’s three sons, Ham, Japheth and Shem, so we have to go back there. All right, that shows you what he does with the Athenians.

 

But now in Acts 17:2 he’s not dealing with Athenian Greeks and pagans, he’s dealing with Jews, and so starts out with the call of Abraham.  How do I know he starts with the call of Abraham?  Because I watched the other speeches that Paul makes in the book of Acts to Jews; he has a standard methodology, a standard approach.  And so he goes back and he says look you Jewish people, don’t you know how our father Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldeas, and he would ask rhetorically, while he was addressing the synagogue, hoping he would stimulate feedback after the discussion, he’d say don’t you people remember what the promise was of Jehovah God to father Abraham?  What was the promise to our father?  Was it not that all the families of the earth would be blessed through father Abraham?  Oh yeah, yeah.  Okay, then, he says, now isn’t it interesting that all the families of the earth must include the families of the Mediterranean area, including those cities bordering on the Aegean Sea, including Greece, including Rome.  Could this be a fulfillment of the third promise of God to father Abraham. 

 

And then he would ask his synagogue audience, tell me folks, when was father Abraham justified?  Was he justified before or after circumcision.  Oh, before.  Was father Abraham justified before the Mosaic Law existed?  Oh yeah, he was.  Now what is Paul doing while he’s doing all of this?  He’s getting rid of objections so that when he gets down to the person of Christ he can concentrate completely on the person of Christ and not get blurred up with all this other stuff.  So he’s dispensing with the objections first, then giving answers to those, he then gets down to the person of Christ, so when he begins to talk about Christ, Christ isn’t kissed off as some sort of religious nut that rolled out of Palestine in the 1st century; he solves the problem by preparing, by answering the objections on way down to it.

 

Then he comes down here and he would talk about the Exodus; he would say when were our people, when did they become a people?  The Exodus.  Oh, he’d say, how did our people get freedom from Egypt?  By putting blood on the door.  Blood on the door?  What did the blood on the door do?  Well, it stopped God’s wrath, it stopped God’s judgment.  Oh, we had a sort of substitutionary sacrifice there didn’t we.  So now what has he done?  He’s set them up because later on he’s going to talk about Jesus’ work on the cross and now they’re going to understand Jesus’ work on the cross because he’s got a parallel, he’s got a reference, it doesn’t come as a complete shock out of the clear blue that Messiah got executed and so here we have a crook Messiah; we now can explain Jesus execution.  And then he would go on and he’s say on the Law, now you all know, he’d say, that to err on the Law at one point is to err on the Law at every point; you know that not one of you has completely kept the Ten Commandments.  You know that this is a matter of the heart, you know you stand condemned before the Law; you know therefore that no salvation can be by the Law, don’t you.  Oh yeah, we know that.  Okay, and then when he discusses the fact that righteousness of God comes by Christ then they’ll understand that it has to come by Christ and not by the Law. 

 

So again he’s getting rid of objection after objection after objection so when he gets down to Jesus these objections have been dispensed with; all the theological problems have been met; all the objections have been met.  And he could go on and on and on down the list.  But that basically is his approach and in so doing if someone attacks him, Paul, you’re introducing something new, I don’t buy this substitutionary atonement, you don’t?  What do you do about the Exodus?  Well, I have to buy that don’t I, I’m a Jew.  Right.  Well, then if you can buy it at the Exodus how come you can’t buy it at the cross. Well, come to think of it I don’t know.  It does seem reasonable because they’re parallel.  And then somebody else would come out with an objection, I can’t buy the fact that the Word of God goes to pagans outside, the Word of God is for us Jews.  What was the third promise to Abraham?  All the families of the earth be blessed.  Hmm, never thought of it that way before.  Well start thinking of it that way now.  And so he would go on and begin to undercut their Jewishness with this kind of an approach.  So watch the technique, you can learn lots of it. 

 

So in Acts 17:3 that’s what he’s doing; “that Messiah must needs have suffered.”  Finally he gets down to the end of this framework and he goes over it in terms which he learned from the men who taught him, who in turn were taught by Jesus, if you’ll turn to Luke 24 where this method was originated.  Here’s where the method started.  One of the problems thrown at students today, of the Scriptures, whether it’s a family at home reading some sort of issues article in their paper or whether you’re listening to some commentator, or whether you’re in the classroom, one of the attacks against the book of Acts will always be this one.  Look, those guys when they got up on the day of Pentecost came out with too profound of speech, you can’t tell me that Peter, in all the hullabaloo of the day of Pentecost gets up and gives this fantastic contentful detailed doctrine speech; why he just adlibbed the thing, surely those speeches are recreations.  Surely what happened in the book of Acts is just somebody that later on read all this in, they wanted to make up a good story how the whole thing started.  And so they read this back into it, but you know, those early guys, they didn’t have this developed theology.  That’s all later.  This is not a real accurate picture of what the Church was like.  This business of getting detailed doctrine out of the Old Testament, it took time to do that.  Really now? 

 

What does Luke report happening in Luke 24:25, the road to Emmaus.  Verse 25, two people walking along the road and they say gee, you know, we started believing in Messiah and He got crucified so I guess we’d better go home, and now in verse 25 is Jesus answer, “idiots, and slow of heart,” that’s not an attack against low IQ, “idiots” here means spiritual ignoramuses, people who just simply won’t see, it’s not that they can’t see, they won’t, “fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets,” there’s your Old Testament, “have spoken.”  And now Jesus asks His listeners a question, isn’t it true that the Old Testament profile of Jesus called for Him to do two things and what do you notice in verse 26?  That is exactly the same that Paul’s doing a decade later in Greece in a Thessalonican synagogue. 

 

What two things has Paul emphasized there?  He emphasizes the death of Christ and the resurrection of Christ.  What does Jesus emphasize in verse 26, “Ought not the Messiah to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?”  And now verse 27 which is the famous verse as I said, and I’ve said this before, if you had been lucky enough to carry your portable cassette with you that afternoon and had recorded verse 27 you would have a best seller of all time.  “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, Christ expounded unto them, in all the Old Testament Scriptures, the things concerning Himself.”  I wonder how long that conversation took for Him to do that.  Well, one thing, we know He didn’t expound every verse of the Bible, He didn’t start well now guys, here it is, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” now this means, and then He went on to verse 2, and in the beginning was chaos in the world and this means and so forth.  He couldn’t have done that in an afternoon.  But what did he do on the Road to Emmaus; it says “all the Scriptures.”  He went through certain key texts of the Old Testament. 

 

You can prove this for yourself.  Here’s an exercise you ought to try on your own sometime.  Take a piece of paper and the book of Acts and go down, find every speech in the book of Acts, you can find them easy in a modern translation because they’ll be offset or in quote marks.  Write out on your paper okay, here’s Acts 2; Acts 2:1 through such and such; there’s Peter’s speech; Acts 3 verses such and such, there’s the second speech, Acts 6, Acts 7, and go through and get all your speeches outlined, get the verse references.  Then read each one again and count and list the Old Testament citations and you can do this, if you’ve got a translation that has the marginal quotes on it, you’ll see those, they got a quote mark from the Old Testament where they’re quoting the Old Testament.  So then on your paper after your speech, okay, here’s Acts 2 verse 1 through such and such, write down on your paper, they quoted this verse, they quoted this verse, they quoted this verse, they quoted this verse and they quoted this verse.  And then when you get all done, just notice what’s happened.  Lo and behold, over here they’re quoting Isaiah 53, over here they’re quoting a whole bunch of verses and Isaiah 53.  Over in this speech they’re quoting a whole bunch of verses and Isaiah 53.  And you begin to notice there’s a set of six or seven verses that are favored, that are always quoted by these men. 

 

Now who taught them that?  Luke is telling us right here; they learned that by Christ Himself.  Jesus Christ taught those men how to teach from Scriptures.  He taught them the profile to look for in the Old Testament and that’s the thing that Paul, you’re finding here, going back to Acts 17, you’re finding that’s exactly what Paul’s doing, as he goes to these people and he reasons with them. 

Now Acts 17:4, the result of Paul’s three weeks, and in verse 4 there is a statistical analysis, so to speak, of the reception of the gospel.  We’ll draw it in terms of the bar graph, three groups of people, three parties, three components to the graph are mentioned.  Luke is precise and he’s telling us something, that something is shifted here.  “And some of them believed,” so let’s make a little chart, the low part is some and the top part is many.  Okay, these are Jews, Luke says “some” Jews believed.  So the reception rate among Jews is low.  This is the first time this signal has happened in the Scriptures and what is it?  The invasion of Europe and this is telling us what the nature of the Church is going to be for the next 1900 years, that we’re getting a shift and the Jewish percent is dropping.  Now look at the next group, “and of the devout Greeks many believed [a great multitude]” and so now we have a very high proportion of believers out of the Greeks.  And a third group is mentioned, “and of the chief women quite a few [not a few].”  Now are women neither Gentiles nor Jews?  No, that’s not Luke’s point. 

 

The point about Luke is he’s utterly fascinated by the reception the gospel received among women.  The next time you’re with your ERA friends who insist upon saying that Christian puts the woman in bondage, enlighten them to the fact of history, that before Christianity women were considered a little more than a piece of cattle.  In fact today oftentimes in these particular Semitic cultures a person when he refers to his children will refer to the fact that I have so many sons, and so many people in the family; the girls just frankly aren’t worth mentioning.  And this has continued on through the Bedouin tradition and so on; the woman’s real absolute subordination.  What you’re getting here, passage after passage in Acts is a notice that women are being accepted into the Church as full functioning human beings.  It’s a great discovery, gee, you know that, women have brains.  And Luke as a doctor standing by, here he’s looking, he’s just amazed.  Every time he gives an analysis of the gospel reception he’s got some crack about the women.  The first thing, Paul starts into Philippi, who’s the first person that accepts Christ in Europe?  Lydia, upper class business women.  And these aren’t just low class women, they’re upper class women.  So there’s this constant theme Luke hits, watch what Christianity did to women.  Get some facts before you get smeared up with all the propaganda. 

 

Now Acts 17:5, the trouble begins.  Paul has had the audacity to bring absolutes into a situation and talk about some sort of Christ that might compete with Caesar.  “But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort,” isn’t that roaring English of the King James, “and gathered a company, and set all the city in an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. [6] 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; [7] Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. [8] And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things. [9] And when they had taken security” that word “security” means bail, “when they took bail from Jason, and of the other, they let them go.” 

 

What happened here; we find the usual tactics always used against Christians.  It goes back to this principle we’ve noticed before in Acts. There are two principles of pagan culture that Christianity is always in friction with, always has been, and you’re seeing it emerge in your own generation. For 200 years in this country this has been suppressed because for 200 years our country basically has sort of gone along with the Christian position.  Not everyone is Christian but basically Christian principles did hold.  And that is that the state grants rights instead of recognizing rights.  Now you may say it’s nitpicking; I say, and history says that those two verbs are two different ballgames entirely.  The state does not create rights; the state can only recognize rights that exist prior to the state.  If the state grants rights the state can take rights away.  So be careful of that one, and Rome has always insisted that it is the right of Kaisar; Kaisar, Caesar, he grants rights to exist to religion.  And the second principle we said was expressed over the history was a Latin phrase, bonum communitatis and that is the good of the community, and Christianity will be tolerated in so far as is supports the bonum communitatis.  Let Christianity threaten it and it will be outlawed. 

 

This is the struggle in Dallas; some Christian parents have had the audacity to suggest that perhaps in the educational field the Word of God might be relevant and this is a thoroughly upsetting theme for our humanist friends and they can’t stand this, and now they’re frantically getting delegations to come to Dallas and try to dissuade the Dallas school board to get the creationist textbooks out of the classroom because what has happened?  What is their moral argument?  You Christian parents are threatening the bonum communitatis, you are threatening the court neutrality we had here before in the city of Dallas; why before every humanist had his own way in the classroom, now we can’t, you’ve threatened the bonum communitatis and so we’re going to see that we bring you to court and we’ll try to harass you, we’ll try to intimidate you, hoping you’re going to run scared and act like a lot of evangelical yellow-bellies do, with their tail between their legs; we want to see if we can cower you by a little pressure, a little adverse publicity. 

 

So the argument was used here, this time it came in another form, that they were challenging the right of Kaisar, let’s watch how they do it.  Notice in verse 5 the tactic. 

 

Acts 17:5, “But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy,” see how it starts out, it’s not a high principle at all, it’s just envy, it’s the same thing in Dallas, it’s not a high principle, educators are just envious that parents are finally assuming their parental rights; it has nothing more to do than that, it’s just simple mental attitude envy; they’re jealous that suddenly other people might have ideas, and so they “took unto them” a mob, and that’s the same thing the media does in our time, isn’t it?  Selective use of morals, stimulate the masses, irritate the mobs and start creating a little pressure, we need a little social action here so let’s whip up a mob.  How do we do it?  Oh, just get a television camera looking at just the right angle; clever cameramen can always do that, and get a clever commentator to ask someone a question and then we edit the text before we present it on the 6:00 o’clock news so just part of the sentence is on the text, and it’s taken out of context, that’s how we can do it.  And so the same tactic, “the Jews that believed not took them a mob, and they gathered a company, and they set the city in an uproar,” did Paul set the city in an uproar?  No, Paul didn’t, the mob did, the media did, they’re the ones that irritated everyone.  All Paul was doing was suggesting that Jesus might possibly be the Christ; he only did it three days and now we’ve got a 200,000 population city in complete chaos over it. 

 

And they [17:5b, “assaulted the house of Jason, and] sought to bring them out to the people.”  Notice they “assaulted the house of Jason, but you notice there’s something missing in verses 5, 6, 6 and 8, and the most conspicuous person is missing—Paul.  Why is Paul missing, why has Jason suddenly come into the scene?  We don’t know why but it’s going to lead up to a very interesting application at the last verse of this passage.  Jason happens to be the owner of the property where these Christians were meeting; he owned the house.  And so the city goes to the property owner, and they start arresting the property owner, and then they make a false charge in verse 6, “[And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying,] These that have turned the kosmos,” that means the order, they’ve disturbed the social order, they’ve turned it “upside down,” how did they turn it upside down?  Because of their claims of Christ, that Christ was King, He was over all, and His words are the authoritative words.

 

And now Acts 17:7, they go on to distort that message by saying “they’re saying that there is another king,” in competition with Caesar.  Now if you’re a student of the New Testament and you’ve read a little bit, I’m sure when you read verse 7, particularly when you get down to the last part of verse 7 a little bell should ring in your mind, something inside you should say didn’t I hear that argument once before, something about Jesus was a King, something about the fact that He was in competition with Caesar.  Sure you heard it before, you heard it at the trial of Christ, didn’t you.  You heard it at the trial before Pontius Pilate, it was exactly the charge that was leveled against Jesus, now leveled against His followers, and will be always leveled against His followers.

 

Ask Solzhenitsyn, he’ll tell you, it’s being leveled against His followers right now behind the iron curtain, in spite of our Helsinki agreement.  The Christian’s are still being charged and notice the media doesn’t see the moral obligation to carry this particular story; undoubtedly it’s not considered newsworthy, but there are millions of evangelicals behind the iron curtain who are not suffering and dying and rotting in stench filled Siberian prison camps because the claim is that Jesus Christ has allegiance over the Polit Bureau.  It’s always the same, the answer is the same that Jesus gave in John and the answer is that Jesus is King all right, but He’s King of the coming age, not this one, and so therefore there should be no competition unless you are out of line.  The answer, if you want to look it up, is given in John 18:36. 

They say that these people troubled the city, and finally they make a deal in verse 9, they make a bail agreement with Jason.  [7, “Whom Jason hath received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. [8] And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things. [9] And when they had taken security” that word “security” means bail, “when they took bail from Jason, and of the other, they let them go.” ]

 

Now here we are face to face with a little piece of revelation about Satan.  Turn back to 1 Thessalonians 2:18; Paul sees far more sinister things in this deal that was worked out between the court and Jason than just a bail agreement.  In 1 Thessalonians 2:18 Paul notices there’s another problem entirely, Paul says: “We would have come unto you, even I, Paul, once and again,” that means over and over he wanted to come back to Thessalonica, but I couldn’t because “Satan hindered us.”  Satan hindered us?  How did Satan hinder you?  What did he do, put a toll road up, charge high tolls so you couldn’t pay the toll?  Did Satan hinder you, Paul, because you were afraid you’d get beaten up with the mob.  No-no, Paul would say, none of those things.  When I say “Satan hinders” us I don’t refer to an attack upon myself.  Paul had courage, he would have risked arrest again, he would have risked the mob again and come back to Thessalonica to teach further doctrine; we know that because of the first missionary journey.  Didn’t he go back to the towns where he’d been kicked out of?  Didn’t he expose himself physically once again?  Of course he did. 

 

Well then, what’s the matter with Paul here, why does he say Satan hinders him.  Because of the bail agreement, a deal was worked out and the deal went like this.  Jason, you own that property down on 8th Street, right?  Right!  Christians meet there, right?  Right!  Paul came in there, he used your property to upset the bonum communitatis of the city, did he not Jason?  Yes!  Then let me tell you something, Jason, we’ll let you off from jail for a $2,000 bail, but Jason, if your friend Paul shows up again you go to jail.  There’s the agreement; how clever of Satan. See Paul loved his fellow Christians and he didn’t want to put them out.  Remember what he had said earlier in 1 Thessalonians 2, when he came to Thessalonica what’d he do?  He didn’t suck money from them, he didn’t get pledge cards, tithe cards, send them bills.  He simply gave them the Word of God because he didn’t want to be a burden and now look what Satan he did, he turned it around so Paul can’t go back to the city; if he does go back to the city his friends go to jail, and Paul becomes the instrument of hurting those whom he loves.  Now Paul wouldn’t mind it if he would go back to jail but he doesn’t want to send Jason back to jail.

 

Now when you see something like that happen in your life, that is a satanic hindrance, and that’s how you spot a satanic hindrance.  Don’t go to the movie, The Omen, and see some slimy green ooze and that’s Satan.  Satan is a little more subtle than that; he doesn’t walk around in a red suit and ask you if you want to sin.  When Satan operates there’s a degree of intelligence to his operation and Paul could always spot a satanic move; it’s just like you’re playing chess and all of a sudden he moves his piece and you’ve had it.  And Paul says when I get that feeling, that I’ve been had on the chess board, I know who did it.  And it wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t chance, and it wasn’t just a mob, and it wasn’t physical violence, it was somebody else and that’s why he uses the word Satan.  And that’s by application how you can spot the work of Satan.  It will always involve a very clever block in your life, not just an ordinary block, a clever one. 

 

All right, we say that this represents a social collision of Christianity, we’ve watched several collisions, an economic collision, a legal collision, a social collision, and we’re doing this to prepare you so as believers you will function, that you can operate.  I’d like to conclude by citing a letter written by a former member of this congregation who has moved since to Garland, Texas.  She writes a letter how she’s been active recently in surveying in Garland, a survey asking parents about whether they want evolution only, creation only, evolution or creation both in the classroom.  And she reports on this and what she’s doing.  The important thing isn’t the survey; the important thing is here’s a woman who has courage of her convictions, who’s going out, and she writes this letter to the Garland Daily News, Sunday, February 20, 1977.  Keep in mind this woman did not go to Dallas Seminary, this woman does not have formal education in theology.  She is a person who is a wife and a mother who is concerned for her children who does have experience in the public school classroom, who is certified to teach in the state of Texas, and who is an intelligent Christian who is applying the Word in her area.  And she writes this:

 

“Citizens and parents of Garland, may I remind you that: (1) The theory of evolution has never been proven. (2) It is a godless system based on human presuppositions. (3) Its precepts are based on pure chance and astronomical periods of time. (4) No scientific theory is anything but faith and belief unless it can be measured, observed and tasted. (5) The result of the theory of evolution demands that man is basically no different from animals, or a rock for that matter.  (6) Your taxes are supporting this godless materialism which is approved by our school system to teach your children the subject of origins.  Since the theory of evolution is based on faith in those areas in which it cannot be tested and observed, it can no more be scientific than creation based material.  It seems that we do have religion in the schools, a religion of science and a weak science at that, a science so dogmatic in its beliefs and faith that it smacks of bigotry.  Finally, the school, as an extension of the home, should teach material which reflects the ideals and commitments of the community.  There is every reason to believe that the majority of Garland citizens and parents do not accept nor want the theory of evolution as the only source of science instruction.  The creation based book has not been state approved and therefore not acceptable to Garland school adminis­trators.  May I submit that concerned citizens could get this regulation updated.  Don’t wait until our child one day reminds you that God is, in fact, dead, evolution and its consequences taught him that scientific fact; remember, God cannot be tasted, measured or observed.”

 

And so very cleverly she conducts her campaign.  Every Christian can do this; think of it, if 10% of the evangelicals were as noisy as she and others in all sorts of areas, not just the evolution controversy, there’s gobs of other places where the Word of God can be applied. 

 

That’s what Paul at least began when he invaded Europe.  We hope we can continue it in our day.