Transcription
Let's go to Acts 16, the first 13 verses. I just want to say to you, in the first 13 verses of Acts 16, that the story really, really is about discipleship. This is the examination of Paul picking up a disciple. You know, this disciple, he becomes important. His name is Tim. And Tim is, his background is well known. But I want you to look at the work of making a disciple, because we're talking about that all the time in our class, right?
All right, look at verse 1. Paul came to Derby to Lystra. A disciple was there named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer, but his father was a Greek. So he is now from a mixed background with a Greek father and a Jewish mama. And the very first verse tells me that when Paul went to find a disciple, what did he look for first? A committed believer. Disciples come from committed believers. You don't start trying to make disciples of people who are not committed to Christ. Now, here's the thing. It doesn't mean you don't love people who aren't committed to Christ. Of course, you do. But they're not the ones you're making disciples out of. They're the ones you're trying to lead to Christ. So you have to decide, who is this person when I meet them? Okay?
In verse 2, the other thing I think that you look for is not just a person who knows Jesus and is committed to that, but somebody who's unashamed. And what do I mean? First two, he was well-spoken of by the Brethren who were in Lystra and Iconium. That is, he's a person who had a good reputation among other local believers. Why would you start with a person who has a terrible reputation with other local believers? In other words, when you go into a youth group and you want to disciple a young person, don't first go to the kid who is, who is known as a, as a guy who's sleeping around with all the girls in the youth group. That's probably not the first guy you want to go to if you're looking for a strong believer. Look for somebody who has a good reputation. Now, if you go to him, you go to him with a different objective. I'm not saying don't talk to him. I'm saying your objective is different.
Verse 3, you have to make clear the commitment to them. Look at verse 3. It says, Paul wanted this man to go with him, and he took him and circumcised him. Stop right there. They have to understand the cost. You, and what you want them to do, but they also have to have obstacles removed. I hate to play this as a pet, as a pun, but he needed to be circumcised because he needed an obstacle removed. Why was his circumcision going to remove an obstacle? We know it removes skin, but why did it remove an obstacle? Because his mom was Jewish. Therefore, the command for the family to have him circumcised was still alive there. And as a result, if he had gone into a place and they realized that he was Jewish but not circumcised, then Paul would have been guilty too of allowing a person to violate what God told Jewish people to do for all their generations. And he would have gotten himself right in the middle of a quagmire of a sinking ship. Ultimately, by doing this, by circumcising, he removed an obstacle, but he did it biblically.
Now, the interesting thing is, Paul also traveled with Titus. But Paul never circumcised Titus. Why? He wasn't Jewish. And there's no biblical command anywhere for non-Jews to do that. So he was, he was absolutely accurately, literally applying the text of the situation.
Now, you also have to show him that what God is doing. In verses 4 and 5, "Now when they were passing through the cities, they were delivering the decrees which had been decided upon by the Apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem for them to observe. So the churches were being strengthened in faith and increasing in number daily." You have to show him that God is at work in people's lives. If you want to disciple a person, just telling them the Bible isn't all there is to it. You have to show them that God has work, is at work in His church, dynamically transforming people. Because discipleship happens within the understanding not only of the text of Scripture, but also of the power of God.
Now, the other thing I noticed is that in verses 6 through 10, you have to be real. You have to, you have to be willing to share your struggle with the person you're discipling. It says, "They passed through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And after they came to Mysia, they were also going, going into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them. And passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, saying, 'Come over to Macedonia and help us.' When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them."
Now, what's interesting is it starts the "we" passage here. Did you notice that the, the pronoun changed? So many people believe that Luke joined on at this point here. Here's the, here's the important thing. Timothy gets to be the disciple, right? Does anybody think Tim is going on? Guys, look, I know I just joined your group, but you, you wanted to go north and east, and you can't. And you want to go due west, and you can't. You want to go north, and you can't. And do you guys always make decisions like this? Like, do you have any idea where you're going? The, the real, the be real part of the six through ten command is very simple. Paul was struggling to know what God wanted him to do next. Why? Because he took the letters to where he had to go, and he didn't know what to do next. And, and in reality, he shared with the man, "Look, I'm praying about going this way. God's saying no. I want to go that way. Jesus is saying no. I don't know where He wants me to go." Because you're the disciple maker, does not mean you have to be perfect. You can be the person who goes, "I'm not really sure where God is going in this." Don't overplay your hand when you don't know. Tell him you don't know. And, and here's the thing, in the, when you run out of ideas, God shows up.
Now, I personally believe that the Macedonian man was Dr. Luke. That the one he saw in his vision was Dr. Luke. I'll tell you why. Luke is apparently a Macedonian doctor. And Macedonians don't dress any different than every other Roman does. So how does he know he's a Macedonian unless he knows who he is? Why would the Macedonian man be a Macedonian and not, and not Luke? Because Luke is the writer. And it's disrespectful in the time to write your own name into the narrative. So like John Mark writes about how he ran away in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke writes about how he appeared to Paul in a dream, but he doesn't want it to sound weird. And he doesn't want us to sound self-serving. So he just simply says, "a Macedonian man," which he happens to be. Okay, that's what I think it is. At any rate, I'm not selling that. You can kick it around.
Verses 11 and 12, I think you have to open the team to the disciple. You have to integrate Timothy into the relationship with Luke and others along the journey. Look at verse 11. "So putting out to sea from Troas, we made a straight course to Samothrace, and on the day following to Neapolis." That's interesting because it's going to take them five days to come back. It took them a day and a half to get there because the winds were with them. It says, "And from there we went on to Philippi." From Neapolis, which is the port today of Kavala. You have to walk all the way up the hill to Philippi. It's a great, great beautiful view. "And there was a leading city of the district of Macedonia, a Roman colony. And we were staying in this city for some days."
One of the things you want to do when you take a disciple is take them with you and let them be related to the other people. Be careful. I don't know why it happens. I really don't. But there are guys who I felt in my discipleship journey wanted to keep me from knowing people because I might maybe follow them and not the person who brought me. Or maybe I would make a relationship with them and I would leave their ministry. Or I felt that a couple of times I deliberately try to introduce people I'm discipling into as many other people as possible, hoping that you'll find one of them that, frankly, is more to your taste than me.
The other thing I think is incredibly important is you have to show the disciple, how he showed Timothy how to get to a work and start making the context that are necessary to share Christ with people. So it says, "On the Sabbath day we went outside the gate to a riverbed where we were supposing that there would be a place of prayer. We sat down and began speaking to the women who had assembled." You have to know something about Jewish tradition. If you have a minyan, a minyan is 10 adult male heads of families. 10 males that lead families. If you have a minyan, you can have a synagogue meeting. If you have nine, you can't have a synagogue meeting. You have to have ten heads of families. That's what officially calls that a synagogue. So on any given week, that's the reason why the synagogue here in town doesn't always have services. They don't always have a minyan, especially in the summer time. They go weeks without having services. So they show up, they look around, they do a head count. If they don't have it, they don't have a synagogue service. They can still have a, you know, a Jewish Bible study or whatever, but they don't have the service as planned. Now, we don't have that, but that was in Judaism. And what's important is whenever you know you're in a town where there aren't enough Jews to have a minyan, you don't have a synagogue. So where do you go? Jews know the first place you would go would be to the public water supply, the local river. Why? Because that's where Jews meet when there's no synagogue. You go to wherever the river is. And there's this, there is a symbolic ceremony called a Teshuvah ceremony where you turn your pockets inside out and you get rid of all the lint. It's kind of a symbolic, "I want to get rid of all my stuff, and now I'm ready to be together with other people." So when Paul arrives in Philippi, it's a big Roman colony, but it's not a big place for Jews. It's a Roman military colony. It's sitting right next to the plain where the battle for the empire was fought. And so it's a well-known blood-soaked valley and a great tradition for Rome, not so much on Jews though. And so he goes there, knows there's not a lot of Jews here, so he goes to the river. And that's what sets up the next story.
The reason I frame out the first 13 verses as different than the rest of the story is I think it focuses on what he did when he got Tim. How do you make a disciple? And what do you do with them? So verse 13, I would just say, is show him how to do it. Show him exactly what to do when he gets there and he doesn't know what to do. Tell him, "This is where you go first." Don't expect disciples to just know Jesus and therefore know how to share Jesus. You have to actually teach them how to share Jesus, and you have to, you walk, walk them through that whole thing.
All right, the next part in the rest of Acts chapter 16 is what I would call jailhouse rock. Okay? It is essentially when the jailhouse started to rock and they found themselves in a very unusual situation. Look, God has established models of how to build ministry to people. The purpose of these mission journeys, the first, second, third mission journeys in the book of Acts, is not just to tell you what Paul did. It is to give you a model of how to spread the gospel. That's what he's doing. He's walking into a place that's never heard the gospel, and he's bringing it to them. How do you do it? Well, first, you start with people. How do I know that? Because verse 13, he's going to what people group? Who's he looking for? It's Sabbath, and he's looking for a gathering. I'm thinking they're Jews. And so you start with people that you know. And by the way, note the prominence on prayer. That's going to come out of this. That there would be a place of prayer. He wasn't just looking for Jews on a picnic by a river. He was looking for praying Jews, people who were trying to have a service. That's what he was trying to look for.
The second thing I would tell you is, in verse 14, that people who responded were not always what they expected them to believe to be. And so I want you to see, what was the vision he had that brought him across the water to Macedonia? What vision did he have? He had a Macedonian man, a local man from that place. The first person to come to Christ is a woman, not a man, and not Macedonian, but from where he came from. In other words, the first person who comes is Lydia. And she's from Thyatira. That's where he was when he had the vision to come there. Why in the world did I come all the way over here to reach somebody from there? I could have stayed there. But they weren't there, they were here. Your divine appointment isn't necessarily to whom you think it is. You may get there and think you know exactly who you're there to reach. I went to Athens, Greece, on a trip, and I was teaching the Bible. And then this group that came is a really neat group. They come and they, I've told you about the people that wash the feet and put shoes on people. You know who they did it for? Largely gypsies and Croatians. And here we are in Athens, and we're reaching Croatians. Why don't we go to Croatia to reach Croatians? Because they happen to be living in the parks in Athens. When you go to a place, often you're not dealing first with people that are from there. You're dealing with expats from somewhere else. Why? Because they're dislodged. They don't know where they fit. And there are some of the first people you reach in the gospel. So that, for instance, in Israel, a lot of the incoming Israelis that were reached for Jesus were actually Russians, who were Jews, who were brought to Israel. But when they got there, they didn't, they didn't feel at home, you know, because Russia and Israel aren't exactly the same. And look, and so a lot of Christians would share Jesus with them, and they would come to Christ because they already felt dislodged from where they were, and they were looking for answers to life.
Now, I suggest to you then, that in verse 14, it says, "A woman named Lydia, from the seller, from the from Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics." What does that tell you? She's wealthy. Because purple is taken from the Murex snail. 10,000 snails it takes to make one thin, beloved, base for red, blue, or purple dye. And as a result, that means that she has a snail operation and a cloth-dying operation, and she's selling a very expensive cloth. Purple dye was extremely expensive. Today, blue, we have royal blue because only royalty could afford it in antiquity. That all changed in the 300 AD when they found a plant that would keep dye fast that was just equal to the snail and a lot cheaper to make. So today I'm wearing blue in the honor of those. Never mind.
Verse 14 goes on and says, "She was a worshipper of God, and she was listening, and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul." It's very interesting because what they had to do was, they had to adjust their expectation of who was going to come to Christ. You know, you might have this great ministry plan where you're going to go out and reach young people, and the first five people that come to Jesus are all older. Guess what? You don't go, "I'm sorry, you're too old to come to Christ. Okay, you're not allowed to do that." What you do is you take the fruit God gives you. And maybe it's different than the fruit you expected.
But in verse 15, it says, "And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, saying, 'If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and stay.' And she prevailed upon us." One of the things that happens is that they build ministry around the people who responded. That's important. The important thing is that when God gives you people who respond, look, there's a lot of guys out there who are absolutely desperate to pastor the church. They want to be there instead of the one they have. You start with the people God gives you and you work from that. And if you have a direction from God that you're going to go in some direction, that's fine. But don't step over people on the way to trying to reach people, because that's not right.
Verse 16, verse 16, 17, and 18, I think is a real statement of preparation. They met spiritual opposition that distracted from the plan. Immediately after people began to respond. So they have Lydia and her household that have responded to the gospel, and they baptize them, and they are now publicly part of the people of the Way, right? And so you go, "Wow, we've got the Church of Philippi is born." Right after the church at Philippi is born, the demonic powers around start to pay attention, and now comes the attack. "It happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a slave girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune-telling. Following after Paul and us, she kept crying out, 'These men are bondservants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you the way of salvation.'" And now, nothing she said was untrue, but it was incredibly annoying. Okay? So she continued doing this for many days. He's wearing now, like the scratches on the chalkboard are causing his toenails to curl. But Paul was greatly annoyed. Now, can I just say, in verse 18, this is not a method of ministry. Annoyance is not the driving force in ministry. But Paul got ticked, and he turned and he said to the spirit, "I command you in the name of the Lord Jesus to come out of her." And it came out that very moment.
Now, the fact is, the message that she was given wasn't wrong. What she was saying wasn't wrong. What she was saying wasn't designed to be wrong. It was a distraction. Would you please note that one of the ways the enemy works is not by frontally trying to confront us that we're wrong, but by creating one distraction after another to try and keep us off of our A-game. And one of those great distractions will be people that will come in with other issues that have nothing to do with the issue of reaching the people for Christ. And they will bring in the other issues. One of those great distractions, the New Testament was Judaizers that will hop on board and say, "Oh, then maybe they know Jesus, but they should be circumcised." That's a whole separate set of issues that has a whole separate set of problems. What happens is the enemy, if he cannot pull you off course, he will distract everyone around you. He will create disruption and distraction. And sometimes he does it by people in the room, and sometimes he does it by people who are even saying true things, but they're not relevant to the time. So you're trying to give the gospel to somebody, and somebody else is all offended that they're dressed immodestly. They are dressed immodestly, but that's not the relevant issue. You could make them modest, but they'd still go to hell. How about we fix the big problem first? Or, "Don't you know they're divorced?" Okay, but they're lost. Their bigger problem is not whether or not they had a previous marriage, but whether or not they have faith in Jesus Christ. You're on the wrong issue. Please, guys, hear this from my heart. Mature believers redirect back to the issue. Because you're going to find people that are immature or that are on the wrong issue all the time. There, what they're saying isn't wrong. Immodest is immodest, but it's not the relevant issue of the day. And so you've got some people that are so interested in making sure we clean the outside of the cup, they don't deal with the inside of the cup. And Jesus told us that's not the way to do it. Go from the inside out, not from the outside in. Live with the fact that some people will come in, and your reputation will go down because they dressed immodestly. Jesus spent time with prostitutes and sinners. Get over it. He didn't acknowledge that theirs was the right way, but he didn't let that stop him from giving them the message that changed their lives. People change after the gospel. Don't try to make them Christian-looking before they're Christian inside. Don't try to do it.
Now, what's interesting is that when I read this, we get into this situation where it says, "But when her masters saw that their hope of profit was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the market before the authorities." The physical opposition that they met was both illegal and unfair. The owners of the girl saw the powers were removed and grabbed Paul and Silas and brought them to the magistrate. They complain, "These men are Jews and are causing disruption in the city and telling us to do things that Romans are not allowed to do." Here's the thing. Verse 21 says that the accusation made against them was completely false. They were not to, they did not run around telling Romans not to be Roman. There was no such thing. So expect when the enemy attacks and distraction doesn't work, and you deal with the distraction, the next thing that will happen will be legal maneuvering. They will create a situation where they make you look like you're the bigot, or you're the disruptive one, or you're the un-American one, when what you're doing is exactly what you should have been doing. And what they'll do is create a scenario. "They're judging me. They're judging." We're not doing anything of the kind. We're bringing a message that tells you how to be free. That's what we're doing. And what you'll find is that the lack of logic and lack of law doesn't stop people from, that won't matter that what they're saying isn't true. People don't mind lying to make their point. Salesmen everywhere. People don't mind lying to make their point. They really don't. And they honestly believe that if it benefits them, a greater good happens than telling the truth.
So one of the things that they had to do, look down within the crowd, with verse 22, "The crowd rose up together against them." By the way, I would say, by the enemy had a hand in this. Satan whipped the crowd up. "And the chief magistrates tore their robes off and proceeded in order to, in order to order to them to be beaten with rods. When they struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely." Now, that was, by the way, against Roman law. They got all hostile about these guys saying things that were against Roman, what you're not allowed to publicly be a Roman. You can't do it without a trial. So they broke the law because they said they broke the law. This is the person who runs around calling me discriminatory, when all, or hateful, when all the hate is coming from the other direction. I see it all the time. He writes something that's not hateful at all. You just say, "This is what I believe." And they go, "Hater, hater!" And then they'll throw all kinds of nasty language at you, as if that's not hateful. If, in order to defeat the beast, you become the beast, the beast is one. Okay? You don't, you don't defeat hate by hate. That's not how you do it. But you're going to find there's no logic in this. It's not going to be logical. They're going to feel they can hate all they want because they're right.
Now, what I think is interesting as I look at this and I see verse 22, that they beat them with rods, 23, they throw them in jail, verse 24, "And he, having received a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks." So now they are beaten, their feet are in stocks. And I'm asking the question, what exactly would you be doing at that point? Paul and Silas thought it was a great time for a hymn sing. I'm not thinking that my feet in stocks and my back being beaten is a great time for hymn singing. That's me. But they're thinking, "Hey, let's sing some of those old tunes we love so much." Really? I mean, seriously, you're thinking this is the right time to do this? It's interesting. "About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them." Now, I don't know if Paul was any good at singing, and I don't know if Silas could blend really well. I just know that they found a way to be a testimony in the middle of the prison. See, it's not about where you are, it's about what you're there to do. So one of the things that happened is they spotted this opportunity so that they could use the opportunities they were given. Now, they didn't belong in the prison, and they knew it. They could have easily stood up and said, "We are Romans. You can't do this." They didn't. What I don't know is why they didn't. I suspect that they, that it all happened very quickly, and that they have not yet been through this kind of beating. And so they're, you know, it's been a long time since they've had this kind of open challenge. And says in verse 26, "Suddenly there came a great earthquake, and the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's chains were unfastened."
When the jailer awoke and saw the prison doors opened, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, supposing that the prisoners had escaped. Paul cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Do not harm yourself, for we are all here." And he called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear, he fell down before Paul and Silas. And after he brought them out, he said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" Paul had the presence of mind to say to the jailer, I think he had the presence of mind to spot that the jailer might have been the object of God's challenge. That I think what he saw was, "Hey, there's the guy God's trying to reach." And when he sees him about to take his life, he says, "Stop. That's you. You don't have to do that. It's true. All of us, the stocks are open, the chains have fallen off. We didn't go anywhere." If the power of God was shown to that man, not so the people that were guilty of things could be freed, but so that that man could be freed. God wasn't trying to set free the prisoners. He was trying to set free the prisoner to his sin. And so God used an illustration that spoke directly to the heart of the man. Don't tell God what He can use to reach somebody. You might think it was a terrible event, that there was this horrible car accident or whatever, but that might be the very thing that that young person needed in order to surrender their life to Jesus Christ. So you take the opportunities that are given.
What I think is interesting is, did you notice how Paul and Silas stewarded their time? It's midnight. They could easily be expected to be sleeping, but they're not. They're praising, they're praying, they're having a meeting. Now, I think one of the things that I picked out of this is, if you keep going, he's verse 31 says, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, you will be saved, you and your household." And they spoke the word of the Lord to him, together with all who were in his house. Verse 31 says, "Believe, and you and your household will be saved." And it sounds like he can make a decision for someone else's salvation. But if you read verse 32, it's clear that the rest of them were also deciding at the same time. Just be careful not to miss that. Every single person, you're not saved because your mama was. You have to make that decision on your own. But all of them were in the room. And I think it's interesting that in verse 33, it says, "And he took them that very hour of the night and washed their wounds, and immediately he was baptized, and all his household. And he brought them into his house and set food before them, and rejoiced greatly, having believed in God with his whole household."
What I think is interesting is in verse 32, 34, they used the time they had, knowing that there was little time to get them established. And so they were there in the middle of the night, they're preaching the gospel with people. Why? Because that's when they have. Don't tell people you do it in the morning if all you have is the night. And so what they do is, they're with him, they're in the house. The guy responds. He not only responds to the gospel, but one of the outward symbols that he truly responded to the gospel was he began to clean the wounds off of the, the beaten ones. I think it's also interesting that the team used the law that had been violated to, to protect the gospel. So look what they did. Verse 35, "Now when day came, the chief magistrates sent their policemen saying, 'Release those men.'" And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, "The chief magistrates have sent to release you. Therefore, come out now and go in peace." But Paul said to them, "They have beaten us in public without trial, men who are Romans, and have thrown us into prison, and now they are sending us away secretly? No indeed! Let them come themselves and bring us out." The policemen reported these words to the chief magistrates. They were afraid when they heard that they were Romans. And they came and appealed to them. And when they had brought them out, they kept begging them to leave the city. They went out of the prison, entered the house of Lydia, and when they saw the brethren, they encouraged them, and they departed. They left a house church there. I will call it the Lydia Philippi house church. But notice what they did. They made sure the ministry was stable before they left. And they made sure that people backed off and didn't go after the Christians. How did they do that? All we have to do is report that you beat us illegally, and Rome's going to come down, and you'll be out of your job. So we suggest you leave the believers in town alone. And that beating actually paid off because it meant that the mayor in town was not going to raise a problem against the early believers, or somebody was going to report that mayor, and he'd be out of a job. He may not have been spiritually converted, but he got the point. Back off. Sometimes it's not wrong for believers to use the law to get people who are illegally using, frankly, demonic forces against them, to overturn them. And I think the smartest thing he could do was wait it out, then look for an opportunity.
When Paul was beaten and thrown in jail, when Silas was beaten and thrown in jail, they looked for the person God was trying to reach, the jailer. And they looked for the opportunity behind the beating, and that was stability for the early church.
In chapter 17, I want you to see that he goes to Thessalonica, or Thessaloniki. I will say it both ways because one is modern and one is ancient. Thessalonica is the way we say it. Thessaloniki is the current city where that is. And since I go there, I use them interchangeably. They're really not. In verses 1 through 9 of chapter 17, I want you to see in Thessalonica, there is internal division. Now, let me break the text down for you. In, in 1 through 9, there is internal division. And in 10 through 15, he's going to move on to Berea, and there will be external opposition. So Thessalonica, one through nine, internal division. Berea, 10 through 15, external opposition. And Berea is a different city than Thessalonica. And then in 16 to 34, Athens, where they get overt skepticism, antagonism, and skepticism. So this is a tale of three cities. Let's just very quickly break down a tale of three cities here.
First, verses 1, 2, 3. Look at the witness. Look at what Paul was about in verses 1, 2, 3. "Now when they traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, Philippi, and Apollonia, near our lovely little villages that are along the main road where they could stop and take water. But they decided that they were actually heading somewhere." So by now, they have a sense that they're not stopping at every little village. They're going to main points along a road called the Via Egnatia, or Via Ignatia. And that is a major route. So what they're doing is they're following a highway. And they pass by Amphipolis and Apollonia, get some water, go on. And they get to Thessalonica. Why do they stop there? Because it's a large enough place to have a synagogue of the Jews. There's a Jewish synagogue there. And because they're bringing the gospel to the Jew first, and then also to the Greek, they stop at that place. "According to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah.'"
So I want you to notice a couple of things about Paul. First, he was forthright. He gave persuasive arguments in the light of day, on the Sabbath, making public presentation. This was not a subversive, quietly sneaking in Bibles. They were walking in the front door, speaking what they believed. Second, Paul was biblical. And if you notice in verse 3, he gives an explanation that's completely rooted in the scriptures. He's trying to show why Jesus matched the scriptures. That was the important thing.
In verses 4 through 9, you move from the witness to the response. What is the response of the people? And in verse 4, what you see is this: "And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women." So what you see is some from the Jewish core come with him, but also other people that were Greeks who were proselytes, God-fearing proselytes, and then women. Why are women mentioned? In other words, there was the core group of Jewish men from the synagogue who came, but then there were people who were on the outside of that core group that came along with them. So a significant work got started. After three weeks, he's there, three Sabbaths.
Now it says, "Some Jews, becoming jealous and taking along some of the wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob and set the city in an uproar." Stop right there. The first part of the response was some people believed. The second part was some people opposed. Look for opposition to come immediately after you start growing. Watch for it. Wait. When you see people coming to Christ and something starting to happen, the enemy also sees it. So expect him to come at you. And what it says here is that in verse 5, "They got together not only some who were jealous Jews, but also a worthless group of people from the marketplace, a group of wicked guys who were just in it for the riot. They didn't even care who they were rioting against." This happens in social media. You will find that some people pile on to the discussion, and they're not serious about it at all. They're just trying to add some extra fuel and hate and sarcasm. They're not really, they're for anything. And you're going to, you're sitting there trying to explain a position, and they're just beating you up from all sides because they don't really care. They're going to do what they're going to do. They're not going to care what you think. So that it's not an honest discussion. Honest is, if I'm sitting here having a discussion with Zoey, stick their head in the door and yell some kind of nasty language at me. They're not in the conversation. They're just yelling. That's all they're doing. My advice, just in the social media context, answer the people who are serious. Don't answer the others. And when they say, "Why aren't you answering me?" Because you're being sarcastic. If you want a real discussion, there's a way to have one. But this isn't all you're doing is yelling nasty words at me. I don't generally respond to people who yell nasty words at me. I just don't. I don't find it to be academically helpful to the discussion.
Here's the thing, and people, and then the other reasonable people in your conversation will know that you've been reasonable. They'll say it. What I think is interesting is, if you keep going down through what happens, you see that there are some interesting things that happen. Alliances, wicked men of the part of the marketplace, injustice. What do they do? They attack the house of Jason. You might be asking the question, "Whose Jason?" In the story, as best we can determine, he's someone who's a relative of Paul's. And what I find interesting about the, the setting here is it says, "And they attacked the house of Jason and they were seeking to bring him out to the people. When they did not, not find them, they began dragging Jason and some of the brethren before the city authorities, shouting, 'These men who have upset the world have come here also, and Jason has welcomed them. And they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.'" They stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things. And when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them. They put Jason out on bond on the agreement that Paul would leave. That the original Paul and Silas group that brought the message would get out of town. So now he's got a problem. Apparently, Jason is the guarantor of Paul's leaving town. If Paul stays in town, Jason and the other brothers will go to jail. If Paul leaves, they'll be set free. So now, now what they did was, watch what Satan does. If he can't get to the leaders, he'll attack the people all around them. When Jesus was ministering in the synagogue in Capernaum, Peter's mother-in-law got sick, and Jesus went to her. Why was that important? Because when the enemy can't attack you, he'll attack the people around you to bog down and slow down the ministry plan. On, if you will follow Jesus Christ with your whole heart and you have children, plan on them facing an attack because of your walk. That is going to happen. If you don't want your children attacked, then don't be anything for Jesus. Because the devil doesn't attack people who, frankly, aren't anything and don't really draw. So all I'm saying to you is, notice that the way the thing plays out. Now he has to leave. And so it says, "The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea." They were sent away in order to release the other brothers from prison out on their bond. And when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. You, I don't have free to bring to you.