Let's turn to Acts chapter 17.
One of the things that I find so
remarkable about Paul, first his great apprehension of
grace, and he tells us that grace causes
us to stand.
It's the power of God to enable us
to go on no matter what.
Now when we begin to glorify God, Satan
seeks to come against us to discourage us,
to cause us to look back.
And it's interesting Jesus, I said, I think
he, let's see in Luke 9, 62, he
said, no man having put his hand to
the plow and looking back is worthy or
fit for the kingdom of God.
Now the amazing thing about Paul, and so
often we see in our own lives until
God brings us to that understanding, and he
changes us within with his grace, his unmerited
favor, and his love.
So often when we feel or experience or
face difficulties, we get hardened.
I look back at my life and as
I was a younger Christian, there were times
like the apostles as they struggled against the
wind going across the lake, trying to be
obedient to the Lord.
You remember the Bible says their hearts were
hardened.
And I can recall times when I'd get
nasty, and the poor people around me would
be at the brunt of my nastiness or
my reaction because of the struggles that I
was going through.
As you get older in the Lord, you
begin to realize that God designs everything that
happens in our lives, and it's his grace
that keeps our hearts soft that we continue
to go forward.
And we don't become hardened, we don't get
nasty.
And it's difficult to be around a nasty
Christian or a mean-spirited Christian that just
can't tolerate the slightest little thing that maybe
upsets their agenda.
It's just difficult.
Well, if anybody had a right to be
maybe nasty and even take out his anger
at the lost rather than share the love
and the grace of God, it would be
the apostle Paul.
Now stop and think of his life.
Now we've all had our magnificent, glorious initial
experiences with Christ, our Damascus Road experiences.
And we can recall that glorious day that
we were born again, particularly if there was
some great supernatural phenomenon with it, like Paul's
road experience.
But it's interesting, from that moment on he
faced nothing but difficulty and jail.
And yet he's the man that had the
greatest handle and understanding of the grace of
God, the love of God.
He's the man, as Jesus said, continue ye
in my love.
So many of us, because it's our human
nature, we begin in the love of God.
And Jesus prophesied that at the end of
the age, one of the signs of the
end was that people's hearts would begin to
wax cold and get angry and nasty again
as Christians.
The initial love and excitement of that experience
with Jesus Christ would wax cold.
Now the apostle Paul was so different.
The amazing thing is, remember, he's had the
vision to come to Europe, to Macedonia.
So he responds immediately.
And as soon as he goes into Europe,
Philippi, the very first place he stops, he's
beaten and thrown in jail.
He heeds the call of God.
He's obedient to the vision, immediately responds to
it, and he's beaten and thrown in jail.
And at midnight he's singing praises to God,
not ready to quit the ministry, not angry
at the jailer, not getting nasty with the
person next to him.
You see what the grace of God can
do in the heart of the human being.
It wasn't some special anointing more than anybody
else.
He had the indwelling Holy Spirit.
But he began to apprehend the grace and
the love of God that surpasses all knowledge.
It's the power of God unto salvation.
It's the power, it's the strength that causes
us to stand, Paul says in Romans.
So you see, that's what defeats Satan.
He knows that he gets out of jail
and he's now being led to Thessalonica, where
we will see tonight.
And what happens in Thessalonica?
The Jews get all stirred up, create a
riot.
They go to the magistrates, they run them
out of town.
It's another riot.
He's in the perfect will of God everywhere
he goes.
And his own countrymen.
He travels some 100 miles, and before it's
all over, 200 miles by foot from village
to village on this main Roman road from
the west to the east.
In the perfect will of God, he gets
to Thessalonica.
He has to go out of town at
night, and he goes to a little village
off by the wayside.
And it's interesting, he starts to share the
gospel with a little place called Berea.
And the Jews in Thessalonica, some, you know,
100 miles away, they get wind of it
and they stir up skinheads from the streets
and go down looking for him.
And another riot and he has to leave
Berea.
I mean, that's his life.
But you see, he put his hand to
the plow.
His love for Christ and his understanding of
Christ's love for him, as he teaches in
Corinthians, the love of Christ constrains me, overwhelms
me, and there's no difficulty that Satan can
send that could cause me even to look
back.
I put my hand to the plow.
I love Jesus Christ more than my own
life, more than my closest human friend.
And that enabled him to keep from getting
hardened and angry and nasty.
He drew out of that deep well of
grace, and so when he preached the gospel,
there wasn't nastiness or threatening or anger or
resentment in it.
It was love.
It was a concern for all races of
people.
It's that marvelous grace.
That's what God can work in any heart
if anybody's willing and is willing to find
out about it.
Again, the scriptures tell us that God is
a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
And when you begin to apprehend that and
drink of that well, you can't get enough
of it.
You just want more and more.
And it's wonderful to know that Satan can't
cause you to get nasty anymore.
Start taking it out on your wife or
your husband or the children or your friends.
The grace of God constrains.
It's so powerful.
Well now, he's responded, you remember, they have
left Philippi.
The jailer's whole house had been saved.
A church has been established.
And it's interesting, he'd go from village to
village.
He's going from place to place, some from
Philippi to where he goes now.
When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia,
they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue
of the Jews.
So now, there are Jewish males there, more
than ten, and so there's a legitimate according
to the Jewish law and custom, there's a
synagogue there.
And as his custom was, you know, to
the Jew first, he said, I wish, I
could wish myself a curse from Christ for
the benefit of my countrymen that they might
come to know the Messiah, who he is,
Jesus Christ.
And so, even though he was the apostle
to the Gentiles and he knew that, and
he knew that Peter was the apostle to
the Jews, Paul's desire was to the Jew
first, to reach his countrymen.
He ached inside that they might know.
The very ones who had followed him around
and badger him and beat him and lie
about him and try to disrupt his Bible
studies.
You see, the grace of God kept him
from beginning, mean-spirited and angry.
He still had a desire to share the
love of God with them, because of what
the love of God did for him.
You see.
So he's gone from one village to another,
and I like the way he plants churches,
not five miles from each other, eight miles
from each other.
He goes about 30 miles here, then he
goes another 33 miles, another 37 miles.
And before it's over, he, by foot, has
gone up, and if you look at your
map, you see the northern portion of the
Aegean Sea that separates the coast of Turkey
and Greece.
And that upper portion is what was known
then, and even today, is Macedonia.
The lower portion, or the border of Yugoslavia,
met Greece.
And so he's planted a church.
He's got a group of believers.
He's met that very influential, wealthy woman from
Thyatira.
Her house has gotten saved.
He moves on now, taking the gospel to
another town.
But God's using the persecution and the attacks
from the enemy, allowing Satan to do these
things, to direct Paul.
I think if we begin to learn the
sovereignty of God, and the providence of God,
and know that things aren't by chance, that
even if we do, in our decision-making,
and I've done this so often, make mistakes.
It's so easy to make a mistake and
miss the direction, but God still has a
way of working it to the good.
He works everything to the good, to those
that love Him, and are the called according
to His purposes.
So that no matter what Satan tries to
do, God uses it for the gospel's sake,
and for the spreading of the gospel.
And for the learning experience for you and
I.
And to change our hearts, and conform us
into the image of Jesus Christ.
I marvel at Paul, a man who before
he was born again, before he was converted,
was a deeply devout religious Jew.
But he was bitter and nasty and angry.
He could resent just as easy as he
could show kindness in an instant.
He could go from a religious Jekyll to
a Hyde.
And how, as God worked in this man's
life, how he was changed into the image
of Jesus Christ.
A man just like you and I, as
James tells us concerning Elijah, he was a
man subject to like passions as you and
I.
A normal human being that the grace of
God worked in, through these things, and made
him like Christ.
And so the longer he walked with Christ,
the more difficulty experiences, the more Satan attacks,
the more he became like Christ.
He continued in the love of God, and
grew in the grace and the knowledge and
the love of Jesus Christ.
No more nastiness.
No more resentment in the man.
No matter how difficult his situation, he was
always pleasant to be around.
He didn't have to hide when Paul was
going through a trial.
God do that in us.
Because that's what he wants to do.
That's what he's willing to do.
That's what he can do and will do
through the work and the beauty and the
power of the Holy Spirit.
If we don't look back.
David Livingston, they ask him, where do you
plan to go?
He says, I don't know, but wherever I
go, I'm going forward.
I've put my hand to the plow.
I'm not going to look back.
Lot's wife looked back.
And what did it do?
It paralyzed her.
It stopped her from going forward.
Just to look back.
And so he comes to Thessalonica, and Paul
as his manner was, went in unto them,
and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out
of the Scripture.
So he was there, it could be either
two weeks or three weeks, depending on when
he started.
If he came the first day on a
Saturday, he could have stayed until the next
Saturday, and then the Saturday after, that would
be two weeks.
If he came on a Sunday and spent
the week with them, and then went in
that following Saturday, he could have been there
three weeks.
Two weeks or three weeks, but he was
there for three Sabbaths in the synagogue, reasoning
with them out of the Scriptures, as his
manner was.
His desire to convert the Jew.
And he began to open and allege that
Christ must needs have suffered and risen again
from the dead, and that this Jesus whom
I preach unto you is Christ.
The Messiah is Jesus, Yeshua of Nazareth.
The anointed one who all your Old Testament
prophets spoke of is Jesus.
Now, here's the wonderful thing.
They had no New Testament.
So Paul proved to them and reasoned with
them out of the Scriptures, out of nothing
but the Old Testament that you and I
have to convert.
You can use nothing but the Old Testament
to convert someone to Christ, if you know
the Old Testament.
There was no New Testament written yet.
Everything was verbal and oral, and they're going
about sharing.
So he used, in the Scriptures, it was
all Old Testament.
Now stop and think of the wealth of
the Old Testament Scriptures.
You recall, and it could be he took
them down the same path that Jesus himself
took the two men on the road to
Emmaus, when it says, when he began, at
the beginning with Moses, Jesus gave them this
Bible study and brought them through the Old
Testament from Moses all the way up to
the present time, and then revealed himself to
them, you remember.
And it says, did not our hearts burn
within us when he was sharing these Scriptures?
And Jesus shared nothing but Old Testament Scriptures.
Now stop and think of the wealth and
the pictures and the figures of the Old
Testament that prove that Jesus is the Messiah.
Well, first of all, you start, you know,
right in Genesis, and maybe Paul very possibly
went right immediately to Abraham, where the very
first mention of love in the Bible is
where it speaks of Abraham loving his only
son, and offering up his only son, and
then having his son given back to him
in a figure, the resurrection.
So immediately he could have gone there to
begin to prepare them with the Old Testament
Scriptures, because they'd heard about this Jesus who
died and rose again, who was claiming to
be the only begotten son of God the
Father.
You've got the whole second Psalm that speaks
about the Lord's son.
He said, this day have I begotten thee.
He's going to have him reign and rule
on the earth, and the begotten in that
second Psalm speaks of resurrection.
Why do the heathen rage?
And it says that God's going to raise
him up, and he will rule and reign
on this earth.
He said, this day have I begotten thee.
He's raised him from the dead, and he's
coming back to reign again.
You've got the beautiful figure of Joseph, the
son, the favored son, rejected by his brethren,
cast into a pit for dead, lifted out
of that pit.
As far as his brethren, the Jews are
concerned, this son that they hated, the father
loved, but the brethren hated, rejected, dead, gone,
and he becomes mighty with the Gentiles in
Egypt.
The Jews are suffering.
They need to go to the world.
They go down to Egypt to survive in
the famine, and here Joseph disguises himself and
meets their needs, and they don't even realize
it's the rejected son that's keeping them and
meeting their needs.
And it says, and a second time he
revealed himself to them, the one they thought
was dead, just as Jesus Christ, you see,
is going to do again for the nation
Israel, the one, the favored son of the
father who's been rejected, who they think is
only but a dead prophet, false prophet on
the cross, crucified.
You look at Moses, the same thing.
Moses, a common criminal, wanted to lead his
people out, rejected, runs for his life, disappears
for many years, lives with the Gentiles, takes
a Gentile bride just as Jesus Christ has
taken a Gentile bride to church, and then
comes back a second time with his Gentile
bride and delivers his people, Moses.
The 22nd Psalm, the two-thirds of the
beginning of the psalm describe crucifixion, our Lord
on the cross, and then from verse 26
on is the resurrection.
In the very last verse of the 22nd
Psalm, the psalmist says it is finished, the
very thing that Jesus cried out on the
cross.
Psalm 16, verse 9, thou will not leave
my soul in Sheol, or the grave, the
resurrection.
Psalm 17, verse 5, when I awake I
will see thee, I will awake with thy
likeness, speaking of resurrection.
Daniel 9, 26, when he lays it out
and he prophesies the coming of the Messiah,
but it said he will be cut off,
but not for himself, rejected, crucified.
Hosea speaks of him being rejected, and after
two days he says, I will return to
my place whence I came, and he will
hide his face for two days, or two
thousand years, and then he will return, and
he said he will revive us again.
Hosea, chapter 5.
Zechariah chapter 12 speaks of, they will look
upon me whom they have pierced.
And then over in chapter 13, verse 6,
it says, we will look upon you and
say, what are these wounds in my hands?
And say, these are the wounds which I
received in the house of my friend.
So, text after text after text, and then
the one that's so dynamic and so emphatic
that the Jews to this day will not
read it in their synagogues, you know, on
their holy days at all since Christ came.
Isaiah 52, 16 through Isaiah 53, that they
refuse to read in their own synagogues.
The rejection and the accurate description of Messiah.
Scripture after scripture after scripture.
You can just see Paul reasoning with them.
They've heard of this Jesus, and knowing the
scriptures well enough that the Holy Spirit can
honor and open their hearts.
Opening and alleging.
Notice, opening, giving understanding.
Not angry, not bitter because of all of
his trials and difficulties since he got born
again and met Jesus.
A difficult road, a difficult yoke, and this
heavy cross I've got to bear.
Why did I ever even give my life
to Christ?
I've had nothing but trouble since I've been
born again.
See, the grace of God changed the man.
He'd never look back.
Never look back.
He said, this person that I speak of
is Jesus, the Messiah.
Some of them believed and consorted with Paul
and Silas, and of the devout Greeks, or
Greeks who had converted to Judaism, and a
great multitude, and of the chief women, not
a few.
Just as he shared the grace and the
love of God with such a spirit, it's
just like the Holy Spirit began to open
our hearts.
Instead of attacking them, it says he reasoned
with them, and opened the scriptures in such
a way that they weren't defensive.
He didn't go out and start slashing and,
you know, attacking them because they were believing
false things and they were blind idiots, or
that their religion was damned and they'll be
damned.
You know, it's interesting, Jesus said, remember, in
John, that if I just be lifted up,
if you'll just share me in such a
way, he said, all men will be drawn
unto me.
And naturally he was speaking of the cross.
The true meaning of there is Isaiah's text,
that he'll be exalted and highly lifted up
on the cross.
He said, if you do that, if you
present the cross in my love, I can
draw men to me.
Not attacking or damning people.
And now, notice immediately.
But the Jews, now, remember, Jews, that was
a feather in their cap, to proselyte a
Gentile, have a Gentile convert to Judaism.
So here's Paul coming along, and now the
Gentiles, who were these devout Jews that had
been converted to Judaism from Greek pagan thought,
are now realizing, through their Jewish faith, that
the Messiah that they were believing in, going
into Orthodox Judaism, the Messiah was none other
than Jesus, and now these devout Jews who
are Orthodox are saying, we're losing our converts.
They're following Jesus and they're leaving our religion.
We're losing control here.
And notice what that usually does.
How it stirs up envy and resentment.
The Jews which believed not, in other words,
they believed in Messiah, but that Jesus, not
the Jesus of Messiah, the Jews that were
blinded and hardened, you see, they took the
22nd Psalm and they saw Jesus as being
put to death as a false prophet, as
a blasphemer.
They didn't see that it was fulfillment of
Psalm 22.
But the Greeks were saying, those whose hearts
were open, were saying, wow, this has got
to be Jesus.
And so the Jews which believed not, they
were maintaining their faith in that Orthodox Judaism,
they were moved with envy.
And they took unto them certain lewd fellows
of the baser sort.
In other words, they went out and got
some street gangs, these kids that just, you
know, they're hanging around in the corners, maybe
in a neighborhood or in a shopping center
with their, you know, court bottles of beer
and their ghetto blasters on their front, and
you drive through and it's almost like they
dare you to hit them as they, they
don't even get out of the street, you
know, and you can feel the vibes.
They're just looking for trouble.
Just on a street corner, that kind of
a crowd.
And isn't it interesting, the devout Jews went
looking for them to create problems.
They knew they could stir these kids up,
certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, just
some street gangs.
They gathered a company, and they set all
the city on an uproar, and assaulted the
house of Jason, and sought to bring them
out to the real world.
So Paul had befriended a Greek named Jason,
they were probably staying at his house, teaching
the Bible, and they'd become friends, and so
they, they knew that that's where Paul was,
and so they went after that house.
They sent these kids just to, you know,
create a ruckus in the neighborhood and stir
up the city and even the police.
Not much different than today.
We look at the things that are happening
in the United States today.
You know, we, it's been what, about 30
years since we said it was the constitutional
law that says you can't pray in schools,
and now they're deciding whether, you know, trying
to figure out, maybe they're going to arm
the teachers so they can be protected.
The metal detectors aren't working.
They're going to arm the public school teachers
in the United States, even though they have
police in the halls.
I've got a few statistics.
Just to show you, this is from the
Children's Defense Fund, Washington, D.C. Some of
the late, this is what's going on right
now in the United States with teenagers.
Every 24 hours.
So by this time tomorrow night, this is
what will take place in the United States.
437 teenagers will be arrested for drunken driving.
1,206 unwed teenagers will have abortions by
this time tomorrow night.
We're talking teenagers, not the people in their
20s and 30s that are into lust and
pornography.
We're talking about teenagers.
1,206 unwed teenagers will have abortions by
this time tomorrow night.
1,365 unwed teenagers will give birth by
this time tomorrow night.
1,512 teenagers will quit school by this
time tomorrow night.
3,288 teenagers will have run away from
home by this time tomorrow night.
135,000 teenagers will carry guns into schools
by this time tomorrow night.
That's the future of America, by taking God
out of everything and thinking that secular humanism
and education is the answer.
And you have, you see, you make your
own morals.
You allow secular humanists running the educational system
to form the morals of a country.
Well, these were the kind of kids that
were always out hanging around.
Parents probably, you know, didn't know where they
were, what they were doing, who they were
associating with.
And so it was very easy to stir
them up.
Just restless, no goals in life, no future,
no absolutes, no moral standards.
And you have to know the Greek culture
in Paul's day, you see, the society was
split between the Epicureans and the Stoics.
The Epicureans were, you live for nothing but
pleasure.
And so there was no creator to answer
to.
So you're just on the animal plane, living
for sensual pleasure to the highest extreme without
pain.
And it led to nothing but degrading lust.
That's all the society lived for, was some
new sensual pleasure to have without pain.
That's Epicureanism.
That was Greek thought.
And so they got them stirred up and
they assaulted a house.
No respect for the law or for authority.
And they attacked this house where there was
some Christians living.
Stirring them up.
The Jews stirred them up.
Behind that we know is Satan stirring them
up.
And when they found them not, they drew
Jason and certain brethren under the rulers of
the city crying, these that have turned the
world upside down are come hither also.
So Paul wasn't there.
As the riot started and all the trouble,
the authorities came and they blamed it on
the Christians and dragged them into court and
the Jews, you know, they accomplished their agenda.
They disrupted the preaching of the gospel temporarily.
Now, here's the amazing thing.
Now, you remember Paul in Romans, as he's
writing to the Roman Christians, declared that as
God would work in the Gentiles, because they're
being rejected, God would use that to stir
the Jews to jealousy to get them to
react.
The very purpose of God is being accomplished
again in His sovereignty and His providence.
Amazing how God is so sovereign in this
universe, He controls all events and works it
to the good eventually.
And He fulfills prophecy.
He achieves His agenda.
You wonder, when we look at our own
personal life, is God achieving His agenda in
your life, in my life?
Is He able to work everything to the
good in your life?
Are you called according to His purpose?
Do you love God?
Is He being able to achieve that in
your life?
Turn to Romans chapter 11.
Let's look at it.
Verse 7, Paul is saying, What then?
Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh
for.
Now, Israel is seeking for redemption, seeking the
coming of the Messiah, the anointed one.
But they've rejected Him, Jesus.
And so they're blinded.
But the election hath obtained it, and the
rest were blinded.
Paul was one of the elect.
He was one of the...
that man born out of due time.
That's why he had this burning desire, knowing
that as a Jew you could know who
Messiah was.
But they hardened their hearts and rejected Him,
the Jewish people.
And so it says, The rest were blinded,
and are blinded to this day.
According as it is written, God hath given
them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they
should not see, ears that they should not
hear unto this day.
And David said, Let their table be made
a snare.
Let all their ritual and their worship services
be a snare and a trap and a
stumbling block and a recompense on them.
Let them just be trapped in their own
religious system, because they've hardened their heart against
Jesus Christ.
Let it become a snare to them.
Their devotion, how devout they are, but devout
in their error.
Let their eyes be darkened that they may
not see, and bow down their back always.
Let it be difficult for them, for a
purpose.
I say then, have they stumbled that they
should fall?
In other words, is God going to allow
them to fall so far down that they'll
not exist as a people and be finally
destroyed as a race?
God forbid.
But rather through their fall salvation is come
unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to
jealousy.
That's the very thing that was taking place
wherever Paul was going.
God's purposes were being accomplished.
God again controlling all things at once.
Now if the fall of them be the
riches of the world, and the diminishing of
them the riches of the Gentiles, how much
more their fullness when their eyes are finally
opened at the end of the age, when
the blindness is taken away.
But they're actually, they're being stirred to jealousy
because of the success of Paul, sharing the
Christ, and having people respond to it.
And so here they're stirred to envy, and
they cause trouble.
Yet God still is controlling it and working
it to the good.
Now, you see, that is very encouraging for
me.
I don't have to understand why.
I don't need an answer why anymore like
I used to have to have an answer.
Lord, why did you let this happen?
Why is this happening?
I don't like it.
I don't understand it.
It doesn't seem to go along with what,
you know, the scriptures say.
But if you look at the apostle Paul,
and you look at the plan of salvation,
and the sovereignty of God, that no matter
what happens, God is working all things all
at once to the good for his glory.
And so, you see, I'm not going to
look back.
I'm keeping my hand to the plow.
I don't need to understand it.
I know that God's in control, and I'm
trusting in Him.
And as Isaiah said, thou will keep him
in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon
thee.
What's your mind?
What goes through your mind constantly?
I see some people, they've got everything going
through their minds.
This Babylon out there is racing, pouring through
their minds, and they're trying to have a
little space once in a while to think
about Jesus in their life, in their activities.
And it's always this battle of this world,
you know, racing through their mind.
If your mind is stayed upon Christ, you
can do your job, you can take care
of your responsibilities, and you can be totally
consumed with Jesus Christ.
Mine's stayed upon Him, and you'll have peace.
Thou will keep him in peace.
It says God will keep him in peace,
so the job doesn't have to overwhelm me.
The difficulty doesn't have to get to me
that I quit.
I need an answer.
You better give me understanding, Lord, or I
can't trust you anymore.
No, those aren't issues anymore.
You see, you trust in God.
He's controlling it.
He's working into the good.
When they had taken Jason into the jail,
or before the magistrates, they're probably questioning him.
Where is Paul?
Where are these people that are turning the
world upside down with their talk about this
Jesus?
Jason, when he received them, they said, these
do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying
that there is another King, one Jesus.
So they're lying about him.
They're lying about what Paul is saying.
Now, that's an absolute lie.
You remember in Luke chapter 20, verse 25,
you remember the Pharisees came to Jesus Christ
to lie in wait to entrap him.
And they say, which is lawful?
Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar
or to give to God?
What is lawful?
And Jesus was aware of their craftiness and
their deceit, because they knew that Jesus was
getting a following.
But Jesus was designing a kingdom that he
plainly said, my kingdom is not of this
world.
No threat to Caesar.
Jesus didn't come to change the world.
He came to bring people out of the
world, as we shared last Sunday.
Remember, John heard a voice from heaven, another
voice from heaven saying, come out of Babylon,
O my people, that ye not become partakers
of her sins or receive of her plagues.
Jesus didn't come to Christianize the world.
He came to call to himself a bride,
a heavenly bride, that wants to leave this
world.
He's going to destroy this world and all
the governments of man.
Remember, Daniel saw the beginning head of gold
right down to the end of Gentile sovereign
rule on this earth.
God's going to bring it all to an
end, not save it, not Christianize it.
And so Jesus caught them in their very
words.
He said, you know, he saw through it.
He said, and this is what I find
interesting.
He didn't say, render unto God what is
God's, and then Caesar unto Caesar's.
He mentioned Caesar first.
You're down in, you're temporary, you're aliens, you're
strangers, you're just biding your time in this
world.
Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
He caught them.
He said, you render unto Caesar what is
Caesar's, and unto God what is God's.
You do both.
You don't start some movement to overthrow the
government.
You render unto Caesar's what is Caesar's.
And then Paul later on devotes practically a
whole chapter of Romans 13 about being subject
to the higher powers and glorifying God, even
if they're unjust.
You obey the laws of the land.
And then Peter, in 1 Peter chapter 2,
he picks up on it, and he too
says that we're to give honor to the
king, the honor that is due and respect,
and obey the laws of the land.
And this is what's good in the eyes
of God, even if it's unjust.
Remember, Jesus said the meek are going to
inherit the earth, not the revolutionists.
But it's the meekness that causes the revolution.
It's the walking in humility and lowliness and
obeying the laws no matter how unjust, not
trying to start a movement to overthrow a
government.
Jesus taught against that.
He said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,
and to God what is God's.
He wasn't trying to overthrow the Roman government,
and neither was the apostle Paul by sharing
that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
See, the problem was Augustus Caesar started it.
He was the August one.
He began to claim deity.
He was God in human form on the
earth, ruling the world, and he demanded worship.
So to be a good Roman citizen, you
worship Caesar.
And so that was the issue.
People were beginning to worship Jesus Christ, and
they quit worshiping Caesar.
They weren't trying to overthrow the government.
They just weren't worshiping a man as God
anymore.
They'd met the true God, Jesus Christ.
But they lied about it.
You see, true Christianity is always going to
be lied about.
Our responsibility is to live the life that
my life isn't a lie, that the Christian
life that I'm living is not a lie.
It is the truth, a true example of
someone being led by Jesus Christ, and also
a good citizen obeying the laws of the
land.
So they troubled the people and the rulers
of the city when they heard these things.
Just stirring up trouble.
And when they had taken security of Jason
and of the other, they let them go.
So they threatened them, broke up the gathering
looking for Paul, and they made him post
a bond, and they released them and warned
them.
And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and
Silas by night into Berea, who coming further
went into the synagogue of the Jews.
So right away he finds another synagogue.
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica,
in that they received the word with all
readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily
whether those things were so.
Now they just didn't believe immediately.
When it says they were more noble than
the Thessalonicans, they listened to what Paul said
and they searched the scriptures to see, are
these things really so?
Yes, it does line up with scripture.
That's what made them noble, searching the scriptures,
not believing instantly.
It doesn't mean that.
It's great to be around somebody, you know,
who searches the scriptures.
It doesn't walk out and say, well, this
is what it is because Pastor Bill said
it, or Chuck Missler said it, or Chuck
Smith said it, or Billy Graham said it,
or Greg Laurie said it.
They searched the scriptures.
Did God say it?
Did the scriptures say it?
And see, that's what gives us a powerful
witness, isn't it?
That we share scripture.
We don't share what Greg says or Bill
says or Chuck says and try and convert
somebody, or what Billy says.
We're not following men, even the men that
God uses.
We're following Christ.
If you want to convert someone, you really
want an effective witness, you share the scriptures.
You know the scriptures and you know the
scriptures that identify who Jesus Christ is.
That's what makes someone noble.
They're more noble.
Why?
Because they searched the scriptures.
They just didn't buy everything that came down
the road.
There wouldn't be so many weird Christian things
going on if Christians would search the scriptures.
It's amazing as I watch some of these
charlatans on television making fools out of people,
raking in money, exactly as the Apostle Peter
said.
He said, in the last days, these false
teachers, one of the signs of the end,
would draw huge crowds and make merchandise of
them.
And some of the bigger the crowds, it's
amazing.
I like to watch, it's amazing, very few
of them have Bibles.
And yet you see them in the stands
weeping and crying and their hands in the
air and running up on stages.
And you see these guys doing exactly what
Jesus said when he identified wolves, casting out
demons, knocking people down, claiming miracles, prophesying in
his name.
And Jesus said to these people, I will
say, I never knew you.
Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, into
everlasting fire.
Isn't that amazing?
And you tell some people that go to
these meetings, you tell them those scriptures, you
say, don't you attack that guy.
Don't you judge that brother.
I said, it's right here.
I don't care what you did.
I got saved there.
I got healed there.
And you got ripped off there, too, probably.
And you try to help them.
You try to show them the scriptures.
Invariably, why try it if you can handle
the network, if you can handle what goes
on.
And you sit there and you watch and
you go, oh, God, why don't these people
have discernment?
And you look and none of them have
Bibles.
They're all hyped on emotionalism.
It's almost like their strings are being pulled
and they get hyped.
You say, well, does God heal people, save
people?
Absolutely.
He's not going to allow Satan to stop
anybody who's got a sincere heart and being
sincerely deceived from getting saved or touched by
God.
But I'll tell you one thing.
If these people don't start picking up the
Bible and reading the word of God, they'll
start following these men forever and they will
become their Jesus.
They will never get to know the real
Jesus.
They'll know more about the evangelist or the
prophet or the TV personality they got saved
under than they do Jesus Christ.
And that's all they'll ever do is quote
that person.
They'll never be able to quote Jesus Christ.
And you'll never see them change.
The only thing in their life is they'll
only talk about their last experience.
They never get beyond the experience realm or
level.
And that's all they can ever testify of.
Man, what happened to me?
Man, you should have seen what happened to
me.
And they never change.
You try to help them.
If they just read the Bible.
The Bereans were so noble.
You should never, ever go out of here
and just say, wow, that was a great
Bible study.
I believe it because Pastor Bill said it.
I would rather you go to either start
reading your Bible and testing to see if
it's true or find a church where people
don't use Bibles.
I'm failing.
How can you enjoy and grow in the
knowledge of Christ if you don't read your
Bibles?
And isn't it amazing how we claim to
be spiritual beings, but our flesh still dominates
us?
If some of you people ate physical food
the way you read your Bible, you'd be
dead tonight.
And you know it.
And I hope it upsets you.
I would hope that it would stir you
to show you that, you see, you've shifted
and you're a saved person, but you're dominated
by your flesh and your emotions because the
Word of God isn't important.
You're not a spiritual Christian.
You're a Christian, but you're not a spiritual
Christian.
You have no desire for the Spirit.
Usually people that get into that, that shift
into that mode, they want to feel something
in a meeting.
And so that's where they go to feel
better after it's over.
Or to experience something new.
Or to receive something.
Not to give of themselves as Paul.
To give something they received from Christ away
to somebody else.
To see someone else's life enhanced and blessed.
Because the flesh is dominating their life.
And they never give up food like they
give up the food for their spirit, the
Word of God.
They don't even give it a second thought.
It's automatic.
It shows you.
Their body appetite governs them.
Not Jesus Christ.
And nowhere does it say, you see, after
we're born again that you quit eating.
You know, that you don't eat and take
care of yourself.
We're three-part beings, you see.
Spirit, soul, and body.
So important.
That's why you see every wind of doctrine.
All these weird things.
And you say, hey, I haven't seen so
much.
Oh, they're going over there.
They're into this now.
They're into that now.
Oh, no.
You quit teaching end times, they don't come
anymore.
You're not talking about tongues and the baptism
of the Holy Spirit and healing.
They don't come anymore.
They're not into Hosea or Genesis.
The Bereans were more noble than those in
Thessalonica.
And that they received the Word with all
readiness of mind and searched the Scriptures daily,
not once or twice a week or a
month.
Daily.
Whether those things were so.
And see, when you read the Word of
God, remember, God has marvelous, wonderful gifts of
the Spirit for each person in the body
of Christ.
To bless that individual and to enhance the
body of Christ.
And as you read the Word of God,
the gifts of the Spirit that you're given
initially as a believer develop and become more
powerful.
That's another aspect of truth that a lot
of people don't realize.
Just as when you are born as a
human being, you have in your makeup the
way God's designed your physical body and the
genetic code, your muscular structure, your brain, your
lung capacity, your coordination.
As you feed your human body nutrition by
eating a good balanced diet on a regular
basis, and then you begin to develop as
you grow older physically, these things all develop
and enhance.
Your strength gets stronger.
Your vocabulary increases.
Everything develops and gets better.
God has designed the same thing for everybody
spiritually.
If they'll feed their spirit, the gifts become
more powerful.
You grow spiritually and develop even more as
you search the Scriptures daily.
Therefore, many of them believed.
Also of honorable women, which were Greeks, and
of men, not a few.
But then the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge
that the Word of God was preached to
Paul at Berea.
They came thither also and stirred up the
people.
A hundred miles away.
Now he's down there and let's go get
him.
And so Satan stirs and here is Romans
11.
They're stirred up to envy again.
Here's the hand of God controlling everything.
And now what's going to happen?
You see, by this trouble, God is going
to keep Paul from staying there longer.
Paul's saying, you know, oh maybe I ought
to stay an extra six months.
And teach him everything.
Now remember, if you look at 1st and
2nd Thessalonians, why don't they go to a
city like Clifton Springs?
Why not Clifton Springs and Shortsville?
Those are easy names of villages.
Thessalonica.
He wrote these two great letters on the
second coming, the rapture of the church, the
second coming, the Antichrist, the end of the
age, the day of the Lord.
Just think how he filled these people up
with the eschatology of the second advent.
Dynamic two letters to the Thessalonicans.
Whoo, thank you Lord, I got it out.
But then you see, when you have a
Bible study and you're excited and you see
people responding, you don't want to stop.
So God says, I've got to get him
to the city.
It's actually the university city of the world,
Athens, where all the intellects of the world
gathered.
And the religious center, the intellectual, the cultural
university religious center of the world.
It wasn't Rome, it was Athens.
And God wanted Paul at Athens at a
specific time.
So he used the Jews from Thessalonica to
come rushing down to Britain.
No, he's not going to get something started
there.
And he drove Paul, he had to leave
again, get on ship, and God's using it
by stirring up the jealousy to fulfill scripture,
to keep the Jews angry, they're hearing about
this Jesus, and Paul is moved to Athens
right where God wants him.
The intellectual capital of the world, where all
the great minds, Socrates, Plato, all the great
minds of mankind.
It was the university center, the great universities,
the greatest of the world at that time,
in Athens.
And they were pantheistic.
And the two great divides of mankind, you
had the Stoics and the Epicureans.
And here Paul is bringing the gospel to
this pagan, cultural, degraded, intellectual place, the great
universities that love to do nothing but gather
around and discuss religion and politics and culture
and philosophy and art.
In fact, they were so pagan, there were
so many different religions in Greece, in Athens,
that you couldn't find a god before you
could find a human being, a statue somewhere,
a temple on the street.
Silver, gold, marble, everywhere, hundreds of gods.
They had gods for, it's amazing, they had
gods for sex, Diana, Aphrodite, gods for war,
Zeus.
They had gods for emotions, gods for appetite,
for rumor, for shame, for the inlet, gods
for the weather.
They had gods for everything.
Great universities, and they just loved to discuss
the religions of the world and debate and
talk about life and the arts and science.
And here God's bringing the apostle Paul, using
persecution, and at the same time, remember as
Paul taught in Romans 5, that through these
persecutions and these tribulations, the love of God
is shed abroad in your heart by the
Holy Ghost which is given unto you.
And so by the time he gets there,
he is so filled with the love of
Christ, no bitterness, no nastiness, no anger of
why God's using him this way and directing
and allowing these things in his life, that
he's got nothing but, he sees these intellectuals
absolutely lost in darkness in the greatest university
city of the world.
All God's plan, God's love for mankind.
They acknowledged that the word of God was
preached to Paul and Berea, they came through
there also and stirred up the people.
And then immediately, the brethren sent away Paul
to go as it were to sea, but
Silas and Timothy abode there still.
And they that conducted Paul brought him unto
Athens.
And receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timothy
for to come to him with all speed,
they departed.
Paul says, man have we got a harvest
field here.
The fishing is great here.
We've got intellects.
We've got perverts.
We've got politicians.
We've got the rich.
We've got the artsy folks.
He says get up here.
We've got to share the truth here in
this major city.
God has got me in a place that
man where sin abounds, grace does much more
abound.
Remember Paul wrote that in Romans.
Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.
You see again, what the grace of God
can do to a heart.
Well, I'm not staying here.
There's no believers around here.
Well, that's why God sent you there.
That's why Paul's there.
Because there aren't any believers yet.
No, I'm not going to live in this
neighborhood.
There's no one who believes here.
No, I can't go to that town.
There's not a right on church there.
Maybe that's where God wants you.
To start the right on church with you.
To start the home Bible study with you
and have it develop into something wonderful.
Or maybe just meet somebody who God has
picked is going to be the Timothy, to
be the pastor, to be the one that
God's going to do dynamic things in that
town, that village, or that place where all
that degradation is and that pornography and that
perversion and violence and lust.
God's got you there.
Now, you're going to meet somebody and they're
the one I'm going to use.
But I want to start with you.
You're going to meet them on a job.
And they're going to be nasty.
They're going to have filthy language.
They're going to have dirty pictures on the
assembly line.
They're going to tell nasty things at the
water cooler at the office.
And don't quit.
Don't leave because they're evil there.
That's why I want you there to convert
them.
Oh, I'd rather go on the mission field.
That's amazing how we want to go.
There are more people lost here now than
in a lot of other countries.
It's getting a little worse here, isn't it?
You say, well, I want to go to
a, you know, I want to go where
the heathen are.
I want to go where the pagans are,
where they worship trees and they wear things
in their nose and in their lip, you
know, the Aborigines.
They're walking around here.
I've seen, there's white Aborigines in Canada.
Right now, go down to TCBY in Canada
and you'll see some white Aborigines with rings
in their lip, things in their belly buttons,
hanging out of their eyebrows.
They stick their tongues out and if they're
around a high voltage wire, they get electrocuted.
There's so much steel in their tongue.
And you want to go to, you know,
Australia or South America or Africa.
Downtown Canandaigua, the Canandaigua High School, the Newark
High School, Victor High School, Clifton Springs Elementary
School.
Look at our elementary schools.
And here we are.
You say, that's Paul.
Paul was there.
He said, oh, we've got a harvest field
here.
We've got people that are religious and educated
and cultural and they believe in the arts
and they believe in all kinds of gods
and religion, but they don't know the truth.
They're blinded by Satan.
And while Paul waited for them in Athens,
his spirit was stirred in him.
All he had to do was see the
kids on the streets at night or turn
on the television in Athens and say, these
people are sick.
They've got talent, but look at how they
portray their talent.
They're sick.
When you saw the city given wholly to
idolatry.
See, the only thing that's changed is technology.
The heart of man is the same.
And isn't it interesting, the very things, the
very people that Paul debated with, that we'll
learn of in a couple of weeks.
Next week is communion.
The very people he debated with are the
very people that formed the very educational system
that you grew up in in the United
States today.
The philosophies, the architecture, the law, the social
studies, everything is from these people.
They can build their magnificent buildings.
These artists were so fantastic, they could take
a statue and make it look human out
of marble and gold and silver.
And they were degraded.
They were morally bankrupt.
They were living in darkness under the oppression
and the bondage of Satan.
And it's the very school system that some
of you are growing up learning, the very
same things, the same Socrates, the same Plato,
the same architecture, the same mathematics, the same
physics, the same social studies, the same psychology.
It all started there.
See, nothing's really changed.
As Solomon said, there is nothing new under
the sun.
And so here's this right, Paul sees, oh,
what an opportunity to set these people free.
And it's amazing how he did it.
The love, not attacking them for their superstition
or their false gods, not attacking whatsoever, but
giving them Christ in a marvelous way.
Shall we all stand?
Father, what a privilege and an honor to
live in these days and to know Jesus
Christ and be handpicked by you to share
the truth, to have you move us from
village to village or town to town in
our everyday experiences with the opportunity to share
Jesus Christ with someone in a loving way,
not nasty or resentful or bitter because of
difficulties, but in your love, Lord, because we've
experienced grace and we're understanding the beauty of
your grace and your love for the lost
and your understanding for the deception that they're
in.
We know, Lord, that you hate these things
that are happening.
You hate what's happening to the youth of
America, what the adults are producing and causing.
And yet, Lord, you love these people enough
to send your son to die for them
and to redeem us and free us and
then send us as light that they may
come forth and come to Jesus Christ.
We pray, Lord, that you'd enable us to
walk in that love and to share that
grace and to continue on in the love
of Jesus Christ, no matter what the difficulty
may be, that once we put our hand
to the plow, oh, Father, that we'd never
look back.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.