Acts 17:1-9

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Kids:

Q. 1. What is the chief purpose for which man is made?
Q. 1. What is the chief purpose for which man is made?
The chief purpose for which man is made is to glorify God,[a] and to enjoy him for ever.[b]
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11   “Worthy are you, our Lord and God,     to receive glory and honor and power,   for you created all things,     and by your will they existed and were created.”
Is it wrong for God to say we should glorify and enjoy him forever? Not if He is the best thing for us. In 1670, Blaise Pascal wrote that there is a “God shaped hole in each of us”, in other words a hole only God can fill. I f your Mom insists you eat dinner when you are hungry, but you want eat sand instead, is she being arrogant and unreasonable, not she is insisting on the one thing she knows will satisfy your hunger and provide you what you need.
In 1670, Blaise Pascal
Comment on Q. 1. The opening question brings us at once to the subject of true religion – what it requires and what it gives. God has made us for a purpose just as everything made by man is made for a purpose. Only as we fulfil the purpose for which God made us can we be happy. Now God made us to glorify him. Of course we cannot add to God’s glory because he is entirely perfect, but we can show his glory by doing everything in life as service to him. This means that God must be first in our lives; only as we know and love him can we truly please him. That is why, since sin entered the human race, we can only be brought back into God’s family through Jesus Christ. Then we can have real joy in our lives, and look forward to knowing joy that never ends after this life. Looking for happiness apart from your Maker – ‘doing your own thing’ – is a dead end.

Background:

Paul and his team are in Greece on his second missionary journey, they have just planted the church in Phillipi a town with no significant Jewish population, and are now headed for Thessalonica a major city in the Roman province of Macedonia. The journey from Philippi to Thessalonica traveled by foot, would have (100-mile journey) taken more than three days.

Text:

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Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
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Text:

17 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. 2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.”

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17:1 Amphipolis and Apollonia … Thessalonica. Amphipolis was thirty miles (48 km) southwest of Philippi and Apollonia twenty-five miles (40 km) farther on the highway to Thessalonica. Paul and his companions were eager to get to Thessalonica, forty miles (64 km) beyond Apollonia. Thessalonica had a population of two hundred thousand and was the provincial capital of Macedonia.

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No real reason to mention them other than the fact that they went through there, texture and details.
It served as a port with close ties with Rome.

17:2 three Sabbath days. The Pauline Epistles suggest that Paul stayed in Thessalonica longer than three or four weeks (including the workdays before, between, and following three successive Sabbaths). According to Phil. 4:16, the church at Philippi sent him aid at least twice, and the Thessalonian epistles indicate that Paul had been able to give extensive doctrinal instruction to the Christians there. Acts does not state that the uproar surrounding Jason, the missionaries’ host (v. 5), occurred immediately after Paul’s third Sabbath of teaching in the synagogue. The conversions listed in v. 4 may have occurred over subsequent weeks, leading eventually to the hardening of Jewish opposition and the mob violence against Jason and other brothers.

17:2 three Sabbath days. The Pauline Epistles suggest that Paul stayed in Thessalonica longer than three or four weeks (including the workdays before, between, and following three successive Sabbaths). According to Phil. 4:16, the church at Philippi sent him aid at least twice, and the Thessalonian epistles indicate that Paul had been able to give extensive doctrinal instruction to the Christians there.

So while elsewhere in the epistles Paul ply his trade as a tent makers here he takes support to be able to focus on ministry.
It may be the volume of ministry opportunity, it mat be there is no opportunity for him to work, or it may have been the wealth of the church in Philipi and the soundness of their faith that he knew he could take support without endangering the Gospel message.
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17:3 necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise. Neither Jesus’ disciples nor their Jewish hearers readily accepted the divine necessity of the Messiah’s suffering (Luke 9:43–45; 18:31–34; 24:25, 26; 1 Cor. 1:18–25). When Paul establishes this point from the Scriptures and identifies Jesus as this suffering and triumphant Messiah, some of those who attend the synagogue, both Jews and Gentile God-fearers, as well as some of “the leading women,” come to believe in Jesus (v. 4).

Offensive things about the Gospel
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He could have supported this viewpoint with Isa 53:10–12

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Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

11  Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

12  Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.

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It was important that they understood what was prophised to happen to the Mesiah to realize who Jesus was. The idea that God would suffer run contrary to conventional wisdom.

For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

3  He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4  Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

6  All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

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4 And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women. 5 But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. 6 And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, 7 and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” 8 And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. 9 And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go.

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17:5 filled with jealousy As happened earlier in Pisidian Antioch (13:45), Iconium (14:2), and Lystra (14:19), the jealousy of particular local Jews compels them to oppose Paul and the movement of the early church.

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17:7 against the decrees of Caesar. Paul proclaims Jesus as the anointed King who has inaugurated the spiritual kingdom of God (14:22; 19:8; 20:25; 28:23, 31), but his opponents distort Paul’s message, alleging that the apostle advocates political insurrection against Rome. About this time, Claudius Caesar (A.D. 49–50) expelled the Jews from Rome (18:2) because of riots allegedly instigated by “Chrestus,” a probable reference to disputes within the capital’s Jewish community over the identity of the Christ.

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One quick aside before I get to the main point on those little marks of authenticity. Jason, is not mentioned anywhere in scripture, introducing him does not advance the narrative, he was introduced as an eye witness, a member of the church in Thessalonica who could confirm the veracity of Luke’s account.
I want to zero in here on this idea of “turning the world upside down”, because while I think their accusers were engaged in what even they believed was a bit of hyperbole, in fact turning the world upside down is exactly what Paul and this movement did.
At the time of this passage about 46 A.D. scholars believe the population of the world was ~300,000,000 million people. We don’t know the size of the church at this time exactly we can infer from the texts that maybe 1/10 of 1 percent of the world had been reached with the Gospel. Leaving 99.9 percent of the world un-reached.
2,000 years later The Joshua Project estimates that today 42% of the world’s population remains unreached (16% in th US), 3.19 billion people unreached with the Gospel. An un-reached people group is defined as “An unreached or least-reached people is a people group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers and resources to evangelize this people group without outside assistance.” Two of the 7,300 unreached people groups that make up that number are in Ethiopia a place near and dear to my families heart.
2.3 Billion people are Christians and pew expects that number to top 3 billion by 2050 with the explosion of the faith in Asia and Africa with the global center of Christianity moving from North America to Africa.
The Paul knew what Jesus had commanded them to do, George Leile and Phyllis Wheatley knew what Jesus had commanded (in spite of facing greater obstacles than we will ever know). And they lived out their obedience to , they turned the world upside down:
English Standard Version Matthew Chapter 28
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
This morning in the sermon I looked at an example of this movement and how it has played out on this side of the pond, it has the benefit of being appropriate for Black History Month
If you were to Google as I did yesterday morning “Who was the First Missionary sent from North America” the top result in Google is Adoniram Judson a white Baptist Minister from Massachusetts, who sailed to Burma in 1812 and served there faithfully for 37 years. And while we honor that amazing service to the Lord it should be noted that we was not the first missionary sent from these shores.
George Liele a freed slave, the first African American ordained Baptist Pastor in the US and the founder of the First African Baptist Church, located in Savannah, Georgia, which still exists today left these shores for Jamaica in 1783 some 29 years before Pastor Judson.
Pastor Liele began the work of proclaiming Jesus Christ to the enslaved population of the island, who the Church of England was not ministering to.
Pastor Liele would baptise 500 people in the early years of his ministry, by 1832 as a direct result of Pastor Liele’s work there were 20,000 baptists on the island, and he is credited with playing a large role in the abolition of slavery on the island in 1838.
Pastor Liele and his Ethiopian Baptist Movement would in turn send from Jamaica's shores church pastors who planted churches in Georgia, South Carolina, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone.
Pastor Liele’s commitment to missions should inspire all of us, he face innumerable challenges including being imprisoned twice for his work in Jamaica and persevered until his death in 1828. Today the Joshua Project there are over 2MM Christians on the island of Jamacia a testament to Pastor Liele’s work.
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Ancestors on Mission: Phillis Wheatley

Ancestors on Mission: Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 – 1784), widely known for her poetry, and as thee first African American woman published in pre-Revolutionary America, was also a notable apologist, abolitionist, and missionary.
Her journey to these shores was cruel and traumatic. In 1721, slave trader Playten Onely requested the Royal African Company capture “500 Small Slaves, Male and Female, from 6 to 10 years old, to be delivered annually” aboard the slave ship Kent. This legislation, allowing for the capture and sale of African children in the New World will introduce scores of children into these pestilent and unjust conditions. They would be stuffed like afterthoughts into the smallest and most suffocating areas of the slave ship’s ‘hold’, in whichever way they fit.
After being kidnapped from Senegambia, West Africa at the age of 7, she was purchased at auction by the Wheatley household. She was given the name of the slaving vessel from which she came, and taught the English alphabet by the Wheatleys’ daughter. She was trained as a domestic, and received obligatory religious and theological education from the Wheatley family, and from the clergy of New England.
Legislation against educating slaves had not yet reached Boston, but it was certainly discouraged and seen as impossible due to ontological racism – a perceived intellectual inferiority that Phillis’ abilities would soon challenge. Sixteen months after her purchase, she was reading English with fluency and ease from the most difficult portions of the Bible. By age 10, she was reading Greek and Latin, translating classics into English. By 14, she was catechized and published.
She converted to Christianity at the age of 16 and became a ‘member’ of the Old South Congregational Church in Boston under the ministry of Rev. George Sewall. Yet this “genius in bondage” worshipped in the segregated balcony reserved for slaves.
In 1774, Wheatley begins mission work with Samson Occom, a member of the Mohegan nation and a Presbyterian cleric, and Phillip Quaque, the first ordained Anglican priest of African descent. The three are publishing their work, and funding mission to Ghana and Sierra Leone. Their work makes some of the earliest recorded mission efforts from the New World, though America does not technically exist as yet. Their efforts were thrust toward establishing an African Christian presence specifically in resettlement projects in Freetown Sierra Leone, created as a safe-haven for emancipated slaves who were often recaptured and sold back into slavery. The three were soon joined by other self-emancipators: Ottobah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, Ignatius Sancho, and the European attorney Granville Sharp.
This early African American mission activity was truncated by the Revolutionary War, as New Englanders fled with their funds and their slaves to escape British occupation. By 1775, relations are so poor between England and the Colonies that all mission activity is suspended. What is of note is that this group began mission from North America in 1774, 8 years earlier than George Lisle.

Application:

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Each one of us has a sphere of influence, no matter how small, that we can use to advance the gospel. It maybe as simple as inviting a friend to church, it maybe sharing the Gospel with a co-worker. You might have an opportunity to invite friends and neighbors into your home to read the word of God. Each of us has opportunities, and we can follow Antioch’s example in seeking those opportunities out...
English Standard Version Matthew Chapter 28
18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Each one of us has a sphere of influence, no matter how small, that we can use to advance the gospel. It maybe as simple as inviting a friend to church, it maybe sharing the Gospel with a co-worker. You might have an opportunity to invite friends and neighbors into your home to read the word of God. Each of us has opportunities, and we can follow Antioch’s example in seeking those opportunities out...
One quick aside. We often here objections to personal evangelism “I don’t know enough”, “what if I can’t answer their questions”, “I need more time to get ready”. Let’s think for a second about the thief on the cross. He was saved in the final hours of his life by believing Jesus was the son of God and trusting in Him for his salvation.
(Don’t have to under stand how a movie was made to appreciate it…to tell someone about it)
(People coming up to me)
He’s what the chief end of man should be
Imagine, if we had been able to walk up to that thief on the cross and ask him about Jesus, he had most likely never heard Jesus teach, might not have been able to quote on word of scripture, knew nothing but that Jesus was God and his life had been changed. That’s all that he could have told us, but when we saw the peace in his eyes, a dying man full of joy we would have been amazed and wanted to know more. If he had figured out by who was weeping at Jesus’ cross who his followers were he might have told us to go to them, to sit at their feet and learn. Without a bit of theology, or a passage of scripture what a powerful witness that would have been, we are all experts on our story, and the difference that Jesus has made it our lives, share that. And then invite them here, or to a friend who is a more seasoned Saint to ask their questions.
Revelations 7:9-10 gives us a vision of the fruits of this labor “9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Can you imagine that day, can you imagine the joy we will feel knowing we were obedient to the Lord’s call on our lives. What a gift that the Lord allowed us to play some small role in those gathered on that day. It might be a neighbor, or a co-worker, or a child that you loved enough to support 8,000 miles away in East Africa. Whatever time, treasure, and talents we give to his mission I promise on that day we will know it was worth every sacrifice.
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