I please God to bless us together
as we continue our meditation in the 17th chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles. And this evening we'll consider
from verse five down to verse nine. And you will remember that
we left last week with the word of God having been preached powerfully
by the Apostle Paul and having a blessed effect And the effect
was that some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas
and of the devout Greeks, a great multitude, and of the chief women,
not a few. And so we see there was great
blessing and many were favored, but we now come onto the other
side. But the Jews, which believed
not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of
the lesser sort, gathered a company and set all the city on an uproar."
Well I suppose we must recognize that we have the accounts in
the Word of God which set before us very often the pathway that
God's people are expected to come into. We often think that
our path won't be difficult it'll be an easy path but we see in
these halcyon days when the gospel was so gloriously preached, there
were those that believed and those that did not believe. And
those that did not believe created a big problem, and they tried
to stop the preaching of the gospel. Well, surely we observe
that today, do we not? There are so many that do not
believe, and they try all they can to stop the preaching of
the gospel. And sadly, they are successful
in many areas. we need to realize that we have
a God who is on the throne and so here then there were those
that did not believe and they did all they could, they were
moved with envy, and they brought together the base of sort, lewd
people, to cause an uproar. They wanted to cause such a problem
in the city that there would be those who would appreciate
the terribleness of such doctrines which have been preached and
would therefore not allow it to be declared anymore. And that's
really what is happening today. But we should be thankful that
we today worship the same God. Now, we hear what happened. And they assaulted the house
of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. Well,
we don't know very much about Jason. But we know that obviously
he was a godly person from this position because they would surely
have not been interested in him if he was going along with the
crowd and joining in the uproar. But clearly he was separate and
therefore they appreciated that here was a man who was opposing
what they wanted. And therefore they went to his
house and they took him out of his house and they brought him
out to the people. And when they found them not,
Presumably, they were referring to Paul and Silas, who they would
have thought were in the house, perhaps sheltering there. We
don't know where they were, but they appeared not to be there.
And certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, these
that have turned the world upside down are come hither. Why were they spoken of like
that? Well, the truth is the things
of God, the true things of God, things the Lord Jesus Christ
really do turn the world upside down because people do not want
to have their lives hindered and cluttered and stopped by
doing worldly things, worldly pursuits, things that they please
their flesh, they want to continue with them, they don't want to
hear anything that's going to stop them in such an occupation,
they don't want to hear the preacher of the gospel. They don't want
to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ. They want to continue
in their own way. And really what it means is their
world is being turned upside down, complete opposite to what
they wanted to do. And the glorious thing, of course,
is in the life of the believer, they're turned upside down because
as they pursued their own agenda, then God comes and when God comes
and God speaks, their agenda goes to one side and God's agenda
takes its place and really is an upside down position. It's
the complete opposite. Well, we read here then of those
people that didn't want this to happen and they were complaining
about it and therefore they cause an uproar in an endeavor to change
the situation which was developing hopefully banning Paul and Silas
from this place they weren't allowed anymore to preach the
gospel and so here we have this statement and when they found
them not they drew Jason and certain brethren unto brethren
into unto the rulers of the city crying these have turned the
word upside down are come hither also well yes they come and they'd
realized that there was a great word being spoken and preached
and it didn't want it and so when jason hath received and
these all do contrary to the decrees of caesar saying that
there is another king, one Jesus. Well, this was the condemnation. This was the statement against
them. And they therefore hoped that
the rulers would concur with them and ban them from ever preaching
the gospel again because they were so convinced that decrees
of Caesar, which were, of course, the laws of the land, which were
the Old Testament ceremonial law, and now Paul and Silas were
preaching the cross of Christ, they were preaching Jesus and
how attractive it was to those in whose heart was the new life,
the light of the gospel and how bad it was and how horrible it
was to those who were still in darkness, in the darkness of
nature where there was no light And so here was the situation
then that these people were brought to the rulers and they were told,
yes, these people are speaking against the decrees of Caesar
and saying there is another king, one Jesus. Well, of course the
Jews could not believe it because the Jews anticipated there would
be a glorious king. Um, but not a humble king Like
the lord jesus they didn't expect one to be like that and therefore
they could not accept him and of course the the greeks and
the and the other nations also Would not concur that this one
jesus wasn't in king. He'd been crucified As far as
they was concerned he was dead now remember that christ Uh when
he rose from the dead only appeared It would seem to his people,
not to the world. The world did not view the risen
savior. They viewed the king of kings
while he was upon the earth before he was crucified. And they turned
their back upon him. They'd said, we will not have
this man to rule over us. And now you see when the Lord
rose from the dead, he was only revealed to his people and not
to the world. And therefore, here was this
statement that Paul and Silas were preaching about the King,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and they couldn't receive it. They didn't
want to receive it. They wanted to reject it. And
so they tell the rulers and they trouble the people.