Isn't it wonderful that we can
go to the scriptures and find again and again that our Lord
Jesus Christ reigns. That's the declaration of the
gospel, isn't it? The modern world says that he's offered,
he's done his best and he's offering something to everyone. Well if
all he does is offer things, brothers and sisters, you are
lost. If all that he does is offer
things, you are lost. If all that he does is love,
and he can't apply that love to the hearts of people, we are
all lost. If the Lord Jesus Christ died
for everyone, and people that he died for can go to There is
no hope, brothers and sisters. There is no hope outside of an
absolutely sovereign God. There is no hope for sinners
outside of that. We have a great and awesome God,
and He sends His Gospel. He sends His Gospel out into
this world, and He sends His Gospel out with a purpose to
particular people, and He sends His Gospel out that at the time
of His love, that will happen that will work in the hearts
of those people. We're looking at the Thessalonians. I'd like
you to turn to 2 Thessalonians just briefly before we go back
to our text in Acts chapter 17. One of the things that is necessary
for us to state again and again and again is that all that calls
itself Christian in this world is not necessarily Christian.
Now that was obvious a long, long time ago. Cain went to church
with Abel and Adam and Eve, and Cain went to church for probably
some considerable time, and he was a lost man. The Jews had
all of the privileges of all of that witness of the Lord to
their lives, and yet the overwhelming majority of the professing Jews
throughout all of that time, until that nation was destroyed
in 70 AD, never to rise again, other than in the figment of
man's imagination, never to rise again. The majority of those
people, despite all of their activities and all of their worship,
so-called worship, were actually lost people. The scriptures give two, they're
only twice in the New Testament is the word Christian used. And
it's a word that I tend not to like using these days because
it is so perverted and we can certainly use it and apply it
to the Lord's people wherever they're found. But in the scriptures
there are two other words that are describing the people of
God and they're much more descriptive, aren't they? I think they're
much more descriptive. One of them is called brethren. Brethren. Now, to be a brethren
means that you're born from the same womb. The Jerusalem above
is the mother of us all. So all of God's born-again children
are born from above. So they're brethren. They're
brethren. And believers. They're believers. So in those two words we have
a great description of what it is to be a Christian. It's a
really helpful description. So if you turn with me to 2 Thessalonians
2 verse 13, we'll see what Paul was praising God for. You know
the story, he'll be tossed out of Thessalonica and then these
Thessalonian Jews that tossed him out of Thessalonica will
chase him down to Berea and they'll pursue him like a rabid dog until
they get rid of him out of their region altogether. Their hatred
for him is just a reflection of their hatred for God. and
their hatred for God is revealed in them wanting to shut down
the Word of God being proclaimed. But you can't shut the Word of
God down, brothers and sisters. It's not constrained by men.
God sends it where He wishes. He's the sovereign ruler and
reigner. Verse 13. He says, We are bound,
but we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren. And here's the description of
the brethren. Brethren are those who are beloved of the Lord.
They're beloved of the Lord because, this is how they were loved,
weren't they? Because God has from the beginning chosen you
to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the
truth. That word sanctification is the
word to be holy, isn't it? And what is the holiness of God's
people? And what is the holiness of God's people that the Spirit
reveals to people? That their sanctification is
1 Corinthians 1.30. Their sanctification is a person. Their sanctification is the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's not their activities, it's
what He's done for them. If you are sanctified, you are
sanctified by God. You are sanctified to Him. And
sanctified people believe the truth. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the way, the truth and life. They believe the truth. Not only
that, this God chooses people, He sanctifies people, He brings
them to believe the truth, and then what does He do? Verse 14,
whereunto He called you, and how does He call you? How does
He speak to people? How does He call His sheep to
Himself? By our gospel. That's how He
calls people. He calls people by the preaching
of the gospel. At the end of the day, the thing
that is most important and most necessary for you is that you
hear from God. You hear from God speaking His
words into your hearts and revealing the Lord Jesus Christ. Because
that's what happens, isn't it? What do you obtain, these people? These people who are brethren,
these people beloved of the Lord, these people chosen to salvation,
these people who are sanctified by the Spirit and believe the
truth, that have been called by God, and what do they obtain? Listen to this, to the obtaining
of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's the heritage of
the saints of God, isn't it, brothers and sisters? The obtaining
of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Which is why when we
proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels, we're proclaiming
His glory. We're proclaiming His glory as
a God who chooses. We're proclaiming His glory as
a God who sanctifies. We're proclaiming His glory as
a God who speaks the truth to us. We're proclaiming His glory
as a God who calls His people to the obtaining While you have
your Bibles open there, go back down to verse 12. Paul prays
in chapter 1. Paul prays for these. Praise
to these Thessalonian believers. He was there for three Sabbath
days plus some, we're not sure. But wherefore we also pray always
for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling and
fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness. Isn't that remarkable? So Paul
doesn't pray things that aren't gonna happen, brothers and sisters.
He's praying because that's what God's promised to do. We've just
been reading it. To fulfill all the pleasure of
His goodness and the work of faith with power that the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you. I can understand that, can't
you? The name of our Lord Jesus Christ
might be glorified. And then what does the next phrase
say? and you in Him. You in Him. God is glorified. God is glorified
by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in His people, drawing
them to Himself. And what's this according to?
According to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why in verse 15, we go
back to chapter two, therefore brethren, you stand fast and
hold on, hold the traditions which you have been taught. Just
believe the gospel that you have been taught. Paul came proclaiming
that simple gospel, declaring who the Lord Jesus Christ is,
declaring what he has done, declaring where he is now, declaring him
coming back, and exhibiting that work in the way he calls his
people to himself. You hold on to those traditions.
Don't move away from the gospel at all, ever. Whether you've
been taught it, whether by word or by our epistle. Now our Lord
Jesus Christ himself and God, even our Father, which has loved
us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace. Comfort your hearts. and establish
you in every good word and work." That's the sort of consolation
I need, brothers and sisters. All the consolations I have in
this world, they come and they go. I can feel remarkably comfortable
on top of the world one day or one moment, one hour. and the
next thing it can be dashed and taken away completely. I need
comfort that goes on forever. I need comfort that comes from
someone else. Someone outside of us. And that's good hope. A good hope through grace. Comfort
your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. That's what our God's doing.
That's what our God's doing right now. That's what our Saviour
has done. And that's what our Saviour is
doing right now. Let's sing. We're going to sing
number 63. 62 it has. They've moved. Matchless Condescension. Did Beth choose those or did
someone else? Okay, Matchless Condescension. He is a glory, He is a glory,
He lives in us today ? Birds approaching, birds approaching
? ? Heaven rejoices today ? ? Heaven rejoices today ? ? Waiting to
be part of the story ? ? Where it shines in Jesus' face ? In His highest work redemption,
See His glory in our days. O can angels ever mention, All
that more our God displayed? Praise and justice, praise and
justice, In our heaven's days. Praise and bless you, praise
and bless you. Let's just turn in our scriptures
with me to Acts 17. I just want to read the text
that we are looking at today and then make a few notes and
I'll have a cup of tea. Acts 17. Now when they had passed
through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where
there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul, as his manner
was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them
out of the Scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must
needs have suffered. and risen from the dead, and
that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ. And 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. 5. But the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took under
them certain lewd fellows of the base sort, and gathered a
company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the
house of Jacob, Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.
And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren
under the rulers of the city, saying, These that have turned
the world upside down are come hither also. Whom Jason has received
These all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that
there is another king, one Jesus. And they trouble the people and
the rulers of the city. And when they heard these things,
and when they had taken security of Jason and the others, they
let them go." You've got to remember how serious the charge is. The
charge that's levelled against Paul is sedition. It's a treasonous
charge which warrants a capital offence. If he's saying that
there's another king other than Caesar, then he's in very serious
trouble. This was no small accusation
levelled against him. But the Lord in sovereign mercy
and grace seemingly hid them away from them and then the crowd
was pacified a bit when they got from Jason a bond as it were,
a good behaviour bond for the Christians, that the Christians
would behave themselves and they would settle down. One of the things that is so evident,
isn't it, in the scriptures, is that wherever the Gospel comes,
there is a growing and an intense opposition to the Gospel, a growing
and intense and extraordinary irrational opposition to the
Gospel. It begins, of course, by wanting
to silence the Word of God. And that's what we've seen, haven't
we, all the way through Acts. The first response of them is
to stop these people speaking, to stop people hearing from them. In the church we left, the pastor
had one piece of advice for anyone, and that was not to sit down
with Angus Fisher and a Bible. because a Bible and me together
are dangerous. And in every activity that we
have witnessed, people have wanted to stop the Word of God being
heard. So Paul just came with a simple
message. He was declaring another king,
but he was declaring another king who had another kingdom.
And that kingdom was not a kingdom of this world. That kingdom obviously
is the kingdom that rules over Caesar. Caesar is God's Caesar
on God's. In God's world, under God's absolute
rule and authority, Caesar can't wriggle without the sovereign
purposes of our God being achieved. Which is why Pontius Pilate,
he wished to let the Lord Jesus Christ go. He knew that those
Jews had brought the Lord Jesus Christ there because they were
envious. They were envious of who he was and what he'd achieved.
But Pilate couldn't let him go. Pilate couldn't let him go because
it was the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God that
brought the Lord Jesus to that place. And Pilate's hands were
wicked, and the Jews' hands were wicked. They all had blood on
their hands. They did as they wished to do, uncoerced. They did as they wished to do,
uncoerced, and at exactly the same time they did every tiny
little sovereign purpose of God. And such is the nature of our
God in this world, and such is the nature of the God that Paul
proclaims. It's fascinating, isn't it, to
think of our friend Paul. As I've told you before, the
more you read about him, the more you fall in love with him.
And he loved these people in Thessalonica, and he loved the
people in Philippi, and he went everywhere with a message, didn't
he? But when you think of Paul, there he was. He'd been directly
commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ. He had met the Lord Jesus
Christ in his radiant glory on the Damascus Road, and he was
blinded by the sight of him. And he was knocked from his high
horse, and he was put in the dust at the feet of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And all of a sudden, Paul went from being a sovereign
man to being a servant. What will you have me to do?"
He says. There he was ruling his own life
and the very first response to meeting a sovereign God is, I'm
in your hands, I'm in your hands. But he met him. And here he is
in Macedonia, modern day north-eastern Greece, and he'd been led there
by a vision. He had a vision of a man from
Macedonia. And he'd been denied, on his
road to Macedonia, he'd been denied access to Asia and Bithynia. He said, you're going here, you're
going here. And he passes through these two cities and he gets
to Thessalonica. But all Paul ever did, wherever
he went, he had one purpose in mind, and that was just to proclaim
the Word of God, to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ from the
Scriptures. And all we need for our authority,
brothers and sisters, is simply, is this written? Is this what
God says? And we had no need to go anywhere
else. Paul didn't look back. He defended
himself in courts by declaring what had happened to him. But
he had one purpose, didn't he? He just said, this is the word
of God. At the beginning of his ministry, all through his ministry,
and if you go to the end of his earthly life as we have it recorded
in the book of Acts. At the end of his earthly life
in Acts 28, 23. And when they appointed him a
day, there came many to him into his lodging, to whom he expounded,
this is in Rome just before he was to be killed, to whom he
expounded and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning
Jesus. Both out of the law of Moses
and out of the prophets. And he didn't stop all day long.
He went from morning to evening. Give him an opportunity and he
had one purpose in mind. He was just going to tell them
who the Lord Jesus Christ is and tell them what he has done.
Jesus Christ and him crucified. Jesus Christ and him crucified.
is the tradition that Paul was wanting these people to hold
on to, to stand fast in this Gospel. 17 and the beginning, there's a
must needs about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. There
is a must needs about everything that the Lord Jesus Christ does.
There's a must needs about the gathering of his people. There's
a must needs about the proclamation of his gospel to people. There
is a must needs about the response of that gospel in the lives of
people. Whether it's a riot or repentance, Whether people get
glad or mad, God's servants just continue to proclaim the gospel.
They proclaim the gospel. They proclaim our God, they proclaim
the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It was a necessary
thing. It must, this Gospel says the
Lord Jesus Christ, it will be preached all through this world
until the end comes. And it will be preached as a
necessary death, a necessary death according to the decree
of God in 1 Peter chapter 1, those verses that I love reading
all the time. But we weren't Verse 18, for
as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things as silver and gold from your vein, your empty conversation
received by the tradition from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ as a lamb without blemish and spot, who verily
was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest
in these last days. for you, who by Him believe. See, true saving faith is by
Him. It's not a work of man. It's
the gift of God, saving faith. Who by Him do believe in God,
that raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory, that your
faith and hope might be in God. There was a necessary death.
and he spoke of Christ being the surety from the foundation
of the world. He spoke again and again of the
eternal covenant. He spoke of this great God in
the terms of the Old Testament scriptures, again and again.
That's all they had in Isaiah 50, which is no doubt one of
the passages that Paul went to so many times. In 50 verse 7
he says, God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded, therefore
have I set my face like a flint. The Lord Jesus Christ must go. Opposition must come. The gospel
must be preached. I've set my face like a flint,
and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He knows that. He set his place like a flint
to go to Jerusalem. He is near that justifies me. Who will contend with me? Let
us stand together. Who is mine adversary? Let him
come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help
me. Who is he that shall condemn
me? Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment, and the moths shall
eat them up. He spoke. of the necessary things
and he spoke of the Lord Jesus Christ out of the Old Testament
prophets. And he spoke of the God who is a just God and a saviour. I love that description of our
God. He's a just God. He will not save anyone and do
any damage to his justice. He's a just God and a saviour.
Paul summarises that so extraordinarily well in Romans chapter 3. What
mercy we owe to the Holy Spirit for giving us these amazing words
by the hand of our friend Paul. For all have sinned, verse 23,
and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely. To be justified is to be declared
without sin in the court of God. Justified freely, that word freely
is the same word that's used in John chapter 15. And the Lord
Jesus spoke of those who stood opposed to him and said, they
hated me without a cause. It's exactly the same word as
the word freely there. See, there's no cause in us for
our justification, brothers and sisters. And if you're looking
inside of yourself for it, you're looking in the wrong place. Justified
freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in His blood. God set Him forth. God set Him
forth. to be a sin-atoning, a sin-absorbing,
a sin-removing sacrifice through faith in His blood to declare
His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through
the fair forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time
His righteousness, that He might be just. He might be just. He might do everything that He
does in the saving of sinners. to the glory of his holy justice. He might be just and the justifier
of him which believeth in Jesus. Paul kept pressing on these people,
just one message. One message he went to Thessalonica
with. One message he went to Antioch
with. One message he went to Iconium with. One message he
went down to Jerusalem when they stood opposed to the gospel of
free and sovereign grace. He just went there with one message.
Again and again, he just went there with one message. Jesus
Christ and him crucified. Why don't we have a break and
then we can come back and sing. Sixty-five. Sixty-five. Crown
him with many crowns. Crown him with many crowns. The Lamb upon His throne. I come with heavy hand and long
bow. ? Awake my soul and see me ? ?
Walk in through thy holy feet ? ? And hail thee as thy matchless
king ? ? Through holy church we meet ? ? Now in the Lord,
O Lord ? ? We hold these hands in sight ? ? In truth, we bear
witness ? O angel in the sky, can fully
bear the sight, but down the way is one pretty guy, a mystery so bright. Who rose victorious to destroy
all the wicked in his days. These glories now we sing, Who died
and rose on high, Who died in the full light of day, And in
that day, One with the Father, one with
the Spirit, to give you all your devotion. To give you the endless
grace, for thou for us hast died. That's a glorious hymn. Every
time you think about crowning him with many crowns, you've
got to remember that he was crowned by his father a long, long time
ago. Crowned as Lord of all. I was just reminded that I have
some friends from America, Adeline and John. She was one of my students
and dawn girls in India. She's from Bangladesh. So she
married an American fellow. They'll be arriving in Sydney
tomorrow morning early and they'll be coming down for the next couple
of Sundays with us. So I appreciate your prayers
for them and our time together. And Ben got his job. Well done. Something else momentous happened.
What was something else that's momentous that happened? Oh yes, and John's Angus joins
the Army this week, so in a couple of weeks time. And this, we have the first production
of Jaeger Enterprises, so the Jaeger publishing empire has
begun. So now Brad has redone Believer's
Rule of Life. There are plenty of copies up
there. I would love for you to have them and have spares at
home for anyone who has any issues with the sovereign grace of God
and the clarity with which the scriptures reveal that the Lord
Jesus Christ has kept the law for all of his people and we
keep the law by faith. For those who believe in works,
and that is the multitude of people in professing churches
all around the place, this is the precious book. It is a special
book because the attack upon the early church, as we have
seen, was an attack about the law, which is why Galatians was
written, and really it's at the heart of what is written in Romans
and Philippians and Colossians and other books of the scriptures.
And so God's children are set free, and God's children delight
in the liberty that's in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so every
so-called, every professing Christian that you know of outside of this
congregation needs to get one of these. I have given out, I
don't know how many copies of this over the years, to anyone
who professes that they believe in reform faith and they believe
in putting people under the law, and I've given it to them in
all sorts of formats so that the text is in the middle so
they can write notes all over it and write on the back of it
and show me where Mr Huntingdon and the scriptures are wrong
about this. Thus far, despite all the promises that I have
received that they'll go away and study it, not one, not one
has ever come back. It is, it's probably, it's the
book that I probably turn to, I carry one with me all the time,
and because the chapters are so small, you can read it as
a devotional, but it is, it's dealing with the very heart of
the gospel, brothers and sisters. It is precious. And the Jews,
as we'll see here, the Jews were stirred up against the Apostle
Paul. They were stirred up in every
place that he went. And they were stirred up because
he made a statement that we read in Acts chapter 13. If this statement was believed,
If this simple statement from the scriptures was believed,
the churches of this land and the churches of this world would
change what they do and change what they proclaim. It says in
Acts 13.39, and by him all that believe, so he brings faith to
his people, by him all that believe are justified from all things
from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Paul created a riot when he proclaimed
that and it ended up with him in Lystra being dragged out of
the city and stoned to death as they saw. Such is the opposition
of the Jews to the Gospel. And while we're on that introductory
moment, isn't it interesting today, when do you hear of the
Jews of today being irate about the Gospel? Why aren't the Jews of today
irate about the Christians? Where they aren't, are they?
They're not saying a single thing about the Christianity of today,
are they? In fact, they're hand in glove with them. They're walking
down the road together, aren't they? Why? There's one simple
reason why, brothers and sisters, the Christian world has so joined
hands with the Jews, that in effect, when it comes to the
things of God, there is no difference between them. There was in Paul's
day, okay. Let's go back to Acts chapter
17 and just read from verse five down. But the Jews, which believed
not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of
the base of sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city
on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to
bring them out to the people. And when they found them not,
they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city,
crying, These, that have turned the world upside down are come
here also. Whom Jason has received, and
these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that
there is another king, one Jesus. And they troubled the people
and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. And
when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they
let them go. And the brethren immediately
sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming hither
went into the synagogue of the Jews. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do pray in
this short time that we have to look at your word and this
history recorded for us, Heavenly Father. We pray that these words
would be spirit and life to us and that you would breathe a
life from above into your word, Heavenly Father, that we might
see the glory of your Lord Jesus Christ. To see that he is a king
and to see that his gospel turns this world upside down. Bless
us, Heavenly Father, for His sake. Amen. The world turned
upside down. Well, it would be extraordinary,
wouldn't it? It would be wonderful if the Church could receive that
accusation these days. The Church of today, other than
with some activities of legalism, that we've seen in the media
of late doesn't turn the world upside down at all. The Church is generally at peace
with the world. It is and has been esteemed in
the world. It is, in reality, the reason
that the Jews aren't stirred and the reason the world isn't
stirred is that the Church of today has betrayed Christ. and betrayed the souls of men,
and betrayed the gospel of the grace of God. One of the things
that I long for us to see that when we read these accounts in
Acts, we would actually see that this is what's happening in our
day. And if we don't see that this is a living and active word
for us and a living experience for us, then we have missed what
the Holy Spirit is trying to teach us today. There is just
so much that's going on that wants to make the world relevant,
isn't it? There's an organisation in Sydney called the Centre for
Public Christianity. And if you go on their website,
what they're trying to do is to provide an apologetics for
what so-called Christians have done throughout the ages, and
they want to proclaim the standard gospel. And what's that gospel?
God loves you. God loves you. And Jesus has
died for you, and God is offering salvation to you if you'd only
be kind to him. If you'd only be kind to him
and stop him being an embarrassment. by offering something that he
didn't intend to give. It is an absolute denial, a denial
of the reality of what the scriptures declare, a denial of the reality
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul met a Christ on the Damascus
road, and you will meet that exact same Christ when you breathe
your last breath When your soul goes back to the God who created
it and the God who controls it and the God who owns it, when
your soul goes, you're going to meet him, you will meet him
as he is. You won't meet the figment of
your imagination, you won't meet the figment of the imagination
of the religious world around here, you will meet him. And
for God's people, that's the meeting that we long for. Because
we meet him here. We meet him here in the Gospel. We meet him here as he takes
his word and applies it to the lives of his people. We meet
him here as he takes us as he does Paul and he humbles us in
the dust. and we find ourselves delighting
in His will, and we find ourselves delighting in His righteousness,
and we find ourselves delighting in His salvation. We need to
be saved from God. You need to be saved from Satan,
you need to be saved from your sins, you need to be saved from
yourself, but most of all you need to be saved from God. We
need someone to take his hand upon us and put us in the cleft
of the rock and hide us from his glory. He is a consuming fire, our God. Men in religion can play games
with him. These Jews, as we see in Acts
17, can be stirred up in opposition against him. And all they'll
do is reveal the hypocrisy of their religion and the emptiness
of their religion. And their hatred towards Paul
is really a hatred towards God. The opposition of the religious
world to the gospel of free and sovereign grace is a hatred towards
God. And it can be masked and masqueraded
as all sorts of things. It can be masked and masqueraded
as niceness and kindness and a reaching out to people in all
sorts of ways. But if it's denying the character
of God, it's denying the successful finished work of the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's damning to the souls of men. And it's hatred of God. Hatred of God. The Jews reacted
to Paul as they reacted to the Lord Jesus Christ. in exactly
the same way. It was hatred of God. And they
can't get to him now because he sits on the throne of this
universe. And so the opposition to the gospel and the opposition
to the preachers of the gospel is nothing less than hatred of
God. And the people who hate God most
evidently in this world are the ones who are most zealous in
religion. the ones who have achieved some
righteousness for themselves in their religious activities.
You imagine the situation there in Thessalonica. You are a Jew.
You might have gone there for business reasons. You might have
gone there for all sorts of reasons. There you are in Thessalonica.
And what was ancient Greece? It was a den of iniquity. Paul
will go on from here to Athens. In Athens there were 30,000 idols. In Athens and Corruph, human
depravity of the most disgusting sort was commonplace to people. So what were these Jews like?
There were enough Jews there to be gathered for there to be
a synagogue, so there were ten mild Jews in this large city
of Thessalonica. What do you think their lives
were like? As they went to synagogue on Sabbath morning, what do you
think they and their family looked like? As they went about their
activities in Thessalonica, do you not think that they were
the most moral, upright people? And they would have looked at
the rest of what was happening in ancient Greece, and they would
have seen it as being so far from God and so idolatrous and
so worthy of God's wrath, and that these pagan people that
lived amongst were worthy of their contempt. And no doubt
when they came home from the marketplace, they'd wash their
hands to wash the filth of all of these other people off them.
They would have been remarkably moral, zealous people. When you think of these Jews
and you read the story of these Jews, you must think of the nicest,
most zealous religious people you can imagine. out with their Bibles, out with
their tracts, out with their missionary activities. And what do we find? What do
we find when the gospel comes along? We find when the Lord
turns the world upside down that God separates the people for
himself. We see that, don't we? We read
about it in 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 13 and following. But some of
them, verse 4 in chapter 17 of Acts, some of them believed. And what did they do? They did
two things we talked about before. They believed and they consorted,
they were brethren with, they joined together with Paul and
Silas. They wanted to be seen to be
with them. Why? Because they loved them. And if God indwells you, then
necessarily you'll love the brethren because God indwells them. And
we'll be kind and forgiving of one another. as God, for Christ's
sake, forgave us. So there is a love, a love that's
created and generated by God. So these people consorted with
Paul. So God, when he turns the world upside down, he reveals
that he separates the people to himself. And he says they're
his people, he says they're mine. They're mine, and some of them
believed. Sin turned this world completely
upside down, and every notion we have of God and every notion
we have of ourselves and every notion we have of this world
is wrong all the time. All the time. You might remember
Naaman the Syrian, Naaman the great general. He was a great
man who had leprosy. In reality he was a leper who
happened to be a great man. He really was a leper. But what
was Naaman's problem? Naaman came there thinking that
he was going to do some great thing for God. So Naaman said,
I thought. I thought that this prophet of
God would come out and wave his hands and do some mighty thing
in my presence. Naaman's problem was that he
thought. If God would allow us to think his thoughts after him,
there's a lovely verse in 2 Corinthians, isn't it, where he says, he'd
take every thought captive of Christ. Would to God that he
would do that in our lives. But sin separates us from God,
but God separates a people to himself. Sin also separates people
one from another, doesn't it? It's the Gospel that does the
sifting. It's the Gospel that does the
sifting. So the reaction of these unbelievers, these Jews which
believe not in verse 5 of Acts 17, they actually are now exposed
in a way which is extraordinary. They are exposed to the believers.
and also they are exposed to the world. All of a sudden, all
those robes of their goodness and their niceness and their
religious morality are exposed before the people of Thessalonica. Look what they do. Verse 5, and
the Jews which believed not moved with envy, took Unto them certain lewd fellows
of the base are sought." So you've got to imagine there's a big
marketplace in the middle of Thessalonica, and down in that
marketplace are the people there who are the unemployed, unemployable
riffraff. People would call them the scum
of Thessalonica. The Jews, as I said earlier,
would have looked down on these people as just the lowest of
the low of all life. these Jews. So they took unto
them certain lewd fellows of the base sort and gathered a
company and set all the city on uproar. If you had told those
really nice religious people as they were going off to synagogue
there a few weeks before this, if you had told them that in
a few weeks' time you'll go down to the marketplace and you'll
find the most scruffiest, unkept dregs of society, and you would
join hands with them and pay them and consort with them to
cause an uproar in this city, they would have said absolutely
no way in the world. If you said to Caiaphas in Jerusalem
before the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you said to
him that he would publicly stand up before Caesar's representative
and before all the Jewish nation and say, we have no king but
Caesar, and say, we have a king, we're waiting for our king. He denied everything that he
stood for. The reality is that everyone
who is religious and righteous is a hypocrite. Everyone who
is religious and parading the righteousness of their religion
will be shown to be a hypocrite. Which is exactly what these Jews
are, aren't they? It's just blatant, errant hypocrisy. See, sin, sin makes sinners. Ignore the word of God. But these Jews, so they weren't
sinners in the streets. These people were sinners in
the synagogues. The most offensive sinners in this world are not
in the brothels and in the pubs of this world. They're in churches. Those that cause the greatest
offense to the glory of God in this world are in churches and
standing behind pulpits. They weren't sinners in the streets,
but these people were sinners in the synagogue. See, sin makes
sinners ignore the Word of God. And this sin of unbelief separates
these people from God. And this sin exposes the fact
that they had a hatred for God. You see what it says there in
verse 5? They were moved with envy. That word means that they
were boiled over with hatred. It's exactly what Pilate knew,
that those Jews in Jerusalem had brought the Lord Jesus Christ
there. They'd brought him there because of envy. They'd boiled
over with hatred. See, the gospel exposes, before
we go too far and you think, well, these are those nasty,
hypocritical, self-righteous Jews. Sin exposes the hearts
of all humanity, brothers and sisters. And I pray that the
Lord would not let us think that we're better than them and above
them in any way at all. It's only the grace of God separating
you to himself that causes you not to be like this. Who makes
you to differ? What do you have that you didn't
receive? And if you received it as a gift,
what on earth are you doing boasting about any of it? You've got no
right to boast. So be careful, as I try and keep
warning you, be careful of seeing these people and seeing the evil
of their nature and thinking, that's not like me. That lurks
in you, brothers and sisters. Until this flesh is put in the
grave, we would do exactly the same. See, the world hates, the
world hates the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Romans 1.30 says that
they're back biters, they're haters of God, despiteful, proud,
boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents. The Lord
Jesus Christ said, the world cannot hate you, John 7.7, but
me it hates because I testify of it that the works thereof
are evil. And it's only in the light of
the Lord Jesus Christ that we see evil for what it is. An unregenerate man, a man who
hasn't been moved by the Spirit of God in his heart, his hatred
boils over when he hears that God is absolutely sovereign.
His hatred boils over when he hears from God's Word that his
righteous deeds are filthy rags. Religious men get most irate
when their righteousness is taken away from them. when the Lord Jesus Christ comes,
he's the one that brings us by a sovereign hand of grace, doesn't
he? He brings us who are enemies
by nature. He brings us, and he abolishes
that enmity between us and God, and he abolishes the enmity between
us and the brethren. But sin, sin exposed by the gospel
unites sinners against Christ. and against his messengers. They couldn't get to the Lord
Jesus Christ, and so they took it out on Paul. It's as close
as you can get to him. The Lord Jesus Christ indwells
his believers, and the hatred of the world to believers is
the hatred it was to the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul came with love for these
people. He came with an expectation that
God had sent him on a journey there and a mission there. He
came because the Lord had many people in Macedonia and he was
going to gather them to himself. And he came there knowing as
a promise from God that he was going to suffer for the gospel. He came there waiting and looking
for a place of opportunity to speak. And he finds that when
the Gospel comes, and the Lord Jesus comes in the preaching
of the Gospel, there is this enmity that's raised up in people
that otherwise looked clean and polished in all of their religion,
and you wouldn't have been able to fault them for their Bible
study and all of their other activities. And yet, all of a
sudden, these people are exposed in the most appalling ways. The
sin unites sinners against Christ and his brethren, Acts 17.6. They settled the city on uproar
and assaulted the house of Jason. Jason was obviously the man who
had given a place of refuge and a house for Paul and Silas to
stay in. They sought to bring them out
to the people, and when they found them not, they drew Jason
and certain brethren under the rulers of the city, crying, that
have turned the world upside down have come here also." They
hated Jason and his brethren because they believed the Lord
Jesus Christ and because they received the brethren. It's interesting,
isn't it, how quickly these churches formed. We've seen what happened
in Philippi and you can often think with wonder and joy what
it was like when Lydia's house and the jailer's house came together
and they had their first church gathering in Philippi. And Paul
may not have even been there, he's run out of town. joy when
the Lord creates love, bonds of love. That's why Paul said
to the Thessalonians, he doesn't need to teach them how to love
each other. He says, as for brotherly love,
you don't need that I could write, he doesn't need to write to them
about brotherly love because you yourselves are taught of
God. to love one another. When God
works in the hearts of His people, He creates brethren. He creates
a community of love and nurture for one another. He creates these
bonds of love between people who, if it wasn't for the Gospel,
would have almost nothing ever to do with one another. There
are bonds, aren't there? We all have earthly families.
I promise you that as God works in your heart, The brethren that are around
you are your real family, and they will be your family not
just now, but they'll be your family into eternity. The bonds
that I have with my Christian brothers and sisters are so much
deeper and so much more profound than the bonds that I have with
my brother and sister, and I am fond of them, and I care about
them. But I share things and I have
a life that I share with my Christian brothers and sisters that they
know absolutely nothing of whatsoever. We have a separate life. We have,
as Paul says to the Colossians, you've been taken out of the
kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of his dear
son, a kingdom of light. We see things upside down. They
can't understand us. They can't understand us. We're
a mystery, a mystery to them. But sin, sin which has turned
the world upside down. This sin, when the Gospel comes,
is exposed. Sin is exposed only in light
of the Lord Jesus Christ. You want to see what sin is,
you go to Christ on Calvary's tree and you'll see how God sees
sin. You want to see what sin is and see how sin is exposed,
you go to these situations where you have these extraordinarily
nice, zealous religious people and you expose them to the Gospel
and you'll see what's in their hearts. It exposes an ignorance in them. They hated God, so they showed
that they hated his word, and they wanted his word stopped.
They hated his brethren. They hated the assembly of his
people together. They hated him separating them
to himself out of this world. And what these Jews revealed,
didn't they? It was revealed that they had
an extraordinary hypocrisy that was hidden away until the Gospel
came along. As I said earlier, the Jews hated
Caesar and hated his rule over Israel. And the Jews would have
hated, they would have hated the fact that Caesar was a king.
They were looking forward to a messianic king and they kept
saying to the Lord Jesus, when are you going to restore the
kingdom? When are you going to act like David? When are you going to
come with all of your armies? When are the hosts of heaven
coming down here to deal with these Gentiles? To put Caesar
in his place and to put us on our place. We're waiting for
our thrones. They had no idea that his kingdom
is a kingdom that's not of this world. His kingdom is a spiritual
kingdom, and he reigns and rules as a king in the hearts and lives
of his people, and he reigns over all the events of their
world and this world. He works all things according
to the counsel of his will, all things, all time, to bring all
of his people to himself, to bring them to himself and to
guard them and to protect them, to protect them from their mother's
womb. set apart from the mother's womb,
you're set apart from eternity. You're set apart from your mother's
womb. Every little tiny thing that
happens in this world happens to God's people by a sovereign
hand which is purposed for their good. Part of our good is exposing
what religion is and exposing its hypocrisy. Those who claim
to love the word of God find that they despise it. Those who
claim to love a God who is sovereign and claim to love the Lord Jesus
Christ, when they have the real Lord Jesus Christ brought before
them, they find Him repulsive to them. The very characteristics
of God that most delight the children of God are those that
most offend those who really hate Him. They'll talk about
his sovereignty and then they'll deny his sovereignty in a heartbeat.
They're saying that he runs around offering salvation and he can't
make it happen. They talk about his love. What
sort of love is it that loves people and yet can't do anything
about that love in their lives? They talk about the death of
the Lord Jesus Christ and all that death did, and I heard it
again yesterday, all that death did was open a door. There's
an offer. There's an offer. If all he can do is try and fail,
then he's not the God of the Scriptures, brothers and sisters.
They have another God, and they reveal by whom they join with,
that they have another God. You see, sin makes people blind,
blind to the righteousness of God in the Lord Jesus Christ,
but also blind to the fact that these people, these religious
Jews and the people in the marketplace before God are exactly the same. They are exactly the same, aren't
they? They're all one. They're all joined hands together. So the Jews revealed, by the
company that they kept, they were prepared to seek assistance
from anyone, anyone who would oppose the Gospel. So their religion,
ultimately, and the religion of the Gentiles was exactly the
same religion. All of it was a religion that
hated God, and they hated Him without a cause. It's interesting,
isn't it, when the Lord Jesus Christ gave us Beatitudes in
Matthew, He said, blessed are the peacemakers. It's good for
us to be peacemakers. It's good for us not to be causing
trouble in this world. Blessed are the peacemakers.
And what does the next verse say? Blessed are they, are those
who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. You come preaching the
gospel of the peace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will
find yourself persecuted for righteousness' sake. And so, by a sovereign hand of
God, Paul and Silas were set free to go to Berea. By a sovereign
hand of God, this crowd was stilled in Thessalonica. They wanted
the peace of their city. And God moved that the gospel
would continue there and this flourishing church would grow
and thrive. And they took a bond from Jason,
verse seven, And they troubled the people
of the city and the rulers of the city when they heard these
things. But when they had taken security
of Jason and the other, they let them go." Why did they let
them go? Why did they let these people
go? Why did they let Jason and the
brethren go? It's exactly what the Gospel
does, isn't it? The Lord Jesus Christ said in
Gethsemane's garden, you can have me. if you let these people
go. At the sovereign hand of God,
the work of gathering, the work of proclaiming the Gospel had
begun there in Thessalonica, and he gathered those people
to himself. And now it was time for Paul and Silas to move on
to the next people, because the Lord had people down the road
in Berea, and the Lord had other people in Athens, and the Lord
had people elsewhere. So Paul was sent on a mission
And God, the King of kings, he moved the hearts of these people
to let them go, to let them go for the gospel to be preached
on. His will is done. His word is
not bound. He'll get his word to his people
and he'll get his work done in the lives of his people. He'd
come, the Lord Jesus Christ comes personally when the gospel's
preached. And he comes to his people, and he draws them out
of that religious world, and he draws them out of that pagan
world, and he gathers them to himself, and he separates them
to himself, and there he is, in their midst, nurturing them
and caring for them. There is purchased possession.
Precious blood bought these Thessalonian believers. Precious blood has
bought you, brothers and sisters in Christ. Bought you out of
this world, bought you out of Satan's grasp, bought you out
of this world, and turned this world upside down, and now we
see this world for what it is, and we see this religious world
for what it is, and we see us as people in this world for what
we really were. and we are thankful. I'll just
finish by reminding you of those verses that Paul wrote as he
thought back on these things and he rejoiced. He says in chapter
2 verse 13 in 2 Thessalonians, We are bound to give thanks always
to God for you, brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God has
from the beginning, from the beginning of the world, chosen
you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the
truth, whereunto he called you by our gospel to the obtaining
of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren,
stand fast and hold the traditions, hold the teaching of the Gospel,
hold the teachings of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, whether
by word or epistle. And now, our Lord Jesus Christ,
and God, even our Father, which has loved us and given us everlasting
consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and
establish you in every good word and work." If that's your portion
brothers and sisters, you can go through this next week and
you can stare down whatever befalls you in this world. knowing who
stands with you and in you. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for the power in which the Gospel comes. We thank
you for the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in all of that
saving wonder, Heavenly Father. What happened on Calvary's tree
where he took the sins of all of his people and He bore infinite,
eternal wrath because they were His sins and it was His guilt
and His shame. And by His stripes we are healed. Wonder of wonders, Heavenly Father,
that You should from eternity have looked upon Your people
as one with Your dear and precious Saviour. May we find refreshing
in His sovereign hand, Heavenly Father, and in His work in the
hearts of His people. May it be our portion, Heavenly
Father, to be granted a simple childlike faith, to trust Him,
to look to Him, to delight in being the servants of He who
is the King. Cause us to walk in faith, our
Father, as we go through this week and leave this place. Bless
your people for Christ's sake, our Father. Amen.