Let's open the Scriptures to
not Isaiah, but Acts. And not Jeremiah, but Acts. I
had Isaiah on my mind. Go to the book of Acts chapter
17. Acts chapter 17. I'm so thankful the Lord brought
you here today. I'm thankful that He arranged
for us to meet like this for worship, and I ask Him to enable
us to do just that. It sure would be wonderful to
worship today, to exalt the Savior. Let's see if we can do that by
the presence of the Spirit. by the ability the Spirit gives
us as we look into Acts chapter 17. I'd like to read in verse
6 just to start with, and I recognize we're sort of in the middle of
an event in Acts 17, and I'll catch you up to let you know
what's happening. But I read this to give you the
subject for this morning. Alright, Acts 17 verse 6. When
they found them not, that is, they were looking for God's preachers,
the authorities. These rebel rousers were looking
for Paul and Silas. But they couldn't find them when
they found them not. They drew Jason, who was a believer
in this group in Thessalonica. They drew Jason and certain brethren
under the rulers of the city. And this is what they were literally
crying out. These that have turned the world
upside down are come hither also. This is my subject, turning the
world upside down. In other words, Jason, whom God
had saved by His grace, and others who believed the gospel in his
house, they were brought before the rulers. There really wasn't
so much Jason and the other believers who had Turned the world upside
down. That is the world of these people.
But it was really God's preachers and the gospel that they set
forth. Well, let's see what led to this. What led to this? You know, look
back in verse 1. Now, when they had passed through
Amphipolis and Apollyonia. Now, this is of course Paul and
Silas. Back in the previous chapter,
chapter 16, we know that God's preachers, they had been in Philippi
preaching the gospel. The Lord had established a work
there. You remember God had given to
the apostle a vision and he saw a man of Macedonia in this vision
and the man of Macedonia said, come over into Macedonia and
help us. Would you come over and help
us? Be swift to bring aid to us. We need help. And God's preachers
were swift to bring aid. They were swift to go and preach
the gospel to them. It's interesting, and if you
want to look back at that, in chapter 16 and verse 9, where
that last phrase, come over into Macedonia and help us, that word
help us, or the word help is exactly the word used over in
Hebrews chapter, the second chapter, where it says that our Lord Jesus
is able to succor us. That is, He helps us with feeding,
and He helps us quickly. rapidly. He helps us as we need
help. And this idea is brought in here,
in this, come over into Macedonia and help us. We need aid. We
need somebody to come to us in a hurry and we need your compassion. We need tenderness. We need somebody
who will care about us and tell us the truth. And that's what
God's preachers do. God's preachers go forth preaching
the Word of the Lord. They go forth to tell people
the truth, and they tell people the truth because they love the
Lord, and they love the Gospel, and they love the ones to whom
they speak. And we speak the truth in love,
and in compassion, and in tenderness. And so that's the way they went
forth into Macedonia to preach the Gospel. Now, the fact that
they needed help, is a good reason for the Apostle
Paul and Silas and Timothy and then Luke to go into Macedonia
and preach the gospel to them. We gather together today so that
I can preach the gospel to you. So that I can set before you
the message of good news. The message of God's salvation
by grace. The message of mercy. The message
of the forgiveness of sins by the blood of the Lord Jesus.
The message of righteousness established by His substitutionary
death. The only way I can help you is
by directing you to the One who can really help you, the only
One who can help you, the only One who can rescue you, the only
One who can deliver you, and bless His name, the One who does
care about sinners, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's how I can
help you. Our brother read to us those
words out of 1 Timothy chapter 1. This is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus, He came into
the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. I can only help
you in this way to tell you about the Savior. To give you some
information about the One who died for sinners and let you
know the reason He had to die, that God might be just and justify
the ungodly. The way that He died, it was
a substitutionary death. It was a sacrificial death. And
the fact that He died, He died for our sins upon the cross.
And the results of His death, as a result of His death, He
actually removed the indebtedness of all of His people. He fully
satisfied God's infinite justice. God's justice that demanded the
soul that sinneth must die. Somebody's got to die for sin. You understand that? Our Lord
Jesus, He died on the cross not as an example, not as a martyr,
not as somebody starting a new religion. He died a death of
substitution to satisfy the demands of a holy God. And in that death,
He actually satisfied God's demands and He saved us by His death. By His death. And this is the
good news that we set forth today. It's not the good news of that
which you have to do, of that which you have to contribute,
of that which you have to merit, of that which you have to work
for. It's not any good news where you've got to keep this law or
that law. In fact, if I preached that to
you, it wouldn't be good news. It'd be bad news. But the good
news is, it is not the message of, this is what you must do. It is the message, it's done.
It's finished by the Lord Jesus. We bid you come to the Savior
who has finished this great work of redemption. That's how we
can help you. And so, they went over and preached
in Philippi. And as we related to you last
week, God saved several people there. Lydia, He opened her heart. That heart that was barred against
the Lord, He opened her heart. That's what the Lord does. David
said, Thy people, they shall be willing in the day of thy
power. Oh, blessed day when omnipotence,
omnipotence goes to work on the heart of a sinner. And the Lord
opens the heart like He opened the heart of Lydia. And then
she attended to the Word of the Lord. She attended to the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. She gave it her absolute full
attention. And she was addicted to the message.
And then others of her household believed. And then as we know,
the Apostle Paul goes on. He and Silas wind up in prison. God has another vessel of mercy
ordained from old eternity. He's there in Philippi too. He's
a jailer. He's got to be confronted with
the truth. He needs help, but he doesn't
know it. And the Lord makes him realize
he needs help. He needs divine help. He needs
help from above. And the Lord sends him the message
of the Gospel through the lips of the Apostle Paul and from
Silas. And God saved the Philippian
jailer and his household. And as it was so with Lydia and
her household, they were baptized. So with the jailer and his household,
they were baptized. And then they leave Philippi.
And they go by a couple of large cities here in chapter 17 and
verse 1. They first go from Philippi to
Amphipolis about 33 miles, something like that. Then they probably
took a break. Then they go to Apollonia, that's
37 more miles, probably took a break there. Then from there
they go on to Thessalonica another 30 miles. So we're talking about
a hundred miles. They go from there in Philippi
under Thessalonica. They go forth to preach the gospel.
They did. As we read, they passed through
these other couple of big cities. They had a lot of people there.
We don't know why God didn't have them stop there and preach
the gospel. The ways of God are mysterious.
He sends His Word to whom He will. This is very, very populated
areas. Either there weren't any of God's
elect there, or it certainly wasn't the right time for them
to hear the gospel. Whatever the reason, the Lord
had them pass by these and make their way to Thessalonica. And there, as was usual, the
apostle entered into a synagogue of the Jews. It says that there
in verse 1, he entered into a synagogue of the Jews. Now, though the
Jews had in fact, back in chapter 13, put the gospel away from
them, though the Jews in general had said, we are not interested
in your message, We're not interested in hearing of Jesus Christ and
Him crucified. We don't believe Him. We don't
believe He's the Messiah. We have no confidence in Him.
We believe He is an imposter. We put your message away from
us. And though that was a fact, yet
the Apostle Paul, you'll find as he went on his missionary
journeys, if there was a synagogue in the city to which he went,
he always went to the synagogue First, he still had a great affection
for his countrymen, the Jews, and as often as he had an opportunity,
he would enter into a synagogue in order to preach the gospel
to them. That was always his custom. It was always his pattern. Go to the synagogue first, preach
to the Jews first, and then to the Gentiles. If we were to go
back and study his first missionary journey, we would find that wherever
there was a synagogue in the city to which he went to preach,
he would always go in there and preach first. And most of the
time he was treated rudely and very cruelly, and then he would
have to leave. In fact, in one location, Lystra,
he and Barnabas went there and preached, And those Jews got
so upset that they stoned him to such a degree that they thought
he was dead. They drug his body out of the
city. This was the typical reception
that he met with whenever he went to a synagogue. And we know
he's just left Philippi where he's been beaten, as has Silas. Both of them had been beaten
with rods. I mean, they're still, as we
would say, kind of licking their wounds. Remember the Philippian
jailer? He doctored on them and tried
to wash their wounds and tried to give them as much comfort
as he could. And then, of course, Paul and
Silas, eager to be on their way, eager to preach the gospel, they
go forth. You know they are still bruised
and battered. They are still hurting. No pain
medication. They couldn't, well, give me
some Motrin 3 or Tylenol 3 or whatever it is, or give me something
stronger than that. No, it just, you know, though
they were in pain and agony, it's press on, press on. And
it goes to the synagogue. Now, I wouldn't have been surprised
and you wouldn't have been surprised if Silas said to Paul, you know,
brother, every time you go to a synagogue, you know how it
winds up. You know, they're liable to stone you, they're liable
to beat you. Have you ever thought about just
passing by this synagogue here in Thessalonica, Paul? But no,
he wouldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. He was a
man of courage. He was a man of commitment. He
was a man of determination. In fact, just two or three chapters
after this, he will say to the elders in Ephesus, I go forth
to preach the gospel. I don't know what's going to
happen to me except the Spirit of God has said to me, He showed
me that which awaits me are hard times. I'm going to be severely
persecuted in every city to which I go. He said, I know that, but
I'm going for it anyway because I've got to preach the gospel
to people. God's got some folks out there. There's some lost
sheep out there. They've got to hear about the
shepherd. They've got to hear about the
Lord Jesus Christ. They're God's elect. They're
God's vessels of mercy chosen unto salvation before the world
began. And the same God that chose them
unto salvation redeemed them by the precious blood of His
Son at the cross. And they've got to hear this
sweet message of substitution and satisfaction So I press on. I press on. Even though I know
it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. So he
goes to the synagogue, and I'm sure the Apostle Paul and Silas
felt just like David. David said, the Lord is my light
and my salvation. Of whom shall I be afraid? And so they press on. They go
to the synagogue. He knew exactly what to expect. And believe me, that which he
expected to receive, he got it. He found more persecution, more
persecution. But those things didn't move
him. He said, I don't count my life dear unto myself. He goes forth to preach the gospel.
I know there are many preachers who would never think of offending
anybody. And God's preachers don't want
to deliberately offend people. I don't want to be the offense.
But I do know this, if you tell the truth and the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, this wonderful truth of God's salvation
by free and sovereign grace, if you preach the truth, there
are going to be some folks out there who are going to be very
offended. They are going to be very upset with you. Very upset
with you. But God's preachers are not men
pleasers. It's like the apostles said in
Galatians chapter 1, if I preach to please men, I'm not the servant
of God. I know the truth of the gospel
is offensive to the natural man. It offends man's pride because
it lays all of us in the dust. It says we're all equally guilty
before a holy God. The gospel offends man's wisdom
because it says you can't learn this on your own. It's got to
be revealed. The Lord's got to show you these
things. I don't care how smart you are. Whoever's got the highest
IQ in this building, bless your heart, thank God for your intelligence,
but your natural intelligence will never get you in the Kingdom
of God and will never give you an understanding of the things
of God. Only the Holy Ghost can give
you an understanding. Only the Spirit of Grace can
give you enlightenment of the heart and of the mind concerning
the things of our great God. This gospel offends men because
it makes us all like little dependent children. If the Lord doesn't
do something for us, we're going to perish. We're going to perish. It's not that we seek to be offensive. I'll say that again. Let me be
tender and compassionate, but let me never waver from the truth. I know some preachers who think
they're being persecuted for their beliefs. And the fact of
the matter is they're just hard to get along with themselves.
I don't want to be like that. But I do want to tell you the
truth. Salvation is of the Lord. And I know Satan's servants aim
not to rock the boat. They don't want to offend anybody.
But I'll tell you this, if your hope lies somewhere else
other than God's free grace, through the solid rock Christ
Jesus the Lord and His substitutionary death, I not only want to rock
your boat, I want to turn it over and sink it. I really do. I just want to absolutely explode
your security. Because there's no hope for a
sinner anywhere else except in God's free and sovereign grace
in the blessed Savior. That's the only hope we've got.
The only hope we've got. Well, he gets to the synagogue,
verse 2. What did he do when he got there?
Well, the Scripture says, as his manner was, he went unto
them, Chapter 17, verse 2. Three Sabbath days he reasoned
with them out of the Scriptures. He reasoned with them out of
the Old Testament. That's the only Scriptures they
had. Reasoned, that is he presented
very sound biblical arguments concerning Messiah. Concerning
His perfections. Concerning the work that He did
on the cross. How that he would suffer and
bleed and die for the sins of men. And the apostle did this
three Sabbath days running. Every Sabbath day, for three
Sabbaths in a row, he preached to them. Wherever the Jews met
for worship, that's what he did. And he made use of the Old Testament
Scriptures. This is what we make use of,
the Scriptures. The Scriptures. Well, what did
he say? Look at verse 3. Opening and
alleging. That is, giving an understanding
and confidently setting forth that Christ must needs have suffered. He had to suffer. Why did he
have to suffer? Well, because God ordained him
to suffer. In the covenant of grace, it
was ordained that he would suffer, that he would bleed, that he
would die for sinners. Why must he needs have suffered
in order to save us, in order to satisfy the demands of God's
law and God's justice? Why was it a must needs that
Christ Jesus suffered? To save us from our sins. He
must needs have suffered and risen from the dead. And then
He said, and that this Jesus, this one I preach to you, He
is the Christ. He is the Christ. I preach that Jesus of Nazareth,
that one born of Mary, that one raised who worked in a carpenter
shop. That one who began his public
ministry when he was just 30 years of age. That one who went about performing
miracles and preaching. Here's what the Apostle Paul
said, that Jesus, He's the Christ. He's the Messiah, He's the Son
of God, He's the One spoken of in all the Old Testament Scriptures.
This is what the Apostle Paul preached. Notice what it says in verse
4. And some of them believed. Thank God. Oh, thank God. Some believed. That's what we want. We want
people to believe the Gospel. I heard a preacher one time say,
you know us preachers, you've got to forgive us, man, you've
got to cut us a little slack. We get up here preaching and
sometimes we say some things that we just like to just, you
know, like a fisherman, you know, you throw a lure out, let me
wind those words back in, but you can't do it. Sometimes you
say something, but man, I wish it hadn't come out. This preacher
was preaching, he was really going, he said, I'm going to
preach the truth. If you don't believe it, I don't care whether
you don't believe it. Well, I do care. And he did too. He just got carried away. We
do care. We do believe. We persuade you. Isn't that what we read there
in 2 Corinthians chapter 5? We persuade me. Be reconciled
to God. Now listen, our God's no beggar
and I'm not a beggar. I'm the Lord's servant. But I
compel you. I compel you. I want you. I persuade you. Be reconciled
to God. Bow at the feet of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Believe on Him in your heart.
I compel you to do that. That's what we want. That's what
we want. I don't want you to perish. I
don't want you to go to hell. You say, are you a hellfire and
brimstone preacher? I'm a preacher of all of the
Word of God. And when it talks about hell,
we preach hell. And we don't want you to perish.
I don't want you to go to hell with a Bible in your hand. I
don't want you to go to hell with the gospel still echoing
in your ears. I don't want you to wind up like
the rich man of Luke chapter 16, and in hell he opened his
eyes being in torment. I don't want that. Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ. If you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Bible says God will save you. In fact, if you believe,
you already saved. Is that right? You already saved. Some believed. Some believed. And they consorted with Paul
and Silas. Well, what in the world does
that mean? They joined in with them. They said, hey, we're with
you, brother. We're with you, brother Silas.
We're with you, brother Paul. Man, we'll stand beside of you.
We'll stand beside of you. We consort with you. We join
in with you and of the devout Greeks, a multitude, and of the
chief women, not a few, I tell you, God's arm's not shortened
and it cannot save. He can save every person in this
building if He's of a mind to, if it's His will. All who are
watching on the internet, if you're yet in your sins, in your
darkness, in your blindness, in your spiritual deadness, God's
able. He's able to break the hardest
heart. He's able to raise the dead.
He's able to give life. Are we living evidences of that? Nothing is impossible with the
Lord. There are many people converted. Many people converted. Verse 5. But the Jews, which
believed not, moved with envy. Oh, they are jealous at the success
of Paul and Silas. They took unto them certain lewd
fellows, wicked, openly wicked fellows of the baser sort, good
for nothing, idle men. They could hire them for just
a little bit of money. Hey, come with us. We got some
troublemakers. We want you to help us run them
out of town." They said, yeah, we'll do that. Let me get one
more beer down. Let me get one more drink down.
We'll go with you. I'm really feeling good now.
They grabbed their sticks and off they go. So they took with them certain
lewd fellows of the baser sort. They gathered a company. Here's
a mob. picture in your mind a mob singing. All these men, some of them drunk,
wild men, men who'd do anything for, if they'd had our currency,
anything for a dollar. And they set all the city on
an uproar. Everybody's upset. Man, they
got the whole city tore up. And they assaulted the house
of Jason. I mean, they just barged right
in. They didn't come knock on the door and said, I come in
and look around. They just barge right in. There's Jason and a few other
saints in there. But they just barge right in.
Took them. They're looking for Paul and
Silas. That's who they're looking for.
They're looking for God's preachers. Remember this. Whenever the Lord's
working, you can always bet Satan is not standing idly by. Oh, no. Oh, no. He's not going to take his lying
down. So he stirs up these unbelieving Jews. They hire these folks.
They cause an uproar. They attack the house of Jason. They couldn't find Paul and Silas.
They grabbed a hold of Jason and a few other believers were
there, and they brought them out in front of the rulers of
the city in verse 6 and said, these men, they've turned the
world upside down. And look at verse 7, "...whom
Jason hath received, and these all do contrary to the decrees
of Caesar, saying that there is another king, and his name
is Jesus." There is another king and his name is 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
others, they let them go. They said, now, Jason, you an honorable man, give us
your word. You promise these preachers won't
come back here again. And Jason said, well, they're
going to be on their way anyway because they're going to preach
the gospel somewhere else. So they let them go. Jason, we
can gather from this, He had become a believer. He had his world turned upside
down. You know, wherever the Apostle
Paul went preaching the gospel, there was always a reaction to
the truth. Always a reaction. I'd like for
you to keep this in mind. Whenever you hear the gospel, You're never the same, and something
always happens when the gospel goes forth. Something always
happens. Some people are further impressed with the truth. They
love the truth more. And others, they just get harder.
But you're never the same once you hear the gospel. And every
time you hear the gospel, you're never the same. The Apostle Paul, whenever he
went preaching, he caused an uproar. Look over in chapter
21. Let me just give you a couple
of little illustrations of this. Chapter 21, verse 27. Here's the Apostle Paul preaching
again. 21, 27. When seven days were almost ended,
the Jews which were in Asia, When they saw him in the temple,
stirred up all the people and laid hands on him, and they cried
out, Men of Israel, help! Now they weren't saying we need
help like the man of Macedonia. What they were saying was, Would
you help us with this man who is preaching this message? Help
us to get him out of town. Help us to get him out of business.
We want to put him out of business. They said, this is the man that
teacheth all men everywhere against the people, and the law in this
place, and further brought Greeks also into the temple, and hath
polluted this holy place, caused an uproar. Look at chapter
22, verse 22. Chapter 22, verse 22. They gave
Paul an audience. under this word. And then they
lifted up their voices. They said, away with such a fellow
from the earth. It's not fit that he should live.
And as they cried out, they cast off their clothes and threw dust
into the air." Boy, he got a reaction where he preached the gospel.
And then over in chapter 24, verse 5, this is when Paul is
giving his defense in front of the governor. The Jews had hired an orator,
Tertullus, and he said on behalf of them in verse 5, For we found
this man a pestilent fellow, a mover of sedition among all
the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect
of the Nazarenes. He is just a troublemaker. He
caused trouble everywhere he went. I tell you, before you
had invited the Apostle Paul to come preach for you, you better
first of all say, do we want the kind of trouble he's going
to bring to town? Kind of like Brother Barnard did when he came
to this town. He turned the world upside down,
didn't he? That's who I thought about when
I was preparing this message. Go back to this. Let me give
you a few thoughts on this. on this turning the world upside
down. And I'll give you this, first
of all, the Apostle Paul's world, that is Saul of Tarsus, his world
got turned upside down by the Gospel. We had read to us earlier
from 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul said, who was before? I was before,
a blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurious. That's what I was
before. But then the Lord made Him. The
Lord made him. The Lord unhorsed him. The Lord
humbled him. You know what the Lord did? He
turned his world upside down. And that man who was before a
persecutor and a hater of the church, he loved the church.
And that one who despised Jesus of Nazareth, who sought to put
in prison anybody who believed in the way, the way of life,
who is Christ Jesus Himself, he became a preacher of the way.
What happened to him? The Lord turned his world upside
down. That's what the gospel does. It'll turn your world upside
down. You see, whenever a sinner is
converted, the Lord turns your world upside down. If any man
be in Christ, what is he? He's a new creature. Literally,
he's a new creation. What's happened? His world is
turned upside down. Isn't that what happened to you?
Your world got turned upside down. Your religious world. Man, you was with maybe the free
will Baptist or the Methodist or the Catholics or whoever you
were with and you was going along just fine and dandy. And then
something happened, upset your apple cart. And suddenly things
became different. Your world got turned upside
down. And that message of works that
you hugged and embraced and thought so much of, Suddenly you found yourself believing
grace. Grace alone. You were dead, you
became alive. You were unwilling, you became
willing. You was in darkness, Lord gave
you light. Did you read about these members
of the geology class out of Clemson University? Got lost and went
in the caves out of here? Several of them. They only had
the lights on their helmets. It went down and then it had
a flash flood and the waters came up, up to their necks. The
only thing they had the lights on, no communication with the
outside world. Well, imagine what it would have
been if all their helmets' lights went off. That's us in spiritual
darkness. No communication. No light. floodwaters of God's wrath around
us? And then the rescuers came in
and led them to safety and one man said in the newspaper, he
said, I was never so glad to see the sunlight in all my life. I tell you what, when the Lord
turns your world upside down and you go from blindness to
sight, from darkness to light. You'll say, thank God for the
Son of Righteousness. The Son of Righteousness and
the rays of warmth of His free grace that shines on my poor
soul. Unbelief turns to faith. Your
world's turned upside down and you have new concerns, new interests, new loves. You love what you
used to hate, and you hate now what you used to love. And I'll
tell you what, this gospel had turned church upside down too.
Yeah. I went to my first pastorate
in 1975. At altar calls, salvation by
decisionism, universal love of God, Universal redemption. Just preach the gospel. Turn
the world of that church upside down. I wound up baptizing most
everybody. What happened? What happened? The gospel happened. That's what
happened. The Lord came in great power. And I want to ask you,
has the gospel turned your world upside down? But let me say this, the ones
who made this announcement, these have turned the world upside
down. They're God haters. They're unbelievers. And I got
to thinking about it. They said they turned the world
upside down. Not really. They turned it right
side up. It turned it right side up. Because
you see, things got turned upside down in the fall. In the fall. In Adam's transgression. And
only the free grace, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ made
real to our hearts by the power of the Spirit of God can turn
it right side up. And I tell you, if God the Spirit
has done something for you and your soul, leading you to Jesus
Christ and His blood and His righteousness, for all of your
hopes of salvation and everlasting life, He has turned your world right
side up. Things are finally right. Finally right. That's what the
Lord does. That's what the Lord does. And
I tell you, We trace it all back to the substitutionary death
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Give thanks to God. Look at number
129, at the cross. At the cross. Thank God for the
cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's not talking about a symbol. He's not talking about a tree
upon which Christ died.