Acts 17

What exactly was Paul’s method of bringing the message of Christ out into the Gentile world? We join him in the middle of what we have come to know as his second missionary journey. Joined by Silas, Paul was travelling throughout Macedonia, first going to Jewish synagogues on the Sabbath day, wherever possible. We need to pay close attention to what he did in those synagogues. He expounded the Old Testament Scriptures, fully opening up a message that was once closed to the understanding of those who were gathered there. He expected his listeners to consider his reasoning concerning the inspired text. It was from God’s Word that he would prove to them the necessary facts concerning the expected Messiah; particularly that the Christ had to suffer, and that He had to rise again from the dead. Further, he wanted them to embrace the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was this expected Christ. It is a deeply moving and impressive thing when we can see God’s Word clearly showing us these central facts of redemption.

Some of those who listened over the course of those Sabbath days were persuaded by what they heard, and we are told that they joined Paul and Silas. This group also included many of the Greeks who had been interested in the Jewish faith, and some of the leading women of the city. But, as we have seen in the past, the reaction was not universally positive. In fact, those who rejected the message of Christ became quite violent. Their jealous wrath was not only against Paul and Silas, but also against any that were supporting them. These enemies of the Word were ready to use the civil authorities against Paul and the others. Their charge was that these visitors had “turned the world upside down” through the preaching of Jesus as king. This claim of insubordination against civil authority seems often to be very impressive to those in authority. The end result of this strategy was that Paul and Silas and their company were forced out of Thessalonica after only a few weeks with the new church there, which gathering that had to leave behind in a deeply hostile environment. This forms the context that helps us to understand Paul’s two letters to this church recorded for us in the New Testament.

Paul and Silas went from there to Berea, and to the synagogue in that place. Once again Paul ministered there in the same way, teaching from the Old Testament Scriptures the necessity of Christ’s suffering and His resurrection. Too often we assume that the way that Jesus fulfilled prophesies regarding Himself was largely a matter of specific personal details that confirm Him as the Messiah. These were interesting, but far more prevalent and powerful was the overwhelming weight of the Old Testament teaching us of the One who would come to save the many. He would be both Man and God, He would suffer and die, He would rise again as a source of great strength and courage to the many who would look to Him and live, and He would be the key to the establishment of the fullness of the kingdom of heaven, and the reunion of heaven and earth. These are the kind of things that Paul taught through the Scriptures in places like Berea, where people were willing to search biblical passages daily to see if these things were true. This teaching ministry in Berea came to something of a crisis point when the enemies of Christ from Thessalonica came to that neighboring city trying to stop the Jesus movement there. Paul went on to Athens, but Silas and Timothy remained in Berea at least for a short while, undoubtedly strengthening the new church there.

The final missionary adventure of this chapter was quite different from that of Thessalonica and Berea. Although Paul began teaching the Jews in Athens (and others who attended the Jewish worship), the focus of the account of His time in this famous city had a strong Gentile orientation. This all started because something was troubling Paul. All these idols and so many smart people… He brought the message of Christ directly to the marketplace. That message was the same in essence and direction: “Jesus and the resurrection,” but the starting point was different, as we learn from the extended account of His words at the Areopagus.

He began by referring to their own monument and literature, finding in these things whispers of the truth that men already know within their hearts, that there is a God who made us and all things, and that our worship of our own ideas and the objects of our hands cannot possibly be anything that He needs, since He is the Giver of every good gift. Establishing that the time for this kind of ignorance was now over, He called them to repent of their foolish worship of idols, in light of the coming judgment through Jesus, the one Man appointed as Lord of that coming day, a fact attested to by God through His resurrection from the dead.

It was this fact of the resurrection of the dead that proved to be so offensive and laughable to the earth-bound mind. Nonetheless, some of those hearing believed this message, a word preached with no reference to Scripture, but now recorded for us as Scripture. The answer for philosophical Gentiles was not any different than that for Law-catechized Jews. There is only one answer for all of mankind. There is only one Man who could ever repair the breech between heaven and earth that has come to us through God’s judgment against sin. There is only One who can bring about the resurrection of the dead, the Man who has Himself risen from the tomb. He who is able to solve the deepest need of all the nations of the earth is the only answer for the salvation of any individual within any of those nations. We should not think of Him as so far off from any of us just based on the fact that we have not yet known Him as He really is. He is nearer than we normally admit. “In Him we live and move and have our being.”