The Suffering King

Has it ever occurred to you that wherever Paul went, a riot followed? A riot. How's that for speaking for the glory of Christ?

Here's Jason posting bail. The city's infuriated over the Gospel claims. Can you imagine this in the average church in our culture today? Hey, you want to join our church? Go down the hallway there, second door on the right, pick up your riot gear. By the way, we're starting a new series of studies tonight called Church Planting in a Town Where Almost Everyone Will Hate You.

Great, you know, sign me up. I want to belong to that church. The Jews of Jesus' day wanted a victorious Messiah, one who could give them health, wealth, and power. Many churched people today are searching for the same thing, but Jesus and his early followers were different from what was expected. In Acts 17, some disciples of Jesus were accused of upsetting the world. Isn't that often a typical response to the Gospel?

The world gets upset with God and his word, and they take it out on Christians who try to reflect and represent him. This is wisdom for the heart. Stephen Davey has an important message for you today called The Suffering King.

Stay with us. There are some interesting insights that came out of a series I read about, I didn't watch it, that was simply called Belief. And it was sort of a survey, and it did go around the world, by the way, in a number of different countries, surveying what people believe in as it relates to some kind of supernatural being, or some divine essence, or it might even be some kind of universal force or power. And it was supposed to witness some of the world's most fascinating, they called it, spiritual journeys where cameras have rarely been. So I read a little bit about it. They were searching for origins of diverse faith and the heart of what really matters, whether it's the belief of millions who flock to the sacred Ganges for cleansing, a free climber on the side of a mountain without any security ropes who believes that his will to climb is the greatest power on earth, a woman engaged in ancient ceremonial cleansing, a search of one nation through ancient astrological systems to find meaning in the stars, and of course, more.

You know, our world is incurably hungry, isn't it? I found it interesting in reading some of the promotional material, just as I suspected, that the idea would eventually surface, and it did, and I quote, that a monarch like God is fading. A monarch like God is fading, and people are now seeking the divine in nature and in their neighborhoods like never before. And the series continually presents this question, what do you believe? What do you, emphasis you, what do you believe? Frankly, what you and I believe isn't really a very good place to start because we are all finite creatures and we have blind spots, the size of our own biases. We're prone to believe whatever we feel fits and is comfortable with our perceptions and lifestyles, and the gospel collides frankly with what we believe, and the truth of who God is does as well.

A.W. Beatoza wrote in his work entitled The Knowledge of the Holy this, left to ourselves, we tend to reduce God to manageable terms. We by nature want to get God where we can use him, or at least know where he is if we need him.

We want a God we can in some measure control, making even the Christian God only slightly superior to the gods of Greece and Rome. See the question to begin with is not what do you believe about God and the universe and some spirit being or world out there, the question is what has God revealed about himself and the universe he created? And frankly the only place to begin to answer a question like that in specific terms is this book we call the Bible. And by the way, in the opening line of the Bible, God is not explained, his existence is not supported, he is not proven, he is not defended, he is simply introduced with the statement in the beginning, what? God, in the beginning, God, here he is, here he is.

And now our search begins and for us it begins here not on a mountainside, not through a telescope, not in the polluted waters of the Ganges, it begins here with what God claims to be his very breath, the inspired scripture. Here's what creator God discloses about himself. What I want to do in our session today is begin to study one of the most loaded chapters in the Bible that reveals who God is and what God is like. What I want to show you is the self-disclosure of God and it's going to take some time to work through this chapter and you're probably wondering what chapter might that be. We'll turn to Acts chapter 17.

What I want to do is I want us to travel back 1,967 years ago, this very month, the month of January, to a moment when the Apostle Paul arrives at a city called Thessalonica. What happened in January 49 A.D. and we're going to use this to just sort of begin to not only capture our thoughts and what we're going to discover about God through the revelation of God by means of his servant, but we're also going to try to answer the question along the way, how do we communicate to our culture that really doesn't want anything to do with a monarch like God who is so dogmatic as to suggest there might be something called a commandment rather than a suggestion. So we're going to also explore what it's like to communicate to our world in this pre-Christian day who God is. So for this session, let's just go to verse 1 where Paul arrives in Thessalonica.

There's a synagogue there of the Jews and according to Paul's custom, verse 2, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with him. And now what we're told is that he's going to engage in at least three activities as he goes into the synagogue. He's going to primarily begin with Jews and proselytes. He's going to deal with sympathizers to Judaism, those that might sit on the fringe elements of this congregation, but he's going to do three things.

So let's start there. First of all, he's going to reason or dialogue according to the Scriptures. My translation reads he reasoned with them. The verb is dialectomai from which we get our English word dialogue.

And it's really important to understand what this is like so you can picture this in your mind. It isn't like Paul is standing up somewhere like here and the audience is sitting out there sort of like you are. This is more like a give and take. A dialogue in the Greek sense is a word that refers to teaching or engaging people in a method of question and answer in order to stimulate their thinking. That's the idea of dialoguing. And so what Paul is doing here is he's having these Jews and these proselytes and these God-fearing Gentiles and he's engaging them. By the way, notice in the next phrase he's dialoguing with them from the Scriptures. So what he's doing is he's saying, have you ever thought about this verse? And he might have them recall it from memory or he might quote it to them. And then he's going to say, have you ever thought about what that might mean? And then he's going to have some give and take on the implications of whatever that particular text might be. And he's focusing, notice in verse 3, he's intentionally driving them in the thoughts, in the texts, in the question and answers to consider the truths that this God incarnate died and rose again.

He is their Messiah. So he's saying things like, have you ever thought about that verse from the Torah, the law, the first five books of our Old Testament? And they might fire back their answers. And he'd say, yeah, but what about that passage where King David describes some things? What do you think about the prophets of the past? And he'd lead them into some rather stunning implications of their own Scriptures to stimulate their thinking. So this would have been rather raucous.

That's what the word, dialogamy means. I'll never forget my father telling me what happened in an airport a number of years ago. He's in Russia. He leads missions to military. And he's coming back from the Black Sea area where they have expanded.

And they now have built a ministry there with the military, the Russian military, very fruitful ministry. And he's sitting there in the airport. And for those of you that travel at certain times of year, you may have seen the same thing he saw.

The terminal was filled with Orthodox Jewish men with the curly sideburns and the hats and the black garb. And my dad was sitting there in the terminal with his Bible open. And you have to understand that all he was doing was baiting the hook, okay?

It was very intentional. He's just opening it up just to wait and see. But he was reading. And sure enough, a young 25-year-old Orthodox Jew came and sat down beside him. And quiet for a moment. And then my dad looked at him and said, can I ask you a question?

Sure. How will you know your Messiah is the true Messiah when he comes? The young man responded, oh, we will know. We will know. Well, how will you know? Oh, he will be dynamic. He will be a great leader. He will have miraculous power.

That's how we will know. And my father took his Old Testament and he said, I know how you will know. And he turned to several passages like the prophet Zechariah who spoke of their returning king.

And he turned there and he said, look here. And he had him read it where it said, they will look upon him whom they have pierced. And that young man said, that's not in my scriptures.

And my dad said, yes, it is. And he said, well, let me write that reference down. And so he got out a little piece of paper and he wrote the reference down. My father then said, well, let me show you another passage from the great prophet Isaiah that you have never heard read in the synagogue. And he turned to Isaiah 53 and he said, here, read this verse. He was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

The chastening for our well-being fell upon him. The young man said, let me write that reference down. And he wrote that down. And my father went to Genesis to the great Torah, written by Moses. And he turned to chapter 49 and verse 10 where it talked about the scepter not departing from the tribe of Judah when he comes. And the messianic prophecy that said, and when he comes, he will tie his young colt to a vine, which is exactly what Jesus did when he entered the city. The young man said, I've never seen that verse before.

My father very kindly said, it's in your Torah. Then he turned to Zachariah again in chapter 13 and he showed him verse 6 where the nation Israel asks their shepherd king, what are these wounds in your hands? And then he will answer, these are the wounds with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. And he wrote that reference down.

And asked some questions. So here they are in the terminal dialogue. This is the idea of the apostle Paul doing the same thing here in Thessalonica centuries earlier. And notice the text again, he not only dialogued with him, number 2, he explained the scriptures to them. Verse 3, for Paul is explaining. See that word? Explaining.

Again, the Greeks help us with a little bit more color. It means to be opened. He is opening the scriptures to them. In other words, Paul is taking the scriptures, as it were, and opening them with clarity, shedding light on them. And with that, opening hearts and eyes that only the Spirit through the truth of the scriptures can do. But he's sort of opening up the word of God to them and their hearts are open. In fact, that word to open is the same word used of those two disciples that Jesus spoke with on the road to Emmaus. And their eyes were clouded until they saw the Lord give them the elements, as it were, of what we call communion. And their eyes were opened.

This is the idea here. He is opening the scriptures. Isn't it wonderful when you're reading the word of God and the Spirit of God opens the meaning of a text to you? Or maybe you're listening to a sermon or a lesson, a Bible teacher, a Bible study, or on the radio or whatever. I can remember as a senior high student I'd given my life to the Lord as a 17-year-old. And I was told that J. Vernon McGee was going to come to a church in Virginia Beach. Now as I tell these stories, I realize how old I'm getting. But at any rate, he was preaching every night for a week in that church. And I was really hungry for the word.

Of course, I'd come to life spiritually. And so I, as a 17-year-old, drove to that church. I can't remember if I was alone or by myself. I can't remember anybody being with me.

I just remember that I would sit on the front row of the balcony five nights a week and listen to J. Vernon McGee. He took an entire week to go through the Book of Ruth. You think, how?

It took a week. Well, he talked slowly. But really what he did was he went into the history and the culture and the meaning of the words and I'll never forget, sitting there with my mouth open, he opened the Scriptures to me. This is Paul in the synagogue and he's opening one passage and he's saying, let me tell you what that means, showing them how they tied together to show who God was. I want you to notice thirdly, Paul is not only dialoguing, he's explaining, but notice he's giving evidence. He's giving evidence for scriptural integrity. The verb there in verse 3, giving evidence, means to lay things alongside, if you translated it rather woodenly. So Paul is taking the Scriptures and he's then laying one passage alongside another passage, which is a wonderful way, by the way, to study the Scriptures, comparing the Scripture with Scripture. So Paul then is perhaps taking a prophecy and then he's laying alongside of it a psalm and then he's delivering along with it an eyewitness account from perhaps one of the Gospel writers. We don't know, I wish we'd been told, but we don't know what he laid alongside.

That doesn't mean we can't use our imagination. I can imagine that Paul could have started the dialogue and then moved forward and eventually to the evidence by asking the congregation, what did it mean for your great King Solomon to say in his collection of Proverbs, which we revere, what we call chapter 30 and verse 4, who has ascended into heaven and descended? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped the waters in his garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?

Notice this. What is his name and the name of his son? I can imagine Paul, you know, just kind of throwing that out there and stopping and saying, you know, Solomon is obviously talking about God, the Creator, but he's asking who is his son?

Do you know his name? Maybe then Paul could have laid alongside that text the eyewitness account of Matthew and that incredible moment where Jesus meets up with the ministry of John the Baptizer and acknowledges the truth of that Old Testament prophet John and goes into the water as a sign of his acknowledging the truth of that message and going down and then up and out of the water and then that voice speaking from heaven. Paul said, you know, the eyewitnesses said the voice from heaven said, this is my son.

Then I can imagine Paul saying, you know, let me kind of tie it together for you. The only way they can be tied together, let me introduce to you the son of God, the same man who was crucified and rose from the dead, the son of God, Solomon, centuries ago wondered about. He is the son of God confirmed by eyewitness accounts and his name is Jesus.

He is the Christ. Look at verse 3 again, he's explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you, who I'm introducing to you is the Messiah. It isn't long before the Jews recognize the threat Paul represents to their religion, to their tradition, to their customs. Verse 4 tells us that some of them were persuaded and joined, Paul tells us that word joined is actually much stronger. It indicates to us that God is actually creating and forming a community of believers. What we would know then obviously is the creation of a local church. But then again all you have is this departure then from the synagogue, you have numbers that are disappearing, you have well respected women, you have a multitude of Greeks, you have even Jews who've joined this community of followers and they're all naming Jesus as their Messiah.

That's very, very troubling. See, Paul has introduced God to a city that knew nothing of him and now the question is, what is this city going to do about it? Verse 5, the middle part tells us they formed a mob, they became jealous of course, they took some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, they came upon the house of Jason, they were seeking to bring them out to the people. Evidently the believers had moved from the synagogue no longer welcome into the home of this man by the name of Jason, Paul will greet him later in one of his letters, a man who put his life on the line for the apostle Paul in the gospel of Christ and Jason opens up his home evidently large enough, perhaps a leading man of the city, we don't know for sure. But he's hosting Paul and Silas and the church and then you have this uproar, they effectively are going to drag Jason, verse 6, out and they're going to make two charges against these Christians, specifically Jason.

Look at verse 6, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities shouting, these men who have upset the world have come here also, and I love that phrase by the way, catch that, mark it down, it's going to become more and more the testimony of the church in this culture. And the first charge is that you are disturbing the status quo, these men who upset the world, literally these are they who have turned the world upside down, they're ruining everything. By the way, if you disturb the status quo, if you swim against the politically correct current, if you don't keep your opinions of what's right and wrong to yourself, if you suggest that Christianity is the only faith and everything else is speculation, if you do that you're going to invite trouble into your life.

Why? Because you're tampering, you're impugning, you are disagreeing, you are claiming, and you are turning the world upside down. Listen beloved, you are not, you are not, you are turning the world right side up, it's already upside down. You're introducing your world to who God really is and what he's really like and the gospel actually returns the world to where it ought to be. Secondly, Paul and these early believers are not only charged with breaking up the status quo, they're accused of committing the crime of treason. Look at verse 7, they all act, later on in the verse, they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar saying there is another king, Jesus.

I love that. They're saying there's another king, this is treason. Jesus is not only the Messiah, that gives us enough problems, but he's king. In fact the word used in the Greek New Testament by this mob can be translated emperor, or you could translate it, get ready for this one, monarch.

The world might chisel the reminders of who he is and what he said, but there is a sovereign monarch, the emperor who is Jesus. Now look at verse 8, they stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things and when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released him. Receiving a pledge is a reference to posting bail. So what they got from Jason was bail and he evidently bailed everybody out. Has it ever occurred to you that wherever Paul went, a riot followed? A riot. How's that for speaking for the glory of Christ?

Here's Jason posting bail, the city's infuriated over the gospel claims. Can you imagine this in the average church in our culture today? Hey, you want to join our church? Go down the hallway there, second door on the right, pick up your riot gear.

And then come out of the hallway, turn left and get some instructions on how to post bail because you're probably going to jail. By the way, we're starting a new series of studies tonight called Church Planting in a Town Where Almost Everyone Will Hate You. Great, sign me up. I want to belong to that church. Our gospel should produce reaction, heartburn, offense, guilt, shame, repentance, forgiveness, joy.

But you can't chisel away the truth. Jesus Christ is revealed as sovereign God, the fulfillment of Solomon's question and God's and others suffered and died. He rose. He's going to return to earth one day as the emperor of all that is. Jesus Christ really is the emperor of all that exists.

As Christians, we may face trouble on this earth for being loyal to our king, but that's the only way to live. Thanks for being with us today here on Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Stephen is the pastor of a church in Cary, North Carolina. He's currently working his way through a series called Introducing God.

It comes from Acts 17. Today's lesson from that series is entitled The Suffering King. When you're unable to listen to Wisdom for the Heart on your local radio station, you can still keep caught up with our daily Bible lessons. The Wisdom International app has each day's broadcast as well as the archive of Stephen's 35 years of Bible exposition. You'll find the Wisdom International app in the app store for your device. Thanks for listening. Join us tomorrow for more wisdom for the heart.