August 9, 2026

"Eagerly Examining the Scriptures" (Acts 17:1-15)

Series: Acts: God's Vision For His Church Scripture: Acts 17:1–15

Hear now the word of the lord from Acts 17, verses 1 through 15. Now, when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in as was his custom. And on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, this Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.

But the Jews were jealous and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And Jason has received them. And they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king Jesus. And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things.

And when they had taken money as security from Jason, the rest, they let them go. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now, these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

Many of them therefore believed with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. And the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens.

And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together this morning in prayer.

Gracious Father, we pray that you would help us to, with all eagerness, examine the Scriptures carefully this Lord's day, seeking to see if these things are so, to see if the Scriptures really do declare that it was necessary for the Messiah, the Christ, to suffer and to die and to rise again, and whether Jesus truly is that long awaited Messiah. And if these things are so, we pray that by your spirit, you would give us hearts to understand and eyes to see and ears to hear all that is contained in the good news of the Gospel of your son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

Well, in this passage of Scripture, I hope you're noticing a pattern. As we're studying through the Book of Acts. As we're studying through this Book of Acts, we're going to see regularly a pattern where the missionaries here, Paul and Silas, where they come into a particular area and they start preaching. And as they preach, the Word of God is powerful in that area. And many, not all, but many, come to faith in Jesus.

But as the Word begins to bear fruit in that area, it's not too long down the road where opposition begins to grow. Wherever they are, whether it's Jews or Gentiles, opposition begins to grow. And very soon oppression comes against the missionaries. Until things get so bad in one way or another, the missionaries have to shake the dust off of their feet, whether we read about it or not, and they have to move on to the next area to continue preaching the Word of God in a new place. And we read so many of these stories, there's a real pattern here forming.

But I don't want you to think that each of these are the same story every time. Oh, here's another story where the same thing is happening. I think if you're a believer, if you followed Christ for any length of time, you probably understand that there are a lot of places in your life where it feels like you were doing the same thing. Maybe some of these are the day in, day out rhythms and routines of your life, day to day, week to week, month to month. Maybe you come into worship every week and worship again is going to look very similar in the format and structure of it week by week.

Or you come across the same besetting sins, or you come across similar lessons and trials that you have to deal with and wrestle with one more time. And you say, I've been here before, I've done this before, why can't I move on to something else?

But what the Lord teaches us through each of these events as we go through them is always something a little bit new. It's always coming back to the fundamentals of repentance from sin and faith in Christ and trust wherever he is leading us. But though it always comes down to those fundamentals, every time God is shining a different light on the reality of our situation or the reality of our condition, or his goodness and mercy and Grace and power. And each time we forget those things even a little bit, so that God is once again putting them before us and asking us once again to trust in Him.

I think what these stories and the patterns that we are reading here in the Book of Acts are doing in part is they're showing us something of that pattern in the life of the church. If God's vision for the church is reflected in this book, one of the things that we are seeing is that life is. Is going to look the same. And yet in each story, Luke is shining a different light, a different angle. We are seeing a different aspect of the kingdom of God as it's developing into this world.

And so often it comes back down to fundamentals, but we catch a new glimpse. We see a new part of God's glory. And here the glimpse we have is the necessity that the Messiah, that Jesus, who is the Christ, must suffer and rise from the dead. And the way that necessity has been communicated to us through the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, very basic lessons. But this passage is profound in the way that it puts both of those ideas before us.

And so our theme and this is going to be our application then, is this. Respond to the Scriptures by faith. Respond to the Scriptures by faith. And so we'll look at two sections to this passage. The first, what we are seeing in Thessalonica, where we are seeing right reasoning.

Right reasoning. And second, what happens in Berea, where we see right response. Right response. So let's start with right reasoning. In verses 1 through 9 in Thessalonica, we're reading about the ongoing journeys of, again, these missionaries, Paul and Silas.

1. Right Reasoning (Acts 17:1-9)

And they passed through Amphipolis or Amphipolis, however you pronounce that, in Apollonia. And now they come to Thessalonica. If you have read the letters to the Thessalonians, first and second Thessalonians, these are the letters to the Christians in this city. One of the interesting things as you read the letters to the Thessalonians, is how much Paul talks about what a miracle it is that they treated the revelation of the word of God for what it was, namely, a word from God and not the mere preaching of men. And they received it eagerly in that way.

And he says it's a miracle. And he talks about the fires of opposition that they have faced. And we see that that traces to right here where Paul is preaching this Gospel. And some miraculously come to believe in these things, while others rejected entirely and even come to persecute the Christians, including Jason apparently the one with whom these missionaries lodged while they were in Thessalonica. But upon coming to Thessalonica, we read there was a synagogue of the Jews.

If you remember, there was not a synagogue of the Jews in Philippi. There were not enough Jewish men in that town to be able to form a synagogue. But here there are, and there's a strong Jewish contingent. And so we read that Paul, as was his custom, it says, starts his ministry off in the synagogue. He went in, as was his custom, to the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures.

Now why does Paul start his mission in the Jewish synagogue? Well, Jesus was careful to remind us in John chapter 4 that salvation is from the Jews. Jesus himself was a Jew born to Jews, fulfilling the long awaited promises that God had made to his covenant people, the Jews, that salvation would come up from one born to their ranks. But Paul also reflecting in the letter he wrote to the church in Rome, the letter to the Romans, he reminds us in Romans 3, 2, that to the Jews were entrusted the oracles of God. They should understand something of what he is going to be preaching about because he is appealing to the Scriptures, the oracles that they have possessed.

And then in Romans 9, 4, 5, Paul goes on writing, to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs. And from their race, according to the flesh is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. They should know what he's talking about.

He's starting to preach to them that the long awaited promises that the covenants that God made with his people, that what was foretold and foreshadowed by the worship that was given to them has been fulfilled in the Messiah. That's the Hebrew word. In Greek it's translated as the Christ, which is what he is preaching about in this passage. And so we read that he goes into the synagogue of the Jews and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures. Now this is the very first time in the Book of Acts that we come across this word for reasoning.

However, it actually comes up several times from here on out, particularly when Paul is reasoning with the Jews. He's talking with the Jews in their language from their Scriptures, according to the promises made to them about the Messiah raised up from their race according to the flesh, who is the God whom their ancestors and the patriarchs had worshiped. And he reasons with them, saying the Messiah has come.

But then it goes on to say what exactly he reasons with them about from the Scriptures, verse three, explaining and proving. The word for explaining is a word that essentially means something like opening up. In Luke chapter 24, when Jesus was resurrected and he's talking with the men on the road to Emmaus, and it says that he opened their eyes, he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. That's this word. And so here Paul and Silas are trying to open their eyes, open their minds to understand what the Scriptures declared about the Messiah.

And this word proving then is something of setting something before people physically. This can be something like Jesus setting the fish and loaves before the crowds when he miraculously multiplied those meals for 5,000 and then for crowds of 4,000.

So here's Paul reasoning, explaining, trying to open their eyes, proving, setting before them the scriptural proof. And what is he saying? The Scriptures teach. As he pleads with them to believe, he points to the Scriptures saying, reasoning with them from the Scriptures that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and arise from the dead. Now, this is the heart of the message.

Again, it comes back to basic blocking and tackling fundamentals. It comes back to the heart of what we preach, the core of what we are about, namely Jesus and him crucified. But what Paul is saying is that this is not a small part of what you should know. This is what you should be very acquainted with because you have these Scriptures. The oracles of God were entrusted to you in the Scriptures of the Old Testament.

Now, what, what Paul is saying here is the Messiah, the suffering and death and the resurrection of the Messiah had always been proclaimed from the Scriptures. And when we study the Scriptures, a simple principle of trying to understand what the Scriptures teach is that we are to look for both precepts and examples. Precepts and examples. Precepts mean some kind of clear, explicit teaching on a matter. Examples put flesh and blood on principles.

They show us stories of real life human beings who struggle and sin in the same ways that we do, who are learning about those things as they go through life. Precept and example. Well, did the Scriptures teach by precept that the Messiah would suffer and die? And the answer is absolutely. It's taught in many places.

Probably the clearest is in Isaiah 53, verses 5 through 6. And I'm just using two verses out of that lengthy section that talks about the suffering servant of the Messiah where we read, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with his wounds we are healed.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. That was written 700 years before the hands and feet of Jesus were pierced on the cross. But what about example, one of my. Well, I wouldn't say it's my favorite book, but one of the best books that I've read is a book called by Arnold Fruchtenbaum called Jesus was a Jew.

And Arnold Fruchtenbaum is an evangelist to the Jews. And one of the things he talks about is if you study the teachings of the rabbis, the Jews, many of them believe that there would be two Messiahs. And one of them was the son of David, Messiah, the conquering, valiant warrior king like David, who would come with a sword in his fist and would bring peace to the nations by conquering them. But the other Messiah they imagined would need to come because they could not imagine both roles being accomplished by one person. They called the son of Joseph, son of David, the son of Joseph and the son of Joseph.

They pointed back to the story of Joseph, this example of one who was appointed by God as specialist, set apart whose brothers, the tribal heads of the Jewish nation, hated him, rejected him, laid hands on him, stripped him of his garments, threw him in the pit. We talked about this last week. And then from there he was sold into slavery, where he descended all the way into the pit of the prison resembling hell itself. And from there he was lifted out of there to the right hand of the ruler of the time, Pharaoh, from which he became a powerful ruler, where he saved the world by keeping many people alive, by providing food for them. And they pointed at that suffering servant as an example.

Couldn't see how that would look anything like the son of David. Couldn't imagine how those two individuals would be the same person. But they understood that the example of the Scriptures pointed to the necessity of a suffering, rising Messiah. But what about the resurrection? Do the Scriptures of the Old Testament teach by precept that the Messiah must rise from the dead?

Well, yes. The apostles preach this all over the book of acts in Psalm 16:10. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol the grave or let your holy one see corruption. It was written by David 1000 years before Jesus walked the earth. And as both Peter and Paul point out, David is still in the grave.

David's soul, his life was abandoned to Sheol. David's flesh did see corruption. David wrote not of himself, but about his greater son, the Messiah. Jesus Christ, whose flesh would not see corruption, but would rise from the dead on the third day. And indeed even the dates are foretold in the Scripture.

In Hosea, chapter six, verse two, the people of Israel are speaking collectively, but a voice that foreshadows Jesus, where they write, after two days he will revive us. On the third day he will raise us up that we may live before him. As the Scriptures teach, it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to die and to rise again. And what Paul and Silas are pointing to, what I am pointing to from their writings today, is that the only one who has ever lived to fulfill these promises, promises that were made 700 years and a thousand years and more than a thousand years before the coming of Christ, this has been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, whom I proclaim to you is the Christ.

And Paul and Silas preaching, declare this to people and many come to faith. But again we are seeing that pattern where others are violently opposing him, especially this poor man named Jason. We don't know anything about Jason except what we read about here. We don't even know entirely if they lodged with Jason or if he just is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time, if he's sort of like the man who was forced to carry Jesus cross just because he happened to be there. But this Jason is dragged before the authorities and he's beaten and he's tossed about and he has to pay some kind of security deposit to make sure that these riots aren't going to happen again.

And only then is he released. We don't know that what they are saying is true because they make up a lot of things in opposing and accusing the believers. But one thing they do get right is in verse six, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. Jesus is the king.

They got that right. Jesus is the one overturning the world, turning the world upside down. And this same Jesus of Nazareth is the reigning valiant warrior, son of David, Messiah, precisely because he walked the path of the son of Joseph, who descended all the way into the pit and then was raised up and is now seated at the right hand, none of the ruler of Egypt, but the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, creator of all things and Judge of the living and the dead. The question I want to ask you is this, why was this necessary? Why was this necessary?

I was praying about this this morning. I went on a walk and was reflecting on this and Was praying? Why was it necessary? Is there some compulsion, some constraint, some obligation that God has set upon him by someone else? Did we put this on God?

And he said, well, I guess I have no choice. The answer is no. God is the eternally blessed One. God would be eternally blessed and satisfied and joyful if he simply let us alone to go in the way, in the footsteps of our sin, all the way to death and eternal condemnation into hell. This would not harm God in the least, because God cannot be harmed.

God cannot suffer. And yet it was God's good pleasure. Out of nothing more than his free mercy, out of his love for the creation that had been tarnished. Out of the love for the people that he foreknew before their creation. Out of love for the glory that he would gain by descending into the pit in the person of His Son and dying and rising again from the grave.

That he sent His Son into the world. Born of a virgin, according to the prophecies of Isaiah, despised and rejected by men, again prophesied in the Scriptures, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, again as the Scriptures foretold, dead and buried in the tomb of a rich man, as was prophesied in Isaiah, but risen again on the third day.

From the scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, I proclaim to you that God has accomplished in the man Christ Jesus. Not something he was forced to do by anything outside of himself, but something that God bound himself to do according to his oath and his covenant and his promise. And this necessity he revealed and foretold in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. And so I proclaim to you that the long awaited Messiah is Jesus, and he has come. And for all those who put their faith in him, you will be saved.

This is the hope we have. That the Lord of glory, the God who is over all, took upon a human nature, suffered and bled and died in our place. The God who cannot suffer, the God who cannot die, became human so that he could for us.

Well, from this message from the hope of the Scriptures proclaimed in Thessalonica, for which Paul and Silas suffered and were run out of the city. What should our response be? And that answer comes in the second section. In Berea, we read in the second section the right response in verses 10:15. That the brothers, the believers in Thessalonica, that fledgling Thessalonian church to whom Paul would correspond in 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, they immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea.

2. Right Response (Acts 17:10-15)

And when they arrived, they Went into the Jewish synagogue again, doesn't say as was his custom, but we should be picking that up. Salvation is from the Jews. Paul never lost his heart for reaching the Jews with the Gospel of the Jesus. And we read that in this case, these Jews were more noble. The word here has to do with good breeding.

It means a refined quality that rather than the rabble that we read about who stirred up the mob back in Thessalonica. This is the idea of those who were serious minded, who were always open hearted, who wanted to hear specifically what the Scriptures taught. And they were more noble than those in Thessalonica. Why? Because they received the Scriptures daily.

One commentator pointed out, I hadn't thought about this, but that actually stands in contrast with the Thessalonians, where Paul met with them on three Sabbath days. We don't even know if they are consecutive Sabbath days. You get the impression that those in Thessalonica were good pew sitters in the synagogue, but whom the Scriptures never really touched. But here, these Jews are receiving the Word with all eagerness. And they don't wait until the next Lord's day.

They don't wait until the next Sabbath to hear more about this. They go straight to the Scriptures and say, are these things true? Is the Messiah prophesied and foretold not just as a valiant, reigning, conquering son of David, but would he actually suffer and rise from the dead on the third day? And they examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And when the Scriptures, not the preacher, but the Scriptures convince them that these things were, so many of them therefore believe.

And this reached up into high society. Not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men, though this would not contribute to their high standing, though this would not gain them votes or influence or prosperity. Yet they left those things behind, forsook them in order to follow Jesus.

And yet here too, that cycle finishes its course. As we read about opposition. This time, however, it comes not from inside Berea, but the word travels back to Thessalonica. And they learned that the men who had turned the world upside down around the world had come to Berea as well. And they were turning the world upside down in Berea as well.

And so they came there too. Not to study the Scriptures, not to examine the Scriptures, to see if these things were so. They came agitating and stirring up the crowds. Well, again, this is their cue. This is the time to leave.

This is when they head off and we read in verse 14, they had to do this, apparently in a staggered way, verse 14. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. We don't know if that's safety or to continue ministering, ministering in this fledgling young congregation. But in verse 15, we read those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens.

And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. Now, two things. One is we are seeing the roles of Silas and Timothy. This is the role that Titus has. It's the role that Scripture calls the role of an evangelist.

These are officers, apostles, prophets, evangelists. These are the evangelists. And their role was to come behind the apostles and to help put in order whatever remained out of order, wherever the apostles had left when they had to go on to the next place. And they had an extraordinary impact in the early church. So we're seeing part of what's happening here, but the other thing we are reading is that the Gospel has now landed in Athens.

And we are going to read in the next passage about what it looks like for the Gospel. We've seen what it looks like for the Gospel to be preached in the streets in the Temple of Jerusalem. Now we are going to see what happens in that ancient center of human learning and civilization and philosophy and arts and sciences and mathematics. What does the Gospel have to say there? Well, before we get to that, let's remember the theme for today.

I want to call you to respond to the Scriptures by faith. Not to me, to the Scriptures. One commentator, Lenski, I love him so much. He writes this. The shining way of faith is to receive the preached word with all eagerness, not with hostility, and to test and to examine every bit of it by the Scripture and to accept only what agrees with them.

Earlier, I pleaded with you to believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household. But now let me add a qualifier that does not detract from that message. It reinforces that message. Do not believe because I have preached something to you. Examine these things according to the Scriptures.

Be eager, look at these things daily. Ask yourselves, are these things so? And I would say, believe in the Lord Jesus only if he is what the Scriptures proclaim.

Ask yourself, does God indeed promise that he will crush the head of the serpent by the seed of the woman whose heel would be bruised in the process? In Genesis 3:15, do the Psalms, written 1000 years before Jesus birth, prophesy that the Messiah would be forsaken by God? Since they have pierced my hands and feet, does Isaiah writing 700 years before Jesus birth, prophesy that the Messiah would be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities? If so, and the Scriptures do then believe in the Lord Jesus, whose hands and the heels of his feet were pierced, does the prophet Isaiah declare that he would be buried in the grave of a rich man in Isaiah 53, 9, did the Psalms promise that God would not abandon the Messiah's soul to Sheol or let his Holy One see corruption in Psalm 16:10? Does Hosea prophesy that God would raise the Messiah up on the third day, writing five to six hundred years before the coming of the Messiah in Hosea 6, verse 2?

And does Jonah's example, the example of three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, set a pattern that the Messiah fulfills when he is in the belly of the earth for that same time, as Jesus says in Matthew 12:40? If so, and the Scriptures do then believe in the Lord Jesus, who suffered, who died, who was buried, and who rose again on the third day. Give yourselves to these truths. This is what we are in this world. For all the good things that we enjoy of this world, all of the hardships that we must endure in this world, all of this is for Christ.

All of this is a theater for his glory. All of this is so that the world at the end of the ages might gaze upon the one who is pierced and see him ascended and glorified when he comes on the clouds to establish his eternal throne in the new heavens and the new earth forever. Will you be there? Will you be his servant, his brother, his friend?

Or will you be cast off forever into the outer darkness of hell and the torturing fires of condemnation because you have resisted the Messiah who loved you to the point of shedding his blood for sinners like you? Turn from your sins, Believe in the Lord Jesus, respond to the Scriptures in faith, and you will be saved, you and your household. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we pray that your spirit would help us relate to these truths really, truly, personally, not by anything we do, but simply by the open hands of faith that we receives what you have done for us through Christ Jesus, your Son.

Thank you for the Word, for the Scriptures that declare these things. Thank you for Christ Jesus, who was willing to suffer and die. Thank you, Father, for your love with which you loved the world so much that you gave your own Son, so that all who believe in him would not perish, but would have eternal life. And so, Father, we pray that you would turn all those who do not believe to faith in Jesus and that you would take the faith of those who do believe and you would strengthen it in Jesus.

And, Father, we pray that you would do all of this in Christ's name and for his glory. Amen.

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Oct 4

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"Preparation and Fulfillment" (Acts 19:1-7)

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Sep 20

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Sep 13

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