How to consider the gospel message
Text Acts 17:11 Time 07 09 08 Place Childs Hill Baptist ChurchI would like us to consider this evening how we should listen to the gospel message – to faithful preaching. This is useful if we are not used to it, of course, but I think it will also be a help to all of us who are used to listening to sermons telling us the gospel. The verse I want to focus on is Acts 17:11 Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.Acts 17 deals with part of Paul's second missionary journey and how Paul and his companions came first to the city of Thessalonica, today in Greece but then in Macedonia. It is a still a city today but then was even more important. Paul founded a church there and later wrote the two New Testament letters known as 1 and 2 Thessalonians to them. Paul had come into Macedonia following a vision he had in Troas in which he saw a man from Macedonia saying 'come over and help us'. Paul had worked first in Philippi (Acts 16) where he also founded a church and later wrote a letter that is again in the New Testament (Philippians). He then went on to Thessalonica. In each place although some come to faith in Jesus Christ there was opposition.
That is a reminder to expect that sort of thing if we are going to serve the Lord.
In Philippi, Paul and Silas were put in prison and in Thessalonica the Jews rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They tried to find Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd but failed. That night the believers secretly helped Paul and Silas to get away and they went on to Berea, where the reception was quite different to what they had had in Philippi and Thesalonica. As our text says Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.So let's look at this verse. I want to say two things – one more briefly and one at greater length.
1. Consider the contrasting ways in which people can listen to the gospel message
There is the statement Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians. The word Luke uses was originally a word meaning 'better born' but it came to stand for noble character as it is translated here. $ It is a little like the history of the word 'gentleman' in English. On the one hand, gentleman originally referred to a man's noble birth or superior social position. It has come, however, to mean anyone well-mannered or considerate, with high standards of proper behaviour.
That is a reminder perhaps that it is not enough simply to have the name Christian – we need to act as Christians too. We should all be more concerned about acting nobly than about having mere honours and titles.
Luke is saying here then not that the Jews of Berea were better born than the Thessalonians but that they showed a superior nobility in the way they acted when the gospel message came to them.
This is a reminder that when the gospel message is preached different people are likely to react in different ways. In Thessalonica, although many believed, many did not and they showed it by their animosity towards Paul and Silas. This animosity was driven by jealousy (see 5 the Jews were jealous) and led to them bringing in these bad characters from the marketplace to form a mob – not something noble at all.
The question forces itself upon us – what about us? Are we most like the Thessalonians, driven by jealousy and other bad motives into stirring up trouble and opposing Paul and his companions or most like the Bereans who reacted in quite a different way. Paul preached the same gospel in the two synagogues but in the two places there were contrasting reactions. Which is yours most like?
2. Consider the right way for people to listen to the gospel messageNow let's examine the detail here. In what way could it be said that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians? What characteristics led to Luke making this distinction? Both has the same message preached by the same man but there were two distinctive things about the nobler Bereans and all who are like them.
1. They receive the message with great eagerness
1 What they do They receive the message (for they received the message). We know from 2 and 3 what the message was. It says there
Paul ... reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ, he said.
So his approach was based on Scripture, the Bible – it was what we call expository ministry, expounding the Bible. From the Bible he reasoned with people. He wanted them to accept two things – first, that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead and then, second, that the Messiah is Jesus.
We endeavour to do something similar today. From the Bible I want you to see that the Jews are God's chosen people and that God promised them that Messiah would come and that he would suffer and die in this world and then rise again. I want you to see that the Messiah has come and suffered and died and risen again and that the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth.
Are you willing to accept that message, to receive it. Are you willing to believe it?
2 How they do it We read that the Bereans didn't just receive the message, they received the message with great eagerness. They were marked by a readiness of mind and a real desire to know the truth. They were not narrow-minded and prejudiced against the truth but open to receive it, indeed eager to receive it. This is the noble attitude. This is the attitude that God likes to see. Sadly the Berean attitude is uncommon today. There is a narrow, bigoted and unreasonable spirit abroad that is unwilling even to listen to what Christians have to say.
The philosopher Antony Flew, now in his eighties and once a leading atheist, announced a change of mind in 2004 and published a book at the end of last year called There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind.Flew is very critical of The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins. He says, it is "remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."
We need to watch our for such bias – not just in others but in ourselves. If we are unwilling to eagerly receive the message then it betrays an ignoble spirit. Let's not be like that.
That is a reminder to expect that sort of thing if we are going to serve the Lord.
In Philippi, Paul and Silas were put in prison and in Thessalonica the Jews rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They tried to find Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd but failed. That night the believers secretly helped Paul and Silas to get away and they went on to Berea, where the reception was quite different to what they had had in Philippi and Thesalonica. As our text says Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.So let's look at this verse. I want to say two things – one more briefly and one at greater length.
1. Consider the contrasting ways in which people can listen to the gospel message
There is the statement Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians. The word Luke uses was originally a word meaning 'better born' but it came to stand for noble character as it is translated here. $ It is a little like the history of the word 'gentleman' in English. On the one hand, gentleman originally referred to a man's noble birth or superior social position. It has come, however, to mean anyone well-mannered or considerate, with high standards of proper behaviour.
That is a reminder perhaps that it is not enough simply to have the name Christian – we need to act as Christians too. We should all be more concerned about acting nobly than about having mere honours and titles.
Luke is saying here then not that the Jews of Berea were better born than the Thessalonians but that they showed a superior nobility in the way they acted when the gospel message came to them.
This is a reminder that when the gospel message is preached different people are likely to react in different ways. In Thessalonica, although many believed, many did not and they showed it by their animosity towards Paul and Silas. This animosity was driven by jealousy (see 5 the Jews were jealous) and led to them bringing in these bad characters from the marketplace to form a mob – not something noble at all.
The question forces itself upon us – what about us? Are we most like the Thessalonians, driven by jealousy and other bad motives into stirring up trouble and opposing Paul and his companions or most like the Bereans who reacted in quite a different way. Paul preached the same gospel in the two synagogues but in the two places there were contrasting reactions. Which is yours most like?
2. Consider the right way for people to listen to the gospel messageNow let's examine the detail here. In what way could it be said that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians? What characteristics led to Luke making this distinction? Both has the same message preached by the same man but there were two distinctive things about the nobler Bereans and all who are like them.
1. They receive the message with great eagerness
1 What they do They receive the message (for they received the message). We know from 2 and 3 what the message was. It says there
Paul ... reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ, he said.
So his approach was based on Scripture, the Bible – it was what we call expository ministry, expounding the Bible. From the Bible he reasoned with people. He wanted them to accept two things – first, that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead and then, second, that the Messiah is Jesus.
We endeavour to do something similar today. From the Bible I want you to see that the Jews are God's chosen people and that God promised them that Messiah would come and that he would suffer and die in this world and then rise again. I want you to see that the Messiah has come and suffered and died and risen again and that the Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth.
Are you willing to accept that message, to receive it. Are you willing to believe it?
2 How they do it We read that the Bereans didn't just receive the message, they received the message with great eagerness. They were marked by a readiness of mind and a real desire to know the truth. They were not narrow-minded and prejudiced against the truth but open to receive it, indeed eager to receive it. This is the noble attitude. This is the attitude that God likes to see. Sadly the Berean attitude is uncommon today. There is a narrow, bigoted and unreasonable spirit abroad that is unwilling even to listen to what Christians have to say.
The philosopher Antony Flew, now in his eighties and once a leading atheist, announced a change of mind in 2004 and published a book at the end of last year called There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed his Mind.Flew is very critical of The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins. He says, it is "remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. The fault of Dawkins as an academic (which he still was during the period in which he composed this book although he has since announced his intention to retire) was his scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine which he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."
We need to watch our for such bias – not just in others but in ourselves. If we are unwilling to eagerly receive the message then it betrays an ignoble spirit. Let's not be like that.
I can see how there might easily be an objection to this line of reasoning. It is felt to be naïve and unthinking. But there are two sides to this coin. What made the Bereans so noble in character was not just their openness and readiness to accept but also their scepticism and eagerness to examine whether these things really were so. Luke goes on and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
2. They examine the Scriptures daily to see if it is true
1 What they do The Bereans didn't simply take Paul's word for it. They did the hard work necessary to be sure that what he said was according to the teaching of the Bible. John 5:39 famously talks about searching the Scriptures but there it is the searching of the minutiae. Here it is the idea of following the argument. Like lawyers looking trying to establish a case and so looking for possible loopholes in the law so they examined and investigated the Bible. It was not like in our day when you can just get hold of a Bible from Smith's or read it on the Internet. They had to go to the synagogue and arrange with the Synagogue ruler to be allowed to look at the scrolls kept there. They didn't let things like that put them off though. They were eager to know the truth and so they made the effort.
This is how we must be if we are serious about knowing whether the gospel message is true. Are you like that?
2 When they do it We are told that the Bereans examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. They were taking time out form other things to be there at the synagogue and to examine the Scriptures to see if Paul was speaking the truth. Each day they would hear Paul saying something from the word and each day they would check up on him to see if what he said was true. @ That is how it should be with us. Find time daily to examine the Bible. Check out what the preacher says and see if it is really true.
3 Why they do it They did it we are told to see if what Paul said was true. Paul said that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead and that the Messiah is Jesus. These people wanted to know whether it was true or not and so they examined the Bible to see if it was true.
This reminds us of just how much is in the Old Testament and how if we study it properly there are wonderful things to see there. It also teaches us to have that right sort of scepticism towards those we hear speaking. Test it out. Is what they say really true?
Sadly this attitude is not common today. Antony Flew again complains about the way in which Dawkins dismisses Flew's belief in God in a footnote in The God Delusion. Flew says
"What is important about this passage is not what Dawkins is saying about Flew but what he is showing here about Dawkins. For if he had had any interest in the truth of the matter of which he was making so much he would surely have brought himself to write me a letter of enquiry. (When I received a torrent of enquiries after an account of my conversion to Deism had been published in the quarterly of the Royal Institute of Philosophy I managed – I believe – eventually to reply to every letter.)
This whole business makes all too clear that Dawkins is not interested in the truth as such but is primarily concerned to discredit an ideological opponent by any available means. That would itself constitute sufficient reason for suspecting that the whole enterprise of The God Delusion was not, as it at least pretended to be, an attempt to discover and spread knowledge of the existence or non-existence of God but rather an attempt – an extremely successful one – to spread the author’s own convictions in this area."
Some people think Christians are afraid of scrutiny. No, our complaint is that there is not enough scrutiny. Not enough careful examination goes on. When people do that they often come to faith. I believe the writer and pastor Lee Strobel, a former journalist and lawyer, came to faith as a result of a two year examination of the subject of just who Jesus was. There are other examples of similar things. God wants people to think for themselves. He wants them to read the Bible. That is why in his providence we have our own translations and our own Bibles. He wants people to be able to test whether preachers are telling the truth. I want you to receive my message but I don't want you to be like a zombie. I want you to think about it. Test it. Weigh it up for yourself. As Protestants we believe in the right of private judgement. Yes, we ought to listen to what the church has to say but in the end each man must decide for himself what he believes. Think carefully then. Be noble. See what the Messiah is like and that Jesus is the Messiah and in believe in him. Weigh up these things – that is the way to nobility.
