Dennis Tuuri

Christ and in that preaching writed the world sermon text is found in the book of Acts chapter 17 verses 1-10 Acts 17:1-10 please stand for the reading of our king and his word king our king’s word Acts 17:1-10 now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia they came to Thessalonica where was a synagogue of the Jews and Paul as his manner was went in unto them and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ and Some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas.

And of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few. But the Jews, which believed not, moved with envy, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren under the rulers of the city, crying, these that have turned the world upside down are come hither also, whom hath received.

And these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one 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 other, they let them go. And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea, who coming there went into the synagogue of the Jews. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the wonderful accounts we have in the book of Acts of the Acts of our Savior himself working through his church. And we pray Lord God that you would illuminate our hearts to the understanding of this text that your Holy Spirit might write it upon our hearts. Open our eyes and our ears but mostly our hearts so we may receive these things. Help me Lord God to have the grace of the Holy Spirit that I might open this passage of text up and explain it correctly.

We pray also for the Sabbath school teachers that they may open the scriptures helping the children to understand the lessons at their own level. So we pray Lord God your blessing upon this next period of time together that we may receive instruction from your word to reform our lives and our culture within Jesus name we pray. Amen.

May where are we in the book of Acts? What are the divisions of the book of Acts? What are the progress of the gospels it goes through as we’re seeing developing here? Are we in the first, second, third missionary journey? Where are we? What cities were gone through by Paul and Barnabas in the first journey? What happened to Paul and Barnabas at the end of that? What was the council of Jerusalem? What was its relationship between the first and second journeys? And what does this all have to do with the first portion of the book of Acts where Peter was the primary figure?

And what’s the transition from Peter to Paul all about? These are questions hopefully that most of you can give me a decent answer for by now. And if you can’t then I would exhort you to further attentiveness to the word.

We’re going to talk today about the righting of the world. This text is one that’s sort of near and dear to my heart in a particular way. My oldest son Elijah Jason Tuuri, we chose that middle name explicitly based upon this text because we were so thrilled with the teaching in this text.

Although it was a slanderous accusation and yet we’ll talk about in a few minutes that I think it contains also some truth. That Christianity does indeed right an upside down world. It brings light into darkness. It brings truth where error reigns. And so as we raise our children in the context of a darkened, rebellious, sinful country again, much like the cities that are described in this missionary journey, hopefully we want them to be men like Jason who received not just the instruction of the apostles, but also received the apostle into their home made their home probably in the case of Jason a worship place but certainly a place of Christian hospitality and character a strong Christian character of men like Jason who would participate in a gospel and in a faith system and in a practical outworking of that system that indeed turns the world upside down from the wicked’s perspective but from God’s perspective rights the world and so Thessalonica is a place that I have a lot of attachment to simply because of the reminder to us on a regular basis at our home through Elijah Jason’s middle name of the great truth found here that the Christian faith does indeed right the world.

Well, how does that happen? And what we’re going to talk about is that happens as the scriptures are taught and Paul uses three specific terms to talk about what he did with the scriptures. Then he talks about the message that he did that he kind of focused down the meaning of the scriptures too. The death and resurrection of Messiah and that Jesus is Messiah. That’s the central message, the message of this text and then the implications of that as it works its way out in Thessalonica and it works its way out every time we read the gospels advance nearly in the book of Acts controversy trouble clouds over particular groups and so we see this is the natural progression of the gospel of Christ and his providence and central to all of that is a knowledge of the word of God and that’s why I ask those questions and I hope you don’t feel like I’m just trying to make you feel guilty or stupid or whatever what I want to do is challenge you to hear at least once a week exposition of the scriptures and to commit that to your understanding because this word ultimately is the source that God has chosen to use to bring reformation to our land to make us those saints that hopefully our lives will be remembered by our children and our grandchildren and great grandchildren as valiant men of God who stand around the throne of God the way that great host in white array and the righteousness of Christ do that we sang about earlier.

And so this scripture should be extremely important to your life. And I reiterate this because we live in a day and age when this scripture is not having preeminence in the church anymore. The sad fact is that most evangelicals cannot identify most of the major portions of this word. And if they don’t know this word, they certainly can’t relate it to this world. And hopefully we’re not like those people.

Hopefully if I mention a book of the Bible, even one of the minor prophets, you have a good sense of where it is in this book and maybe even a little bit of the context of it and the meaning of it. I know that some of the books are a little smaller, more obscure, but at least the ones we’ve gone through formally preaching and teaching on in this church. Hopefully in your own family worship, you become acquainted with this book more and more.

That’s what we’re going to stress is the need for that in this sermon because that’s what rights the world.

Thessalonica was, just in case you don’t know, this is the second missionary journey we’re on. The transition from Peter to Paul, of course, is the transition. As Jesus said, you take the gospel first to Jerusalem and then Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. Peter is the apostle to the circumcision. Paul is the apostle to the uncircumcised, to the Greeks.

Notice, however, that in this text, as we’ll see this throughout the book of Acts, Paul still goes to the synagogues. He still goes to what we might think of as the institutional church. That’s really what it was. And he started with those institutional churches, pressing the implications of the faith that they supposedly espoused most and the scriptures which they took as their authority and that’s not such a bad model for us today too to seek reformation in our day and age by going first to professing Christians those who worship God in the context of professing Christians and only after that to others that progression is a good one but any event we’re in the second missionary journey of Paul’s ministry the first missionary journey was Paul and Barnabas they split because Barnabas had a difference of opinion over John Mark I think Paul is right as evidenced by the actions of the church remember the first missionary journey.

Remember it there’s a lot of similarities and we’ve talked about these before and we’ll talk about them again and hopefully if we talk about them enough after a couple of years of going through the book of Acts and reminding ourselves of these things we’ll remember the patterns that run through the book of Acts. And you remember that in the first missionary journey it began. The first real account of what goes on is with Elymas the magician the sorcerer who tries to keep the conversion of Sergius Paulus from occurring.

And you remember we correlated that to what happens in the first new territory of the second missionary journey of Philippi. Remember Paul is there. He’s gone from Asia to Europe because of the providential closing of doors of the Holy Spirit. And so he’s in Europe now. He’s in the hallmark and heading toward the center of the Holy Roman Empire. Not holy at that point although they considered themselves holy.

Caesar was declared as Lord and bringing salvation. But in any event at Philippi, what do we read about? We don’t read a lot about what goes on in the context of the city. We read individual stories and we see the story of the demon-possessed slave girl and the casting out of that. There’s spiritual warfare at the beginning of each of the two missionary journeys we’ve discussed so far. And after that, we then have a progression to see Paul then going on to a city where specifically the synagogue is the source of the teaching.

And as remember back in the first missionary journey after Sergius Paulus’s conversion, a picture of the conversion of the Roman Empire, the same as the Philippian jailer’s picture of the conversion of the Roman Empire. The same as the man Cornelius in the city of Cesarea, a Roman soldier was also a picture of the conversion of the Roman Empire. Each of these three accounts are correlated together to show us over and over again what’s happening here is the message is plain.

But what we’re talking about is through Cornelius, Sergius Paulus, Philippian jailer, representatives of the Roman Empire are converted until we get to find the end of the book of Acts and members of Caesar’s own household are converted. Well, in any event, after that occurs in the first missionary journey, they move on to Pisidian Antioch. You remember we had a long sermon there, a long text given to us, 20 or 30 verses of Paul’s sermon there in the synagogue.

And when we read today a very summarized account of that, I think we have reason to correlate what he says in Thessalonica here in the synagogue back to that first sermon that was preached, the first missionary journey in Pisidian Antioch. There’s a relationship. Luke does have to repeat the thrust of what Paul asserts. He gave us a lot of detail in the first missionary journey. He now just summarizes it up.

And so Thessalonica here is where we’re at.

Now, Thessalonica itself is an important thing to remember what’s going on here. And you wouldn’t know this normally. I didn’t before I did my studies, but Thessalonica was a major city. At this particular time, Macedonia was divided into four regions and four districts in by the Roman authorities. And this was in one of those districts, the second district. And Thessalonica was the head of this particular district, the capital.

Later, it would become the capital of all Macedonia. Okay? It’s an important city. It’s an important city in terms of commerce. They had a port there. The port brought a lot of commerce. The Roman road, the Ignatian way went right through Thessalonica. I mean, right down center street was the Roman road that would took traffic all throughout the Roman Empire. And so, they’re on an extremely important commercial place.

In addition to the seaport the Roman road goes through there and as a result of the commercial influence it’s a very important political town as well now Thessalonica is not a Roman colony Philippi was Thessalonica was a free state that freedom is related again to the battle of Mark Anthony for your male children who might like to continue to hear about Mark Antony and Brutus and these guys when Thessalonica helped Mark Antony against the forces of Antony and Octavius who had become Augustus Caesar against the forces of Brutus and Cassius.

They were declared a free city then. So their freedom is on the basis of their assisting Caesar. They’re a free city and so they’re ruled a little differently and that’s why some of the events happen the way they do here. How it’s different. The titles of the magistrates here are different from those at Philippi. But what I want you to get an understanding of here is the importance of Thessalonica in terms of the advance of the gospel.

Paul was being extremely strategic. Now I don’t know, you know, maybe he was thinking that way. Maybe the Holy Spirit just told him not to preach in these two cities that are mentioned that he goes through. We don’t know. But we know that Jesus acts very strategically in taking his representative Paul and Silas and the other men that are accompanying him to this central area of Thessalonica. If you were here when we were preaching through the book of First Thessalonians, you remember that Paul talked about how their faith had sounded out into all of the region around them into all of Macedonia and Achaia.

And that’s because they’re at a central place. And of course it also tells us something about the church that developed at Thessalonica. It was a strong vibrant church. Later we’ll see Jason mentioned as being at Corinth. Some of the men who are from Thessalonica will later accompany Paul to Jerusalem. And one will even accompany him in his chains to Rome. So Thessalonica is an important church. If the gospel is established here, it spreads out.

It has significance for the entire region. And so when we see the gospel indeed established here it again is a picture to us not of just an isolated little city where people come to the faith and have a quiet life. Nothing like that. We see a city that’s brought upside down controversy and we see a city that it’s at the center of one of the key districts of the Roman Empire. And so the gospel will go into that city penetrate it and from there go out.

Now it’s important for us. We live in the context of Portland. Its port makes it an important area in the Pacific Northwest. And while it isn’t as tied to commercial traffic as it once was. Still, the fact that port we’re in a major metropolitan area like Portland, we should see that same emphasis to us here. There’s a correlation to us. It’s a significant place. It’s significant politically. Why is the state becoming more and more wicked?

Because the people of Portland have become more and more wicked. If you look at the ballot measures, the ones that propound Christian morality, whether they’re taught that way or not, usually not, but that they do, you’ll see them usually not doing well in the greater Portland area, but doing better downstate. Portland has an influence. It’s as if a big bomb blows up in these major cities. And that liberalism in its worst sense, that anti-Christian mentality, that mentality that doesn’t want anything to do with this as an authority structure, works its way out to the lesser regions.

Conversely, if a Christian witness, a strong Christian witness is established here that proclaims the truth of these scriptures once more, that also will ripple out into the outer communities and we look for reformation in this state and we should see it in the context of normally the way God works is through metropolitan areas and so this has significance for us certainly in the context of the history the progression of the gospel here but certainly in our own relevance as well.

Let’s go through now what we want to just sort of talk about what the text tells us and I’ve decided to outline it in terms of this righting of the world as I mentioned before and the first thing I want to talk about is the method of righting the world.

What Paul does with the scriptures essentially what does he do when he comes to Thessalonica? We’re told in verse one that he comes to Thessalonica where was a synagogue of the Jews. In verse two, Paul as his manner was went in unto them and there in three Sabbath days reason with them out of the scriptures opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead and that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ.

So we have a summary account here that probably is correl you can see some correlations back to Pisidian Antioch and a larger sermon but let’s just look briefly at these three methods that Paul used in terms of righting the world the first one is reasoning from the scriptures reasoning from the scriptures the Greek here is a combination of thoroughly and the word logos. Thoroughly is what the Greek word here means and it involves usually one of two things it can involve a great deal of dialogue or debate or it can involve an extended discussion as well.

We’re told for instance that when the apostles are arguing about who is the greatest in Mark chapter 9:34 that they disputed amongst themselves. This word disputing is the same word for reason. Okay, they disputed. They had a lot of conversation trying to prove which one of them was greatest. Later in Acts 20:7 and 9, we read of Paul preaching. Remember this is where Paul preached a long time and the man was so the young man was sitting up there in the window and fell out and they thought he died and maybe he did.

But in any event, the point is that Paul preached a long period of time and the preaching there on the Sabbath day is the same word when it says preach there. It actually is the same word reason from the scriptures. So we know from those two examples as well as others that it can involve a lot of discussion and dialogue back and forth or in the case of Paul preaching a long period of time it involves more an extended or oration of scripture.

And so either one of those things is one of the ways that Paul works to right the world. He reasons with them. The mind is involved. The mind isn’t mindless. It isn’t simply He doesn’t just simply quote large passages of scripture, read them, and leave it at that and says the Holy Spirit will work it out. No, the Holy Spirit works through human rationality, human reason. Paul reasoned with them, but he didn’t reason with them autonomously on his basis of his own authority standard.

He reasoned from the scriptures, from the word. Okay? And so the scriptures should form the basis for our rationality. And it’s a very important point. We don’t reason and and based upon our reason then go to scripture to support our reason. That will not right the world. That’s why the world is upside down because men have their own mind, their own rationality as the standard for what they believe and do.

and then they backfill in, you know, scriptures or whatever other outside of sources they want to justify their positions. This should not be true of us. Our position should be a reasonable one, but one that comes forth from the scriptures. We don’t reason to get at the scriptures. We accept the word of God presuppositionally first and then we reason on the basis of it.

Now, if we’re going to have the righting of the world in our day and age, and I hope you all understand, and I’m sure you do, that it’s upside down.

If we’re going to have the righting of the world in our day and age, it’s not going to be through an absence of rationality. Nor will it be rationality without scriptures. It will only be to the extent that we men and women, boys and girls in this church, learn to reason from the scriptures and that involves two things. One, it involves a knowledge of this word. And that’s what I said earlier, a knowledge of the word.

The Reformation was about sola scriptura. The scriptures took on a renewed sense of authority in the life of the people because they had access to it. One of I think the booths will have Monday night the forces have done a great job of putting together their booths to depict the life of Lutheran night and I think we’re going to have one that’s about the translation of the scriptures into the vulgate into the tongue of the people into the common language.

See we don’t have that problem now do we? We don’t have a Bible that we can’t understand. We’ve got Bibles in every possible translation you’d want down to like a first and second grade level. Now we can you about the how good those translations are. My point is this. If we don’t have a knowledge of the scriptures so that we cannot reason on the basis of them, it’s not the fault of the translators. It’s not because some church has kept it from us.

It’s because we’ve distracted ourselves through worldly pleasures away from a study of this word. And so I challenge you and I challenge myself today to renew your commitment to a knowledge of the scriptures. You cannot read reason with the world around you, with your friends, neighbors, countrymen from the scriptures if you don’t know what they say. You’ve got to know what they say. It’s important to attend to the preaching of God’s word every Lord’s day.

I know it’s hard. I know a lot of you, some of you had a lot of fun last night, stayed up a little late. It’s okay. That’s good. It’s good. But remember, you want to come here as rested as possible. You want to attend the preaching of God’s word. And you want that then to be the model for the rest of your week. and getting yourself in a position of reading the scriptures at a time when you’re not weary, when you’re not going to fall asleep, and telling it to your children at a time that’s fit for them to hear it, not when they’re all upset and through force of discipline making them to hear the word.

That you have to do that sometimes, but you want to figure out ways to get your children and yourself to a knowledge of the scriptures. Because if you don’t have a knowledge of the scriptures, you cannot reason from them. We have a famine today, as the prophets talked about in their day and age, a famine of the word of God, of the preaching of God’s word. We went by a church this morning that had hundreds, maybe thousands of cars in the parking lot.

Precious little word is preached there, though. And so, people don’t have a knowledge of the word. If you don’t know the word, you can’t reason from it. Knowledge of the word isn’t enough. Of course, you got to be able to engage your mind to train yourself to reason from those scriptures. We had an exercise in this last Sunday after church, didn’t we? We talked about ballot measures, talked about political matters, and we tried to reason from the scriptures on those issues, maybe poorly, but we made the attempt and that’s what we want to do in this church is continue to make the attempt to address issues, address recreation, address vocation, address personal relationships in the family of the church and the state on the basis of the scriptures and then reasoning forth from the scriptures.

Matthew Henry said that we must take the scriptures for our foundation, our oracle and touchstone and then reason out of them and upon them. Not set up reason in opposition to scripture but rather base it upon the Bible.

Secondly, Paul opened the scriptures to them. Verse three, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered. He did two things here. He opened and he alleged. And these things are sort of related. I don’t want to make too much of a differentiation, but they are two different words used in two different ways in the scriptures.

So, secondly, Paul opens the scriptures to them. Here we read of as I said, the other the first word is a combination of two words, one meaning thoroughly and then the word for word logos. Here we have thoroughly and then opening. So it isn’t just opening, it’s a compound emphatic opening of the scriptures. Okay? So he takes the word of God, he reasons from them, but he also takes the word and opens it thoroughly opening it up explaining texts that may be difficult to understand.

In the context of this particular message, he’s talking about the need for the death and resurrection of the Messiah. And he’s going to many texts, opening up the scriptures to people, opening their understanding of it up to them. And we want to have that same thing. We want to know the scriptures so we can reason from them to issues, but we also want to know the scriptures so we can open them up to ourselves, to our family, and to our culture.

Opening up in the particulars now, in particular problems or reference points or particular verses, we want to be able to open them up and understand them. Now, this word is the same word that was used for Lydia when her heart was opened by God. It’s the same word. Her heart was thoroughly opened by God to hear the things of scripture. And when we open the scriptures up, it should be accompanied with prayer that whoever we’re opening up to, either ourselves, our children, our neighbors, that God would open their hearts to them as well.

It’s interesting that in Luke 24, we read in verse 22, they said to one another, “Do not our heart burn within us when he talked with us by the way and how and while he opened to us or rather open to us the scriptures?” Do you remember what that is? You said hopefully you know it’s the road to Emmaus to the resurrection. Disciples are walking down the road with Jesus. They don’t know it’s Jesus. And he opens the scriptures up.

And what does he do? He teaches them all about how the Old Testament pointed to him. Jesus, I guess you could say, is the key to opening the door of the scriptures to understanding it. Okay? And Jesus opened the scriptures up to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and their hearts burned within them. And I think some of us have had that same experience in the last 10 12 years if you’ve been here that long going to eschatological texts that seem fuzzy or vague and we’ve had them opened up to us by certain authors and the Holy Spirit working through men.

I know my heart has burned within me as I’ve seen the continuity of the scriptures old to New Testament book to book themes throughout them. The correlations for instance I talked about in the cities in the first and second missionary journeys. There’s important things there. It’s a result of study. It’s a result of the Holy Spirit opening their hearts up because indeed we read that they burn when their hearts burn within them as Jesus opened the scriptures.

But then in verse 45 of that same text that we read then that Jesus opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures. So opening up the scriptures to an understanding of them is a result both of applying ourselves to them and also of praying and receiving God’s opening up of those scriptures for us. The sovereignty of God is alluded to here as well. So we have to ability to reason.

We got to know the scriptures. We can reason from them. We got to know the scriptures so we can open them up to people and explain the continuity of the scriptures relative to a particular issue. And then third, Paul alleges the truth of the scriptures. He doesn’t just open, he alleges that Christ must needs have suffered. And I think here that allege means as I think J. Alexander said the authoritative proposition of things to be believed.

This is kind of like more systematic truth. What do all these opening up of these neat things in scripture point to? They point to the allegation the statement the central truth that Jesus must needs have suffered and died and resurrected been resurrected and that Jesus is Messiah and so when we allege something from the scriptures we’ve taken that reasoning the base of knowledge we’ve opened up the scriptures and then we get to alleging various systematic truths about the scriptures we move from the particular to the general here now and we move to general doctrines and if we’re going to have the righting of the world we’ve got to know the scriptures well enough to reason from them well enough to open them up and then have the understanding that there’s a need then to commit that in some sort of formalized systematic way to people this word allege can mean commit command we can commend ourselves the Lord Jesus Christ same basic word and so it’s kind of like wrapping the thing up and charging people as it were this is what the scriptures teach systematically I can go to the details I can open the scriptures up I can reason with you on the basis not my own reason but the basis of scripture but it comes down to this and Paul says it comes down to a central message and this allegation this alleging is part of the process those are the means then the means are reasoning from scripture opening the scriptures up and then alleging from scriptures and what is it what is the central truth that Paul delivers here that in the context of this message rights the world at Thessalonica the centrality of that message is two things first the needed death and resurrection of Messiah.

What did he open and allege? What did it come down to? That Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead. And that this Jesus whom we preach unto you is Christ. Two things. First, Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead. This was a stumbling block. This was foolishness to the Gentiles. Stumbling block to the Jews. But Paul does not shrink back from the systematic truth of the scriptures because men looks like they may not receive it.

It’s a stumbling block or it’s foolishness. No, Paul goes right to the heart of the matter. Right to the core of the matter. That core is that Messiah must needs have suffered, died, and been resurrected. Why must he needs have done that? At least several things come to mind. One, of course, it’s a howling indictment of the need for that because of our sin. Why did Christ die? He died not just as some example to us.

He didn’t die, you know, somehow in related to us. He died to effect redemption from sin, an atonement. And so when Paul alleges takes the central truth to right this world down to the fact of Christ’s death and resurrection, he’s pointing out the need for forgiveness of the elect community, those who are called to salvation. He’s pointing them out to their own sin. It’s not abstract doctrine. He’s going right to the heart of their matter.

He must needs have suffered. Why? Because you sinned and you need someone to pay the price for that sin. And you cannot do it yourself. All the breast beating in the world won’t take care of your problem. All the deeds of righteousness won’t take care of your problem. The only thing that can take care of your problem is the death, the second person of the trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when Paul preaches this, he preaches sola fide solely by faith and also Sola Gratia solely by the grace of God.

You cannot affect salvation through Caesar and his good works. Unless Caesar is willing to die for you and then he can’t do it because he’s not God. He’s not Messiah. It must be Messiah, God in the flesh who pays the price for the sins of elect humanity. And so Paul points to the great Reformation truth of Sola Scriptura opening and alleging from the scriptures and reason based on the scriptures and he preaches the great Reformation truth of sola fide solely by faith and solely by the grace of God as well here.

And of course that grace find its embodiment in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sola Christus solely the Lord Jesus Christ that’s the message of the scriptures that’s our job as we open and allege and reason and whatever else we do with this word it’s not to change people’s lifestyles ultimately it’s to acquaint them with the Lord Jesus Christ and to bring them to relationship to him we preach a person not a set of doctrines ultimately a person the Lord Jesus Christ he must needs have suffered.

We also preach when we preach that Christ must needs have suffered. We preach the sovereignty of God once more, don’t we? I remember going to Bible school many years ago and being astonished by a statement as one of the instructors. Well, Jesus made an offer of the kingdom to the Jews and if they just would have accepted the way he put it to them, then he wouldn’t have had to go to the cross. Now, this was at a good strong Bible believing Bible college.

but the reason he went to the cross is that was like Plan two. Plan one was that they would accept him as Messiah. When they didn’t do that, he had to die for him. But no, Paul says he must needs to have died. And we read other places in scripture that was according to the foreordained will of God that ungodly men put Christ to death. God’s sovereignty in the scriptures is tied explicitly to the to the most improbable action that we would want to see God’s sovereignty in relationship to the death of his son, his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God’s sovereignty. He says he must needs have suffered. Again, don’t forget, yes, these truths are important, the knowledge of the scriptures and the grace of God. But don’t forget the Reformation was about preeminently, the reassertion of the sovereignty of God. And if we’re going to have reformation in our land, we’re going to right the world today. We must preach and teach what the scriptures clearly affirm, the sovereignty of God, even in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

People pull back from that and we were told no election and you know foreordination and the sovereignty of God and it refers to salvation that’s you know that’s kind of hidden stuff once we get people to be Christians then we can give that to them slowly you know till they can kind of get used to it not Paul at the central centrality of his message to bring people into the kingdom of God is the assertion of the need for a savior that savior is the Lord Jesus and that he died for your sins but that God was sovereign and that he must needs have suffered And so the sovereignty of God is asserted here.

The message, the first half of the message is the needed death and resurrection of Messiah. And that’s the message that we do not hear today in its fullest sense with an emphasis upon the sovereignty of God and of the complete desertion of all works to achieve righteousness with God. Secondly, Jesus is the Christ. And you know, if we do hear somewhat of the first one, the second one really in its fullest implications, we do not hear.

we hear less and less in the churches in America. Christ must needs to suffer rising from the dead. And number two, that this Jesus whom I preach unto you is Christ. Christ is Messiah. It is the anointed one. He is prophet, priest, and king. It doesn’t just refer to savior. Jesus Christ means savior, messiah. Jesus is given to him. The angel tells us in the gospel account because he shall save his people from their sins.

Christ does not refer to salvation as much as it refers to his messiahship, that he is the anointed priest and king. And so, it’s an assertion that Christ, this Jesus, your savior, is Messiah, is an assertion of the crown rights of King Jesus. That’s what he’s saying here. That’s at the center of the message that rights the world. And if we’re going to have a reformation in our day and right our world, we must assert the claim that Jesus is Christ.

is Messiah is anointed priest and anointed king. Matthew Henry said that gospel ministers must preach Jesus. He must be their principal object. Their business is to bring people to acquaintance with him and that which we must preach concerning Jesus is that he is Christ and therefore we may have hope to be saved by him and are bound to be ruled by him. And you remember that back at the first city the first sermon that goes on in the first missionary journey at Pisidian Antioch.

Remember that Paul put the salvation, the death and resurrection of Jesus in the context of God’s acts of deliverance of his people, including political deliverance. He put it in that context. He gave them the full orbed gospel is what one of the words we like to use this last decade or so. The full orbed gospel of Jesus Christ, the ascension of the savior, king Jesus Christ. Christ to the throne in which he now reigns.

And when we call people not simply to salvation from their sins and to life insurance policy for men who want to avoid what possibly might be hell in the afterlife. When we restrict the gospel to that, we don’t preach reformation gospel. And we don’t preach a gospel that will right the world. We preach a gospel that will do the very opposite. That will give men ease of conscience without a need to submit and to bend the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. So this great truth is what we’re supposed to be reasoning to and alleging about and opening the scriptures to demonstrate.

These things are brought together. These two emphases of this message Jesus’s savior and king. In Colossians 2:13-15 we read that you being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh hath he quickened together with him having forgiven you all trespassing blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross.

And listen to what he immediately relates to that great truth which we know and affirm. And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them. That’s what Paul is asserting here. And that’s why he gets in trouble. That’s why they get upset. And that’s why they can make the accusation and make it have a little bit of sticking power to it that he’s teaching another king, the Lord Jesus instead of Caesar.

Paul’s preaching that Jesus is king. He’s Messiah. And Messiah means the anointed one, priest and king. Rushdoony quoting on this text says that Paul says first that Jesus by his lordship triumphs over all powers and principalities and destroys their dominion over his new humanity. That’s a scary thought to world rulers, isn’t it? Jesus has destroyed their dominion over his new humanity. The spoiling of all his enemies means their public humiliation.

He made a show of them openly triumphing over them. We miss the whole point of his death, atonement, and resurrection if we failed to see that it was the public dethroning of all Christ’s enemies. They were openly shown to be dethroned and impotent, and Christ openly set forth as the great and cosmic Lord. The Greeks might call that cross foolishness, but it was their confounding and their public humiliation.

The enemies of Christ are spoiled and disarmed, for to disarm is a means of spoiling. And that’s what we’ve seen, isn’t it? That’s the great truth of Psalm 2 that we’ve seen repeated throughout the book of Acts over and over and over again is those enemies not just, you know, definitively being spoiled, dethroned by Christ in his resurrection, but progressively seeing that worked out as the gospel is preached.

And we see it here as well, don’t we? Open. We saw it in Philippi. The rulers of the Roman Empire, one is converted, the jailkeeper, the other men have to come begging Paul to leave the city, please. You see, God protects his people. He does it in Thessalonica by sending Paul and Silas away, but he sends them away to more ministry. Matthew Henry commenting on this text says, the meat came forth or the sweet, the honey came forth out of the lion here.

Their attempts to oppress and stop the progression of the gospel at Thessalonica became just the means whereby not only is a church established there that is strong and firm, but then he goes on immediately to the next city to Berea and establishes another church there. The gospel isn’t stopped. It’s only multiplied by the effects of Caesar and his cohorts and trying to bring it to nothing. I want to quote again from Rushdoony about this second truth that Christ is Lord or Jesus is the Christ rather.

Rushdoony says we see two great confessions emerge out of the battles of the early church. Confessions required of every believer. The first is cited by Paul in Philippians 2:9 and 11 Jesus is Lord or Jesus Christ is Lord as against the claims of civil rulers and of states to be sovereign or lord to be man’s most king or baal which means lord and master the church required the confession that Jesus Christ alone is lord or sovereign the Christian had not only to confess that Jesus is Lord not Caesar but that there is only one Lord one Lord one faith and one baptism to confess one Lord meant to challenge the sovereignty of the state.

Second, we have the confession now set forth by John. Jesus is the Christ. The incarnation is real. God became man and Jesus Christ is as Chalcedon later declared in 451 AD. In terms of his continuing confession, Jesus is very God of very God and very man of very man. Here were two confessions and two battle lines. Jesus is the incarnate God. He is the Lord or sovereign over all things. The true prophet or preacher is the one who sets forth Jesus as incarnate God and as Lord or sovereign over all things in heaven and on earth and that’s the message that Paul took that righted the world we see three then there’s the effects in your outline Roman numeral 3 what is the effects of opening alleging and reasoning from the scriptures the central message that Jesus must needs have died and raised been raised up and that Jesus is Messiah the effect of this the results of righting the world are that first of all some believe and consort and receive Verse four, some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas and of the devout Greeks, a great multitude and of the chief women, not a few.

And then in verse 7, we read in terms of the charge against Jason, whom Jason hath received. So we’re told here first of all that this people are brought to belief. Those people that are brought to belief demonstrate that through consorting with Paul and Silas and in the case of Jason, receiving Paul and Silas. I’ve mentioned this before, central truths that permeate the book of Acts reception of God’s emissaries hospitality yes but more than that identification with the word consorting here has in the original Greek a connotation that relates back to a word for inheritance.

Okay. And there is a and again here there is a an indication from the Greek of God’s sovereignty in this when we read that these people that had believed consorted with them. We could read that one way to translate that word to be say they were allotted unto Paul and Silas. Allotted obviously sovereignly by God. And so the ones that are foreordained to believe and elect in Christ, those are the ones who are allotted to Paul and Silas and those are the ones who are indeed brought to believe.

Okay. So we have the assertion that when the gospel is preached, the elect who are allotted to the emissaries of Jesus Christ come to believe. That allotted to though certainly implies God’s sovereign election of them. But remember, it is allotted to men. Doesn’t say they’re allotted to God. They are, of course. But their allotment to the body of Christ is pictured in their being aligned with and brought into a consorting relationship with the ministers of Christ.

And so the indication that those who believe have believed is their attachment to they’re being allotted to and consorting with the ministers of the gospel and obviously the church. It’s reception of the emissaries of Christ that is the demonstration and evidence of belief here. And it is necessary to say that this church, not this church, this world, this country will not see reformation if the end result of the preaching of the gospel are isolated individualistic Christians who do not consort with the ministers of the gospel and the church of Jesus Christ and do not receive them into their home community. It was an essential task to right the world. And this turning the world upside down was a result of the preaching of the gospel bringing men to salvation who then identified with each other in terms of the visible church.

And again here, the news isn’t good in America. The news isn’t good in terms of the understanding and ability to even know a very limited amount of knowledge about the scriptures. We don’t get a good grade in this country. And We don’t get a good grade if we talk about whether or not God is sovereign and must and as a result Christ must needs have died and been resurrected. And we don’t get a very good grade if we look at how many churches preach the total lordship of Jesus Christ. He’s Messiah, that Jesus is Lord above all lords, King of Kings. And we don’t get a very good grade if we look at how well those who come to believe consort with the people of God and ministers of the gospel.

And when churches try to affect community, it’s not looked upon very favorably. And when discipline is brought into that structure, it’s not looked upon very favorably. You know, it’s it’s an interesting fact, apparently a fact. I take the historical accounts that I’ve read as a as true. In Geneva, which we probably see is the height of the Reformation, it’s full out working. There were apparently about 25,000 adults and every year saw roughly 500 excommunications.

That’s a lot of excommunications, huh? That’s five for every 250. Isn’t that right? It’s one for every 50 people every year. A lot of excommunications going on. And you know, the amazing thing is that there were excommunications that probably wouldn’t have gone over too well in our culture today. Some of them out of I think a 2-year period or three I guess I was reading about a three-year period, a hundred or so were for adultery.

Another 50 or 60 for blasphemy. But the by far the largest group of excommunications in this three-year period, 700 out of the 1500, for half about half was for people quarreling. Quarreling at home, quarreling in the church, quarreling in the public square and refusing to be reconciled one to the other. That was by far the largest number of excommunications in Geneva. now I should point out quickly that the ministers and even secular historians who don’t like the reformation acknowledged this.

The ministers reconciled far more people every year than they excommunicated for this sin. In other words, they were successful by and large in reconciling people who had problems with each other and quarreled and were contentious. So the number may seem high that every year they were excommunicating a couple hundred people for quarreling but remember that they were they were actually reconciling far more people than that.

I break this out because why did they do that? Because they understood the necessity of community and they understood of the they understood the great danger that lie to community both church and the culture and the civil community of people who refused to consort with each other and pulled back and ended up fractious and divisive. They saw it as a big deal. And until the church in America sees it as a big deal, we’re not going to see the righting of the world.

But to the extent that we do try to affect biblical community and a reception and consorting together, we’ll see the righting of the world. What’s the other side? That’s the believers. The