Christ is Life Podcast

So what do you do when you are presented with new information? What do you do whenever someone comes up to you and has new ideas about something that is old in your mind, that you've shaped your mind around you've formed your thinking around one way being true, and someone comes to you and presents new information or the same information in a little bit of a different way or context. I've had a number of conversations with people as a pastor about God throughout my time in ministry, and many of them, I'll talk about how Jesus left the glory and riches of heaven to come here and die for them out of his love for them, to forgive their sins and have eternal life. And they'll just stop me, and they'll cut me right off and go, Well, I really don't even believe that there is a God. I'm an atheist. And they'll just kind of turn me away and reject that kind of thinking. Right off the bat, they'll push back with things like, you know, I don't really know if I could ever have a blind faith like you do. I mean, we can't really see that there's a God or prove that there's a God. And so I don't really know if I could blindly believe in a God and enter into this religious thing that you're talking about. Or if you begin to talk about Jesus, it'll be even if there is a God, I'm not sure I can go there. I mean, Jesus the only way, like, really, out of all the people and all the ways that we could come to God and be in heaven, you're trying to tell me that he's the only way. And so a lot of times when we begin to share these things, or at least in my experience, people reject it immediately. They don't want to hear anything else that you have to say. Their mind is made up, and they just move on. As I think about how people react that way. Sometimes when I talk to them about God and this new information for them, these new ideas. It reminds me that I've also reacted that way, even as a believer, even even as a Christian. One of the times that stands out to me when thinking about this kind of thing was when I was just getting into ministry. I was transitioning out of teaching and coaching, and God had called me into ministry, and I was trying to learn everything that I could learn. And I was having lunch with this ministry leader, and we were talking about the Bible and in theology, and he began to share more about grace with me. He began to open up scripture and talk to me about how grace is so much more than we tend to think that grace really is most people talk about God's grace on the front end of salvation, and how it's by grace alone, through faith, alone, in Christ alone, that you're saved. It's a gift that you receive. But then many people move on and talk about the works and the other things that we're to do. But really what he was trying to tell me that day was that it's Jesus plus nothing that not only equals salvation, but equals everything. It's Jesus plus nothing that equals everything about your life and the Christian life. And I sat there at that lunch, and I was listening to what he had to say. And as soon as he finished, I began to push back. I began to reject what it was that he was saying. I began to go to Scripture myself and say, Oh, yeah. Well, then what about James two, where it says, Faith without works is dead. It seems to me that it's Jesus plus works that equals everything when it comes to that verse, and he had something and was very generous and nice and talked about it and used scripture to back it up and what he was talking about. And I said, Okay, well, okay. Well, then what about Jesus? And what about whenever he says that to be a true disciple, you got to take up your cross, and you've got to forfeit everything about your life, die to everything and surrender all in full commitment to him, it sounds to me like it's Jesus plus full surrender or commitment that really equals everything. And he was kind and continued to try to walk through Scriptures with me and talking about what it was that he was talking about. But I didn't want to hear it. I did not open my mind in any way, shape or form. I completely rejected it, and I was trying to get out of there as fast as I possibly could. This is the way that I reacted when someone was presenting new ideas, new information, new truths. To me. I thought about it in this way. He was saying it means this in this way, and I rejected it completely. So what about you? How would you have responded in that moment? How do you how do you tend to respond when someone else comes to you with new information or new ideas? Do you just turn them away and reject them immediately? Do you just believe what it is that they're saying? I mean, they sound like they know what they're talking about, and they're a leader, they're authoritative, maybe they're in a role or position, and you just kind of take their word for it. I don't know what your normal reaction to that kind of thing would be, but we are all presented with new ideas and new teaching sometimes. And the question is, how are we supposed to react? What do we do whenever people bring new information and new ideas? What do we do whenever someone goes to Scripture and says what you thought this meant doesn't really mean what you think it meant what your Sunday School teacher taught you when you were seven doesn't really line up with what I'm telling you is true right now, what your pastor taught you last year, or from that YouTube video that you watched last week, didn't really line up with, how are we to react whenever all of those things happen? Because it happens and it happens all the time. I asked you to turn to Acts chapter 17. Told you we're gonna start in verse one, and we're gonna look there now, because now, because the answer to those questions, to that question, is found in our text today. Luke starts off in verse one and says, when Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and apollenia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. Now we're jumping in here to Acts. We're 17 chapters into Acts. Some of you have been here for the entire thing, and you know exactly where we're at. And you remember everything that I've said. Some of you haven't been here at all, and maybe this is your first time hearing it. And so let me just remind you we are on we aren't they. Paul, at this time, is on his second missionary journey. You'll see all the way over here in this corner Antioch. I don't know if it's very clear or not, but Paul and Barnabas originally were sent out on their first missionary journey to go spread the gospel to the ends of the earth. Jesus had said at the beginning of Acts one eight, when he met with them, that the Holy Spirit would come upon you and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and all the way to the earth. And it had gone from that area, and now is beginning to spread. And so they did. They traveled all around. And then, after that first missionary journey, where many people put their faith and trust in Jesus, had their lives transformed and changed forever, churches were planted. The Holy Spirit said, go visit them again. I want to disciple, use you to disciple them, encourage them, support them, and share the gospel with new believers who haven't heard it yet. And so they do, and they take off on this journey. And they thought the Holy Spirit was leading them that way, and he shut the door, and he led them all the way in this direction, going west. And here's where we are in the province of Macedonia. And Thessalonica is right here. It's the capital of the province of Macedonia, and it's a major seaport city with where it is located. And so there was a lot of commercial trade, and a lot of people in and out. Historians even say that there could have been as many as 200,000 people living there at the time Paul and then visited. And so they're going, Wow, if we can share the gospel with them. And then they turn around and share with their neighbors. And then more people think of how many people come to know Jesus, and then they could go to other areas, and it'll just continue to spread. And so this is where we're at. And Luke tells us that there was a Jewish synagogue there. And so now he tells us in chapter or verse two that this is where they went, as was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days, he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. The first thing that I want to highlight and point out to you is this word right here. We're told that Paul, when he entered into the synagogue, he reasoned with them. This is an important word, because I mentioned this earlier, and a lot of people will try to tell you that believing in God is a blind faith, that Christianity is a blind faith that there's again, you can't see him. There's no real proof about this, that he exists. So this is just kind of this religious thing. For people who can muster up this sort of blind faith, it's it's just what they've kind of created, because it's something they need to believe in to make sense out of this world and the things that are going on in their lives. But Luke says that he didn't show up and try to tell them to just blindly believe in something. Listen, I'm trying to tell you that this is true about this. So just believe it. Okay, or he didn't go any direction and just say, hey, you know, I'm really preaching passionately here. You should be feeling something, and if you're getting emotional right now, then you should buy into this thing and make decisions based upon your emotion. No, he didn't say there's nothing about blind faith. There's nothing about the emotions. It says he reasoned. He logically reasoned with them. He tried to prevent or present evidence to them that what he was saying was, in fact, true, what we see.
Faith
is that Christianity is not a blind faith. It's a reasonable faith. I'm not I'm not sure if you're familiar with J Warner Wallace or not. He's written some books, and he's an apologist, but he didn't start out that way. He he was a detective. He was a detective in the Los Angeles Police Department, and for the first 35 years of his life, he was an atheist. He didn't believe in God. And not only did he not believe in God, people described him as an angry atheist. He was angry. He hated Christians and was skeptical about everything, and tried to persecute as much as he could. But he and his wife had had children, and, you know, children tend to misbehave. You Never Noticed that children don't always do what you're asking them to do. And they were struggling with this. And so they thought, you know, I don't really buy into this whole God thing. I really don't like Christians, but, but maybe there's something there that they can do with our kids, you know, maybe they can give them some morals. And so we're gonna go. We're gonna go this one time, see if they can do something, give us something to help our kids about or kids with in that way. And so they went and and during the sermon, I don't know what it was that the pastor said, but something caught J Warner Wallace's attention, and what it made him think about, was it how he was trained to investigate that he was good at investigating things in the police department, he had certain techniques and skills to be able to deeply investigate things, to get to the truth about them. And he said, Well, you know what? If this guy's rambling so much about this being true and is so passionate about this and how it's changed his life and other people's lives. What if I applied those same investigative skills to see if this is really, in fact, true with what it is that they're talking about? And that's what he did. And at the end of that, here's what he had to say. He said, I've come to understand the biblical definition of faith, listen to be a reasoned trust, a reasoned faith. How, in light of the evidence, someone that is trained to investigate and follow where the evidence leads is saying that it logically leads to there being a god, and to Jesus being who he said he was, and to the resurrection having happened. And if that's true, then that changes everything. And he put his faith and trust in Jesus, he and his family's life were changed, and now he's an apologist, and trying to tell every one about Jesus. Christianity is not a blind faith. It's a reasonable faith now, now this audience's problem was, was not that they didn't believe in God, right? I mean, this was a Jewish synagogue. They believed in God, Gentile God. Fears. Who believed in God? But what they didn't believe was that the Messiah here to the bottom had to suffer and rise from the dead. This is what they didn't buy into. And they didn't buy into this because, well, that's what they had been told their whole lives. They had always told people that the Messiah, when the Messiah comes, that he was going to be a conquering king. Not only was he going to be a conquering king, he would restore Jewish fortunes and defeat Jewish enemies and usher in this new kingdom on earth. And guess what? None of that had happened when Jesus showed up on the scene. And so he can't really be the Messiah. And there were scriptures that pointed to that being what it said about the Messiah. But there was also passages of Scripture that were consistent with saying that the Messiah would come and suffer, and that those things would be true about him, but they would be later, and at first, he had to come and suffer so that the forgiveness of sins could be provided and people could be reconciled to God and redeemed and have eternal life to be able to usher in that kingdom with all of his people. And so this thought that the Messiah would come and suffer was just foreign for them. And so Paul's like, how? How can I convince them of something new? Just tell them to believe it blindly. I know what. I'll get their emotions really riled up and see if they feel it. No, no. Look. He reasoned with them. Where from the scriptures? All right, what they were familiar with, where it was. And he was explaining, and he was proving, proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. Now, some of you who are familiar with the Gospels, you've read the gospels, you know about Jesus's ministry, some light bulbs are going off in your mind right now, because when you're listening to Paul doing this, you're going, Oh, Jesus. Jesus. Jesus did that on the road to Emmaus. The road to Emmaus is when Jesus had risen from the dead, and he met with two guys who were walking along the road to Emmaus. And as they were walking, here's what we're told by Luke, who's also the author of Acts. Luke wrote Luke the gospel. And in Luke 24 Jesus said to them, we're told how foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Listen to this. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things. He had to suffer first and then enter into his glory in verse 27 and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. And so Jesus takes them all the way back to the Old Testament and proves and explains to them all the passages that show that he had to suffer and that he was, in fact, who the Scriptures declared he would be and what would happen. And this is exactly what we see Paul doing now, because through the Spirit, Jesus dwells in him and is expressing his life through him, leading him in the same ways that are consistent with what it is that he did while he was here. And so Paul finishes up and just says, Well, this Jesus, I've explained it to you. I've proved it to you through the scriptures. So verse three, this Jesus, I'm proclaiming to you guys, he is, he is the Messiah. He just proclaims it. You've seen it. I've explained it. This is the truth. Let's see how they respond. Verse four, some, some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women and so as a result of following the evidence and listening to what he said, some some of the Jews responded in faith, they joined Paul and Silas. There is much more than just Kind of, yeah, they kind of join their group, just kind of put their name on a membership role. Because when you put your faith and trust in Jesus, your sins are completely forgiven, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you. You're united to him in a spiritual union, and you're joined to other people. You're united to them. You get new brothers and sisters in Christ that become your family you're born into, recreated into God's family. And so they were really joined, I mean, spiritually in a deep way, joined to Paul and Silas now. But not everyone believed verse five, but the other Jews were jealous, so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. Okay? These are some new ideas. These are some new truths that you're trying to say is true. So listen, the evidence seems to be following along this way, but because we can't really prove you're wrong, we're going to resort to violence, right? I mean, this is what we see happening here. We've said this before, but guys, when people cling to their hard heartedness in legalistic and self righteous and religious ways, and you start talking about the grace of Jesus, it can bring out some really nasty things, and it does here, and it continues. Verse five continues and says they rushed to Jason's house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out of the crowd. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city official shouting these men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar's decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus. And that was certainly true in some ways. I mean, Jesus is King, and he's certainly Lord of lords and King of Kings Over Caesar. But they weren't going around saying, Hey, don't do what Caesar says to do they were living as good citizens under the rule and reign of Rome, except for when if Caesar told him to bow down before him instead of Jesus, that would be a problem. But what I want you to notice here is the way that these guys describe these men, Paul and Silas says these men who have what caused trouble all over the world. The literal translation from the Greek of that is they've turned the world upside down. These men who have turned the world upside down now they use that phrase in a negative way. That's why the NIV translates it, have caused trouble all over the world. They've they've turned it upside down in a bad way, and they're causing trouble through all of those things. But let's be honest, this was true. They were turning the world upside down, but they were doing it in a way that would reflect Jesus's values over the value. That we see in the world as they depended upon life in the Spirit, they valued and prioritized humility, humility, service, sacrifice over power and wealth and status, everything that, especially in this day and age and still in ours today, were valued so much. People were seeking status and wealth and power, and these guys were humble in serving others, and it turned the world upside down. And so when we see them depending upon the spirit, and it caused someone to say that phrase, they've turned the world upside down. Guess what? If you and I as the church today are living life in the Spirit. We're depending on, the spirit in his power to express His life in us and through us, and not our flesh, and guiding our own way and our own strength, then it will cause us to also turn our world upside down. This is the result of what the Spirit will do. People will notice, and they'll go, Oh my gosh, what is going on with the church? They're so different. They don't value the things of the world. They value everything else in their humility and sacrifice and love, and they're not seeking wealth and power and fame, and they're just here to care and love and meet needs of other people, guys. It will turn the world upside down. And so when we talk about life in the Spirit, we're looking for him to lead with his values, over and above the world's values, and to produce that kind of fruit through us that turns the world upside down. When they heard this, when the crowd heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. They've thrown everything up. They turned it upside down in a negative way. Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go. But as soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea, tried to protect him, allow him to be able to continue to be used to share the gospel in other ways. And as we think about this, you go, where's Berea? Well, it's not far. Thessalonica is here. Berea is here. It's only about 40 or 50 miles, so he's not far from where they were. But Berea is a completely different area filled with completely different kinds of people, as we're about to see, there weren't 200,000 people there. There was maybe about 6000 people. And look at the way Luke describes them. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Same as before, when they were in Thessalonica, they went to the Jewish synagogue, but now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica. What in the world? Does that mean? Noble character? Well, you think of nobility, and you think of high status and important people. And he's trying to say they were of high character. They were really, what he's really getting at, based on the context, and we'll see in just a minute, is that they were open minded. They were way more open minded than those in Thessalonica. They were not just immediately closing their mind to the possibility of the new things that Paul was saying, the new information, the new ideas, the new truths. They didn't close them off without the possibility of them being true. Now we're going to see also that they didn't just take their word for it. It's not that they were so open minded that they just went well. Paul said it, it must be true. No, no, no. Watch what it is that happens here in verse 11, because this is what we're getting at. This is the heart of what we're driving at. The answer to our questions from earlier four they received, they were they were more noble character. They were more open minded. Why? For they received the message with eagerness and examined the scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. They received it. That means they didn't, they didn't reject it immediately. They were had a favorable attitude towards it, and they they received it with great eagerness. The Greek word carries the illustration of something kind of like a kid in a candy store, you know, like you're just so eager to go grab all the candy that you can find, and they're they're just receiving the news, the new information with eagerness, so that they can examine and dive into the Scriptures to see if it's true. This is the way we respond to new information and things that are brought before us. The word examined here is an important word when it says that they examined the scriptures for information regarding what it is that Paul was preaching here. It's a courtroom term. It's the term that's kind of used where you would interrogate someone. Them, you interrogate them, you cross examine them. You're you're questioning them to try to get at the truth of what was going on in a court of law. In other words, the Bereans were, were eagerly open to the possibility of what Paul was saying being true, but they examined it so thoroughly before they would render a final verdict on Paul's preaching, they would sift carefully through all the information and compare it to what the Scriptures had to really say. Now, verse 12 says as a result, as a result of what well, as a result of having received it with eagerness, as a result of of examining all of the information that he was presenting there. As a result of that process. Many, not some remember in the last Thessalonica, some of the Jews this time, many, many of them believed, as did a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. And so we see that as a result of doing this, they go, Okay, well, what? What does the Old Testament scripture say? Oh. Isaiah 53 talks about a suffering servant. Psalm 22 starts off and says, My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Which is a Messianic Psalm, and Jesus said the same thing. And, oh, oh, yeah. God is a, he's a holy God. He's He's a just God. He can't He can't just let sin go. He has to punish sin, or he wouldn't be a just God, and so, oh, he had to send Jesus to suffer and die for our sins, because someone had to receive the wrath of God, or he wouldn't be just. And we all know that to be true, because if someone injured your family or hurt your family or murdered someone in your family, and you did nothing to them, somebody didn't do it, you would go, that is unjust. They can't just get away from it. So they're noticing all of these things about God and how, okay, the Messiah had to come suffer, meet the righteous and justice demands of a holy God so that he could provide us forgiveness of our sins based on that work, based on the punishments been received, so we don't have to be punished. Now I see it. I'm getting it. And as a result, they put their faith and trust in Him. They believed their lives were transformed and changed. Their sins were forgiven. New Life in Christ Church was formed verse 13. But when the Jews in Thessalonica, the Jews in Thessalonica, learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up again. We talk about legalism, self righteousness, even hearing about how it is going on and Grace being preached in another way. And now we can't beat them. Let's go fight them. Let's stir things up. React to violence again. Verse 14, the believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with his or with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. So Paul again, is rescued to be able to share the gospel in another place. But he says, Hey, you guys. Stay. You stay. These people just put their faith and trust in Jesus. They're brand new creations. They don't know how to live life in the Spirit. Someone's got to teach them. You got to disciple them. And so you stay, teach them about that, then join me as soon as you can later on and next week, as we're going to talk and see about what happens in Athens and where Paul is. It's one of Paul's most talked about sermons in dissected sermons you will not want to miss next week. Make sure you're here to see that as well. But as we get to the end of this section today, let's talk about what life in the Spirit, then looks like for us today as a result of what we learned, God revealing the truth to us through the Holy Spirit through this text today. How does it apply to us? Well, first and foremost, if you've never believed in Jesus, you've never put your faith and trust in him. My hope in my prayer for you today is that you would be like the Bereans, that you would be like the Bereans, and not harden your heart immediately. Don't reject it immediately. Don't just, well, that's not what I believe, and I'm not going to allow myself to go there. I hope that through what you've seen today and the way we've worked through it, maybe God's stirring up something. He's starting you to be maybe more open, maybe even to the point where you go, yeah, I've never put my faith and trust in Jesus, and I need to do that to. Day, and if so, I'll give you a chance here in a little while to receive His free gift of salvation. But if you're not there, you've listened to it today and you're not there, don't reject it. Be like the Bereans. Don't take my word for it. Do what they did, receive it and with eagerness, go investigate the evidence for yourself. If you don't believe that there's a God, start there. Look for the evidence of there being a creator. Frank Turek wrote a book many years ago, and the title of the book was, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. I don't have enough faith to be an atheist that a lot of atheists will go, Well, I believe in science. I can't blindly believe that there's a God. And Frank Turks walked through all of the evidence that's listed there and goes with all of this evidence, if you're going to be reasonable about it and logically go where it flows. It would take more faith to remain an atheist than it would be to believe that there's a God, there's a creator. So start there, look for that, but don't stop there. Move on and investigate Jesus and being open to who he said that he was, and the resurrection and the evidence of that being true. And then, of course, don't stop there. Be open to receiving His free gift of salvation for the forgiveness of your sins by putting your faith in Jesus as the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE and that no man comes to the Father except through Him. But as we've seen all along the way, there is something for those of us who have already believed in Jesus, who've had our lives transformed and changed and to become new creations in Christ and are part of his church today, this text helps us see how those of us who are believers are to also respond to new ideas, new teachings, new things that people are revealing to us. And so you hear another pastor on YouTube, you go to another church, you meet with your Sunday school teacher, you meet with a Christian friend, and they're presenting new information, new ideas, new teachings to you. What are we to do? What we learn today is we're to be open minded. We're to receive it with eagerness, not to assume that it's automatically true, but we're to be open minded and receive it. Be open minded, receive it and then investigate it through the Scriptures, through the lens of the scriptures, examine the Scriptures. And as we do, we lean upon and we trust upon the Holy Spirit to do His work of illuminating those truths to us. And sometimes, when we're open and we're eager and we're looking and we're depending upon the Holy Spirit, he's going to say, no, what that person presented to you is false. It is not true. Do not allow yourself to go there. This is what is true. And he's going to confirm something that you already believed and thought, but you went through the process. You allowed the Holy Spirit some room to show you, but other times he's going to lead you to change your mind and to go, Yeah, I know you've believed this for your entire life. Potentially, I know your Sunday School teacher taught this when you were 16 years old, but this is really the truth, and this is where the evidence leads in these ways I mentioned earlier, when I had met for lunch with that ministry leader, and he was talking about all this grace and how it's so much more than just salvation. And I pushed back. It's like no bringing up all these different things. And I went, I went home, and I told Natalie about it, and my my wife responded in the same way that she responds 99.9 if not 100% of the time. Jason, God will show us. God will show us if it's true. And she can declare that confidently, because she's walked with Jesus for a number of years, and she's dependent upon him, and she sought him out when she didn't understand what was going on. And she can pull out journal after journal after journal after journal where she's written in there, I don't get it. I don't know your truth. This is hard. I don't understand it. Show truth to me, and then reading and reading and reading and reading it. Oh, this is the point in my life where he revealed to me what was true. He met me there and followed through to reveal either no, that wasn't truth, or this is true here. And she could do it in this journal, in that journal, in that journal. So she could go, Jason, you want me to show you where he's done it so many times. He'll, he'll do the same thing here.
Her.
So we entered into it together. I became more open for an entire year. We read Scripture. We read numerous books, and then compared that to what Scripture said. We cross referenced them. We listened to sermons. We did small groups. I did a small group with a group of men. She did one with a group of women. And we were investigating and we were examining and we were pursuing truth, and eventually, the Holy Spirit turned the lights on for us to see it right there, confirming what this guy had told me all along, to see the fullness of God's grace, that it's not just for salvation, but it is grace for everything, that Jesus plus nothing really does equal everything. And we've lived in that freedom, and it's the way that I've been teaching you, because of the convictions that the Holy Spirit has laid upon my heart. And it was one of those things where at first I did not believe it. I was taught this. Someone presented me with new information and new ideas, and I rejected and I said, No, that's not true. But then the Holy Spirit opened my mind to receive it, and through the investigation, revealed the new truths about it. And so my question for you this morning is, what is it that the Spirit is leading you to be more open about today? Is your tendency to always reject every single new thing that you hear and that that cannot be true? Maybe what he's saying to you is to be open minded, receive it, examine the Scriptures and really depend upon him, and be open to confirming, or truly be open to him changing your mind about that and leading you in a new direction, whatever he's saying to you, I hope that you'll listen and I hope that you'll respond. Let's pray together.