Bible Guys Classics: Acts 17 Part 1

Well, today is a challenge to open your mind. Either you're going to be open minded or closed minded, and that's what we're going to find here today. He's Chris and I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. I almost said he's Jeff and I'm Chris. That's not true. He's Chris, I'm Jeff, and we're the Bible guys. You wish you were Chris. No, No, I really don't in the back of your mind. Yeah, well yeah, doctor, let's say it. That's so funny. Okay, So our segment today is two truths and a lie. So you're going to have to come up with two truths on the top of your head, because, after all, our listeners should know, we don't get time to really process this, right, These things get handed to us, and so we're sort of always making it up on the spot. That's right, that's right. So every day we come in, we know what the passage is. But even then we didn't bring in a bunch of notes. It's just two guys talking about the Bible, which is the Bible guy. Yes, yeah, and then in a practical way. And then a lot of times these things too, our producers are our assistance. They handle the hand these things and say, hey, this is what you're doing right now. Okay, So I'm going to truth in allow We're supposed to say two things that are true about our life and one thing that's not true about our life, and the other person's person has to guess it. Okay, Okay, I got it. This so here is I'm just doing this right on the spot. Okay. I don't even know what I'm gonna say. Okay, Okay. When I was twelve years old, I got fifteen stitches on my skull. Okay, that's the first truth or a lie. I used to own a dog named Stretch who would climb up trees more than twenty feet high. Wow, and he would get stuck up in trees. We'd have to go get them and bring them down. Okay. The third truth. Fifteen stitches when you're twelve, Yes, my dog that climbs trees twenty feet high? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the last one is that my brother lost a ring in Pittsburgh and my uncle's found it three hours away in Youngstown on another person's hand randomly. Fifteen stitches on your skull is the lie? Yes, it is the lie. Yeah, I've had lots of stitches on my skull. So wow. Yeah, so wow, really yeah, I got it right. Yeah. So you really had a dog that could climb a tree twenty feet high? Yes, yes, name Stretch, name Stretch. And by the way, imagine this. So he would he would climb up and then because we had just trees for some reason that were really good for climbing, so it wasn't that hard, right, But a dog doesn't do that. But this dog would literally climb the tree and we would say, come on, Stretch, go when he climbed, and then he gets stuck up there and he whined, and so imagine carrying a dog down, going up and having to carry a dog down like we were definitely afraid we were to drop him. And then sometimes he would actually go on his own and he climb up. Wow. It was terrible. Wow and cool. Wow yep. Okay, let me see here on mine, I have sa I'm an adventure guy. I love adventures, that live for adventures. I have let's talk about adventures. Then I have whitewater raft in thepall during monsoon season in the Himalaya Mountains. On that's the first one on one of only two rivers that were open during monsoon season. I have cage dived with sharks in the Great Barrier Reef and we had a twenty foot great white that came and hit the cage. And then I have ballooned through across the Irrawady River and through several thousand temples, ancient temples. I think I already know this. I think you've already told me that your insurance doesn't allow you to do anything that crosses the line a threshold of danger. So I'm going to say that you've never done cage diving with sharks. Yes, that's true. So I have not done that. One. I did whitewater raft because I didn't say ayth about whitewater rafting during monsoon season in the Himalay Yeah, and. Balloons didn't seem inherently dangerous. Yeah they're dangerous, but yeah we went up to fifteen thousand feet. Oh wow, Yeah yeah, yeah, that's pretty really scary. But man, that was an amazing thing. So we took off right near the Irawadi River in Burma, and which is where Rudyard Kimpley wrote a lot of his writings, and then we kind of stayed low right at the top of the trees and went through several thousand temples all around in that area that are like fifteen hundred years old. That was really amazing with the fog in the morning and stuff. And then finally he elevated really high. It was cool. That was a neat one. Real quick, Can I just I'd forgotten I told you that I had insurance? Yeah, yeah, let me. Tell you this real quick. So my brother has a party in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at his college. The ring gets stolen and there was like three hundred people of this party. About a year later, in Youngstown, on the side of town that nobody even normally goes to, two strangers were trying to steal my uncle's hubcaps. And he walks out of a bar like late at night, and these guys are stealing hubcaps, right, and this is pretty This is pretty long ago in the eighties, and people used to steal hug caps, right, And so my uncle gets in a fight with him and punches them and something flies off of his hand and goes into the bushes and he saw it fly off his hand and come to find out, the ring was too big for this kid, and he had put string on it to make it fit. But it was a diamond ring that my brother won to when he boiled a three hundred in a tournament and they gave him a three hundred ring, and so it had like a diamond in it. Well, anyway, he punches this guy, it goes into the bushes and he walks over and picks it up, and on the inside it says, al Zarba. Wow. And here it is a year later, two hours, three hours away from Pittsburgh. Wow, on some random guy's hand. Yeah. Which, who knows how many hands it switched right? And and how it got there? Like was it pond when somebody else got it right? And so my so my uncle calls my brother Chuck and says, you'll never believe what happened, and this is your ring. So my brother still has it. Wow, that's crazy, man, What are the odds? Yeah? Yeah, yeah yeah. So just be careful, don't get on Zarba's bat side. He'll send some of his boys to take care of you. Well, I always say, I'll just call my cousins, Like you want to you have something to take care of you, I'll. Call I got a couple of cousins to take care of that. And by the way, that's actually true. Okay, So today Paul and Silas get roughed up a little bit again. Yeah, did they just go from from town to town and some towns are very open minded and other towns are very clear minded. And you know, that's a big part of the ministry in general. Just whether you're you know, we're paid pastors, or you're you know, working in a shop somewhere, working in an office, we're all supposed to be doing ministry, serving and sharing the gospel. And some people are open minded, some people are closed minded. Don't be discouraged, and you'll see the results like Paul and Silas do. So here you go in next chapter seventeen. We'll start in verse one. We'll just read through verse fifteen. So go about halfway through the chapter to day so is. Paul and Silas then traveled through the towns of Amphipolis and Apollonia and came to Thessalon Nika, where there was a Jewish synagogue. As was Paul's custom, he went to the synagogue service, and for three Sabbaths in a row he used the scriptures. That'd be three weeks in a row. He used the scriptures to reason with the people. He explained the prophecies and proved that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead. He said, this Jesus I'm telling you about is the Messiah. Some of the Jews who listen were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with many god fearing Greek men and quite a few prominent women. But some of the Jews were jealous, so they gathered some troublemakers from the marketplace to form a mob and start a riot. They attacked the home of Jason, searching for Paul and Silas so they could drag them out of the crowd. Not finding them there, they dragged out Jason and some of the other believers instead and took them before the city council. Paul and Silas have caused trouble all over the world, they shouted, and now they're here disturbing our city too, and Jason has welcomed them into his home. They're all guilty of treason against Caesar, for they profess allegiance to another king named Jesus. The people of the city, as well as the city council, were thrown into turmoil by these reports, so the officials forced Jason and other believers to post bond, and then they released them the very night. The believers sent Paul and Silas to Berea. When they arrived there, they went to the Jewish synagogue, and the people of Berea were more open minded than those in Thessala and Nika, and they listened eagerly to Paul's message. They searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth. As a result, many Jews believed, as did many of the prominent Greek women and men, and some Jews in Thessala and Nika learned that Paul was preaching the word of God and Bria. They went there and stirred up trouble. The believers acted at once, sending Paul on the coast onto the coast, while Silence and Timothy remained behind. Those escorting Paul went with him all the way to Athens. Then they returned to Bria with the instructions for Silence and Timothy to hurry and join it now when he gets to Athens. It's pretty incredible. We're going to deal with that on Monday. But the man alive. Is this a powerful story. So here we go. You have Thesalon. Naika's pretty close minded and Bria is pretty open minded. Yeah, and you know that what stands out to me of almost this entire passage, I think is that some of the thessal and nikens heard that Paul was in Berea and hear all this good is being done, and so then they had to go and stir up trouble. And you know what it reminds me of. It reminds me of that there are some people in our lives. This probably is no application other than the venting. There are people that just love drama, don't they. Oh they do. They just they can't help it. Oh, drama kings and drama queens who just everything that surrounds them. There's always strife, there's always tension, there's always turmoil. Yeah. So the kind of person who when they get mad at somebody, they do a deep dive on their Facebook page and just get mad at every post and every quote and every statement or whatever. Or they're they're constantly showing up. They're just trying to figure out where they are and then they try to you know, ruin them, or they go on some page, you know, give a review about a business that the person owns, and just talk bad about the person rather than about the business. It just, yeah, people love a certain segment of society, A large segment of society love drama and sometimes man, it's so we're saying, have you've had people just kind of follow you around, pop up in the weirdest places, harassing you and giving you trouble, haven't you? Oh? Yeah, yeah, for sure, So I it just happens. Man. So they're in every town. And it turns out humanity is not very different, right, We've always been this way. Yeah, It's it's so funny, how that's that's why I love the Bible because obviously so many things have changed in two thousand years, But yet the condition of the human spirit, that our tendencies are the way that God has wired us. You know, the tendencies that we have that are both bad and good, they're all the same. Yeah. We see ourselves in the scripture all the time time. Don't you have something better to do? Right? Do you ever read Teddy Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena poem or thing? So he has this great he was giving a great speech, and you know he was this masculine, manly man, fighter warrior, safari guy, you know, really really rugged, and he's kind of getting put out. So in this speech that he gives, the man in the arena speech he talks about it's not the critic and it's not the armchair quarterback kind of person that makes any difference. It's the man in the arena that makes a difference. So don't worry about what all the complainers and the others do. Right, it's just brilliant. If you've never never read that, it's probably two or three paragraphs long, but it's such an aspiring speech. You know, you shouldn't be surprised. You're gonna have critics that have nothing better to do than to hound you, to keep chasing you, and oh well they just kept moving forward. Hey, just for fun, I do have something that most of our listeners probably don't even know. The invention of the teddy bear. Do you know this, yes, so it actually came from Teddy Roosevelt's right, So a stuffed bear we call Teddy bear, And I bet you that ninety five percent or more of our listeners have no idea that before Teddy why we call it a Teddy bear? But before Teddy Roosevelt the Teddy Bear, they were just called bears. They were just called bears stuffed and only bears. Right. But the reason why is because there was a story where they wanted to they wanted to show that Teddy Roosevelt was a great hunter, and they wanted him to kill a bear. And so they had arranged it where they actually tied a bear up and they and they wanted to get a picture of him shooting a bear, and so they caught a bear, tied it up, gave him a gun, set up a photo shoot, and he was like, I'm not going to shoot the bear that's tied up, and so he told them no way, and so he had them cut the line and let let the bear go because he said this wasn't sportsmanship. Well, then they said, fine, we're going to change the article to compassion. Look at the compassion that Teddy Teddy has our president. And then then they decided to start selling what they labeled as Teddy Bears, and it became extremely popular. And so then did you also know this part of the story. I did that. Actually the next president that came along, they tried to sell otters. Oh no, and I forget the next president's name, but it was it was crazy. It was like Oscar. It was like Oscar Otters or whatever. And they tried to sell it and it didn't catch on. But the bears have lasted. Okay, well, there you go. That's your little bit of history for today. Yeah, and wasting of time. Sorry, yes, So basically what it comes down to is, in the big picture, Paul is continuing his same pattern. He go to the synagogues for but many of the Greeks, and the prominent Greeks and the prominent women. It says quite a few became followers of Jesus and Thesalonaika. Later he writes a couple of books to the church in Thesalonaika's right, yep, so this Thessalonia, yeah first, and second Thessalonians. So this is in Greece. And then they leave there because they're about ready to get arrested. And it's okay, it's okay to move on. But do you see some of his associates wind up getting in trouble. Jason just hosting them, right and understand there are consequences, and that's okay, right, it's okay, And they Postpond and then they able to move on. But then Paul and Silace they go on to Berea, and I love this. It says that the people in Borea were more open minded than those in Thesalonika, and they listened eagerly to the message, and they searched the scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas was teaching the truth. So they were open minded, but they were also trust but verify, right, So they were digging in scriptures. And I hope our listeners and our viewers, I hope that they do the same thing. You know, we were talking. There's so much in every one of these passages. We could take every passage we've read over the last two months and spend days on each one. But we're just kind of hitting the surfaces. And I hope that other people come back in that our listeners and our viewers, and they want to spend more time. We're just trying to wet your appetite, right, And that's what's happening here, is that they're eager and they're open minded, but they go back and they study to make sure that what Paul insidists say it is true. Well, you know, it's a great encouragement for any believer to go back to the scriptures and to verify what any religious person says. So it's a reminder for all of us that says, hey, just because somebody says it's true, you know, if you google something, what does the Bible believe about this? And then all of a sudden, you know, if it's on the first page of Google, all of a sudden we believe it. Right. But it's like, well, we have to decide for ourselves, we have to go back to the scripture. And so I tell you what, I'm a skeptic by heart, you know, at heart, and I don't believe hardly anything. There may be amazing things about people, like like like faith things, like major faith things, and they say, oh absolutely, I've seen this, and I always think is that true? Is that really true? And and and I'm just I'm just a skeptic. God has wired me that way. And and even when people come to me and they say something to me and they say, hey, I'm angry at you. God has wired me in such a way to where I don't even hardly ever get angry at them. The first question I asked is, huh, I wonder if that's true, because it's like, if it is true, I probably need to change that about myself, you know. But that's just the first question that I always ask, is is that true? And that's really what the people of Berea were asking. And it is true to the only source of truth that they really knew for sure was true. Yes, And but more importantly to your point, they're asking the question, maybe it's true. I'm open. I'm open to the fact that it could be true. And if it is true, it has implications. Because Paul and Silize were teaching something that was diametrically opposed to what they fundamentally believed, but they were open minded enough to go explore it. They didn't just dismiss this thing. So the Brions did not believe what Paul and Silas were teaching at the beginning. They were teaching them something it was different from what they believed, but they were open minded enough to say, all right, I'll look at scripture. They didn't go out and look at culture, they didn't look at tradition, they didn't go try to find out somebody's opinion. They went to the Bible and tried to find out is this consistent with what the Bible says. And in that context, they found out what Paul and Silas were saying about the Bible was consistent with scripture, and so now they chose to believe it. Many of the prominent people in Berea decided to join him as well. Right, But of course the troublemakers show up and they decided to cause trouble, and so Paul and Silas they have to split up. You know what it. Reminds me of you? And I went to down to Naples and we went to a TTI conference. Right, yeah, so t Timoth Initiative. Yeah, the Timothy Initiative. And they told a story there where this guy went into the bush of Africa and set up a van and put up a movie You remember that they put up a movie screen and they were showing Was it the Passion of the Christ? No, it was the Jesus Film. The Jesus Film, and but they were showing and. Jesus Film is the most viewed film in the human history, and it's been translated into like hundreds of languages, and you know, billions and billions of people have seen it. But it's really fabulous because people are seeing the Jesus story for the first time and hearing it in their in their local languages. Okay, so it's very much a tool. So anyway, so they're playing this film and these Roman soldiers are beating on Jesus, like, you know, whipping him and beating him. And there was a man who you know, who's He's a man who didn't know even. Know what a film was, right, I had never seen it. I had never even seen him from the tribe. Yeah. So then he stands up and he gets. A rock, throws. It at the movie screen in an attempt to get these men to stop beating Jesus. He wanted the Romans to stop beating Jesus. Yeah, so he throws a rock at the movie screen. Right. And so here's a man who is completely open, Right, That's what that's what reminded me of. It reminded me of like, here's a guy who's who's so open. He's I mean, he is in that film. He's in that story hook line and saying man to the boy to raise rocks. But what a powerful story. I mean, just just he was so moved with compassion. He wanted to stop them. Right, and he didn't really know anything about Jesus. We had that happened with us with the Pocots. We had we were showing the Jesus film one night and the whole village came out and about twenty minutes into it, because it's like a two and a half hour film, it's long film, three hour film maybe, and they'd never had a film in the village, And about twenty five thirty minutes into it, four Pocot warriors come up to got their spears. They're in their warrior garb, their spears, and the crowd got a little comfortable for a while and they just stood in the back and then the crowd calm back down. They're going but those warriors when when they started beating Jesus, the warriors came and asked, where's this happening, because they knew it wasn't happening right here. Where's this happening? We're going to go stop it because that Jesus guy's a good guy, right, And so the pastors kind of peeled away and said, well, this doesn't happen. This happened many years ago, and we're able to explain the gospel and led to Jesus. Yeah, but you know, very open minded it. It was so foreign. They'd never heard the gospel before, they'd never heard about Jesus before. And this is the same thing. These people had never heard about Jesus, right, which is for many of our listeners and viewers, it's almost incomprehensible that somebody couldn't at least know about Jesus. There were no churches, there was no concept of Jesus anything. And so Paul is starting from scratch, Barnabas is starting from scratch, and some people and Thesalonika they believe, but most didn't. And then in Berea they were very open minded, intrigued by it, and Paul and Silas were able to share the gospel in a way that they went and checked the rest of scriptures, the Jewish scriptures, and went, yeah, there is a Messiah, this's promised and he did have to die and he was going to resurrect and if this is a true bud Jesus, we believe. And so a church springs up in both towns, that's Alenika and in Maria, but persecution still follows, and so you know, we can't possibly know. I wonder when Paul, because he had to leave pretty quickly. They had to hurry away. And sometimes we can't know what kind of fruit springs up from the seeds we plant. We just plant the seed, and then he had to go away before there was any real harvest. But the history tells us that a church sprung up in both of those towns. Later on, Paul has to write a letter back that that's Alenaika, so that it's pretty amazing. You know, don't ever underestimate how open minded a person can be. It's like, I remember my neighbor. I lived next to him, and I was a youth pastor for many years, and then I had never shared the gospel. And then one day he said, why haven't you ever told me about Jesus? And I said, well, because I always thought that you would not welcome it because I was a pastor and you were probably rolling your eyes, thinking he's going to tell me about Jesus. And he says, yeah, but I've always wanted to hear, and I can't believe you haven't told me. And we were out there raking leaves. He was helping the rake leaves, and then and I led him to Christ. I just said, hey, you could you could pray and ask Jesus to come into your life and you could put your faith in trust in him. And I gave him the whole Gospel. And I was surprised on how open minded that he was, just because, you know, just for a lot of reasons, it doesn't matter. But I just thought that he was going to be skewed. I thought he was going to be closed minded based on some other things in his family. But don't ever underestimate the open mindedness of people. People want to hear about the things that they're afraid to talk about. People don't talk about religion or politics, right, but they don't talk about it, and and it's and it's strange how people just don't want to talk about such things. But you'd be surprised that if you're bold enough to bring it up, you'd be surprised how open minded people are and willing to receive a. Lot of people are afraid to bring it up, but want to bring it up right right that. I think that's what you're talking about there. They're open to the conversation, they're afraid to initiate it. And a lot of times, yeah, I think too often Christians wind up saying no for other people. We just guess, oh, he would never want to hear the gospel, he'd never want to have a spiritual conversation. And so don't say no for the other people. Our job is to tell everybody and then but our job is not to make them believe. We just tell everybody. But we shouldn't. We shouldn't say no for a person. Instead, we should decide, you know what, I'm going to plant the seed and we'll see what the Holy Spirit does. And this is exactly what these guys do now tomorrow or Monday. Rather, we're going to go in to the second half of this chapter where Paul goes to Athens and now he's talking with a bunch of intellectuals and it's really a fantastic discussion about how to share the gospel in what would otherwise be a hostile environment. So I'm super excited about that. That's coming up next week. But I'm Jeff and he's Chris, and we're asking you to subscribe on YouTube and to follow us on Facebook, and to go to our website, Bible guys dot com and subscribe there, and we look forward to joining you again next week. M hm h