Thorburn-Sutherland's River Pastoral Charge

Living God, you speak to us in sacred story, through friendship and conversation, in bread broken and wine poured out. Send us your Holy Spirit as the Scriptures are read. May our hearts burn within us as we encounter your truth, through Christ, our Risen Lord. Amen

Last Sunday we left Paul and Silas, two of our missionary team, in the house of a woman by the name of Lydia who had come to faith in Jesus through their teaching. They had just gotten out of jail, and she had given them a place to stay. What had happened was that while evangelizing in the streets of Philippi, a town in Macedonia, which is modern day Greece, Paul and Silas were accosted by a slave girl who was possessed by a demon. Her owners were using her to make money, claiming that she could tell fortunes. Paul exorcized the demon from her and suddenly her owners lost their source of income. Because of this they had the local magistrates throw Paul and Silas into jail.

But Paul and Silas used this setback to bring the message of salvation to the jailer and his family who became converts to Christianity. The next morning, they were let out of prison and after saying farewell to Lydia and her friends our two missionaries left town. The seeds of Christianity had been planted there and so it was time to move on.

After passing through a couple of smaller towns they arrived at Thessalonica, a much larger city in Macedonia. Paul and Silas went to the synagogue on the sabbath. The members welcomed them and allowed Paul to speak for three Saturdays in a row about Jesus being the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies of a promised Messiah for the Jewish people. And what Paul shared with them was a message they had not heard before, Luke tells us, “He reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said.”

Now that was a message that was new to them. The Jews believed a Messiah was coming. But they had always pictured him differently – not someone who would suffer and die, but someone who would live and be successful. He was supposed to get rid of the Romans, re-establish the Jewish nation, and make everyone happy. But to hear that the Messiah was supposed to suffer and die, and then rise from the dead? That idea was very different, very new.

So, Paul spent three Saturdays in a row showing them from Scripture all the prophecies about the Messiah, and how he really was supposed to suffer and die and rise. No doubt he read to them these lines from the book of Isaiah, “Surely, he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4-6) Then he told them about Jesus Christ and how Jesus had fulfilled all those prophecies. Jesus suffered and died for our sins so that we could have forgiveness and eternal life with God.

In other words, Paul’s sermon starts with that which his hearers consider to be an accepted authority, the Jewish Scriptures, which is our Old Testament, and then applies it to that which is radically new and difficult to accept — Jesus as the Christ. These people, like Jews all over the world at that time, were having a great struggle with Jesus of Nazareth. They could accept him as the Messiah as long as they were not confronted with the facts of his death. But a suffering, crucified Messiah was a great offense to them and one they had difficulty understanding.

They read their Scriptures much as we sometimes read ours, they picked out all the passages which they liked and kept reading those over and over. Eventually they thought that those passages were all that the Scriptures had to say about the Messiah. They liked the readings which dealt with the majesty of the Messiah, with the time when he would come in his royal power and establish his kingdom over all the world and rule over the nations, subdue all enemies, cause war and strife to cease, and reign in triumphant splendor and glory. That is what they were expecting. But they ignored those passages which dealt with a suffering and crucified Messiah, and with the necessity for a resurrection and atoning for their sins. Like us all, they just wanted to get to the good parts, but God wasn’t going to make it that easy for them. The Bible phrase, “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:14) comes to mind.

And what was the result of Paul’s preaching? Luke says, “Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women.” So, mainly it was the Greeks, who, although not being of the Jewish faith, had come to the synagogue hoping to hear the truth about the Living God. They had been attracted by the Jewish Scriptures. They had come to believe that the God of Israel was the one true God. And now, as these Gentiles heard Paul speaking about Jesus as being the son of that God and the Saviour for the world, they were tremendously impressed, and they believed. Those that listened and heard came to faith.

And it wasn’t just the men, Luke is careful to point out that there was a group of the leading women of the city who also came to faith. For them, the gospel came with the good news that, in Jesus Christ, there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, black nor white, nor any other distinction, that all the distinctions men make were broken down, and so these women responded joyously! They found a fulfilling, and satisfying glory, about the gospel and they responded to the grace of God in Jesus Christ, inviting the Lord Jesus to enter their hearts. Through the dedication of these early disciples of Jesus, they saw that all who believed were God’s people.

And yet there were still problems, we’re told, “But the Jews became jealous, and with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar.” As we’ve seen in our past scriptures, this was becoming a standard pattern, Paul goes to the local synagogue, preaches the message of Jesus being the long promised Messiah for Israel and many people come to faith in Christ. But the leaders of the synagogue grow jealous, seeing their power and influence slipping away, and so they incite the crowds, causing an uproar. They start a disturbance which attracted a crowd. When the crowd gathered around them, they inflamed them with emotional words and propaganda until the crowd was brought to a fever pitch. The disciples are blamed for the insurrection and are thrown in jail and eventually run out of town. This pattern first began not long after the Day of Pentecost when the apostles Peter and John were preaching in Jerusalem, and it continued on in one form or another since that time.

It is amazing how strong their faith was and how God was with them as now Paul and Silas were to undergo such persecution once again. They had been thrown in jail for the night in Philippi, the town they had just come from, but this time the rioters were unable to find them, so they went to the house of a man named Jason, who was a supporter of the missionaries. Then, as Luke tells us, “When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities, shouting, ‘These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests.”

And that’s the question, have Paul and Silas, and all the other followers of Christ been turning the world upside down, or have they been turning it right-side up? God created the world right-side up but then Adam and Eve succumbed to the temptation of the serpent, sin entered the world, and everything was turned upside down. And despite many other attempts to bring the world back upright, the people kept falling back into the same old patterns of greed and corruption. Then God sent his only begotten Son into that world with the offer of forgiveness of sin which would right the world once again. After Jesus, through his death on the cross, offered forgiveness of sin and eternal life to all those who came to faith in him, the world began to straighten up once again.

But the message of the cross was not well received by many people. They accused the followers of Jesus of turning the world in the wrong direction. They accused the early believers of shaking up the world. But those believers had turned the world upside down because they knew that Jesus was that long promised Saviour for the world. His followers, the members of the early church, were dedicated to introducing others to the Jesus Christ of the cross and life eternal. They were absolutely unconcerned about everything in the world but one thing, and that was teaching and preaching Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit was truly at work and the world was actually turning right-side up.

So, what can we be doing in our lives today to be accused of turning the world upside down? What did those early believers do in their world? Where there was darkness – they brought light, where there was hatred – they brought love, where there was sadness – they brought laughter, where there was death – they brought life.

We have to ask ourselves; what is happening in and through our congregation and faith that would cause an apostle like Paul to overflow with thanksgiving? Have some of us become so comfortable with the status quo that no one perceives us to be followers of Christ and different from those caught up in the ways of the world. In what ways might God be calling us to risk our own comfort and security to proclaim and live the gospel, even in the face of resistance?

Let us Pray:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the early apostles like Paul and Silas who made a change in their world, and who are still affecting the world by what they wrote.  Lord, help us to want to affect the world, to turn it right side up and to have lives that count. Lives that lead us and others to you. We pray in Jesus Christ name. Amen