Explaining & giving evidence
Acts 17:1-9 · Vern Peterman · Apr 15, 2018
Acts (2017-18), No. 58
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926199394640

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Just to reiterate, we'll be meeting in here for the Dead Sea Scrolls presentation. I'm trying to figure out what to call these new rooms we've got. We've got a north room and a south room. Does that make the new wall the Mason-Dixon line? I'm not quite sure there. But anyway, so trying to figure out what those should be or what we ought to call them. Pardon? And there was no red carpet. So anyway, we have to come up with some entirely different designation and one that doesn't get people upset or confused.

Right. All right. So anyway, now we're going to step into Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verses 1 through 9, as Laban just read for us here. We're going to start off by reading Acts 17.1.

Now, when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. This travel goes upon a well-known Roman roughly east-west road that went through Philippi, went through Thessalonica, obviously, and then farther to the east of Philippi and farther to the west of Thessalonica, although the road didn't go straight, right? And so here is a portion of the Ignatian Way that still remains after 2,000 years roughly.

By the way, the Romans were just absolutely crazy road builders. They had the soldiers do a great deal of the work, so I guess that gets you in shape because you're hefting lots of tonnage. They would make the roads typically 23 feet wide. They would start off with some finer material towards the bottom and then kind of work up the gradation so that the top was topped with solid pieces of rock. The idea is that it would last a long, long time and indeed it has.

Much of this road is still present in the condition like you see in front of you there. In some cases, the road was so good, all that the modern engineers had to do was pave it. And that was about it. But the Romans built enough roadway by hand, this way, to go around the earth two times. That is a lot of road.

So here at Philippi, which we've just seen in the end of chapter 16 in the book of Acts, Paul and Silas and Timothy and Dr. Luke had been and others. The church there had just begun. It was the first establishment of the church on the European continent.

From there, they leave Dr. Luke. Dr. Luke, it's interesting, he uses we and us as he's talking about Philippi. And very interestingly, he uses some very local terminology. that only somebody who's familiar with it would use. And then as Paul and Silas and Timothy leave Philippi, it seems like they leave Dr. Luke there.

So anyway, they head through Anthropolis and Apollonia. We don't know exactly why they just seem to have passed through it. We don't have any other record of them doing much there. They go to Thessalonica, which is the capital of Macedonia. And the largest city, it also is a place where there's a Roman governor, and I will talk about that some more, but they made this trip as summarized there by Dr. Luke in Acts 17. So as opposed to Philippi, which apparently did not even have a synagogue, and they would meet down by the river, and Paul, rather than talking to a gathering of Jewish men, plus others, talked to the women who were gathered there.

So very significantly, a real difference there. The city of Thessalonica did have a Jewish synagogue. As a matter of fact, some inscriptional evidence that they had multiple synagogues. And given the large size, that's not a surprise. So here's an archaeological model of one ancient synagogue that was in the area with a number of Jews.

This is not from Thessalonica. But it can give you an idea, they can be substantial, they can be sophisticated, they can also be smaller and simpler, depending on what the location was. I imagine the one at Nazareth, for example, which has been reconstructed in some degree, was very likely simple and much smaller. This would be an example of something that you might find in Thessalonica.

The culture was generally Greek cultural background, ruled of course by Rome. It had a significant number of Jews who were yet in the minority. They seem to have been influential from everything that we can tell. It was not a Roman colony, however, they did have a Roman governor there and a contingent of Roman soldiers, perhaps several thousand Roman soldiers stationed there. being the capital, having a Roman governor, and being the largest city. So, here's Thessaloniki now is a modern city, half a million people.

It's made it hard to study the archaeology, so the archaeology is covered up in a lot of places and it's hard to get to. So what you see there is a lot of modern city and occasionally where they have opportunity of digging in a foundation or digging in a basement or something like that, they would go in and have an opportunity to dig into the archaeology. It's really rough. Can you imagine you're trying to have lunch and here's these archaeologists digging in your house? It's just real difficult, you know.

So anyway, most of it's covered up. But this model here would be an example of what might have been the case in some of the larger synagogues. They at least have the opportunity to have a more sophisticated architecture. In other places, not so much, but it could have been in Thessalonica that they actually had a significant and large synagogue, perhaps even multiple ones of that kind. You have on your handout, here is a typical Jewish synagogue, and there are a lot of configurations, but a few things to note.

They would typically have an ark or tabernacle, and that would be the place where there would be the storage of scripture, whatever Old Testament scriptures they might have would be there. A large synagogue would have a complete Old Testament in scroll form. A smaller one might not be able to afford all of those because they were rather expensive, but they had one place there where they would gather. There would be a place where there was a pulpit or some kind of a stand, and it was usually larger so they could roll out a scroll. on there and be able to read it and not have to wrestle with the scroll or trouble yourself with keeping it stable.

There would also be, almost always, an entrance facing Jerusalem. Isn't that interesting? It'd be like, okay, you can design it however you want, but it's got to hold this many people and the entrance has to face Jerusalem. And so that's what they would do.

And then sometimes they would have other features, a second story, they may have a courtyard off to the side. But typically, that would be kind of a minimum. They'd have a place for the Jewish men to gather, often children, women, and others who didn't qualify as adult Jewish males would oftentimes be behind some kind of a screen or in a separate area where they could see and hear, but be separated from the Jewish men.

Here would also be as shown on page 2 of your handout, this is a general chronology of Paul's second missionary journey. He began it there as we saw earlier on with chapter 16 basically, the end of chapter 15, end of 16. And this chronology takes us to Thessalonica, which would be November 50 AD to January 51 A.D. would be about the time frame there.

We're going to read about three Sabbaths, and you're going to think, well, wait a minute, I thought only three Sabbaths, that's only a couple of weeks, and then he's out of there. But what he might do is show up, because you can't call on your cell phone and, hey, I'd like to arrange to talk at this place, right? So he would show up, but a place like Thessalonica might have all the speaking slots already committed for some time ahead, and so him waiting for his speaking slot might take a little bit. So he's there for essentially two or three months period of time in Thessalonica.

Here's Acts 17, 2 and 3. According to Paul's custom, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that The Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ. So one is for three Sabbaths. So Paul is a visiting rabbi.

Imagine he could go up and say, I was a disciple of Gamaliel. And everybody's eyes would go, Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the premier rabbi of the first century. I mean, there were other great ones, but this guy was like the best of the best. Very well known and very well respected.

Even though he was never a high priest, because he was never qualified as the high priest, when he stood up in the Sanhedrin and spoke, as we saw earlier in the book of Acts, people listened, and they listened very carefully. So here's Paul, who could claim to be a disciple of Gamaliel, the rabbi, and Paul himself, having been under Gamaliel, would then be able to claim that he was a rabbi. And he would also say he was a Pharisee. And by the way, outside of Jerusalem, just about all of the Jews, if they were observant, were Pharisees. So Paul would have a lot of regard and respect when he went to these places as a guest speaker. He would be highly regarded, at least initially, until they got upset.

So he would have spoken most directly to the Jewish men, although, which we'll see in here, the women, both Jew and Gentile, would be able to speak typically from, as you see behind some kind of a screen or an upper courtroom. And then there would also be God-fearing Gentiles, and we'll talk about those shortly. There's a spectrum when you say God-fearing Gentiles. What does that include? But he would speak most directly to the Jewish men, and others would be permitted and allowed and enabled to listen as well.

The synagogue ruler would typically have the final say on who would be invited and allowed to speak in the synagogue, and so allowing Paul three Sabbaths in a row to address Jews and the others. So the synagogue ruler would be the one who would make that decision. You'd have to talk to him, and he would be given administrative authority.

Now, Paul didn't just give his opinion. He didn't just read the scripture, although he most certainly may well have done that. Even, I wouldn't say likely, well have done that, read some of the scripture to ask for the man. They're typically not the synagogue ruler, but another man would have charge of the scrolls of the Old Testament. And so he would tell that man which scrolls he wanted to have out. And so the fellow would bring those out, and then Paul would be able to read from those as he wished. But he reasoned from the words of the Bible, so the Old Testament.

So Paul's reasoning consisted of his explanation from the evidence. Here's the evidence. I'm reading Scripture from you. And so there's the evidence. I'm going to explain what these mean to you. And so that you'll understand. So that's what he did. He didn't use any manipulation. This is commonly done these days. There was no crowd control. There was no appeal to emotion, nor did he stand upon his great background. He didn't just say, hey, I'm a disciple of Gamaliel, and I'm a rabbi, and I'm here to tell you. He started with the scripture. He gave the evidence from scripture, and he explained the evidence that was apparent there in what was read.

It says the Christ, or the Christ as I've put the definite article, and that's in the Greek. And the reason why we highlight that, and it's important that it comes up in the English as well, is the Christ from the Greek, it's the definite article, and then Christos in the Greek. So we say it's from the Greek, shortened from Christos. The Messiah, the Jews would have said Hamashiach, with probably a little bit more throat clearing than that. Anyway, Hamashiach, right?

I've got to take lessons from Courtney here. Anyway, so Paul was telling these Jews that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, as told in the Old Testament. Now, Hebrew, you understand, is the only language in which phlegm is a consonant. Right? So, anyway, just so you get the idea. So it's the Messiah is the way we say it, so it doesn't quite sound so phlegmy, but it's Hamashiach.

But either way, whether it's the Christ or the Messiah, it's the anointed one. That's the idea. And why anointed? Why was the anointed one? Because the Messiah would be as the anointed, prophet, priest, and king in one person. They anointed prophets, they anointed priests, they anointed kings. Christ will be all three. Prophet, priest, and king in one person, therefore the anointed one.

These Jews were of Pharisee background. As we said, the Sadducees, they basically hung around Jerusalem and that was it. You didn't find Sadducees anywhere. It's one of the reasons why when the Romans came in and wiped out Jerusalem, wiped out the Jews in Jerusalem, 70 AD, that was the end of the Sadducees. No more Sadducees. Never hear from them again. The Pharisees survived.

Why? Because they went internationally. They went everywhere. They were missionary about what they taught and told people, and Paul was one of them. These Jews were of the Pharisee background, we know, because it was only Pharisees that went far and wide preaching the gospel of Judaism. They would even tell the stories to Gentiles if they would listen. They believed in a coming Messiah.

Sadducees did not. And as we'll see in this session just right after, the Essenes, which also got wiped out before 70 AD, we'll talk about why. They got wiped out before 70 AD. The Essenes also believed in a Messiah. And they believed, like the Pharisees, in the scriptures of the whole Old Testament. But that the Messiah would suffer and rise again and be their king took some convincing, because the common belief was that the Messiah would come as king, and the hope was that he would come and boot out these nasty, pig-eating Romans.

Because they hated that. And then if you were in a scene, you hated the Pharisees and the Sadducees too. And that was okay, because God hated them as well. Right? So, anyway, we'll see about this. Because these Jews were of the Pharisee background, they believed in the coming Messiah. So that wasn't any issue to try to convince them. The difficulty is convincing them that the Messiah would suffer and rise again and be their king in the same person. The Jews did not believe that. No group of the Jews believed that, all in one person, except these Christians.

Acts 17.4, and some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a great multitude of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women.

There's a lot to explain here. So, some were persuaded. The ones who were persuaded included One, Jews who were of the synagogue in which Paul spoke. So they were of the synagogue, they were Jewish. They said, yeah, I get it. I believe you, Paul. They understood the evidence and the reasoning that Paul had presented to them. They said, oh, I've seen those scriptures before, now I understand. So one is the Jews who were in the synagogue, part one.

Next one. A great multitude of God-fearing Greeks were among those persuaded and who believed. One of the God-fearing Greeks we've seen very early on is in Acts chapter 10. This would be Cornelius there at Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea on the coast, a Roman military naval colony. That would be one. Here's Peter, goes from Joppa. up to Caesarea and presents the gospel to the house of Cornelius, that would be a God-fearing Gentile.

Very likely from the evidence, Dr. Luke is also a God-fearing Gentile who has become a believer. And God-fearing Gentiles would sometimes be called that even though they had converted to Judaism. So there's a spectrum Some of them just said, hey, I'm sympathetic with the Jews. Others of them even supported the Jews, like the centurion who paid for the first synagogue that was there, Capernaum, whose servant Jesus healed. That would be a God-fearing Gentile. It was a Roman centurion that paid for the synagogue. The Jews said, hey, this is a good guy, especially because he gives out money.

You have God-fearing Greeks was a synonym or a euphemism for Gentiles. Why? Because in the Eastern Roman Empire, a Gentile would almost always or most commonly be of a Greek-speaking background. So in the Eastern Roman Empire, to say the Greeks was equivalent to God-fearing Gentiles. That's why we put that here. And that's why it has a God-fearing Greeks or God-fearing Gentiles in that part of the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean. Those would be equivalent words. They were persuaded and they believed.

And there were also a number of leading women, as the local culture permitted. Now, throughout the Roman Empire, both in pagan and in Jewish areas, women had a subsidiary place and role. The man had a higher role and level of authority. Of course, that differed from one, you know, Greco-Roman culture, for example, to the Jews. But there were areas where women were given and allowed a much higher level of authority, a higher level of ability to interact, and legal standing. And that was in two areas that are included in the New Testament.

One is in Galatia. In general, the women had a higher standing there. The second one was Macedonia, such as Lydia in the city of Philippi, as we just saw in Acts chapter 16. So they're called prominent or leading women, and we give the references there.

Acts 13.50 and 17.12 would be a couple of places. God-fearing Gentiles or Greeks would be in Acts chapter 10, 13, and 17, and the references that we give there. So those two cultural things would be helpful to understand what Dr. Luke is writing here.

Here's Acts 17.5.

But the Jews becoming jealous, that never happens. The Jews becoming jealous, taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob and set the city in an uproar, and coming upon the house of Jason, they were seeking to bring them out to the people. So, the third time's the harm here. After the third Sabbath service, it seems, when everything came unglued, Paul spoke and some of the Jews had had enough. Although there were both Jews in the synagogue, God-fearing Gentiles, and prominent women who responded favorably and believed the gospel here, there were other Jews who were very jealous and very upset about what Paul said. And so they gathered up some troublemakers from the marketplace. So here's here's one thing. Why go and gather up a bunch of troublemakers who probably are not Jews, by the way? Gather up a bunch of Gentile troublemakers.

Why? These are political influence for hire. And we'll talk about why in a minute. They use these rabble rousers to form a mob and stir up an uproar in the city. They went to the house of Jason in the hopes of bringing up Paul and the others to do them harm in public. So they're trying to gather up a bunch of people and do them harm. Why? If you get a mob together, you can oftentimes accomplish things that wouldn't happen through the normal channels, right? And this, as we'll see, was something that was especially useful in the Roman Empire.

So they gather up the house of Jason. We don't have other information about Jason. Jason was very likely a leader, possibly among the Jews there in Thessalonica. Here's Acts 17, 6 and 7. And when they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, these men who have upset the world have come here also. And Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus."

Now, first of all, do any of those things sound like something that would get a Jew upset? No, not really. The Jews often, as we go through the book of Acts, we'll see it, the Jews often would come up with concocted, distorted accusations because the Romans were not interested in some Jew who was upset because somebody violated the law of Moses. They'd go, you know, shrug their shoulders and say, I don't care. You go deal with it yourself. So what the Jews would do is they would come up with something that would get the Romans upset, even if they had to tweak the accusation. And they did that.

So since the jealous Jews and the mob from the market didn't find Paul and his companions, and we know, you know, those would include Silas and Timothy, right? Not Luke at this point, apparently. They went after Jason and some fellow believers instead. Jason was somehow somebody obvious to them. It may well have been the place where Paul had been staying. This may have even been the synagogue ruler who arranged to have Paul speak there. But whatever the case, they hauled Jason and some of the fellow believers before the city authorities. They loudly not quietly, loudly charged Jason and the other believers with some false but legally potent accusations against Rome. We've got to tweak it so that the Romans will get upset. Otherwise they're going to go, meh, right? And nobody's going to do anything. They're going to say, you guys go solve your own problem. You know, we're not dealing with the Law of Moses here.

So they cooked up something that would indeed get the Romans upset. So the loud and legal accusations included a few of these. One, Paul and company who have disturbed the whole Roman Empire. Is that true? No, they've just barely gotten started. As a matter of fact, they've just barely gotten started in about one quarter, the northeast quarter of the Roman Empire, and not all that.

So this exaggeration, hyperbole you call it, right? The whole Roman Empire have now, because he said the whole world, by the way, It was a euphemism for the Roman Empire. Anyway, just so you know, "...have now come to the city of Thessalonica, and this Jason has welcomed them." He's given them comfort and support and supply.

So they acted against the decrees of Caesar, who was then Claudius, since about 44 AD, by declaring that there is another king by the name of Jesus. All of these intense accusations were distortions or overstatements. Now, what do you mean against the decrees of Caesar? Now this is interesting. In our own government, we have a situation whereby you elect the president for a four-year term, barring unusual circumstances, for a four-year term and then he is allowed with the more recent decades change in the Constitution, an amendment, to serve two terms and then he's out, right? But the Caesars issued decrees that could be understood in such a way that Paul's message would be in violation of those decrees. Examples of that were the Caesars issued decrees against predicting a change of emperor.

Can you imagine that? We talk about regularly, well, okay, this guy's going to serve for four years, and then the next one, you know, we'll have an election or, you know, it'll be the second term, end of the second term, and so that has to be somebody else. But you were not allowed in the Roman Empire to predict the change of emperor, okay?

That was not permitted. And it was a capital offense, okay? It was a very serious offense. You didn't want to get charged with that. Nobody was allowed to predict that the Emperor would change, even. You couldn't even say the Emperor is going to change. Even that was not allowed. You had to talk as if the Emperor was always going to be in control and in charge and anything else was a federal violation. You couldn't say that someone would replace the Emperor. Can you imagine that? Even mentioning that that might happen was against the law. Now, and by the way, that was Augustus Caesar and Tiberius who put those laws in place. So here's the next one.

Nobody was allowed to use astrology to predict the emperor's or anyone else's date of death. So if anything could be called astrology or anything like it, and predicting a date of death, that was illegal, right? So you couldn't do that. So a common way to avoid such accusations was to pledge to be loyal to the emperor, and thus we have kind of subsidiary sayings like, long live the king, right? Long live the emperor because you don't want to be caught saying, Hey, this guy's going to be replaced in two years or four or whatever. Even the thought that there would be another emperor was illegal. Or at least if you thought it, don't say anything. Keep it a secret.

So, one other thing to point out here, these city leaders was called polytarchi. Doesn't matter to me if you call somebody a Politarcaria or not, but Thessalonica was the capital of Macedonia. They had a Roman governor who ruled right there from Thessalonica. So there was a governor right there in the city. There were Roman soldiers all over the place, right? In this capital, you know, under the command of the governor. The local officials ruled in fear that they would be overruled by the governor on something, right?

And especially something like this is a capital offense. The critics once said, these are people who are critical of the Bible, that the author of Acts was all wrong about calling the local officials polytarchi. That was before we had archaeology. Turns out, since then, since the people said, well, the Bible's all wrong, right? There's no way that this is correct. Seventy inscriptions have been found with that word, and over three-quarters of those are from Macedonia. And over half of them are from Thessalonica. And that's in a place where we can barely get at the archaeology. So it turns out Dr. Luke was not wrong. And the Bible's right. And you can go ahead and put your confidence in it. Because it's a revealed Word of God. Absolute confidence.

Now, Acts 17.8.

And they stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things. So, they stirred up. That word here, stirred up, can mean an internal or emotional stirring. It's the same word, for example, Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled. So it can be an internal or emotional stirring. It's also used as an external stirring of people, getting people all riled up in an external sense. In this case, it likely means both, getting people emotionally stirred up and getting people all riled up in this mob action. Both of those things. So, I see you brought your extra large spoon to stir up trouble today, right? So this is what the Jews were doing. They come in, they're deliberately stirring up trouble.

They're doing so by not getting people upset about the fact that, hey, we don't agree with what Paul says about Jesus and the Old Testament, but we're getting them upset because of the Roman law. That would get the Roman officials concerned. So the local Roman authorities, well known, and so this is something you can look at in the Bible in multiple places, well known to bend to public pressure in order to keep things from getting out of hand. It was written in their law that that was okay.

What does everybody else think? And so if you've got a mob of people, like happened at Jesus' trial, right? What happened is Pilate said several times, I find nothing wrong with Jesus. So what did they do? Crucify him! Crucify him!" And they get everybody yelling, and Pilate says, okay, that's all I need. He's got the public pressure. It was legal for him to take the temperature of the crowd and incorporate that into his decision. That was okay. And that's exactly what happened here.

Acts 17.9, and when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them.

Now it might sound at first like this is sort of anticlimactic, but we want to point out why this is still a big deal, really pivotal as a matter of fact. So these are the reasons why it was worse than it might first appear, and it's not really as anticlimactic as one might think.

One, Jason and apparently the others came under legal scrutiny that seems to be ongoing. The language there is apparently something like, you know, you're going to post bond. And if something else happens, we're going to hold you accountable, right? And this was Jason who had only apparently housed or in some way supported Paul and his companions. He hadn't been the guilty party. So that's part one. So this thing is not over.

Secondly, Paul had been accused of what could become a capital offense, except they couldn't find him. In the worst case, he could be killed. if he were discovered right then, or if he later returned. It appears from Acts and the other books of the Apostle Paul that he did not go back. Did not go back, at least it's not clear that he did. As we go through Acts we'll see that.

Thirdly, the Thessalonians suffered hardship in the short months since Paul had first been there. So we see in both 1st and 2nd Thessalonians evidence for that. There may even have been some who died out of this persecution. One of the things to remember is 1st and 2nd Thessalonians were only written a short time, we're talking about months, after Paul had been in Thessalonica. And we're going to see in the next passage that he and his friends escape Thessalonica, getaway, essentially escaping at night. But so this persecution apparently got worse. Paul just talks about his persecution and the persecution of those with them. Then he also talks in these passages here, in passages in 1 and 2 Thessalonians, about the persecution that took place among the Thessalonians.

These are brand new believers. Imagine You just become a believer, and now really bad persecution comes out. You're a brand new believer. You might say, oh, that isn't what I signed up for. Guess what? Yes, it is. And especially there, it may even have been apparent, if I believe this and if I come out and tell people that I believe this, it's going to cost me. imagine, and they made it the truth. So I'm going to believe it anyway. I don't care what it costs. It's just the truth.

Now, there's some lessons and truths and principles to be brought out regarding the will of God. By every evidence we have, Paul and his companions were in the will of God when they entered the city of Thessalonica and what they did and said there. The fork in the road place where that becomes very apparent, here's Paul and his companions who are trying to head towards Bithynia, which is now in north-central Turkey.

And the Holy Spirit says, no, I don't want you going there, I want you going over to Macedonia. He makes it very clear. And so going over to Macedonia was exactly what they were supposed to do. They needed to leave Philippi because things had gotten a little hot there.

But as they headed over to Thessalonica, every appearance was that they're in God's will. The saints in Thessalonica were certainly in God's will as they believed the gospel. Isn't that what God wanted them to do? Yes. And they endured faithfully both the sufferings of Paul and those with him, that is, those with Paul, and their own. Paul writes not only about his sufferings, not only about their sufferings, but they, the Thessalonians, enduring the sufferings of Paul and his companions.

Here we bring you the gospel, and immediately, relatively speaking, we get into really hot water, the kind of thing where people can lose their life. And you've stuck around through that, and even though it cost you, and we who brought you the gospel came under terrific persecution, you stood fast and stood faithful. And in that you've been an example to everyone else. Paul commended the Thessalonian believers for these things. He even said that there were examples in both 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He brings up the sufferings that they went through. One of the other things we see, what was Paul's message? Paul's message was not about, hey, I want you to follow some new rules or I want you to add these little tweaks to the law of Moses.

It's about who Christ is. He didn't say, I want you to try really hard to be like Christ. He didn't say, what would Jesus do? He didn't say, give it your best effort. He said instead, It's about who He is. That's what you need to understand. Who He is and what He came to do. It's about Christ. He didn't try to sell them on the earthly benefits. Far from it. Oh, if you entrust Christ for your salvation, everything will be so cool, man, God's just going to clear the road right in front of you. Everything will be just a piece of matzah cake.

The first letter Paul wrote to the young believers in Thessalonica, which is only shortly after he was there, that he and those with him were destined for trials, and those believers in the city of Thessalonica had trials right away. Destined, King James has appointed. Appointed to trials. Trials? Oh yeah. We got them. We know they're coming. We know we've had them. We know we're having them. We know more is coming. We know it.

So, does God promise to prevent problems so that you would just sidestep or escape the worst of things in life? Is that what God has in mind? Does God promise to never put on you more than you can handle? God will never put on you more than you can handle.

Bogus! Gobbledygook! That's not what the Bible says. If that's God's job, He's doing a terrible job. That's not at all what He has in mind. It's not a promise of easy street. The answer is no. If that's what you wanted, not happening. If that's what you expected, sorry.

Not happening because what God does promise is that His grace is sufficient. He has provided for us the power Himself to deal with the temptation, but not to just avoid it. Eh, I'm not having any temptations. I'm a Christian. No. Not happening. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12, verses 8 and 9, and I'm kind of taking the shortened Concise version here.

I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me, this thorn in the flesh, right? And He said to me, Sure! No. My grace is sufficient for you. Was it a promise that I will never give you and put on you more than you can handle? No, it was not. It's a promise that if you pray, you'll most certainly get this trial lifted. No. My grace is sufficient for you. So why would God do such a thing?

It's all about trusting God, abiding in Christ, beholding Him, fellowshipping with Christ, walking in the Spirit, and being filled with the Spirit one moment to the next until The day will arrive when we all will see the Lord face to face and will be fully conformed to the image of Christ. I hope the day that He comes and makes that the day that arrives, I hope it's today. I hope I don't get to tell you about the Dead Sea Scrolls. As much as I'm just strongly motivated to tell you about them, I hope that doesn't happen.

But if the Lord says I have to, I guess I have to, right? So, until then, we're being conformed to Christ's image as He works all things together for good. Does that mean all things are good? Do you have to say, oh whoopee, I've got cancer! Yahoo, I just got in a huge wreck! And the EMTs, at least they're very, very nice, right? No. All things work together for what good? We don't have to say everything's good. We don't have to pretend. It's to the good of being conformed to the image of His Son. And it's predestined to be completed.

As a matter of fact, I can't mess it up. That's great. Because otherwise I'm inclined to, right? I can't mess it up. He works all things together for the good that I am being conformed to the image of His Son. And all of us believers can claim that. That's the good, regardless of what happens. And some things aren't very good. But that good will not be thwarted. Let's pray.

Thank You, Lord, that we can look upon this passage, we can look upon how you have laid things out for us and see, just like Paul, we can see that God has His purpose in everything. Even these difficulties, we're not promised to be excused from them or to sidestep them, but rather we are assured that they will come along. And our perspective on them is to rejoice in them when we encounter those various trials. Thank you for that. Thank you for the trials that you put in our lives, because you love us, because you care for us, and because you know and assure us that we will be conformed to the image of His Son. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.