Sermon Tone Analysis

Acts 17:1-9

Ministry is not for the faint-hearted

 

When they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days 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.

Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women.

But the Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city.

They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.

But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, 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.”

When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil.

Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

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inisters who avoid confrontation and conflict likely are also avoiding the truth of the gospel.

The Apostle Paul is an example of how ministers should have confidence and conviction amid conflict.

It is in this passage that Paul goes into the synagogue in Thessalonica and proclaims that Jesus is the Christ.

Christianity is controversial—if it is real!

If at the end of your ministry you can look back and say, “I have avoided all controversy,” you have probably avoided dealing with the truth.

You have avoided proclaiming the gospel, and physically and metaphorically you have avoided the synagogues.

Confrontation is certain if the strongholds of unbelief and gospel resistance are addressed with biblical truth.

The Message that Emancipates Also Infuriates —/It is for freedom that Christ has set us free/…  You, my brothers, were called to be free [*Galatians 5:1, 13*].

The message of Christ leads to freedom.

Perhaps you will recall that in His first public sermon, our Lord announced that He had been sent to proclaim freedom for the prisoners [see *Luke 4:18*].

The promise of freedom which resides in Christ as Lord is that You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

…I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.

Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever.

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed [*John 8:32, 34-36*].

All who are in Christ have been set free from sin [cf.

*Romans 6:18, 22*].

Those outside of Christ are yet in darkness and enwrapped in chains of their own making; they can never be free.

The child of God lives without fear because he is free of condemnation.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin in sinful man [*Romans 8:1-3*].

It is this message of life which gives freedom.

Wouldn’t you imagine that this message of emancipation would bring great joy to all who hear it?

Wouldn’t you think that just hearing of freedom in Christ—freedom from guilt and freedom from condemnation and freedom from the power of sin—would elicit joyful praise to God who gives such freedom?

Such is not always the case.

Christians who dare speak of freedom before God will be proclaiming a gospel that is anathema to a post-modern culture.

Those children of the Living God who are afraid of confrontation will go through their lives living in fear and failure and falsity.

Conviction is essential.

Conviction is the bedrock of our confidence.

If indeed there is a ministry that is marked by a lack of confidence, it must be marked by an absence of conviction.

We are living in an age that is particularly lacking in conviction.

Conviction is lacking in many pulpits, and conviction is lacking in the pews as well.

The true preaching of the gospel—in all of its simplicity (and) in all of its wholeness—is unacceptable in many sectors.

It is simply too abrasive a truth.

It is simply too audacious a claim.

For a minister to have confidence and conviction, his ministry must be grounded in the truth of God's Word.

Paul is such an example.

We are told that among the Jews in the synagogue, /he reasoned with them from the Scriptures/ [*Acts 17:2*], and there again we have the apostolic model that Christian ministry is a Scriptural ministry.

The Word of God is the authority by which we speak and that same Word is the authority we preach.

One truth which I must stress at this point is that we Christians preach a message which is reasonable.

It is irrational not to believe this message.

Before Agrippa and Festus, Roman governmental authorities, the Apostle proclaimed that the message of life was true and reasonable [see *Acts 26:25*].

Christianity does not consist of a “leap in the dark” or of a blind faith exercised in an unseen God.

The Faith of Christ the Lord is confidence in the truth of God.

Man is sinful.

This is fact.

Try ever so hard to be good, yet each of us is sinful—focused on self and concerned with our own interests.

Should someone be so foolish as to deny that we are sinful, I need but remind that individual that perfection eludes him since death is the lot of each of us.

The evidence that we are imperfect (and thus sinful) is that we die.

Why should God accept us on our terms?

Are we, as a race, united in defining what terms we would present to God?  Isn’t it rather true that we are each so consumed with our own self-interests—nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom—that we could never fully agree to conditions advanced by others?

Thus, it is only rational to confess that if we will be accepted by God, it must be on His terms and not on ours.

Were we able to perform some task to propitiate the Living God, then we would be at least as great as that God in the area in which we laboured.

Since God is infinite and beyond our greatest comprehension, we cannot atone for our own sinful condition.

We need a mediator—someone to reconcile us to God.

That someone must Himself be divine.

That someone must be perfect if He will serve as our mediator.

There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men [*1 Timothy 2:5, 6*].

This is the message of the cross.

God sent His Son—holy and without fault—to provide Himself as an infinite sacrifice in the place of sinful mankind.

Without our effort and solely by faith in this Jesus we may be set free of guilt and condemnation.

Were Jesus but a sacrifice, it would perhaps be reasonable to question whether His sacrifice was sufficient.

However, this Jesus, the crucified Son of God, refused to stay dead.

Forever He destroyed the power of sin by raising from the dead.

He did not remain in the tomb; but rather this Jesus has been declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead [cf.

*Romans 1:4*].

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God [*2 Corinthians 5:21*].

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God!

He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ [*1 Corinthians 15:56, 57*].

Amen!

Throughout his apologia in the synagogue, the Apostle underlines without equivocation the centrality and the necessity both of the cross and of the resurrection.

Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days 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 [*Acts 17:2, 3*].

He explained to the worshippers in the synagogue that the Christ—the Messiah—had to suffer and rise again from the dead.

If Scripture is the basis for our service before God, then confrontation and conflict will inevitably come.

Jesus startles us with His stunning challenge.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.

I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to turn

a man against his father,

a daughter against her mother,

a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—

a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.

[*Matthew 10:34-36*]

The message of the cross divides mankind.

We are either saints or ain’ts.