AN UNPREACHED SERMON (185)
[A view of the Cumbrian town of Keswick from Lattrigg or Skiddaw.]
Last weekend I was down in the Cumbrian Lake District preaching at Lake Road Chapel in Keswick. The couple who put me up overnight lived in Penrith and told me in the car after picking me up from the station that they lived in “an upside down” house. I was immediately intrigued. Was it untidy in the extreme? Was it chaotic because they had lots of children and several dogs? I needn’t have worried. Because of the lay of the land where their house was built, it made more sense to have the sitting room, kitchen and dining room upstairs and the bedrooms on the ground floor. The views from the upstairs sitting room were wonderful. It also makes a lot of sense since the heat rises, which is a great boon in the winter.
On my journey home it set me thinking of the accusation brought against Paul and Silas when they preached in Thessalonica. “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also” (Acts 17:6). The whole incident is well recorded at Acts 17:1-9 and provides a fascinating insight into the gathering opposition the early Christians had to face as they preached the Gospel. One of the 17th cent Puritans preached a sermon on this text with his main points persuasively progressing to the main thrust of his argument.
· The world is the wrong side up
· It needs to be put the right way up
· Only Christ can do it
· Our allegiance is to Another King
It was the Greek mathematician and physicist Archimedes who proudly boasted, “Give me a fulcrum strong enough and a lever long enough and I will move the world”. He never did it, of course, but it is theoretically possible. Paul and Silas in Thessalonica, however, did achieve it with their proclamation of the Gospel. The accusation brought against them by the jealous Jews of the city was that “these men have turned the world upside down”. An exaggeration, but we get the point. Both their presence and their preaching greatly disturbed the religious authorities.
The Christian message still has the power to disturb and disrupt. There is a radical element at the heart of what Christians claim that proves disturbing and divisive to those who hear it. It turns people’s lives upside down, whether they accept or reject. But there was nothing haphazard about the way Paul went about winning the world for Christ.
THE STRATEGY PAUL ADOPTED.
His plan seems to have been to follow the Roman trunk roads system connecting all the provincial capitals. The famous Via Egnatia linked Rome with the East and ran right through Thessalonica, the second most important Macedonian city to Athens. Paul’s message was carried east and west along this road.
His strategy was very simple (are our attempts at mission outreach too complex at times?) and contained two main elements.
· Make for the cities. Once the Gospel is planted there it will allow for the evangelization of the surrounding areas.
· Head to the synagogues. It was common sense to go to the very place where people already had an interest and a hunger for God, and Thessalonica had a large Jewish community. (How much common sense do we use in our outreach programmes?).
THE METHOD PAUL USED.
We can learn a lot about how we should be missioning by looking closely at how Paul went about things.
· It was natural. “As his custom was, he went to the synagogue” (v2). Never underestimate the fact that sitting in the church pews are lots of people who have not yet given their lives to Christ. Here is a mission field on our doorstep.
· It was rational. “He reasoned with them from the scriptures” (v2). There is an intellectual side to the presentation of the Gospel. The more knowledgeable we are of the Bible, the more ammunition we will have in presentation the message. Paul was convinced that the Hebrew Scriptures pointed to Christ. We need to become familiar with the Bible because it has the answers to the questions people are asking.
· It was Christ-centred. In the two letters Paul later wrote to the Thessalonians everything has Jesus as its focus. Any so-called gospel that leaves out Christ is spurious. The death and resurrection are the key to everything, which is why he spent time “explaining and proving how it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (v3).
· It was persistent. He took the opportunity on “three Sabbaths” (v2) to deliver the same message and really hit it home. He and Silas really gave themselves to this task. Paul’s time in Thessalonica was not all that long, but he used the time wisely. So much so that when he left, there was the beginning of a thriving congregation of believers.
USING THIS APPROACH OURSELVES.
Here are a few things to think about in relation to our own outreach.
· How strategic do we see our church and premises for reaching our city, town or village?
· When did we last speak to someone in church at coffee time about the things that really matter?
· How confident are we in biblical truth to be able to get it across to others?
· Are all our church activities geared to presenting Christ?
· Are evangelism and mission persistent priorities even when things are tough?
When Paul left Thessalonica, he left behind a fledgling Christian community. He must have worried about how they would fare, which is why he sent Timothy on a fact-finding mission to find out how they were doing (1 Thessalonians 2:5, 6). He needn’t have worried; God the Holy Spirit had honoured the preaching of the Word. The makeup of the congregation was an unspecified “some who joined them”, a larger number of “devout Greek” proselytes and some “leading women of the city” (v4). Not a very promising start, yet by the 4th century Thessalonica had earned itself the title of “the orthodox city”. It had grown into a strong centre of Christian influence and importance. The early mission and meagre success had borne fruit. The strategy, method and approach had produced a lively congregation of believers.
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