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JULY 30, 2006
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Discipleship
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"A Disciple's heart"
Acts 17: 1-10
- Rex Schneider - thank you for preaching these past two Sundays.
What a gift you are to this body of believers and to the greater Body of Christ. I was so blessed to hear you preach on your second week in the pulpit. I came home from vacation ready to worship with this community and to receive the Word so well expounded so blessed and encouraged me. So thank you, dear brother!
Rex launched for us several Sundays in the book of Acts following parts of Paul's 2nd missionary journey as we ask "what does a disciple look like?" or "what does a disciple do?" and seek to be more certain of our discipleship in the process. Over the past two Sundays Rex has said that a disciple first of all is obedience to what God says - whether to go across the street or around the world, obedience characterizes a disciple.
Last week Rex unpacked the nuances of meaning of a disciple's witness showing us that our witness begins with our lives not our words! Witness is expressed in how we endure hardships, how we care for others, and how we tell the truth of the Gospel. He ended with a great question about the lives we live asking: : "Do you have a life worth watching?"
- The Bible, Old and New Testaments, exhorts us to have lives worth watching. And Paul continues this by calling his readers to imitate the way he lives. Imitate Me! Paul writes. Or again, "Live worthy of the calling you have received" he says.
Our lives preach before our words will ever have an opportunity, so Rex's challenge has stuck with me this week: "Live a life worth watching." Today we will encounter a group of people who had taken Rex's challenge to heart.
We are following Paul and Silas and their companions as they journey from Philippi stopping at Thessalonica and then traveling to Berea. At their stop in Thessalonica Paul is asked to speak in the synagogue. This may be why Paul made the synagogue the first stop in a community, for it was a "listening post" - a newcomer would be asked to share. Also at a synagogue Paul knew he would be addressing a cross section of the society. By the way people responded you can tell there were Jews and prominent Gentiles present.
You heard read that Paul spoke to those gathered at the Synagogue in Thessalonica for three weeks in a row. It says that he reasoned with them explaining and proving that the Messiah had to come, suffer, die and rise from the Dead. His message is summarized by Luke in the sentence in verse 3: "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ."
Two reactions followed this third week - one "not a few" had believed. And the other reaction: anger fueled by jealousy. Last week financial losses prompted the riot, and this time it appears to be a loss of power over lives. These Jews see their authority over others slipping as they follow this Jesus.
A riot ensues -- they cannot find Paul and his companions so drag Jason with whom Paul was staying and some of other brothers into the city square. Their shouted charges throw the city into a turmoil and Jason and the others have to pay something before going free.
Look at the behavior of these people. Have you ever been around an adult when they throw a tantrum? It is not a pretty sight. Susanna experienced it just this past week when her flight home was cancelled and grown men stood in the aisle shouted and fumed about the inconvenience.
The only people talking in this passage are these accusers - these grown adults acting like spoiled children and throwing the whole city into commotion. And all this fueled by jealousy. They are jealous of Paul. Why? Jealous perhaps because of the fact that after just three weeks Paul's message is bringing converts. But more so it is evidence of God's plan, that when Gentiles believe in Jesus, and are grafted into salvation, then the Jews will become jealous and ultimately come to faith. As Paul wrote to the Romans: "that I may arouse my own people to envy and save some of them" (11:14).
For whatever reason, their reaction produced a riot, a mock trial, people jailed for no crime and evidenced the hardness of their hearts, the unwillingness to accept the truth when plainly presented. And their need to even pursue Paul and Silas to Berea to start a riot there.
- Luke writes that the difference found in the Berean Jews was one of character.
The reactive Thessalonians were of heart, but the Bereans were more noble. They had a nobility that was expressed in how they received and tested Paul's message. In other words, they had lives worth watching.
The message had not changed between the two places, Paul had not changed, but the soil upon which the message fell was different. Rather than battling Paul and the message, they eagerly received what Paul said and tested it by going back in the Holy Scriptures. They did not react but rather acted with God's Word. In Berea the same groups of people responded to the Word: both Jews and prominent Greeks.
From their lives comes this admonition: "Be a Berean have a life worth watching."
It is a call to be noble of temperament, to test what you hear, to go back to the Word, back to the Bible, to read what is said and ask: "Does that line up with the Bible?"
The problem in all cult movements is when the followers blindly follow a dynamic leader and abandon the Spirit of the Living God and stop testing what is said with the Holy Scriptures.
- If the Holy Spirit tested your hearts today, what would He find? Would you be found more like the Thessalonians - one of shallow character, who when challenged reacts? Who does not test what you hear? Who does not have a life worth watching?
Or would you be found to be more noble like the Bereans - their hearts are more noble for they test what they hear, they return to the Scriptures as their source of truth and then accept what is confirmed as true once tested.
Now in some ways the Thessalonians and Bereans are on two ends of a huge heart continuum. Perhaps none of us are whole-heartedly Bereans, although we may wish we were, and none of us are wholly Thessalonians, thank God!
Actually the Thessalonians in this passage remind me of Fred Phelps and his deluded Midwest congregation who seek to express the love of the gospel by hating others, by picketing with anger and vehemence, by traveling from place to place to be a witness against those there as if that witness against is a stand for the love and mercy of Jesus.
But still the question of our hearts, our response to this book stands. What place does it have in our lives? How do we test what we hear?
- Some have asked me, "well, if I am to test what a hear, what Bible do I go to? I mean, there are so many out there, which one is the true Bible?"
It is a good question, so, if I am saying, Be A Berean, go to the Word, test what I say, test what you hear, then I best be telling you about the way in which the Scriptures came to us and why there are so many translations and how to respond to them.
Not many of us read Hebrew and Greek, the languages that the Scriptures were originally written in, so to go to the original languages is not possible for us.
The Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek in the 2nd Century BC. This is called the Septuagint, for it was translated by 70 scholars. By the 4th century the Bible had also been translated as a whole into Latin, the language of Rome. And for centuries the Scriptures were only found in Hebrew, Greek and Latin. During the middle ages the Bible was "owned" by the church, and literally chained in the sanctuary. Only the priests were privy to the Word.
It was considered dangerous for the common people to have access to the Word. John Wycliffe (Wickliffe) believed the Bible needed to be available in English so made this his life quest. For a period of 130 years Wycliffe's translation completed in 1380 from the Latin was the only complete Bible in the English language.
Wycliffe was followed by William Tyndale 200 years later who published a translation of the New Testament into English translated from the Greek. His work was followed by Luther who published the Old and New Testaments into German from the original languages. Finally the most famous English translation would be commissioned by King James of England in 1611, known still as the King James' Version. Since then there have been multiple additional English translations of the Bible mostly because language changes, so each translation is seeking to capture the meaning of the original in our modern way of speaking.
There are two kinds of translations: One is a word by word translation, in which the translators work with the original language and translate every word or phrase into its nearest equivalent in English. The New International Version, Revised Standard Version and New American Standard, and New King James Versions are all word by word translations. Another kind of translation is called a "thought to thought" translation, in which the translators work from the original text still and translate the "thought" to common English. The most recent translations I am aware of along these lines is the New Living Bible Translation (not to be confused with the Living Bible, which is a paraphrase), and the Message Translation. (Now, there is one translation which is a perversion, that is the New World Translation published by the Jehovah's Witnesses, which purposefully mistranslated many passages in order to lessen the deity of Jesus, however, that is the only one that bears the name Bible and is not authoritative).
Being a Berean does not mean that I read a certain translation of the Bible or that I stick to only one translation. Personally, I usually read the New Living Translation or the New International Version. Being a Berean means that I do read the Bible, that I come to the text and seek to listen for God to speak to me.
I have a paper in my office written by Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia, a bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church, entitled How to Read the Bible. In this he writes, "Our approach to the Bible is one of obedience."
Since the Bible is God's book, since it is divinely inspired, since God is the one who is sovereign over it, then whether I read a paraphrase or a favorite translation, if I am seeking to meet with God then I shall. And as God speaks to me I have decided that I will obey.
But again the key is that I do come to the Scriptures. Like the Jews in Berea continued to test what Paul was speaking by reading the Scriptures, I need to be coming to the Bible myself. To be a Berean, a person of more noble character, means that I take to the Scriptures questions I have about morality, about decisions, about life and seek God's answers. To be a Berean means that when the Bible sets clear parameters to my behavior, I do not seek to get around them, but seek to adopt them. To be a Berean is to be a person who knows they have an outside authority to which to turn in their lives.
Recently in DC there was a conference called Spiritual Activism Conference which the New York Times described as a group of religious liberals gathering to discuss "taking back religion from conservative Christians." Little came from the conference for they could not agree on anything except that they are against the religious right. However, when Tony Campolo, who loves the Bible, tried to explain the importance of following Scripture one participant retorted: "I thought this was a spiritual progressives' conference. I don't want to play the game of 'the Bible says this or that,' or that we get validation from something other than ourselves." Wow that says it all - it was a place where people were seeking to express the very Thessalonian shallowness that they had no need of God, nor of God's Word.
The Bereans were considered noble because they turned to an outside authority. They had lives worth watching for they listened to that outside authority and eagerly received what Paul taught. Are you a Berean Christian - does the Bible hold a place of importance in the landscape of your life so that it is the place to which you turn to test what you hear and to listen for God to speak and obey?
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