Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Acts: Enlarging Our Vision

By Being people of the Word Pt 2 05/10/09

Sermon Series: Acts: Enlarging our Vision

Title: ‘By being people of the Word’ pt.2   Text: Acts 17:1-15 Pt 2

Introduction: A little boy was playing with his blocks when his father entered the room. “Quiet dad, I’m building a church.” The father, thinking that he would test his son’s religious knowledge, said, “Why do we want to be quiet at church?” “We have to, the boy replied, because the people are sleeping.”

ILL: A cartoon in the newspaper showed a little boy sitting beside his father and mother at church. The little boy said to his father: “Mom wants to cook the dinner, you want to play golf, I want to play football. Why are we here?”

Why is it so hard to come to worship God on Sunday? Why is it so hard to stay connected in worship? Is it because our fire of passion for God and His Word has died out?

ILL: The country preacher Vance Havner once said: “The same church members who yell like Comanche Indians at a ball game on Saturday, sit like wooden Indians in church on Sunday.”

We can really get fired up about ball games and other things in life, but where is our fire for God and His Word?  Whatever happened to: "I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the LORD"? (Steve Shepherd)

Background: In our text this morning we’ll see Luke contrasting the Jews in Thessalonica with the Jews in Berea.

·       The Thessalonians had lost their passion for God’s Word resulting in running Paul and his group out of town when they taught God’s Word to them.

·       The Bereans, however, had maintained their passion for God’s Word resulting in the salvation of many.

Transition: Open your Bibles to Acts 17:10 (pg. 846 in the Bibles under the chair in front of you) For it’s there we will continue to see that we enlarge our vision of God by being people of the Word.

II. Acts 17: 10b-12     Breathing In God’s Word

Read: Acts 17:10b-12

The text begins by saying the Bereans ‘were of more noble character’. Luke reveals in the text that ‘more noble’ meant they had a passion for God’s Word….and that passion is revealed three ways.

A. Received God’s Word

The Bereans were ‘more noble’ because they received God’s Word…with eagerness, the text says.

·       They were open to the Word of God.

·       They had an anticipation and expectancy that they would be changed by God’s Word.

·       There was a readiness and receptivity to act upon the Word of God.

These were characteristics that helped them to hear the truth of God’s Word when present to them.

There are far too many people who come to Worship on Sunday without the expectation that God will speak to them…and when nothing is expected, nothing is experienced!

Folks,

·       We need to come to this place with the full expectation that we will not only meet with God but that He will speak to us…corporately as His Church, and individually as His children.

·       We need to come to this place with an eagerness and openness to hear what God would say to us through His Word.

·       We need to come to this place with a readiness and receptivity to act upon what God says through His Word.

If these characteristics are cultivated in us, it will place us in a position where we can hear the very Voice of God. If not, the still small Voice of God will easily be crowded out by the many other voices flooding our minds.

One way to develop and nurture these characteristics is by praying for this Worship service during the week and for your part in it. It’s called preparation.

·       Think about what goes on during this worship service. There are many hours of preparation that go into what we do on Sunday mornings…not just the Order of Worship and the message, but by the worship leader and the members of the worship team.

·       But, we can not be the only ones preparing for Sunday worship. That’s your job as well.

Read: Psalm 1:1ff  ‘Blessed is the person whose …delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.’

Transition: But how can you be certain that what you hear on Sunday by me or any other Bible teacher is true? How can  you know when something is genuine or just sounds good? That leads us to the second part of developing and maintaining passion for God’s Word…research.

B. Researched God’s Word

The Berean’s were taught by the Apostle Paul himself, and they still choose to study God’s Word themselves to see if what Paul was telling them was true.

When Paul spoke the Bereans didn’t think

·       ‘My he’s a good looking man’ or

·       ‘He can sure tell a good story’ or

·       ‘He’s so funny.’

No, they wanted to know…if what Paul said was true. Is he teaching us the Truth?

This is the same thing you should be thinking as well. While I pray I have developed a certain level of trust as your pastor over the past 12 years, I still don’t want you to take everything I say without doing your own study.

And this is especially true of the evangelists, preachers and bible teachers you watch on TV, listen to on the radio and read on the Internet. Don’t just assume what they say is true because they have a TV show, are popular, have a big church or Dr. before their name.

But at the same time, I’m not asking you to be skeptics. That’s what the Thessalonians were. The Bereans studied God’s Word, but then received it with eagerness when they heard it.

Let me give you a practical illustration. 

ILL: The young man came to his father with the question, “Dad, is the moon really made out of green cheese?” The father, busy with his newspaper, replied, “Go read the Bible and see.” Soon the boy was back with the answer, saying, “It isn’t made out of green cheese, Dad.” Interested now, the father asked, “How do you know it isn’t?" “Because the Bible says God made the moon the fourth day and that He didn’t make cows until the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:16, 24) (Steve Shepherd)

See? We can do the same thing with everything in our lives. Either directly or by implication, God’s Word speaks to our every need.

ILL: Preacher Dwight L. Moody once said: “If all the time I have spent praying for faith was put together it would be months. I thought that someday faith was going to come down and strike me like lightning. But faith did not come. Then one day I read in the tenth chapter of Romans, ‘So then faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.’ I had closed my Bible, and prayed for ‘faith.’ I now opened my Bible and began to read God’s Word, and faith has been growing ever since.” (Romans 10:17) We MUST examine the scriptures daily if we want to know God and get our fire back! (Steve Shepherd)

 

Transition: A final point about being passionate for God’s Word is that it changes us.

C. Responded to God’s Word

The text tells us that as a result of Receiving and Researching God’s Word…many Jews and Greeks believed. God’s Word will change your life…not just at that moment of salvation, but every time you receive it with eagerness and research it with diligence.

Every time!

While we can say we believe God’s Word, it has no effect

·       until we respond to it,

·       until we make it part of who we are,

·       until we breath it in as if it were the very breath of life…by the way, it is!

The Bereans wanted to hear from God’s Word because they wanted to live by God’s Word. Are you willing to do that once you hear God’s Word? That’s the real question we need to answer. That’s the challenge of Scripture.

Read: James 1:22 ‘Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.’

Doing God’s Word, living out what we read and hear from the Bible, stokes our fire of passion for God’s Word.

Transition: The Bereans believed God’s Word and their lives were forever changed…but many will not believe and will oppose the truth by all means.

III. Acts 17:13-15       Proclaiming God’s Word

Read: Acts 17:13-15

I can imagine Paul thinking….when is this going to end? Those opposed to the Truth, those less noble from Thessalonica, came to Berea and stirred up trouble for Paul and his group. So the new believers escorted Paul out of town.

But why didn’t the rest of the team go? Good question. The text doesn’t say but I do have a calculated guess.

Paul was an evangelist, that was his gift. His passion was planting churches, not just making converts. If Paul could not stay in a city to strengthen the new believers, then he wanted to move on…and he did. But he left his team in place for a while to encourage the new believers he was leaving behind. That revealed his pastor’s heart.

Conclusion

The conclusion to this message can be put in one word... Pray.

·       Ask God to give you a deep love for His Word.

·       Ask God to give you a passionate desire to study God’s Word.

·       Ask God to give you a spiritual curiosity to test the teachings of others.

·       Ask God to give you a wholehearted trust in God’s Word for every area of our lives.

Let us all ask God to make us people of the Word.