The World Turned Upside Down | Acts 17:1-15

When Paul and Silas hit Thessalonica, they did not bring an army or a political platform — they brought a crucified and risen King, and the city got turned upside down. Zach walks through what it looks like to bow to the true King, examine the Scriptures daily, and let the gospel do the same disruptive, redemptive work in Kansas City that it did two thousand years ago.

Scripture: Acts 17:1-15
Series: Living by the Spirit, Following the Way

The Way Church KC is a community of misfits & saints in the Rosedale neighborhood of Kansas City following the Way of Jesus & pushing back darkness — together. Join us Sundays or learn more at thewaykc.church.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to Sermons from the Way Church KC, a community of the citizen saints in Kansas City, following the way of Jesus and pushing back darkness together.

SPEAKER_03 0:21

Good morning. Welcome to the Way KC. We're glad you're with us. Would you stand and uh read the word of God with me? I'll read it. You guys listen. Acts 17, 1 through 15. Now, when they had passed through Amphipollis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying, This Jesus who I proclaim to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city, before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. And when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul Aberea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent off Paul on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Thank you, Glenn. Well, welcome everyone to the Waychurch KC. If we have not gotten a chance to meet yet, my name is Zach. I have the privilege of being the pastor here at the Waychurch. And um if you're newer here, we're a church plant who exists to follow the way of Jesus and push back darkness together. And it's been a fun journey doing this with friends, with family, with friends who have become family. And I'm just excited to see how God continues to move through this church family, through a body of believers coming together to do the work of the ministry, to share the gospel with the lost, to do all those things. Sorry. You guys are funny. Anywho, if this is your first time here, welcome. We'd love for you to be a part of our way family. So today we continue in our series through the book of Acts entitled Living by the Spirit and Following the Way. We've been walking verse by verse through this book for probably about a year now, maybe a little less. But it's been a fun journey. I've really enjoyed preaching through Acts and studying the scripture each week. If you have a Bible, you can go ahead and open it to Acts chapter 17. If you don't have a Bible and you'd like one, we have some for you right outside of the sanctuary doors for you to have, for you to keep, for you to mark up, take notes in, all that fun stuff. So for the last several weeks, we've seen Paul and Silas in the city of Philippi. And we've watched the gospel do what only the gospel can do. We watched the Lord quietly open the heart of a businesswoman named Lydia by a riverside. We watched Christ break the chains of a slave girl who was doubly enslaved, enslaved to her owners and enslaved to a demon. We watched God turn a midnight prison cell into a worship service. That's what we looked at last week in Acts 16. And we then saw God turn a hardened Roman heart to him. And it ended up with him, with this jailer, this Roman jailer then turning around and washing the wounds of those he had just imprisoned. So we've seen conversion, we've seen deliverance, we've seen suffering, we've seen salvation. We've watched the kingdom of Christ colliding, full force colliding with the kingdom of darkness and winning. And we've seen how God is still breaking chains today, how he is still setting the captive free, he's still bringing men and women to saving faith in Jesus. And we get to be a part of that here at the Waychurch, KC. Now, if you remember from last week, Paul and Silas didn't get to stay in Philippi. They are asked to leave the city at the end of Acts 16. And so in Acts 17, they hit the road. They traveled down one of the most famous highways of the ancient world. It was known as the Via Ignatia. This is a great Roman road that uh was across Macedonia. It was about a hundred miles in length. And it uh flowed through Amphipolis, through Apollinia, until they arrived in Thessalonica. I was practicing that word, Apollonia, today, and I like had to pause in my brain for a second to process it. Um keep in mind though, that they make this journey with their backs still torn up from the beating that they'd just taken in Philippi. Right? They were just, they'd just been stripped, they'd been beaten with rods, they'd been thrown in prison for preaching Jesus. And I don't know about you guys, but for me, like I would maybe consider a different line of work after being stripped, being beaten, and then sent to walk another hundred miles on the road. But Paul walks a hundred miles and then he does it again. Why do you think that is so? Because for Paul, the gospel is not just a hobby, it is not a side project to his life. It is the announcement that Jesus is the crucified, risen, and reigning king. And that announcement, it cannot be silenced by a beating. And in our text today, that is an announcement is going to get Paul and his friends accused of one of the greatest charges ever leveled against the church. The text says, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And I just love that as I was preparing for the sermon this week. These men who have turned the world upside down. Church family, I want that accusation to be true of us. I'll say it again. I think some of y'all didn't hear me. I want people to say that the way KC has turned the world upside down for King Jesus. Amen, Crystal. Every generation has moments where society completely reverses to an extent what previous generations assumed was true. What one generation may celebrate, another rejects, what one generation may call virtue or godliness, another may call oppression. And we live in a world that's that I think is constantly redefining reality. But what I hope that we see today is that Christianity is not just another attempt to reshape culture. The gospel isn't asking, isn't requesting a seat at the table. No, what the gospel is doing is it is announcing that the rightful king has returned to reign. And when the true king shows up, what happens is that every false kingdom gets shaken. And that's exactly the accusation. That's what's happening in Acts 17. That's why the people in Thessalonica cried. Think about it. It's a handful of traveling preachers, traveling missionaries, with no money, no army, no political power, and the empire is nervous. The Roman Empire is nervous. But here's what I want us to see this morning. We talk about the gospel, the accusation being levied is they flip the world upside down, but what I think is true is that the gospel doesn't actually turn the world upside down. Sin already did that, right? We already live in an upside down world. A world where we worship created things instead of the creator, where we often crown ourselves as king, where darkness masquerades as light. But what the gospel does is it turns a fallen upside down world effectively right side up. That's what the gospel does. And so this morning, here's our big idea. Our big idea is this the gospel of King Jesus proclaims from the scriptures, turns the fallen world upside down. One heart, one home, and one city at a time. And with that, there's three truths that I want to encourage you with this morning. First, to proclaim Christ from the Scriptures. Second, to bow to Jesus, the true King. And third, to examine the Scriptures daily. Proclaim Christ, bow to Jesus, and examine the scriptures. I'll pray and then let's dig into Acts 17. Heavenly Father, we love you, we praise you, we thank you for who you are. You are the creator. You have sent your Son Jesus. You've given us these scriptures, which is the word of God. So, Lord, today I ask that you would humble us before you, that you would humble ourselves, allow us to humble ourselves under your mighty hand. That your peace would surround us, would envelop us, would overwhelm us, that we would see you for who you truly are. God, I ask for strength today. As I preach your word, would you move me out of the way and let your words be made clear? God, I need your supernatural help. But I'm trusting in you. Lord, we love you. We praise you. We thank you for sending your son, Jesus. It's in the mighty name of Jesus we pray. And everybody said, Amen. Amen. So point number one this morning is to proclaim Christ from the Scriptures. Proclaim Christ from the Scriptures. Acts 17, verses 1 through 4, the word of God says, Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apolloniah, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women. So Paul he arrives in Thessalonica, and Thessalonica, it's not a small town. Thessalonica was the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia, which was a major port city, maybe a hundred thousand people in total, and it sat right on the Via Ignatia. That's that Roman road that I mentioned to you, which meant everything trade, news, ideas, armies, it flowed through this city. And so what the author Luke is doing is he is showing us Paul's missionary strategy. Plant the gospel in the influential cities, and it will travel down every road that leads out of them. And that's exactly what happened. If you look at 1 Thessalonians 1 through 8, Paul would later write to this church in Thessalonica that the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia. So what does Paul do when he gets there? Well, what the text says is, and Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the scriptures. So that was Paul's custom to go to the synagogue to reason with them from the scriptures, to preach the gospel. And notice the verbs that Luke stacks up in verses 2 and 3. The text says that he reasoned, that he explained, that he proved, that he proclaimed. And the word reasoned, it's an important word. We need to take note of this. It's the Greek is where we get our word dialogue. So Paul, he wasn't just lecturing at people. No, he was actively engaging them. He was taking their questions, he was fielding their questions, he was wrestling with their objections. And then we see this word explaining, and that literally means to open up. And if you were here a few weeks ago, that word should sound familiar. It's the exact same word that the author Luke used in Acts chapter 16, verse 14, when he says, The Lord opened Lydia's heart. And it's the same word used of the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24, when Jesus opened the scriptures and opens their minds to see himself in all of the Bible. So do you see, family, what Luke is doing here? Paul opens the scriptures, but God opens their hearts. That is how the gospel advances. It has never changed. And what was the content of Paul's preaching, you might wonder? Well, verse 3 says that he's preaching that it was necessary, that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead. Now we we've got to understand that to a first century Jew, a suffering Messiah was a contradiction for them. The Messiah was supposed to win in a worldly sense. He was supposed to crush Rome. He was not supposed to get crucified by Rome. In fact, the book of Deuteronomy, it says, cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. So Paul is reasoning with them from Scripture. And we don't know exactly, you know, what books of the Bible, what chapters, there weren't chapters and verses back then, but we don't know what chapters and verses he is reasoning from. But what they had at the time were what we know today as the Old Testament. And I like to think that maybe Paul took them to Isaiah 53, where the prophet Isaiah talks about the servants who would be pierced for our transgressions, which pointed to Jesus. Or maybe Paul took them to Psalm 16, where the text says that you will not let your holy one see corruption, which we see in Christ Jesus. Or maybe Paul took them to Psalm 22, where the psalmist says that the righteous one forsaken, mocked, and pierced, which is fulfilled in Jesus. And so what Paul's doing, he's setting the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth next to the Old Testament scriptures, and he says, it's him. It's him. It's this Jesus whom I proclaim to you. He is the Christ. So the cross, family, it was not a tragedy that needed to be salvaged. The cross was the plan of God from the beginning. It was necessary. Because sinners like you and like me could not be saved any other way. One theologian he puts it this way: Christ-centered preaching isn't a style preference, it's a conviction that all of Scripture finds its climax in Jesus. And here at the Way Church KC, that is what we believe. That all of Scripture is pointing to this man, Jesus Christ, and pointing to his life, his death, and his resurrection. So, what does this mean for us? Well, first, if you're here this morning and maybe you're skeptical about this Christianity thing, I want you to notice something. That Paul reasoned, he explained, he proved, he persuaded. I think so often we can look at Christianity as like a blind leap of faith into the dark. It's not just have faith and don't ask questions. No, what I what I believe and what I've seen is that the gospel of Jesus Christ, it welcomes our questions. It invites investigation, it can hold the weight of our doubts. This book can hold the weight of our doubts. And second, what I think that we see, church, is that when we share Jesus with our friends, with our coworkers, with our neighbors, our confidence is not in our cleverness, it's not in our ability to speak well or eloquently. Our confidence is in the word. You don't need a Bible degree, you don't need a seminary degree to open up the Bible with a friend. Paul opened the scriptures and God opened the hearts. You, in the same way, have a calling to open the scriptures, and as a result, you let God open the hearts. Charles Spurgeon, he was once asked about defending the Bible. He said this defend the Bible? I'd sooner defend a lion. Let it out of its cage, and it will defend itself. Scripture confirms scripture. And family, the word of God, it still has teeth. Open up the cage, let the scriptures out, right? Verse 4 tells us what happened when Paul did just that. Some Jews were persuaded, a great many devout Greeks believed, and not a few leading women. So thus a church was born in Thessalonica, a church that Paul would later say as he wrote a letter to them in 1 Thessalonians, he would later say that they became an example, they became an example to all the believers in Macedonia. But it's clear that not everyone was happy about it. And some believe, some are persuaded, some believe, but some don't. And we still see that today. Some bow to Jesus, but others don't. Some bow, but others are bowing to another king in their life. So that brings us to point number two. Bow to Jesus, the true King. Bow to Jesus, the true King. Acts chapter 17, verses 5 through 19 say, But the Jews were jealous. And taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd. And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things. And when they had taken money as security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. So verse 5, it gives us the engine, the why, the reason behind the opposition. And it's not theological, it's not scriptural, it's not based on their beliefs. It says, but the Jews were jealous. But the Jews were jealous. The crux of their opposition is jealousy. You see, in Philippi, what we saw is the gospel threatened people's money. Now in Thessalonica, it threatens people's influence. People were leaving the synagogue and they were following Jesus. And the religious leaders, they could not stand this. So what do they do? They go and recruit what the text says are wicked men of the rabble. This is literally like the loiterers of the marketplace, guys that were hanging around looking for trouble. And maybe maybe we got some people in here that used to be wicked men and women of the rabble. That's okay. But the the spirit of the Lord changes us, makes us new. But that's who's here, that's who are raising a fuss. And what they do is they form a mob, they set the city in an uproar, and they attack the house of a man named Jason, where Paul and Silas had been staying. Think about the irony here. Like, really think about the irony that we see in this text. They accuse Paul and Silas and their friend Jason of disturbing the city. But they're the ones that are starting a riot. That's ironic, right? And I think that's what we see darkness do. Darkness always projects, it accuses the light of the very thing that it is doing. And I think we still see that in our culture today. So they're looking for the wicked men of the rabble or looking for Paul and Silas, and they can't find them, so they drag Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, and they make two accusations. They bring two accusations against these men. Accusation number one, these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. And accusation number two, they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. In Luke, he calls the city officials city authorities, or in Greek, polytarchs. So for a long time there would be critics of the Bible who pointed at that word and said, see, Luke made it all up. Their title doesn't appear anywhere in classical literature. But then what we see, if you are into archaeology or into biblical archaeology, you see some cool things. Archaeologists they started digging around in Thessalonica, and they found the inscription, including one from an arch over the city's gate, bearing exactly that title, Polytarch. This precise term in this precise city for the precise office that Luke described. Luke wasn't making it up. These words in this Bible aren't made up. He was an historian, and the skeptics were the ones who had to revise their story. So, as I chase that little rabbit trail, what I want you to hear, church, is that you can trust this book. This book can be trusted. You can believe this book. You can let this book direct your life. Here's what's fascinating about the charges that are levied against these men, against these followers of the way. They are a twisted sort of exaggeration. They are wrapped around, though, a semblance of truth. Was Paul leading an insurrection against Caesar? No. In all likelihood, no. But was Paul proclaiming another king? Absolutely. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. He says, in fact, there is another king, Jesus. So in Thessalonica, this was not a small accusation. Thessalonica was a free city. It governed itself, which was a privilege that was granted by Rome. And that privilege depended entirely on loyalty to Caesar. Citizens swore oaths of allegiance to the emperor. There were imperial decrees forbidding even the prediction of a new king or a change of ruler. So when the mob begins to shout that they say that there is another king, they are accusing the Christians of treason. And if you've read the Gospels, then you know that this is the same charge that got Jesus crucified. Remember in the Gospel, they say, We have no king but Caesar. That's why verse 8 says that the people and the polytarchies are disturbed. That's why Jason has to post a security bond or essentially like bail money. This is a financial guarantee that the troublemakers would leave town. This is likely why Paul would later write that he longed to return to Thessalonica, but Satan hindered him. But let's not miss, family, let's not miss what the enemies of the gospel had just confessed. In a sense, they had understood the message better than maybe a lot of modern people do today. They understood, even those who did not believe in the gospel that was being proclaimed, they still understood that hey, the gospel, it's not a self-help program. It's not five tips for a better life. It's not a private spirituality that you keep locked away in a drawer. No, the gospel is the announcement river of a king. And if Jesus is king, if Jesus is king, then Caesar is not. If Jesus is king, then money is not. If Jesus is king, then your career is not. If Jesus is king, then your comfort is not. If Jesus is king, then your reputation is not. If Jesus is king, then your political party is not. If Jesus is king, then your addiction is not. If Jesus is king, then you are not. I think it's time that we put the crown in its proper place, that we take the crown off of our own heads and we put it on King Jesus. Amen. It comes for all of us, right? It's coming for all of us. Because everybody everywhere bows to someone or something. We've all got a lowercase K King in our lives that we bow to. The question is not and never has been, whether or not you have a throne on your heart, in your heart. The question is who's sitting on it. Many of you know my story. For years, the king of my life was addiction. I bowed to it every single day, Jeremy. It told me where to go, told me who to hurt, what to do, who to manipulate to get my way. And it was a brutal, brutal king. It demanded everything. And all it brought was shame. And then on January 20th, 2015, the Lord Jesus changed everything. King Jesus, he walked into my life and he flipped my whole world upside down. Or really, like we were talking about. He turned it right side up, right? Because here's the difference of King Jesus from every other king. Every other king sacrifices his people for the throne. Be it's a literal king or be it's a figurative king, whatever it is, be it a substance, be it a career that's the king of your life, be it money, it's sacrificing the people it's affecting for the throne. But King Jesus, he sacrificed his throne for his people. He vacated his throne while he was living on this earth for the forgiveness of his people's sin. So let me ask you the question that this text is asking us. Where in your life are you still saying that we have no king but Caesar? We have no king but Caesar. What decree of the culture, what demands of your flesh, what throne in your heart needs to be surrendered at the foot of the cross to King Jesus this morning? My hope is that we would be a people who bow to the true King. His yoke is easy, his burden is light, and his kingdom is the only one that will never fall. And family, because we are a people who bow to Jesus, the true King, then our natural response should be point number three examine the scriptures daily. Examine the scriptures daily. Verses 10 through 15 reads, The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea, also they came thereto, agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea. But Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. So under the cover of the night, the Jason and the brothers smuggle Paul and Silas out of Thessalonica, and they send them about fifty miles southwest to a town called Berea. Now, Berea, it was off the beaten path. In fact, the the Roman statesman Cicero, it's said in history, he once described it as an out-of-the-way town. So this is the kind of place that you would go when you didn't want to be found. And yet, it is this small, seemingly overlooked, out-of-the-way town that gets one of the greatest compliments that we see in the New Testament. Verse 11. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Luke says that they were more noble. A word that originally meant noble by birth, like aristocratic, like you were noble because of who you descended from. But Luke here, he's using it to describe nobility of mind, a noble sort of character. So you don't get this sort of nobility from your family tree. No, you get it from your posture toward the word of God. And notice the Bereans, their nobility, it had two parts. And what I want us to do this morning is to hold them together, to hold them in tension. First, they received the word with all eagerness. They weren't cynical. They weren't sitting back with their arms crossed saying, impress me. They were hungry. They were expectant. They were leaning in. And second, they examined the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And this word examining, it's a legal term. It's the word for a judicial investigation, for cross-examining evidence in a courtroom. So the Bereans, they were putting Paul's preaching on trial. And the judge was the scriptures. And they did it daily, not just on the Sabbath, not just when church was in session. Every single day, they were in the Word. They were people of the book. They were testing what they heard against what God had said. John Stott, a Puritan, pastor, and theologian, he observed that the Berean's greatness was precisely this combination: total openness to receive the word joined with careful scrutiny to test it. And I think that's a tension that we need to hold the scriptures in. Eagerness without examination, it makes you gullible. You'll swallow anything. Every podcast, every TikTok theologian, every smooth talker with a microphone. But on the flip side, examination without eagerness makes you cynical. You'll sit in judgment over the word instead of sitting under it. None of us want to fall in either of those ditches. But when we hold those two together intention, eagerness and examination together, well, that makes you what the Bible says is a berean. That makes you noble. That makes you a person of the book. Think about it. Think about how we treat everything else in life. If you get a suspicious text saying your bank account is locked, click here. You don't just click, right? I don't know. I I don't. I'm like, I get that text, and it's like, that's probably a spam message. Like, I don't click the link. No, a check. I verify. I call my bank or I go to the trusted bank app or bank website. You know, we we fact-check our packages, right? We some at times fact-check the news, we fact-check what we hear about sports, we read reviews before we buy that um, you know, new coffee pot or whatever it is for you. But let's be honest here. How many of us will let a stranger on the internet shape our view of God without ever once opening our Bible to see if these things are so? Like, let's be real. Church, I want you to hear me on this, and I I mean this with my whole heart. Like, you can you can check me on it. Don't ever take my word for it. Don't ever take my word for what I'm preaching. I'm your pastor. I love you, I love you, I love you. I work hard to study what the scriptures say, I pray over these sermons, and I stand up here every week with my desire, my prayer to be faithful to the text. But I am not the authority. The book is. So if I ever preach something that doesn't line up with Scripture, the Bereans, they would check me on it. And what I want to share with you is that you have permission to check me on it as well. And I would hope that you do that. Because if you're doing that, what that means, hopefully, is they're getting in the word daily. Not out of guilt, but out of eagerness, out of a deep desire to feast on God's word. Come to it like the Bahrains did, expecting to meet God in it. Verse 12, we see the fruit of what happens when you're examining and eager for God's word. Many of them therefore believed. Many of them therefore believed. When eager hearts meet open Bibles, people get saved. When eager hearts meet open Bibles, the lost are saved. Every time the word goes to work, the Holy Spirit goes to work. And the word's gonna do what the word's gonna do, and the Spirit's gonna do what the Spirit's gonna do. This passage ends. The way that this whole chapter has gone, the agitators from Thessalonica chase Paul down, even in Berea, even in this out-of-the-way town, stirring up the crowds, and the brothers send Paul on to Athens. Opposition follows the gospel everywhere it goes. We've seen that throughout Acts. But notice, not only does opposition follow the gospel, but so does fruit. So does fruit. A church planted in Thessalonica, a church planted in Berea. Hostility, opposition, it cannot stop the word of God. It takes hold and it keeps moving down the road. So as we close, Ashton, you can come up here and close us in worship. As we land this morning, I want you to look one more time at that accusation in verse 7. If you got your Bible, like fix your eyes on it. Fix your eyes on it. And Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus. Do you know where we've heard that accusation before? At a trial in Jerusalem, before a Roman governor named Pilate. What the Gospel of Luke says is we found this man misleading our nation, saying that he himself is Christ, a king. You see, Jesus was accused of the very same crime as the church in Thessalonica. He was accused of treason. He was accused of claiming a kingdom. Except in his case, there was no Jason to post bail. There was no escape by night. There was no city of refuge down the road. And he did not run. They mocked his kingship. They dressed him in a robe of purple. They pressed a crown of thorns on his head, and they nailed a sign over his cross that said, The King of the Jews. And they meant it as a joke. But heaven, heaven did not take it as a joke, right? Because Paul's whole message in Thessalonica was this: that it was necessary, it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise. It was necessary. The king had to die. Because his people were the ones guilty of treason. Every one of us, every single one of us, no one is exempt from this. Every one of us has bowed to something else. Every one of us has bowed to other kings. Every one of us has lived for our own throne. And what the Bible calls that is sin. And what the Bible tells us is that the wages of sin is death. But on the cross, the true king took the traitor sentence. And on the third day, this true king he walked out of the grave. And the world has never been the same. And what I want you to hear this morning is that true king can make it so your world is never the same. He can flip your whole entire life, your whole heart upside down, or rather right side up. That's the message that walked into Thessalonica. That's the message that turned the world upside down. Not an army, not a political movement, a crucified and risen king who saves rebels and turns them into a family. So, church, my encouragement for you this morning is to proclaim Christ from the scriptures. Open the book with your friends, with your family, with your neighbors, and trust God to be the one that opens the hearts. Bow to Jesus, the true King. Drag every rival throne in your heart before Him and surrender it. Lay it down at the foot of the cross. And lastly, examine the scriptures daily. Examine the scriptures daily. If you don't have a personal quiet time, a personal time with the Lord, my encouragement to you would be to do that, to spend time in God's Word, to receive the Word with eagerness and to test everything, filter everything in your life through God's Word. And if you're here this morning and you have never trusted in Jesus, or maybe you've been in a season of wandering, maybe you spent a few days in the wilderness. Maybe you've known Jesus and you've wandered away. Hear this clearly. He turned my whole world upside down 11 and a half years ago. And he's been setting it right side up ever since. So come to him, trust in him, bow to him. Not because you have to, but because he is the only king who ever died for his people. I'll leave you with a quote, and then we'll close in worship. I've probably quoted this in a sermon a handful of times, but in The Lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe, Susan is asking Mr. Beaver about Aslan the Lion. Mr. Beaver says, Aslan is a lion. The lion, the great lion. Ooh, said Susan. I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. Mr. Beaver replies. Safe? Who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good. He's the king, I tell you. Heavenly Father, we love you, we praise you, we thank you for who you are. We thank you that you are King, Jesus. You are the King of our lives. We remove whatever idol, whatever lowercase K King is on the throne of our lives, and we put you there. We place you in your rightful place. Jesus, we thank you for the redemptive work you did on our behalfs on the cross, for dying for the forgiveness of our sins so that we could have life in your presence. Lord, we bow to you. We turn to you. We confess that you are King. Would you make us new as we await the day when you will return and make all things new? It's in the mighty mighty name of Jesus I pray. And all God's people said, Amen.

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