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All right, we're here in Acts chapter 17, and every year we have our New Testament Bible reading challenge. So I always preach a sermon pretty much right before, trying to motivate us to read through the Bible. And especially when we get to holidays, it's great to spend time with family, but the reality is we kind of get out of our normal routines. And even if you're still doing your Bible reading, it's just kind of muggle-o when it's happening, where it's happening. It's kind of all over the place. I mean, that's just kind of the way it works during the holidays. So it's kind of nice when you start the new year to kind of just get back into your normal routine of everything. And next week, I'll be preaching on Mars Hill for the documentary on idolatry. So it kind of just makes sense, with Acts 17-11 being a very famous verse on Bible reading, to preach on the first half here today, and then the second half for the sermon on idolatry next week. And so let me just read you Acts 17-11 real quickly before I get into the rest of the sermon. But in Acts 17-11, the Bible reads, these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. And that's a great verse. It's a pretty famous verse. But I want to just kind of spend more time just going verse by verse through these first 15 verses to kind of understand that verse a little bit more deeply and maybe can have a bigger impact on all of us. So in verse number one, let's start by talking about the church of Thessalonica that is mentioned here, starting in verse one, the Bible reads, now when they had passed through Amphipolis in Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews. And so Paul, in his missionary journey, he goes through Thessalonica and he's preaching the word of God. And it says here in verse two, and Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures. So Paul just kind of had a manner when he would go to a new city, he would just kind of go to the public places where he could run into people. And in the synagogue, he just ran into lots of people he could talk to. It's kind of similar how when we do soul-winning, we often go to parks because there's a lot of people. And if we were going to do a soul-winning marathon in a new town, what would be our manner? Where's the park, right? To talk to a lot of people, okay? And Paul's a little bit more hardcore because he goes in the synagogue. I often joke about, hey, let's go inside the Catholic Church to get people saved or whatever. Paul is actually doing it, right? He's going inside of a synagogue. And he does this over the course of three Sabbath days. When it says his manner is, it's not saying his manner is doing this over three weeks. His manner is to go into the synagogue. It's just persecution causes them to only be able to do it over the course of three Sabbath days, which is anywhere from pretty much 15 to 27 days, depending on whether it's full weeks or whatever. But three actual Sabbath days, he was actually in there preaching the word of God. And it says, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered and risen again from the dead. Now, when we think of Jesus, we think Jesus Christ. But the word Christ is the same word for Messiah. So when you're saying Jesus Christ, you're saying that Jesus is the Christ or Jesus is the Messiah. So what Paul's showing them is in the Old Testament scriptures, here's the proof that the Messiah, the Christ, was going to suffer and die and rise again. So the first thing he shows them is, hey, the Old Testament showed us that the Messiah was going to die and rise again from the dead. Then it says, and that this Jesus whom I preached on to you is Christ. So first he proved to them that the Messiah was going to die and rise again. Then he proves to them that Jesus is the Messiah. He is the one that actually died, was buried, and rose again as the Old Testament prophesied about the Messiah or the Christ. And some of them believed and consorted with Paul and Silas and of the devout Greeks a great multitude and of the chief women, not a few. So some of the people believe and they get saved and they're still happy that Paul and Silas got them saved and they talk to them, they fellowship, they learn from them. And then it says of the devout Greeks, a great multitude. And so that could be the Greeks that have this multiplicity of gods, they end up getting saved. It could be other people that are devout in another religion, but those that are in Greece that are very devout, a lot of them end up getting saved, a great multitude. And of the chief women, not a few. It's kind of an old fashioned way to say a lot. So if it's not a few, it's a lot, right? So of the chief women, not a few. Chief women would be people that have some prominence. And of course, you know, the most receptive people are just your ordinary everyday people, but it's also true that there are people that get saved that have a lot of money or there are people that get saved that might be high up in politics or government or whatever. I mean, the Word of God can reach other people as well. Obviously, that's not the first people you're going to reach, but you know, the Word of God can reach a great multitude of different people. But the Jews, which believe not, move with envy. And imagine that. It's the Jews that get mad and end up just destroying everything. Isn't it like that everywhere where they're preaching the gospel? So the Jews that don't believe this, because of course, he's showing them that the Messiah was going to die. And one of the main groups, I mean, he's going to a synagogue, so one of the main groups of the people he's showing are people that believe in the Old Testament, but they don't realize or believe that Jesus is the Messiah. But people that would say, I believe in the Old Testament, and he's showing them, hey, the Messiah was going to die. Now, a lot of people when they heard that, they ended up changing their mind and getting saved, right? So there'd be people that grew up back then in the Jewish culture that had a lot of the stories and information, but they had never actually believed on the coming Messiah. And then when Jesus came, you know, they didn't get saved. But as Paul is explaining what took place, a lot of them end up crossing over, okay? When Jesus was preaching the gospel, there were a lot of Jews that ended up getting saved. It's the ones that didn't, that got so angry and envious and mad that end up having him put to death. Why is it they do this? Because they're envious. They're mad that people are following Jesus and not them. They're mad because they're not prominent anymore, because people are listening to Paul here in this story, just as they listened to Jesus when he was preaching when he was alive. And it says, took unto them certain lewd fellows of the baser sword. Now, what does that mean, lewd fellows of the baser sword? Lude basically means crude, and baser would be people that are low class. So you're looking at people that are getting arrested, getting drunk, destroying stuff, and just acting like a bunch of losers and derelicts. So the Jews are trying to rile up a crowd of people to cause problems, and they get a bunch of losers and bad people to do it, right? And not all these people are necessarily bad as in children of the devil, but they're very low class. They have no character. They have bad morals. They're getting arrested. They're getting drunk. They're doing stupid stuff. And it's just like, this is the group of people that they get on their side, because these are people that have probably been arrested before. It's not really that big of a deal to get arrested again to them, right? Yeah, sure. I'll go and assault Jason's house. No big deal. I mean, I've done that to other people before, right? So they get a bunch of losers to come on their side to do this. And gathered a company and set all the city on an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. Now, the Bible does not really tell us more than it says, assaulted the house of Jason, what takes place. But in my own mind, what I would imagine is they're just breaking the doors, breaking the windows. I don't think they just grab the people and beat them up. I think they destroyed everything in the house. They assault the house of Jason. I would say it would be all the people inside, but also probably everything. They just show up and they're like smashing bottles or whatever and just destroy the place and just tear things up. And of course, then they're going to beat up Jason and these other guys. They're assaulting them. That would include the people as well, right? So they probably just drag them out, throw them out the door. They kick them, they hit them, whatever. And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren under the rulers of the city. Now what's going to take place is if a group of people go into someone's house and they're dragging them up and beating them up, people might naturally assume that these people must be bad people. It's like, why are all these people beating them up? When in reality, all Jason did was allow Paul to preach at his house. I mean, he didn't do anything. He's just a normal believer, maybe has a nice house. And then all of a sudden he just gets attacked for allowing Paul to be with him, right? And here's the reality. If there were attacks that are going to take place at our church, which we haven't experienced major ones in our history, but most likely it's going to come to me and my family first because I'm the leader of the church. But realize that as a follower, the same could take place to you as well. I mean, I understand in our room, a lot of people have gone through some persecution from relatives that are Catholic maybe and other people that don't like the things you believe. They don't like what our church stands for. And you just have to realize that there is a cost to serving God. And it means that sometimes you are without the camp. And it says in verse six, and when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren under the rulers of the city, crying, these that have turned the world upside down are come hither also. So they beat up Jason and assault the house expecting to find Paul and he's not there, right? They can't find Paul, they can't find Silas, but they just say, well, we'll just arrest Jason for letting him be at the house. And it says these that have turned the world upside down. So what they're saying is, you know, outside of this area, this group of people, Paul the apostle and the soul owners that are with them, they turn the world upside down. You know what? Honestly, that is a very true statement that Paul the apostle literally turned the world upside down. Now, obviously we believe in the entire Bible at our church, but you know, there's people that will say they believe the Bible, but they hate Paul the apostle. There are people that say, I believe in all the books of the New Testament except the epistles. And Paul, there's a lot of people, what they're going to say is this, well, you know, Jesus taught one thing and then Paul taught other doctrines, right? He brought in all these false things. He's a phony. He's a fake. And a lot of the people that are like that are people that are like tied together with the Hebrew Israelites or whatever, you know, Jewish beliefs. And they try to match the Old Testament and New Testament and say, no, no, no. I mean, Jesus never got rid of the laws. It's just that Paul brought in this false doctrine, but he's a bad person. When I was in college, I took a class I had, you know, electives I could take. This is the hardest class I ever had in college, biblical ethics. This was a hard, hard class. And I regret it immediately after I took that class. And I took the class thinking, you know, whatever, I'll take an elective. It's like, you know, it'll be kind of interesting. And then I regretted it because I realized my teacher was a hardcore liberal that hated the Bible. And so he's teaching a class on biblical ethics. Kind of the examples of this, it's like our first paper we had to write, we had to write a paper on a controversial topic. So I wrote on abortion, right? And I quoted the Bible a lot of times for everything that I said, and I got a D minus on the paper. And he said, he's like, you need to quote other sources than just the Bible. And it's like, you know, he criticized like everything. And I'm just thinking, you got to be kidding me because I enjoy writing. It's something I do. You know, I do poems sometimes, but even like writing short stories and stuff, I enjoy it. It's like, I'm an okay writer. It's like a D minus. It's like, but he didn't like what I said. So the next paper, I quoted a bunch of, you know, Bible commentators. And he's like, you quoted too much of commentators. I'm just like, you got to be kidding me. Now, I did make a mistake in the class. I got in an argument with him about the rapture. And it was like a debate in the class and everything. It's like the next class, like all the true Christians were actually in one corner. We're all here. And then everybody else that like hates the Bible is just like in other corners. It's very interesting. But I got to see in that class barely, but it was a hard class. But my point is this. My teacher had gone to seminary, I think he said in a Methodist seminary. And he told me that when he was in school, his seminary teacher taught him or said that if he ever met Paul the Apostle in real life, he would kill him for being a racist. I mean, this is what he told us in class. Like his seminary professor said he would have killed Paul the Apostle if he met him in real life. And I'm just thinking, what did I get myself into? I should have taken Calculus 25. Why did I take, you know, biblical ethics? I mean, it was a hard class, right? But there are a group of people that will claim they believe the Bible, but they hate the writings of Paul. Everything that Paul said was false. And the reason why is because Paul had a massive impact and that is indisputable. And so they get very mad at a lot of the things that Paul says. And so Paul literally, along with the other soul winners, they turned the world upside down. Started churches everywhere, right? Verse 7, whom Jason hath received, and these all do contrary the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus. Now verse 7 is one of these statements that is true and it's a lie at the same time. This is 100% the truth and it is 100% a lie. Because as Bible believing Christians, if you were to ask me, you know, who do you follow? I would say, well, I follow God. He's the greatest and highest authority. I follow God. And who's your king? Well, Jesus Christ. The King of Kings, right? That's a true statement. But I also believe that I should obey the rules of the country. And so we don't have a king, but we have a president. And I would say, yeah, you know, I'm a law abiding citizen. I go along with the rules that President Marcos in the Philippines has. I mean, people that are serving God, they're not the kinds of people that are getting arrested for shoplifting, right? It's like if you are actually serving God, you're very unlikely to get arrested for breaking the law or doing something bad. And we don't agree with all the laws that are out there, but we try to just follow the rules that there are, right? You know, just get along, not cause any problems. So people that are Bible believing Christians, they're good members of society. They don't cause problems. You say, who are the people that cause problems? Certain lewd fellows of the baser sort. The ones on the Jew side, they're the ones that are getting arrested. And they're like, these people here, they say they've got another king than Caesar. It's like, you're the ones that are getting arrested for shoplifting. But then they're trying to make it sound like it's the Christians that are doing this. So technically it's true, right? Yes, we have another king than Caesar. But if you are a Bible believing Christian, we also believe what the Bible says about obeying the powers that be, you know, or obey, you know, the laws of the land. And in general, you know, we obey the laws of the land. Now the Bible talks about praying for those that are in authority that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. The reason why it mentions godliness and honesty together is because sometimes there can be rules in a government that cause you to basically be at odds with these two statements. I want to be godly above anything, but I want to do it in honesty. You say, what do you mean? If the law became illegal to read the Bible, we should still read the Bible, right? So if they're going to arrest you, it's like, well, did you read the Bible today? I would say no, even though I did, right? And the Bible does show instances where lying is okay for protection purposes. Think of Rahab the harlot. That's a whole other sermon. But here's my point. I don't want to have to be dishonest in serving God. I want to be able to go soul winning and be honest and say, yes, I went soul winning. But of course, if someone's going to arrest me or kill me, it's like, hey, did you go soul winning? Did you baptize someone? We're going to put you to death. It's like, I want to be able to be godly and honest at the same time, right? And not have these things be at odds with one another, okay? And so, but in general, if you're a Bible believing Christian, you're going to obey the laws of the land. You're going to be a good member of society, a good citizen. Verse eight, and they troubled the people and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So people are worried. They say, wait a minute. I mean, they've turned the world upside down. I mean, they're not obeying the laws of the land. What are they going to do? Are they going to like steal from us? Are they going to rob us? I mean, it's like, they assault your house and they make it seem like you're going to assault other people's houses. But that's what they do, right? Verse nine, and when they had taken security of Jason and of the other, they let them go. When it says they took security, basically they hold them to figure out, okay, what's the information? What's true? Then they let them go because they've done nothing wrong. What is the crime that Jason committed? Nothing. Paul the apostle preached at his house. That's not illegal. Did he steal anything? No. So basically they hold them and then it's like, okay, well, we have no reason to keep them. He didn't do anything wrong. And then they let them go. Okay. This is all in Thessalonica, which is a pretty famous area in the Bible. Now go to 1 Thessalonians chapter one. 1 Thessalonians chapter one. Now what I believe is that when Paul shows up in Thessalonica, they basically are soul winning. They're having church services or get togethers. And then basically at some point along this way, a formal church gets established. Paul is going to flee the area, but they've got the group of people that are left and they're meeting, they're having services. But when you think of the church of Thessalonica, when you think of the Thessalonians, ask yourself this question, was this a good church or an okay church? Good church or bad church? Well, let's see what it says in 1 Thessalonians chapter one, verse one. Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus honor the church of the Thessalonians, which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ, grace beyond you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father. Now verse three, is that a positive thing that Paul's saying or a negative? Positive. He is complimenting the church of Thessalonica, right? Drop down to verse number six. And he became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost. What is the affliction that they received the word of God in? I think we just read that in the book of Acts, right? They had a lot of affliction. I mean, they're preaching there and what's taking place? They're getting arrested immediately, right? Jason houses these people to preach. They preach the word of God and now all of a sudden they're getting assaulted. They're getting arrested. All these things are taking place. So when Paul came into town and the other group, they received the word in much affliction. Affliction immediately came when the word of God came to them, right? Then it says in verse seven, so that ye were in samples to all that believe in Macedonia and Achaia. Why were they in samples? Because they had affliction and yet they were joyful. And then everybody saw this and they said, man, this church of Thessalonica, they're getting the word of God and they're joyful even though they're getting persecuted, they're getting arrested, their houses are getting destroyed, and yet they're happy because they're serving God and they're doing right. They didn't have a bitter and bad attitude about problems that came our way. And that can teach every one of us because when you start serving God, sometimes things don't go perfectly in your life. Sometimes a lot of family rejects you. Sometimes a lot of old friends get mad at you. It's just the way that it goes. And what I would say is, I doubt that you got arrested for coming to church. I doubt you got assaulted or beat up for coming to church. So I would say our affliction is a pretty light one just because you have some family that might persecute you or mock you or whatever. Verse eight, for from you sounded out the word of the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place or faith the God word is spread abroad so that we need not to speak anything. So in verses six through eight, is it positive or negative what he says about the church? Very positive. Not just positive. What he says is very positive. You say, but yeah, but Paul's like a Joel Osteen, right? A positive only preacher. He's always positive to all the churches. Have you read the book of 1 Corinthians? Have you read the book of Galatians? Because he's not so positive to the church of Corinth. He's not so positive to the church of Galatia. And even other churches that he says good things, I don't think he's as positive to. He is very positive to the church of Thessalonica. So when you see the church of Thessalonica, there's no doubt this is a good group of believers. This is a good group of people, good church. They're zealous. Their faith is spread abroad. Even though they're getting affliction, they have joy. They're serving God. He says very, very positive things about the church of Thessalonica. Now turn to Acts 17. So that's the Thessalonians or the church of Thessalonica. So after he's in Thessalonica, due to the persecution, he's going to head to Berea. Now Berea, if you look on a map, and you know, at least as far as I know, because I looked at a Bible map, assuming this is accurate, Berea is about 81 kilometers away from Thessalonica, and it's almost straight west, but it's a little bit lower. And I get it. Okay, straight west. There you go. Okay, for your direction and down. So it's mainly west and a little bit south. Okay, 81 kilometers away, 50 miles. And 50 miles, you know, obviously you can't hop in a car and do it in one day, but that's not that far even in those days. In a few days, they could do it definitely less than a week. You know, I don't know the exact amount of time, but basically they head to Berea where there's another group of people that are trying to serve God. So they got the church in Thessalonica, and they're going to Berea as they get persecuted in Thessalonica. Verse 10, and the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night on to Berea, who coming there there went into the synagogue of the Jews. Because remember, they're trying to arrest Paul and Silas, and they can't find them, so at nighttime when no one's going to be looking, they send them away because it's going to be safe. And you would think that they learned their lesson. They were in Thessalonica, and they went into the synagogue of the Jews, and they got a lot of people saved, but they got persecuted. And so what do they do when they come to the next town? They go into the synagogue of Berea. Why? Because that's just where they're going to get a lot of people saved. They go to public places. They're not trying to be quiet about it. They're not trying to hide it. They go to a public place where there's a lot of people where they can get a lot of people saved. Verse 11, these were more noble than those in Thessalonica. According to that statement, these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, is the Bible saying that the Bereans are better or worse than Thessalonians? Better. And that's not really meant to be an insult to the Church of Thessalonica. It's more of a compliment to the Bereans because he compliments the Church of Thessalonica. There's a lot of good things to be said about the Thessalonians, but they're not as noble as those in Berea. So what he's saying is that the group in Berea is actually better than the church in Thessalonica. Now why are they better? They do two things. In that they receive the word with all readiness of mind and search the scriptures daily whether those things were so. The first thing they do is they receive the word of God with all readiness of mind, and the second thing is they search the scriptures to see whether those things are so. Go to 1 Kings chapter 10. 1 Kings 10. So what this shows us is we need to be ready to receive the word of God, and we need to search the scripture to see whether those things are so. Receiving the word of God is something you can do when you're reading the Bible, but of course I think the main application he's saying is that when they heard Paul the Apostle preach, they had a ready mind, and then they searched the scripture whether those things were so. Kind of reminds me of 1 Kings chapter 10 when the queen of Sheba comes to visit Solomon. This is what it says in 1 Kings 10 verse 6. And she said to the king, it was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom. Howbeit I believed not the words until I came and mine eyes had seen it, and behold the half was not told me. Thy wisdom and prosperity exceeded the fame which I heard. Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee and that hear thy wisdom. You know, the queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon, and when she visited Solomon, it was not just Solomon that impressed her. The works that were being done impressed her, and one of the things she highlights is the people impressed her. She went, and one of the things she says is, hey, I saw the people, and you're giving out this wisdom, and people are happy. They're happy to be hearing the Word of God. They're happy to be learning. They're happy to sit there and receive the Word of God. They were ready, and they did it with a good attitude, and they were happy. Now look, I grew up in a pretty boring church. You know, it was very different than this. It was a Protestant church where there's all these traditions and a lot of different doctrines that obviously we don't believe here, specifically on salvation, but a lot of different things. And I can tell you, if you were to take a picture or a video of the crowd during church services, there are no smiles. Nobody's happy at all. I'm sure that you'll get kicked out if you laugh or whatever. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, I remember in the U.S. they have the EWTN channel, which is like the Catholic channel. I don't know what it stands for, but, you know, it's the Catholic channel. And I remember just flipping through channels, you know, when I was younger. And sometimes you land on the Catholic channel, and they're like saying, you know, Hail Mary, full of grace. And you see all these nuns, and they are so miserable. It's like, Hail Mary. I can't even do this. It's like, Hail Mary, full of grace. You can tell they're not happy, right? Well, I mean, that's obviously not the way that it's meant to be. And what the Queen of Sheba said is, hey, they were there listening, but they were doing it with a good attitude. They were happy. They wanted to hear the Word of God preached. And one thing that we need to do is be ready to receive the Word of God. Have a ready mind. Have a good attitude. Be happy to be in the house of God, okay? Go to Proverbs chapter 2. Proverbs 2. Now, the way I look at it, there's three categories of things that you hear during a sermon, okay? The first category are things that, when you hear it, immediately when you hear it, you know 100% for sure that it's correct. You're fully persuaded. You believe it without a question. An example is this. If I were to preach and say, hey, salvation is a free gift. You don't have to search the scriptures. Let me see whether or not that's true, because you already believe that. You already know that. You're already saved. It's something you've studied out. You know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. So when I say it, immediately it's like, absolutely. Now, when you're new to church, a lot of the things you're hearing, you're just not really sure on. So when you're new to church, a lot of the things you hear are things that you're just kind of like, I don't know. I mean, I've never heard that. I haven't thought about that before, right? Obviously, the more you're here, a lot of the things you hear, you're probably thinking, yes, that's correct. I already know that. I've already studied that. That's completely correct. But even if you've been here for a long time, there are going to be certain things that I say that you might be like, that's interesting. It makes a lot of sense, but I cannot be 100% for sure because I just heard it, right? There's no doubt, even when I went to good churches, that sometimes I would hear things preached where it made a lot of sense, but I was like, you know what? I need to search that for myself because I've never searched it. It makes a lot of sense. That seems to be correct, but let me go home and search the scripture for myself to see whether it's correct. And then the third category, which should not be a lot of things, but maybe you've studied something out before and I preach something and you just disagree with it. You've already studied it. You've already thought about it before and you just say, I don't agree with that. Now, look, if everything I'm preaching, you disagree with, then obviously you're at the wrong church because you should go to a church that you agree with the things that are being preached. But I would say that there's no church that you're going to agree with every single thing about. You're never going to find that. There's plenty of things in the Bible that people are going to have different opinions on and that's perfectly fine. I don't expect everybody to believe every single thing that I ever say in this church. So here's the thing about this. You have these three categories of things. And so most things, you hear it and you're like, that makes sense, right? I believe that, right? It makes sense. And then there could be other things that you're not really sure about and then other things maybe say, well, I don't really agree with that. Now, what I always ask as a preacher, and I think every pastor preacher would say this, if I say something that you're either not sure on or you feel like is not really correct, I would ask you to search the scriptures to double check and not just kind of assume. Even if you have an idea coming into the sermon and I say something opposite, I would say, hey, you know what? You ought to double check it, right? And I would do that. I would be at churches. Sometimes I'd hear things I didn't agree with and then I would say, well, you know, let me double check it, right? Let me make sure that I know what I'm talking about, that I'm not wrong, or at least let me be able to answer, you know, in the future if this topic comes up, why I believe what I believe, okay? And here's the thing about this. This is Paul the Apostle. This is the guy that you would say outside of Jesus Christ is the greatest preacher, right? This great evangelist who did all these things and you know what he said? He's like, what I was really happy about with the Bereans is not only did they receive the Word of God with all readiness of mind, but then it's like after the service, I saw them like looking in their Bibles like, man, this is interesting. Let me double check this for myself, right? He was very amazed by the fact that they were not only hearing the Word of God with all readiness of mind, they were also searching the scriptures whether these things were correct. Now, when it comes to our church, I would say that the main focus of our church is on the preaching of the Word of God. It's not on all the programs we have. It's not on the music ministry. There's a lot of things we have at church that are good things and other churches might spend more time and energy on, but when it comes to our church, the main thing we think of is the preaching. If I preach a short sermon, that means it's 40 minutes long, right? At a lot of churches, that would be a long sermon. I give a lot of Bible. I give a lot of information. We do a lot of talking, a lot of verses. That's kind of the main focus of our church during our service is the preaching of God's Word, right? Now, one of the things that's important is when you come to church, you have a ready mind. Now, a lot of churches, I'm not really sure why people show up, right? I mean, there's a lot of churches where it's not focused on what you learn, and the Bible says church is meant to be the pillar and ground of the truth. You come to church, you're meant to hear the Word of God preached. I don't really know why a lot of people go to church. Now, if you go to this church, I understand why. At a lot of churches, maybe they're going for the music ministry. Maybe they're going for friendships. Maybe they're going out of obligation, but it's not being ready to hear the Word of God preached. It's for other reasons, right? I think it's great that at our church, I look around, I see people that are paying attention. They're interested. They're learning. They're excited, but you also need to go home and search the scriptures for yourself. You need to go home and make sure that what I'm saying is correct and make sure that you're learning things on your own. Most of what you learn at church should not be from me. You say, well, who's it going to be from? The Holy Spirit of God and your personal Bible reading. That is where most of your information should be learned. It's through your own personal study of reading and memorizing with the Holy Spirit of God actually teaching you. I can say that most of what I've learned is from personally reading the Bible. Now, of course, at church, you do get to learn a lot of great things and you get motivated, but you should be learning in your personal free time by reading the Word of God, by memorizing the Bible, by having a personal walk with God. The Bereans, they searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Proverbs chapter 2, Proverbs 2, verse number 1, the Bible reads, My son, if thou wilt receive my words and hide my commandments with thee, so that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom and apply thine heart to understanding. Yea, if thou Christ after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver and searches for her as for hid treasures. Remember how it said earlier, search the scriptures? They heard the Word of God with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures whether those things were so. Here in Proverbs 2, it talks about getting wisdom, right? If somebody is searching for gold, they will search and put all this energy and effort. And the Bible is saying, you ought to have that same zeal as a believer with saying, hey, you know what? I want to search for the hidden treasures. I want to search for the wisdom that's found in God's Word. And look, when you read the Bible and you memorize the Bible, I promise you, there is a lot of wisdom. There's a lot of hidden treasure found in this book that can benefit your life. Verse five, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 10. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. You know, what's interesting about this is that if you were to talk about the Church of Thessalonica, about the Thessalonians, if I were to ask you, hey, can you tell me something about the Church of Thessalonica? You might have a lot of things to say. You might say, hey, you know, it talks about the rapture in 1 Thessalonians, and then it talks about the rapture in 2 Thessalonians. You know, it talks about the Antichrist. And that also shows you that he's talking to them about the end times. He's giving them the deep things of the Bible because they were mature, right? But it's like you might bring up those things. I mean, there's a lot of things you would bring up in 1 and 2 Thessalonians that have a lot of great information. If I were to ask you about the Bereans outside of Acts 1711, what would you tell me about them? Nothing. Because there's nothing else in the Bible about them. This is it. You say, what's your point? Here's my point. You've got a really good church by all indications based on what Paul said and everything in the Bible, and then you've got a no-name group of people that nobody knows about, except for one verse in the King James Bible, Acts 1711. If it were not for that one verse, no one would ever know anything about Berea. If I brought up Berea, you'd be thinking, Berea's tacos, right? That's the only thing about Berea you would even know. You would never know about this area of Berea. You'd be like, well, who are they? They're a bunch of no-name people, and yet what Paul said is, this group of people that have no name, no reputation, nobody knows them. You know what? This is actually a more noble group than this awesome and amazing group of Christians and church over here. And what that shows you is that you honestly just really don't know how God views things. I mean, we have people at our church. At our church, we've had people that used to work overseas. There's just different soul-winning clubs, and Hong Kong and Singapore are kind of the two areas I think about. And it's like, they didn't have a church to go to, but they would just meet together and go soul-winning. And it's like, hey, you know what? God might have looked down and said, nobody really knows who these people are compared to a church that has sermons online and stuff, but maybe God looked down and said, hey, you know what? They're more noble. It's like, we don't know. I don't know, right? And the thing is, it doesn't tell you based on how popular or how well-received you are or what reputation, what God actually thinks about you. Here's what it says in 2 Corinthians 10 verse 12. For we dare not make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measuring themselves by themselves and comparing themselves among themselves are not wise. The Bible says, comparing is a foolish thing to do, and it's true on an individual level. It's also true on a church level as well. Now look, our church is a church that within our kind of Christianity, we have a bit of a reputation. Not a major one, but we have a bit of one where people might know who we are a little bit. There might be other groups of people that are serving God that nobody knows who they are. It's a bunch of just four or five people living in an area that don't even have a church, but they meet together, they go soul winning. And God might say, you know what? This group of people that nobody knows about, they're actually more dedicated than this other group that you would think because they have this big reputation. Of course, we don't know. And honestly, it doesn't even matter because we worry about what we do. We worry about our church. We worry about ourselves individually and whatever rewards we get at the judgment seat of Christ, praise God, whatever rewards anybody else gets, praise God. Right? But what God's showing you is this group in Berea, it's like no name, no reputation. And yet he very clearly said they were more noble than those in Thessalonica. Now turn your Bible to Acts 17. Acts 17. Acts 17. Now look, obviously there are certain marks to determine success when it comes to a church. I mean, if there's a church of a hundred people and nobody goes soul winning, okay, obviously God's not too happy with the church. Nobody reads a Bible, nobody goes soul winning. They don't preach the word of God. But what I'm saying is I hope that in five years from now, I hope we have twice as many people. Now, not in this room alone because that's just not going to work. Okay. But I hope that we grow as a church and then we were meeting on the second floor and all those things and it might happen, it might not. But here's the thing, that wouldn't really determine whether or not God is happier with us. Maybe God would be happier for a smaller group, but we're more dedicated. It's like we don't really know. Right? And so we can't just look at the results to just determine, okay, this is what God thinks about us, because honestly, we don't know what rewards we're going to get at the judgment seat of Christ. Because I would have never guessed, because the Church of Thessalonica is a pretty awesome church when you're reading the New Testament, isn't it? I mean, that's the church that he talks to about the end times and the Antichrist revealing himself and all of those things. Those are not things that you talk to with someone who just, a church that just got saved, right? Or a church that doesn't know anything. Those are things you talk to, a group of people that are very established and mature, and yet God said, you know what, the Bereans were actually more noble, because they not only heard the Word of God with all readiness of mind, they also were searching the scripture to find out whether those things were so or not. So point number one, we see the Church of Thessalonica. And you know, one application to us individually, I mean, we have a room full of people that love God and go soul winning, and you in your personal time, you could hear the Word of God with readiness of mind, and go home and search the scriptures, and people might have no idea that you're actually extremely dedicated. And other people might think, well, so and so, you know, that's a great Christian. And in reality, you're actually the person in your own personal time that's spending real time with God. And if God were actually come down and look, he'd say, actually this person, then nobody would realize this person's actually more noble, because they actually do go home and really spend time one-on-one with God, just reading the Bible and letting the Holy Spirit of God teach them, right? It's always a fool's comparison to compare yourself with other people, whether it be on an individual basis, or whether it be a church, because number one, we have absolutely no idea, because God's not coming down here from heaven to tell us. And number two, it doesn't really benefit your life in any way. And you know, number three, you just don't really know, right? I mean, I don't sit at home trying to rank everybody in our church. It's like, let me just rank people who's going to get the most rewards in heaven. Now I'll be honest, sometimes I look at the characters of the Bible and I try to rank them, you know, you're thinking like, okay, you got John the Baptist is here, you got Paul the Apostle, you got, you know, Job, you know, Moses is there somewhere, Daniel, you're kind of ranking them or whatever. But that's a foolish thing to do with people that are alive, okay? It's okay with someone who lived thousands of years ago, but it's like, it's a foolish thing. But you know, honestly, it's something that any one of us can fall into because we see people in the Bible doing it, and it's just natural that we just want to compare ourselves to be better than other people. But the Bible says it's a foolish thing. So number one, we see the church of Thessalonica. Number two, we see the Bereans. Number three, lastly, let us look at the impact of the Bereans. Because it said in verse 11, these were more noble than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore, right? When you see the word therefore, you have to ask, why is it there? What is it connecting to? It's connecting to the previous thought. So verse 11 by itself is a great verse to memorize. It's a great verse to commit to memory, but you don't get the full picture of the verse with that verse alone. You see leading up to verse 11, but also after verse 11, therefore, what is the result of the fact that they received the word of God with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so? Therefore, many of them believed also of honorable women, which were Greeks, and of men, not a few. As a result of a group of people that are receiving the word of God and searching the Bible, whether these things were so, all of a sudden they start going out and getting a lot of people saved. And this is a group of people that they didn't really have access, you know, from reading this as much as the church of Thessalonica. Maybe they hadn't heard the word of God as much, but once they hear the word of God, they learn, they grow, and they start turning that part of the world upside down, right? You know, people can be new at church and not know a whole lot, but they just start being in church, they hear the word of God preached, they're learning things, they start studying the Bible, they start coming out soul-winning, and just, you know, a few months after coming to church, they're getting people saved. The thing is, you don't have to know everything about the Bible to get somebody saved, right? It probably takes a little bit of time after you get saved to preach a sermon, but you can get saved and then be a soul winner just shortly after because you learn the verses on salvation, you learn how to give the gospel, you're hearing things, you're growing, you start coming out, and then boom, you're getting people saved too. And that is what's taking place here with the Bereans. Verse number 13, but when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached to Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the people. So they travel 81 kilometers. They quit their job for a week or whatever. It's like, I'm going to take a week off from work so I can persecute this group of people in Berea. It's like, what's your problem? It's like, why can't you just, I mean, they're not in Thessalonica anymore, but that's not good enough for them, right? All of a sudden, they travel to Berea, they start stalking them, and then they're just coming after Paul, and, you know, they just won't let him preach the word of God, and then they stir up the people. They rile up the people. You say, why? Because here's the thing, when you're doing something for God, there's going to be resistance. The Bible says, yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. And it doesn't matter where it is because it also mentions several places that Paul's being persecuted. So whether it's Thessalonica, whether it's Berea, whether it's Cuyahonta, you know, wherever you are, you're going to be persecuted if you're, you know, serving God. Bible says in verse 14, and then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea, but Silas and Timotheus abode there still. And they that conducted Paul brought him on to Athens, and receiving a commandment unto Silas and Timotheus, for to come with them with all speed, they departed. Now, let me just quickly talk about this Bible reading chart that we have here in our bulletin. And if you don't have a copy, we can get you a copy. I'll send a PDF of this to the group chat tomorrow. But you have this Bible reading chart, and you don't have to use this to do your Bible reading. It's just meant to be something that makes it very simple. It makes it very easy. When you're looking through this schedule, in the earlier days, you have less chapters to read, but that's because the chapters are longer. And so the book of Matthew have four days, so seven chapters per day. Book of Mark, two days of eight chapters per day. The book of Luke, the chapters are longer, so it's four days of six chapters, because some of those chapters are really long. The book of John, three days of seven chapters per day. Book of Acts, four days, seven chapters per day. Then you get to the book of Romans split up into two days. Book of 1st Corinthians split up into two days. Then you start getting more chapters per day, but the chapters are a lot shorter. 2nd Corinthians, I think, is 13 chapters. Galatians and Ephesians is 12 chapters, but 12 chapters in Galatians and Ephesians is a lot shorter than six chapters in Luke, right? So it's not that long. Philippians and Colossians, I guess that's your easy day. That's eight chapters. That's probably your shortest reading. 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, eight chapters, pretty short as well. 1st and 2nd Timothy, Titus and Philemon, so that is 14 chapters, I believe. A little bit more chapters, but just because I wanted to get it finished before the book of Hebrews. Hebrews is going to be kind of a long day of 13 chapters in one sitting. It's going to take a little bit of time. And after that, the days are pretty short, because a lot of these chapters, 2nd and 3rd John are short. Every chapter in 1st John is short. You know, it's not as much reading. Revelation is a pretty famous book, but honestly the chapters are pretty short. You know, so 22 chapters in two days is not that bad. And you can always work ahead of schedule, right? You know, you can, there's no free days in this or grace period for the schedule I made here, but you can work ahead. You know, you do extra reading. You could read, you know, at the beginning you say, I want to get a head start because things might get busy or whatever. And you can do extra reading and get a head. You can just mark it off. And you know, it's designed to be this size, so it kind of just fits neatly into most Bibles. So it just kind of fits perfectly, you know, with most Bibles. And you can just have it there. You can easily pull it out, you know. And you know, if you've been here before, you understand this. We've done this. If you have not, and maybe you've never read the Bible, maybe you're kind of newer to church or you haven't done a lot of reading, this might seem kind of intimidating. Like, man, the entire New Testament in the month of January. But I can say that most people at our church last year, at least most adults, I mean obviously young kids know, but most adults did read through the New Testament in the month of January. And this is a challenge. It's not something that you just spend two minutes a day and you finish. It's not something you have to spend two hours a day on though, right? I would say for probably everybody, it's going to be less than an hour a day. You know, it's not that much reading. You know, this is definitely a doable goal to do, just finishing the New Testament. But the goal is, not only do you finish this in January, but then you're in a pattern of reading the Bible. So when February 1st rolls around, it's not like you wake up in the morning like, what am I going to do? Let me go back to my Facebook routine, right? It's like, no, the goal is that you have a new Bible reading chart. And we can give you a new Bible reading chart once you hit February, but you have a new chart or a new system. And you know, there's a lot of different techniques for this. I like to do this sort of system where I just, I have the chart on the wall where I just mark off every day what I'm going to read. Other people like to do a certain amount of pages. You might say, I want to read 10 pages a day. You know, whatever way you want to do, it's fine. You might say 45 minutes a day. I'm just going to have the clock starting once I hit 45 minutes. Many different techniques and all of them are good as long as it gets you to read the Bible. So if you don't use this technique, it's perfectly fine. But you know, it is a goal that I have though, that everybody would give this an effort and say, hey, you know what? I do want to start focusing more of my time on God and set aside distractions from the world. And I think that probably all of us would be amazed how much time we waste during a day. We have a lot of time that we waste on things that really don't matter on social media or just various distractions. A verse that's really been kind of floating through my mind recently is when the Bible speaks about serving the Lord without distraction. And I think that's probably the biggest problem for most Christians. We just have way too many distractions in our life of things that are not that important. Now, obviously there's things that are necessary, but we also have a lot of things in our life that are just really not that important. And we could easily set those things aside to spend time with God. Let's close with a prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for allowing us to be here today and ask you to help us to apply this sermon to our lives. I ask you to help all of us, including my family, to put in an effort to read through the New Testament in the month of January, God, and help us just continually try to draw close to you, especially here in 2025. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.