What would you do having been so unfairly? How would you react to such harsh treatment and it all so totally illegal? If you were a leader what kind of example would you show to the world?
Paul and Silas move on from that dramatic and traumatic time in Philippi, westward along the Grecian coast, to Thessalonica. They enjoyed no respite. There seldom is in the Kingdom of God.
Paul searched for the synagogue, that place of worship for the Jews and in he went and spoke about Jesus Christ suffering and dying to rescue men from the mess they were in, and rising from the dead.
Paul has had bad experiences at the hands of the Jews, but he realises that this is where God would have him start. Would you keep bothering going back to the same people time and again? This is leadership of calibre and true spirituality.
He does not permit the past to colour and influence the present. Having endured what these leaders had to endure it would be difficult to find anything that would make these men give in and give up. Such people really never contemplate making that type of decision.
After preaching for three weeks some folks can stand no more of this.
Many had come to believe in Jesus. Paul had this deep desire to make profound spiritual investments in the lives of men and women, and these investments have amazing rewards and dividends.
Others were so outraged, and filled with jealousy and envy, that they rounded up a mob to riot and attack the house where Paul and Silas were based.
Religious people whose hearts are closed to Jesus Christ are capable of horrendous behaviour. The false charge against Paul and Silas is astonishing. “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here. They say there is another king, one called Jesus.”
Speak about distortion, lies and exaggeration! And yet, in what they say there is a degree of truth, but not the whole truth. Check all this out in Acts Chapter seventeen in the New Testament part of the Bible.
Yes, disciples of Jesus can sound like radical revolutionaries. They are forever seeking to change people’s wrong ideas about God, and wrong ideas about themselves.
Paul and Silas are falsely accused of turning the world upside down.
What these leaders were really seeking to do was turn the world the right way up, but unbelievers cannot see that. They never will. If God is calling you to do what you can to turn the world the right way up and ease the plight of people wherever they are living, keep on serving as faithfully as you know how.
We have just been praying for the leadership of Christian pastors and leaders in Uganda and Kenya. Having met some of these fine men they need all the encouragement and support possible as they have a difficult job to perform.
Give leadership wherever leadership is so needed in these present days.
Sandy Shaw
Sandy Shaw is Pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship, Chaplain at Inverness Prison, and Nairn Academy, and serves on The Children’s Panel in Scotland, and has travelled extensively over these past years teaching, speaking, in America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, making 12 visits to Israel conducting Tours and Pilgrimages, and most recently in Uganda and Kenya, ministering at Pastors and Leaders Seminars, in the poor areas surrounding Kampala, Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu.