Cross-Culture

Acts 17:4–12

“Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go. As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.”

The Living Life writer notes that at this point in the Apostle Paul’s missionary journey, “we see a pattern emerging: the Gospel is preached, many people come to believe in Jesus, opposition to the Gospel rises up, and the missionaries are driven out of the city,” however, “the opposition is probably unsurprising to Paul and his companions as Jesus Himself warned that His disciples would be hated because of Him: “This is My command to you: Love one another. If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world (John 15:17–19).” The LORD spoke of a sharp contrast between love and hate, the world loves its own and will hate that which challenges its spirit we see a lot of this today as we read of it in Scripture. It is the defiance of worldly culture and its leaders that people of the world disdains, that parallels these events, we, in effect, “are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus (v. 7).” “They shouted, "Take Him away! Take Him away! Crucify Him!" "Shall I crucify your king?" Pilate asked. "We have no king but Caesar," the chief priests answered (John 19:15).” It always provokes the world when Christians march to a different drummer or worship Jesus our king and it would stir up trouble in its desire for uniformity in rebellion against the One True God creator of the universe, saying, “But there are some whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon-Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego-who pay no attention to you, O king. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up (Dan 3:12).” English writer GK Chesterton remarked, “You are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil; you are free to say that He would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or a mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one's conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It is now thought irreverent to be a believer.” Let us remain steadfast in being counter- or cross-cultural. Hold on to faith and strive to live out what we believe and practice what we preach, and preach consistently nevertheless. The other beautiful picture I glean from today’s verses is of the noble Bereans (v. 11), here we see that when people seriously and carefully study God’s Word, they will eventually trust in Him. I believe, therefore, that at the end of any rational enquiry is the truth, not only the truth, but the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6)!