Day 259: Acts 17:1–9

As usual, Paul went to them, and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures (v. 2).

Our next passage takes us to another stop on Paul’s second missionary journey—the Greek city of Thessalonica. We know Luke had accompanied the missionaries to Philippi, but his terminology suggests that their paths parted for awhile, presumably for the sake of the gospel. Luke’s references to “we” rather than “they” will pick up again several chapters later in the book of Acts. For now we see Paul and Silas in Thessalonica.

Before we proceed, let’s highlight a few points from this passage at the beginning of Acts 17. Paul and Silas had traveled one hundred miles from Philippi to Thessalonica without the benefit of a motorized vehicle. They seemed to know exactly where they wanted to go and certainly did not lack the stamina to get there!

You may be wondering what criteria made one city more of a priority than another. Obviously the first criteria was the leadership of the Holy Spirit. If He did not lead, they did not go. Paul cited another criteria in Romans 15:20, when he declared, “My aim is to evangelize where Christ has not been named, in order that I will not be building on someone else’s foundation” (hcsb).

God used both of these principles: the leadership of the Holy Spirit and Paul’s desire to go into territories untouched by the gospel. And in each new venue, not only did Paul customarily preach in the synagogues first, he employed the same method each time. He sought to prove that Jesus was the Christ with the Old Testament Scripture. I believe he used this method with them because God had used it so effectively on him in the desert of Arabia. He knew this technique could work on the hardest of hearts because it had worked so well on his.

As a result, some Jews and many Greeks believed. But wherever there is an awakening, you can always expect opposition. It wasn’t long before the seed of jealousy was planted in other Jews. They incited a riot, storming the house of Jason, Paul’s host in Thessalonica, searching in vain for a crack at “these men who have turned the world upside down” (v. 6 hcsb). We see method. We see message. We see patterns and expectations. We see a man serving God with a perfect blend of spiritual sensitivity and dogged determination.