Turning the World Right Side Up | Acts 17:1-15 | September 13, 2026

We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.

We have extra copies.

If you didn't bring one with you and you'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high.

Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle.

Anybody at all?

It's always helpful to look at the text.

And uh while they're passing those out, I want to thank the folks from Ceylon, Cavite, Philippines, Lexington Park, Maryland, Ripon, California, and Philadelphia up in Pennsylvania for joining us online for either worship or Bible study or some form of study over the last week.

It's such a delight to be able to connect with folks from outside these four walls and beyond our own city as well.

I'll put up on the screen for you the QR code where you can find the notes and quotes for the sermon that we have today in this passage.

There will be some very angry religious people who accuse Paul and his friends of turning the world upside down.

It was not meant as a compliment, and the mob will drag Paul and his friends out into the street in Thessalonica, this ancient city, furious that a message so small could trouble people so much.

But what if the mob were more right than they knew?

What if the world they've gotten into and gotten used to, and the one that we've gotten used to, is actually upside down and needs to be set right side up.

That's why we'll call this sermon Turning the World Right Side Up.

And we'll be in Acts chapter 17, verses 1 through 15.

Acts 17:1–15

If you want to turn there in your Bibles, let me offer a prayer for illumination, and then we'll get going.

Our Father, as we gather this day to worship you and study your word, may we be reminded of what is true, compelled by what is good, and moved by what is beautiful about the gospel of Jesus.

Give us a clearer vision of your truth, a greater faith in your power, and a more confident assurance of your love for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen and amen.

I'm gonna post the map up on the screen for you just to remind you, we've been in Philippi.

I think you'll see that in that map up in the upper left corner.

And today they'll be traveling to Thessalonica and to Berea.

From Philippi to Thessalonica is about a hundred miles.

They'll make two stops in verse number one, two different cities.

So just kind of break that hundred miles up there, and then on to Berea another 50 miles from there.

So let's just dive right in with what this happens to say to us, okay?

Now, when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, these are both uh cities that are along the uh Via Ignatia.

It's a it's the ancient Roman road.

And uh so this area is actually uh uh quite uh filled with commerce, all kinds of people coming through, going east and west, and in this trade route, this is a very important road uh of that time.

They then came to Thessalonica, uh, where there was a synagogue of the Jews.

Now, Thessalonica would actually, the reason they stopped there is because that's actually the capital of the Macedonian province, the whole province.

Umphipolis is actually one of the district capitals.

It's a sub, you know, it's like saying that county versus that that state capital.

Okay.

So Amphipolis, Apollonia, no, non-unimportant towns, but Paul is not said to have stopped there.

He went on to Thessalonica, and it's part of what he does, it's part of his missionary strategy, is to go to the towns of great influence.

And he also, it's it's his habit to go to the synagogues first.

In the synagogues, he will find people that aren't sort of polytheists or pantheists either.

They are, they believe in one God.

The Jews would believe, they'd be called monotheists.

They believe in one God.

And also among the Jews there, you'll find what they call God-fearers, uh, Gentiles who have come to the conclusion that perhaps that idea of there being one supreme being is actually true instead of many different gods.

Um, and so, as was his custom, verse two, he went to that synagogue for three Sabbaths, and he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, This Jesus who I am proclaiming to you is the Christ.

Very succinct summary by Luke of the Apostle Paul's preaching there in Thessalonica.

He's gonna get a divided response, as we've already seen in the first missionary journey that we've studied already, and now here on the second missionary journey, uh, the earlier parts of it.

He gets a mixed response, doesn't he?

There are people, some people that are persuaded and believe, other people that get really upset at what he's saying for various reasons, actually.

Some of them were persuaded, verse 4, and joined Paul and Silas along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women.

So it's having an impact in this city, his preaching of the gospel.

But the Jews becoming jealous, taking along with them some wicked men from the marketplace.

Essentially, it means they went down to the marketplace and found some louts and layabouts and found some degenerate folks that didn't have anything better to do but create trouble.

Um somebody came up to me afterwards and said the King James says lewd, um worthless fellows, or something like that.

L-E-W-D.

Not a word we use very often in our own day and time.

But that's the idea here.

These religious folks who were jealous, that's their motive, they went to the marketplace and they got some sort of mob type guys together, and they set the city in an uproar, verse 5 says, and attacking the house of Jason, they were seeking to bring them out to the people, meaning Jason is the host for Paul, for Timothy, for Silas, for Luke.

And so they think, oh, they're staying at that house.

Let's bang on that door, let's let's get let's drag them out there into the streets.

But they did not find them, verse six says.

They began dragging Jason, though, and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have upset the world have come here also.

And the Greek word there is anestadio, and it simply means turned the world upside down.

So they have upset the world, is what the people are accusing Paul and his friends of.

And they have come here also, and Jason has welcomed them.

They're really mad, these religious folks, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.

Now, some of that's actually right.

You know, it's interesting.

Um, but not all of it, and certainly not the way it was done.

They stirred up the crowd, verse 8 says, and the city authorities who heard these things.

And when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them.

So the city authorities get a pledge from Jason.

Could have been a pledge that simply said, we're not trying to stir up the city, we're not trying to cause a riot.

Um uh Jason may have been afraid and may have bowed to wanting to be silenced.

I don't know.

I'm I'm speculating in either direction.

Um, I actually would give him the benefit of the doubt and just say that he's not, he's made his intent known.

He's not interested in causing a riot.

He wants to preach the good news.

He wants to support the guys that are preaching the good news.

So they release Jason, and then Paul and the team are gonna move on to Berea now.

The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea.

This is another 50 miles.

And when they arrive there, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

Again, that's his habit.

Go find the monotheists, go find the Jews, because you know, Paul himself is a Jew, even though he's a Roman citizen.

Timothy is half Jewish, half Gentile.

You know, Luke is full-on Gentile.

Interesting.

Luke is the author of this book, Luke is the author of the Gospel of Luke, really responsible for the greatest volume of text of any single writer in the whole New Testament.

God chose a Gentile to preserve this record for us.

Interesting.

Yeah.

And so they go to Berea and they arrive there into the synagogue, and verse 11 says, These, meaning the Bereans, were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica.

And I got asked why.

What makes them more noble-minded?

And Luke answers right away.

For they received the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

Therefore, many of them believed, not a small number of them, not 10%.

I don't know what the percentage is, but many of them believed, along with a number of prominent Greek women and men.

So you see it's mixed in terms of their racial, ethnic background, some Jews, some Gentiles.

Men and women both are coming to faith here.

And this is really amazing, yeah.

And so when the Jews of Thessalonica, verse 13, found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul in Berea, so somehow or another, rumor gets back 50 miles from Berea.

And they're preaching here for several days, and word gets back to Thessalonica that Paul is preaching there now.

And the gospel is being preached there now, and people are coming to faith.

And he was preaching in the synagogue.

So the Jews that were in Thessalonica, they get all upset about it.

They came there as well.

Verse 13, agitating and stirring up the crowds.

That's interesting.

Then immediately the brethren sent Paul out to go as far as the sea, and Silas and Timothy remained there, where?

In Berea.

Now those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens.

That's 300 miles.

Okay?

And receiving a command for Silas and Timothy, they came to him as soon as possible, and they left Berea.

So there's so much here that happens.

I know it's rather compact, but I gotta begin with at least this observation from G.K.

Chesterton.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

And I think he was right there.

And I think that's kind of what we see, especially in Berea.

They receive the word, they're more noble-minded, they receive the word, and they search the scriptures to find out if what Paul was preaching was true or not.

See, the purpose of intellectual openness is not perpetual openness.

We're actually interested in learning something.

Not something just ambiguous or amorphous, something solid that we can sink our teeth into, something we can stand on, something we can trust and believe to be true.

Christian faith is a beautiful tapestry of verities and mysteries, truths that you can count on, trust in.

And mysteries so great, so magnificent, that they simply leave you standing there with your eyes bugging out and your mouth hanging open.

Because of the wonder of it all.

Promises we can trust, propositional truths we can stand on, mysteries so great they inspire awe, wonder, and astonishment.

So if I were to extrapolate a few sermon points from this passage, it would be at least this.

If we want to turn the world right side up, and I think that's what was happening here, even though they were accused of turning the world upside down, we recognize the gospel is both rational and reasonable.

And I think that's really important.

Rational meaning logical, lucid, sensible, intelligent.

It is rational, however, it cannot be reduced to rationalism.

Rational ism is the belief that we can figure it all out, that we can sort it all out, that we have control over the knowledge itself.

Rather, the gospel is rational, but not it doesn't resort to or dis just sort of descend into rationalism.

We believe in a real God is really there, and none of us are Him.

That means we believe in an authority higher than us.

I love that old Latin phrase, infinitum non capax infiniti.

It means the finite cannot fully comprehend the infinite.

And we begin there, don't we?

With intellectual humility.

That doesn't mean we throw our brains out, doesn't mean we don't think.

We are thinking people of faith.

The gospel is rational.

God is telling us, as you look at these folks here in their preaching, you see it in the words that are used as Luke describes the preaching.

In verses 2 to 4, he reasoned with them, he explained things, he gave evidence, he was proclaiming.

People were persuaded.

You see, the gospel is rational and reasonable.

If it weren't, you couldn't do those things.

In verse 11, the Bereans are said to be noble-minded because they received the word, they examine the scripture.

So none of this check your brains at the door when you come into church.

None of this check your brains at the door when you consider the gospel, the Christian faith.

It is rational and reasonable, it is.

But it doesn't reduce to rationalism.

It is not ours to simply own, control, manipulate.

Um, this isn't God as you imagine God to be.

This is God as he's revealed himself to be.

And we're bowing and before him and acknowledging that he is God.

Paul and Silas and their preaching team did at least two things in all of their preaching, if you study across the book of Acts: proclamation and persuasion.

They're always proclaiming who Jesus is.

And in virtually every one of these sermons that we might be able to call a sermon, this is like a mini-sermon here in the first few verses in Thessalonica, he's talking about the resurrection of Jesus.

The one, this amazingly unique thing about Jesus that makes him sui generis.

He's one of a kind.

He died, yes, but he got right back up three days later.

And that's why we put our hope and confidence in him.

So there's proclamation of the resurrection and the gospel that's on offer to all.

And then there is persuasion towards repentance, belief, and conversion itself, as we see in verses um uh four and in verse 12.

They proclaimed what God had done in the past.

They told the old, old story.

The stories of things like Genesis and Exodus, Exodus that we'll be studying in our lunchtime talks.

That great word, what a beautiful word.

It means deliverance, that God has come to set us free.

It's a wonderful thing, isn't it?

And so they talked about that, what God had done in the past and what God was doing in the present.

And then they sought to persuade their listeners of the veracity, of the transforming power, of the unshakable and living hope that one finds in the gospel of grace and in the life and teachings of Jesus and in his finished work on the cross and in his glorious resurrection.

Last week we uh happened to be at the Singh conference, and the uh among the highlights for me were two hours on Sunday night that just happened quite serendipitously.

Kim and I were in what's uh sort of the lunchroom, cafeteria room, where the speakers and the musicians are, and we we found ourselves, the whole room had emptied, and we found ourselves alone with three other men, three men.

And so Kim, me, and a good dear friend of ours, Ross Wilson, who's a painter, uh just an amazing painter over in the UK and Northern Ireland, and then the one of the one of the world's leading experts on C.S.

Lewis, a guy named Jerry Root, and then the man I'm about to quote, who I've just always had such great respect for, we've quoted him so many times here, Oz Guinness, and we literally kept going for two hours.

You know, we didn't have anywhere to go or be, and we just kept going.

And Kim and I were like a couple of little school kids, you know, just listening to these three great, wonderful minds talk about things like the gospel, things like C.S.

Lewis, things like art, things like Francis Schaefer, just having a great time.

Oz speaking about the fact that the faith is rational and reasonable, in one of his books, here's what Oz says Faith in God is a step taken in the light of reason.

And anything but a leap in the dark.

It may certainly be a step taken with deep emotions, but it is a decision taking about objective reality.

And it is not purely subjective, it's not just up to the individual.

No, God has made a statement, He's revealing Himself.

The question is, are we listening?

Are we listening and will we believe?

Yet, he goes on, yeah, Oz does.

Yet, while the step of faith is fully rational and not for one second irrational, it is certainly more than rational.

That's what I love.

Now you got a marinade on that.

Take that home.

You can download it from the app, and uh and you might want to buy that book as well.

Oz has just a great way of saying things.

So if we want to turn the world right side up, we recognize the gospel as both rational and reasonable.

Secondly, we recognize the irony of the gospel.

We see that in verse 6b, verse 8, verse 13.

Look at your Bibles.

Verse 6b.

The irony is that those guys who were coming like a mob after Paul and his friends go to Jason's house and they're banging on the door and they're shouting, These men have come to upset the world.

And then look at verse 8, what happens?

They, the ones that are yelling, these men have come to upset the world, they stirred up the crowd.

And the city authorities who heard these things.

And then look at uh as well, um, look at how they, in verse 13, they do the same thing.

When the Jews at Thessalonica found out the word of God had also been proclaimed there in Berea, they came there as well, agitated and stirring up the crowds.

So who's turning, who's shaking all things up, who's disturbing everything?

The guys that are accusing Paul of disturbing everything.

They're the ones actually causing the riot.

They're the ones that are just angry and mad at everything.

And you know, it's kind of like that in our own day and time as well.

I hate to say it.

But there are some people that are just angry all the time.

Don't be one of them.

Please don't be one of them.

All our boast is in Jesus, all our hope is in his love.

It's not in politics, it's not in how the economy's going.

It's not in even how our day is going, to be honest with you.

Okay?

The apostle Paul, this guy, might have been a short man, we're not sure, but he certainly had a lumpy head for all the stones and rocks that have been thrown at him.

And his eyesight wasn't so good.

And he spent some time in prison in Philippi with rats nibbling on his toes, chained to a wall.

And what does he do?

He and Silas?

They start singing at midnight.

What kind of song were they singing?

Of course, they're singing about the Lord, and the place shakes and trembles like you learned last week.

It's pretty amazing what happened.

God moved, and then God reached down and grabbed this Philippian jailer after he had grabbed that successful businesswoman and gotten her attention, and that even that demon-possessed little unnamed demon-possessed teenage girl that was bothering the Apostle Paul, and he cast the demon out.

That all had that's God doing stuff, taking the initiative, moving a real God, not just a warm, fuzzy, amorphous spiritual vibe.

That's actually God invading our space to save.

And that's really a beautiful thing.

We recognize the irony of it all, though, because these guys are complaining about what the apostles are doing.

How ironic is that?

And it also reminds me that I can easily fall into a personal and societal level of blatant hypocrisy, myself, us.

As well.

We need to be watchful of these things.

You see, the religious elites of that time were actually not wrong about the fact that something needed to be overturned.

They were just wrong about which way was up and which way was down.

So they said the apostles had come to turn the world upside down.

I say the apostles and the gospel were there to set the world right side up again.

You see, their orientation, the religious folks, was wrong.

They had no idea of what true North is or was.

Paul came along to proclaim and persuade that the only true North was a compass that points right to the heart of Jesus, our Lord and Savior, the once crucified but now risen, King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Ironic means happening in a way that was least expected.

Or sometimes happening in a way that's the complete opposite of the way you would expect it to happen.

And folks, if you don't like irony, if you don't like paradox, you won't like the Christian gospel.

Listen to the Christian gospel, how it is shot through with irony.

Victory through defeat, strength through weakness.

Yeah.

Wisdom that looks like foolishness, exaltation through dissent.

The insiders miss it, and the outsiders get it.

Yeah.

And the greatest irony in the gospel is the fact that in the death of Jesus, sinners like me find life in his name.

And you as well.

That's on offer to you, too.

Through the finished work of Christ on the cross, sinners who repent and believe are declared righteous.

Repent is one of those religious words we don't hear a lot these days.

It's methanoia in the Greek.

It means to have a change of mind and a change of heart that results in a change of direction.

So I was going this way, selfishly.

I'm in charge.

Everything's about me.

Even for everybody else, everything has to be about me.

And I surrender to the Lord.

I turn to the Lord, repenting.

It's a twofold turn, repenting of my sin, to surrender to the Lord.

That's what repentance means.

And that's what was happening all along.

When it says people came to faith or when they were persuaded, they come to believe that Jesus is the one who can actually save them.

The Apostle Paul would write in 2 Corinthians 5.21, he, God the Father, made him, meaning Jesus the Son, to become sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him, Jesus.

What a great exchange.

What an irony it is that the gospel is like this.

I love the way Christopher Watkin put it in his biblical critical theory book.

The cross enacts an utter rout of the paradigm of control is containment by the paradigm of love is liberation, exploding into the world from a lonely hill in Palestine where a man hangs, dying as a public spectacle of Rome's power to rout and contain its enemies.

If ever proof were needed that God has a sense of irony, we have it here.

That's exactly right.

So beautifully said by Christopher Watkin.

Thirdly, not only if we want the world to be set right side up, we recognize the gospel is rational and reasonable.

We recognize the irony of the gospel, but we also recognize the rightness of the gospel.

See, rightness is that quality of being factually true or correct, if you will, but also morally good.

Okay?

That's that combination, rightness, if you will.

We must realize that just as Jesus warned his disciples, though, in a sinful and broken world, sometimes rightness gets you run out of town.

Can you think of any ways in which that is happening in our own day and time?

Maybe you can.

I can.

There are people, just like there were people, who are dead set and they'll travel 50 miles out of their way to be angry at whatever God might be doing.

And they want to shut it down and they want to fight against it.

Does that mean we hate them?

No.

As a matter of fact, just like Jesus hanging on the cross, Father forgive them.

They know not what they do.

You see, again, the irony of the gospel, right?

He is that way.

Instinctively, we long, uh Gavin Ortland says, we instinctively long for our lives to arrive upon not mere happiness, but a kind of rightness.

The question is, how do we best account for such feelings?

In what kind of story do they make the most sense?

And Gavin, who lives here in National, a wonderful man, he's right on it when he says, how do we account for those feelings?

How do you account for that sense you have of wanting things to be right?

And I would argue, whether you're a believer here this morning or watching online, whether you're a believer or not, you actually want things to be right.

There's some category of life that you wish could be fixed and set right.

Where do you get that sense of rightness from?

And what story, what worldview, how about what noetic structure actually accounts for all that we see that's wrong, for all that might be able to be done to fix it and set it right.

And I suggest to you that the Christian gospel is the most rational, the most reasonable.

And it has that smack of real life that is ironic at the same time, right?

Yeah.

And I would say it's propositionally right and true.

And we see that through stories like this.

Tim Keller said it this way.

I believe that Christianity makes the most sense out of our individual life stories and out of what we see in the world's history.

I've been arguing that the Christian understanding of where we came from, what's wrong with us, how it can be fixed, has greater power to explain what we see and experience than does any other competing account.

Those two quotes, I would say, represent contemporary models of everything I'd want to proclaim today.

They really do.

Here is where I seek persuasion and to name the tension or the challenge for us here in our own day and time and here in this room or watching online.

We Christians are often right about what is wrong, but we also need to be right about what is right.

And if our faith isn't turning us right side up, how can we expect it to turn the world right side up?

Some of you in the room, some of you watching online, maybe you have a sense that something needs to be set right in your life.

Maybe you have a sense that you, in your own affections, in your own desires, need to be set right.

Um, this is the gospel calling to you.

This is the Holy Spirit working in and through our study of the word here to draw us, to call us to Jesus, our true North.

Some things need to be turned upside down in my life and in your life, probably, or rather, right side up.

And sometimes that does involve a bit of positive disruption.

As Patrick Ledton, our own TVCer here, who's written a book called Disrupt Everything Says, disruption isn't always negative.

It isn't always a threat.

It's your secret weapon sometimes.

And I think that's what we got going on here.

As we see the gospel continue to spread around the Mediterranean and eventually make its way to where we are.

We're so thankful for that, of course.

We see that what the Lord is doing is turning things up and over and setting things right on an ongoing basis as his kingdom continues to unfold.

And as we close today, I want to have you think about these images that the Apostle Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, where he where he kind of borrows from the way that in that day and time the Jews were fascinated with light, believe it or not.

The Greeks were fascinated with knowledge.

The Romans were fascinated with glory.

And listen to what the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4, 6.

Light shall shine out of darkness.

The same one who said that is the one who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus.

You see, it all points to him.

My biggest questions, my deepest longings are all evidence to me that what I'm looking for, what I'm hungry to learn, is about who Jesus is ultimately.

Because no other earthly thing can satisfy me.

And when I turn to him, we find in him everything that we've ultimately been looking for.

Perhaps, again, you're here today and you admit you need a little setting right, a little gospel disruption, maybe we'll call it that, and the Holy Spirit to turn your heart right side up.

How do we do that?

I think that's a great question to ask.

Maybe to talk about at lunch, maybe to talk about in home groups this week if you uh have the opportunity to.

Take a lesson from the Bereans.

Let me summarize it with these four lines.

Receive the word, believe the gospel.

And then we don't see the word repent in the text itself, but it's certainly there in all of his preaching.

It's the first two things John the Baptist says in the gospels, the first two things in the preachment of Jesus.

Repent and believe.

That's the proper response to the gospel.

And when you start seeing how rational and reasonable the gospel is, how quirky and ironic it is, how amazing, mind-blowing it is, right?

And how right it is too.

I think that's the only proper response is to lift up the empty hands of faith and receive from God the grace that He has on offer.

Receive the word today, like the Bereans.

Examine the scriptures, see if the things that we've talked about are true or not.

Yes, do that by all means.

But come to believe the gospel.

Be persuaded in your heart that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that what he came to do is to offer you salvation as a free gift, not one that you work for and achieve or acquire.

You don't earn it, but he gives it.

You receive it.

And you as you repent from your sin, and you receive God's grace.

Let me pray and we'll close out.

Thank you, Lord, for this.

And I pray that our lives would simply be on that fourfold cycle: receiving the word, relieving the gospel, repenting from our sin and receiving your grace.

Thank you, Lord.

That you are so generous, that you are so kind, that you are so patient with us.

Some here tonight this morning uh maybe full-on running away from you and just found themselves here today for some reason.

Speak to them, Lord.

Some, Lord, maybe just drifting.

And I pray for them as well, Lord.

I've been there myself.

I know what that's like.

Um awaken us, Lord.

Uh seize us by your great affection.

Um, stir us up, Lord, uh, Holy Spirit, to your word and to uh good works in your name to glorify Jesus and to work together with our brothers and sisters on the mission of God in this world, spreading the gospel, the good news of Jesus in whose name we pray.

Amen and amen.