Rabble and Nobles (Acts 17:1-15)

Let's resume our study of how the most revolutionary message the world has ever heard moved into Europe and thus affected the history of Western civilization for some 2000 years. We began, you remember, in the sixteenth chapter of Acts with the story of Paul, Silas, Luke, and Timothy in the city of Philippi, and of the great earthquake that released them from prison with dramatic impact, and of how God used four distinct methods to break through the entrenched evil of that city and to implant a church there. This is what God is always doing in human history. He establishes a bridgehead in the midst of entrenched evil, with its resultant violence and disaster, and, by that bridgehead, he begins to propagate the gospel and thus to clear up the situation. The story moves on in Chapter 17, as Paul and Silas move west, leaving Luke and Timothy behind in Philippi for the time being.