Most Christians Are Living on Spiritual Leftovers|08.02.26|Acts: Mission on the Road pt.6

Most Christians don’t actually read God’s word for themselves, but settle for someone else’s leftovers.

Because too many of us start our days the worst way:

You roll over to stop your alarm, and immediately start doomscrolling on the little screen right in front of your face. Maybe you see a funny skit. Maybe you get a little dopamine hit from a beautiful photo. Maybe you see a Bible verse on an inspirational background… you double tap and keep scrolling.

And if you’re REALLY bold, you might even share that Bible verse picture so other people know you believe in God.

But all we did was get a little taste of God’s voice and sped on with our day without becoming truly satisfied.

So we try to fill those gaps with a short daily devotional to summarize a reading, or a podcast to hear some other people talk about a Bible story, but it’s all still just secondhand, instead of receiving it for ourselves from the source.

And so it’s no wonder that so many of us struggle to understand God’s Word. It’s no wonder so many of us struggle to hear God’s voice and figure out how we can follow God in our daily lives… because we’re still HUNGERING without being satisfied.

And that hunger for something REAL and satisfying isn’t new. In fact, in our Bible passage today, we’ll meet two groups of people who responded to exactly that hunger in two very different ways.

[Scripture Ref]

So open your Bibles with me to Acts 17 (p104). Because we’ve been following Jesus’ disciples through the early days of spreading the good news to people who feel far from God.

And last week, we saw how Jesus sets people free, but there is often opposition to God’s work. If you remember last time, the opposition was about money, specifically it was about how a couple slave owners were exploiting a girl for profit, and when the freedom of Jesus threatened that exploitation and profit, they fought back hard.

This week, we continue on the road on mission with Jesus to a new city: Thessalonica. And the opposition is going to show up again, but this time it isn’t about money. This time, it’s going to be about influence, reputation, and whether or not those with power are willing to follow Jesus as their king.

And it’s interesting to see how the good news of Jesus always threatens something that we build our security on. Last week it was our wallet. This week it’s somebody’s platform.

Watch for it in our reading, and let’s RISE together for the reading of God’s Word, because we want to be willing to receive whatever God has for us, even when it confronts and prunes something in our lives.

[Acts 17:1-15]

[Acts 17:2-3]

As was his normal routine, when Paul gets to a new town, he looks for the Jewish synagogue, because he’s got good news for them: the Messiah came! But he’s got a problem every single time he introduces them to Jesus, because his whole proof that Jesus is the one sent by God is that he DIED and ROSE AGAIN. [pause]

I can tell that none of you are bothered by that. Jesus DIED and rose again! [pause]

Again, no one is freaking out right now, because you have all heard that many many times. That’s not news to you. Because that’s been central to the claims of Christianity for over two thousand years. You’ve probably even heard ME say that Jesus’ death and resurrection is the single biggest event in human history, because it proves that he is God, and therefore it proves that since he’s able to defeat death, then he’s able to do all the other things he promised to do.

But to these Jews in Thessalonica? They weren’t waiting for a Messiah to come forgive their sins. They were waiting for a Savior King in the line of David to lead a revolution and overthrow the Roman Empire so the Jews could be a free people again.

And Paul shows up and says, “Good news, the Messiah came. And he DIED…” and immediately the synagogue is in uproar because WHAT-DO-YOU-MEAN the Messiah died?

If he DIED, then he COULDN’T be the Messiah, because he was supposed to stop Rome, not get stopped by Roman crucifixion.

‘I mean, sure, there are rumors that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to many witnesses. But then, where did he go? He definitely isn't parading around, proving that he rose from the dead and establishing his kingdom in the line of David. He definitely isn't continuing the work of trying to overthrow the oppressive regime of Rome!’

So that’s why Paul needs to spend three weeks walking through various OT passages to show all the places that point to all the things that Jesus fulfilled, including that the Messiah was ALWAYS predicted as having to die, even though the Jews hadn’t understood that prophecy.

And Paul’s efforts work! At least, for some people. Because some of the Jews and more than a few of the non-Jews who were followers of Yahweh decide to believe what Paul is saying and put their faith in Jesus as the Savior.

[Acts 17:5]

But the Jewish leaders of the synagogue aren’t too fond of the idea that their group just shrunk. They don’t like the fact that Paul came in and “took a bunch of people away” from their influence.

Our text says that the Jews “became jealous”, and the word used there can be translated to be “jealousy, consumed with envy, or even ZEAL.” It’s actually the same word that can be used to describe ‘Godly zeal’, good passion for God.

But this time, it’s not passion for GOD, it’s passion for their own INFLUENCE and interpretation. I want you to hear that I don’t think these are necessarily “bad people.” They have good zealous faith, it’s just aimed at the wrong target.

And that leads them to some pretty insane tactics to try and get rid of Paul. They head down to the marketplace, find guys who are just standing around, and manufacture a mob that will be outraged.

[Acts 17:6-7]

And when they can’t find Paul and Silas, they attack the guy Jason who has been letting them stay at his house. And notice what the main accusations are that they bring about the followers of Jesus:

V7: “They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus…”

Doesn’t that sound eerily similar to when the Jews arrested Jesus and brought him before Pilate and demanded that he was crucified because he claimed to be the son of God? And when Pilate said, “do you want me to crucify the king of the Jews?” they all shouted back, “we have NO KING but Caesar.”

Even though their entire religion is about trying to follow God perfectly while waiting for a new king who can overthrow the emperor. But here they are, pleading loyalty to the Roman Emperor, all because the man they are saying is the Jewish King isn’t the Jewish king they wanted.

It’s this sickening and disheartening trend that happened first in Jerusalem when they assassinated Jesus, and then here we are 10-15 years later in Thessalonica, and the same thing is happening again!

Jews who are living under an oppressive regime… who want OUT… but who are more than happy to bend their knee to the emperor when it suits their needs, when it does their dirty work.

[blank]

Because they weren’t willing to let go of the version of God they were comfortable with. So they drummed up outrage and twisted the truth to score political points and hold on to the influence they had in society.

{Now, you can draw your OWN connections between them and what we see playing out in our society right now, with people using the name of Jesus to grasp at political power… I don’t really want to delve into that today.}

I want to look at how they weren’t willing to let go of the ‘version’ of God they were comfortable with, and honestly, neither are we. Because facing the true Jesus actually costs us something.

Everywhere you look today, we spend more time trying to drown ourselves in distraction and dopamine because that’s easier than the costly act of every single day dying to ourselves and picking up our cross to follow Jesus.

It’s easier to share a Bible verse image than it is to sit underneath the Word of God in your own reading time. It’s easier to listen to a sermon or a podcast than it is to engage in Bible study with a brother or sister in Christ.

We’re settling for drive-thru, fast-food spirituality, deceiving ourselves that the fries and diet coke will ever nourish us. Hoping that the brightly colored energy drink will sustain us for the day.

{But last I checked, 7Brew isn’t in the Bible. (Hebrews is…)}

And if we don’t pause and consider what we’re doing to ourselves by continuing on with a secondhand faith of leftovers from other sources… if we don’t learn how to drink fully from the Living Water of the Word of God… we will find ourselves in the same place as the Thessalonians in this passage: fearful, fighting, and faking a faith that is too flimsy to withstand the storms of life.

We’ll be JUST like the foolish man in Jesus’ parable, the one who built his house on a foundation of sand. Jesus said that what set that man aside as foolish was that he “heard Jesus’ words, but DIDN’T OBEY THEM.”

How can we ever obey God’s Word if we aren’t receiving it ourselves, but we are only ever passing along what others have said or written about it?

We need God’s help, because we can’t do it on our own power. And thankfully, he shows us exactly what we need in this next section.

[Acts 17:11]

After Paul and Silas get smuggled out of Thessalonica, they go over to Berea, and there they introduce the same good news of Jesus, but they receive a VERY different response from the Bereans:

V11 “...they were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so.”

They heard what Paul was saying, that Jesus was the Messiah they had been waiting for, and even though it was still a wild claim, they examined the scriptures for themselves.

This was a communal, daily practice, where they cross-examined what Paul was saying with the scriptures. And our text commends them, not because they were super smart in their knowledge, but because HAD SOMETHING TO TEST AGAINST.

And do you know what? So do you!

You have the full, authoritative Word of God available to you, where God wants to deliver to you exactly what you need every time you open it.

And don’t hear what I’m not saying: this is NOT a Bible story where the moral of the story is: “Don’t be like the Thessalonians because they were close-minded… be like the Bereans, because they read their Bibles.”

I’m not saying that “good Christians should read their Bible more so that they can gain more knowledge.” We don’t read the Bible to simply learn more, or to be able to win arguments, or to be able to keep up with the other Christians around us.

[God delivers]

No, we read the Bible because God delivers Christ to us each and every time we open his Word. We see it in our text, because the Bereans examined the Scriptures every day, and many of them therefore believed in Jesus. They received Christ in the reading of God’s Word.

And the same thing happens each and every time we read God’s Word even today: God delivers Christ to you.

Do you realize what an incredible privilege it is… what an incredibly beautiful HONOR it is to open God’s Word… to know that he is SPEAKING to us… that he is REVEALING himself to us. He’s DELIVERING himself to us.

And because God is a good father who gives good gifts, and he knows precisely what we need. What we need is Living Water. We need the Bread of Life. We need to be led by the Good Shepherd.

Each and every time you open God’s Word, THAT’S what he’s delivering to you. God delivers Christ to you.

And I’m just struck by the heart posture of the two groups in our passage, because we have the Thessalonians, who are more concerned with maintaining the status quo, maintaining their power and influence, maintaining their spot in the community by rushing to the Roman officials to squash this threat to them.

Whereas the Bereans seem to be more interested in CLINGING to the Scriptures, clinging to God’s Word, and receiving with joy and anticipation the good news of what God is doing in the world.

And we need to hear the good news that God delivers Christ to you through his Word, because I’m afraid to say that I don’t think we treat Scripture with that type of joy and anticipation.

I love this church. I love being your pastor. I love you, and I need to lovingly tell you that our hunger for the Word is lacking.

And, honestly, I can see it in my own life. It’s embarrassing to admit to you all, but I’m like 50 days behind my Bible reading plan this year. That means that I’m falling behind about 2 days every week.

And even when I do my Bible reading plan, I can say to myself, “should I sit and read my Bible, or maybe I’m running out of time. Maybe I can just listen to the audio version of the synopsis with some devotional thoughts that this other pastor has put together already while I’m driving to work.” And even then, I can let my mind wander and my Bible reading becomes background noise during my commute.

And don’t get me started on social media! Our Man Year men’s discipleship group is practicing how to lessen our screen time right now, and I’m so convicted by it. Because I’m on this device way more than I need to be. But I’ll convince myself that there is good on here too, and I’ll fall prey to the thinking that when I see a social media post that has a prayer tip or a little bite of some scripture… I’ll get that dopamine hit, double tap “like”, maybe share it to somebody.

But rather than let that small taste of God’s Word build my appetite and draw me in to actually sit with God in his presence, to actually receive Christ through his Word… I’m too often satisfied with the little taste, and now I’m just going to keep scrolling into the doom loop.

And what results is less and less of a hunger for God’s Word, because I’m numbing myself with fast food faith and secondhand spirituality.

And I’ve been seeing this play out in our own church for most of this year. Because every single time we gather, we gather around God’s Word. And I’ve been encouraging you to bring your own Bible to get into that habit. And if you don’t have a Bible, or forgot to bring one, to grab the black seat-back one.

And yet, it breaks my heart as your pastor to see more than half the room choose to keep their hands in their lap and just wait for the Bible verses to be displayed on the screen.

I think that it’s telling that even when we get together as God’s family to read God’s Word and try to apply it to our lives… if we struggle to build the habit of opening God’s Word and reading it for ourselves here… I wonder how indicative that is of the struggle we have during the rest of our lives?

And it hurts my heart because I know that the LIFE that is offered to us through the Word… I know that the TRUE LIVING WATER that is delivered to us through the Word is not being received by you if you’re never drinking from it.

And we’re out there in this world where EVERYTHING is trying to compete for our attention and our focus and our zeal… it’s like walking through a dusty field on a blistering hot day. You start to get faint. You don’t have the same energy.

And someone tells you the good news, “Hey, I’ve got a hose of ice-cold water over here!” What are you going to do? You’re going to run over there and get a drink of the best water you’ve ever had! Right?

You can’t stand back and look at the hose and say, “wow, that sure looks like good water!” That’s not going to quench your thirst.

You can’t listen to the bubbling water splashing on the ground and expect the sound of it to revive you.

You can’t have some other person who drank from the water tell you about how cold and refreshing it was, and expect their secondhand description of it to bring any benefit to you!

No! You’ve got to go and drink deeply of it yourself! It’s not something you EARN, because the hose is already POURING the water, but you need to put yourself in front of it to receive it.

God is already delivering Christ through his Word every time we open it, so we need the habit of opening it for ourselves regularly.

[this week]

This might sound like the simplest next step for us all to take, but truly, I think we need to simply open our Bibles to receive Christ this week.

Simply open your Bible. And, hear me, it’s great if you’re following a reading plan on your Bible app, and it’s great if you have a little devotional book like “Jesus Calling” or “Our Daily Bread”...

…but there’s something about opening your Bible. Not because there’s something magical about the printed paper. But because it ensures we’re not getting distracted by the notifications on the phone, and it ensures that we’re not settling for some secondhand, curated, abbreviated version of God’s Word in a devotional.

And so, I don’t know what it looks like for YOU to simply open your Bible to receive Christ this week. Maybe it looks like keeping your same reading plan, but opening the Bible to read it rather than reading it from the app.

Or maybe it means you need this midyear reminder to get back into the rhythm of Bible reading that you might have fallen off a while ago.

Maybe you realize that you don’t have a rhythm of Bible reading, so this is your invitation to start! And talk to me, because we’ve got resources to help you choose a place to start and how to make sure you’re understanding what you’re reading.

But you can’t satisfy your thirst by looking at water, or listening to it, or by hearing someone else describe drinking it. God wants to deliver Christ to you through his Word, so we need to open our Bible and receive him.

[END]

Because we don’t want to be like the Thessalonians we read about: fearful, fighting, and faking a faith that is too flimsy to withstand the storms of life.

That’s what happens when you never open the Word for yourself: you end up borrowing everyone else’s faith and hoping it holds.

But God didn’t leave us fearful. He gave us a shepherd.

He didn’t leave us fighting for secondhand scraps. He gave us the truth.

He didn’t leave us with the need to fake it. He gave us full, abundant LIFE.

So when you are feeling thirsty and parched, God delivers to you exactly what you need through His Word, because Jesus Christ is the Living Water.

When you are feeling hungry and weak, God delivers to you exactly what you need through His Word, because Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life.

When you are feeling lost and afraid, God delivers to you exactly what you need through His Word, because Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd.

And the never-ending flow of God’s grace doesn’t depend on your ability or your effort. It’s never rationed. It’s never waiting on your performance to give you what you need.

Because the source of Life has been pouring out this whole time, and it’s still running, still beckoning you to come and be satisfied, still inviting you to drink deeply from the well that never runs dry.

So when you feel like you are fighting for your faith, or like it’s too flimsy to hold you in the storms of life, God delivers to you exactly what you need through His Word: Christ for you: the way, the truth, and the life.

Isn’t that good news?