Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

Learning is hard work. Anyone who’s gone to school knows that. Using our brains is like exercising a muscle; it grows tired when it’s overworked and weak when it’s left idle. The school system in our country requires us to study until we reach a certain age, and many people will keep on studying for a few years after that in order to get a better job. But sadly, in the minds of some, once they’re through with school, the season for pushing their brains to learn new ideas comes to an end. The assumption is, we’ve had a lot of information poured into our minds during our school years, and after graduation we enter the season of life when we draw on that pool of information whenever we need it. The problem with that approach, of course, is that our memories decay over time, and if we don’t keep using the knowledge we learned, we soon forget most of it. We may have gotten an “A” on the final, but six months later we can barely remember half of what we once knew.

If you’re just reading through Acts and come across these few verses about Thessalonica, you might be left with the impression the mission there was something of a failure. Paul, Silas and Timothy were only in the city for a short period of time. Some people came to Christ, but it wasn’t long before fierce persecution arose and the missionaries were forced to flee, leaving these new believers on their own. It would be natural to assume that when left alone without the apostles to guide them, and facing the fury of a hostile community, these new believers might have renounced their faith or, at least, stopped speaking openly about their faith. 

It’s amazing to watch the change that comes over a person when he or she gets married. The focus of life tends to move from “me” to “us,” or at least it should. We can all tell sad stories about situations where that shift in attitude didn’t take place. And then, there’s another drastic change when children come along. The focus of life moves from “us” to “them.” There is now a little person who depends on me for his or her very existence. Making time for “us” now takes special planning. Money I used to consider mine to spend as I wished is not mine anymore. It’s put into a family account to cover the many different expenses that come in. My free time disappears into a list of chores longer than the hours available.

Becoming a Christian will change your life, not only your inner spiritual life, but your external, relational life as well. Not only are you joined to Jesus when you believe, but you become joined to His people. This doesn’t mean you stop loving your own natural family, but it does mean you start feeling that same kind of love for those who are your spiritual family. You become committed to them as if they were your own flesh and blood. Jesus actually said that the spiritual bond formed between Him and us, and between those who believe with each other, would be closer than the deep ties we have with natural family members. Listen: Matthew 12:46-50. He isn’t trying to tear us away from our natural families. He wants us to love them, but sometimes knowing Jesus divides people, and He warned us that might even happen in our families: Matthew 10:32-39.

What do you do when things go wrong, when your best attempt to obey God ends up in a mess? Where do you turn when depression weakens you like a disease? When you’re attacked by the very people who should protect you, when people totally misunderstand what you say and the situation explodes into a crisis? How do you find peace when temptation rises like a fever until you submit? How do you prepare yourself for that dreaded meeting or phone call or doctor’s appointment? How do you live with the sorrow of watching a beloved family member or friend continue to rebel against all they know is right and destroy one relationship after another? How do you cope with getting older, watching your body age and your memory fail? How do you respond? Do you collapse in self-pity and try to comfort yourself with things you know are destructive? Do you get angry at God for failing to protect you? Do you blame yourself for being so stupid and fall into self-loathing? Because we all face these kinds of pressures, which is why we all need to learn how to respond when they come. Left to ourselves we tend to react badly, and our bad responses become habits and those habits enslave us and drag us down.

Luke says “And setting sail from Troas we had a good run (favorable winds which allowed the ship to sail straight to where they were headed) to Samothrace (about 70 miles north), and then, on the following day, into Neapolis (about the same distance). Neapolis was located on the northeast coast of Macedonia, and served as a harbor for Philippi which was about 10 miles inland. A very important highway ran through Neapolis called the Via Egnatia (Egnatian Way). It was a paved and carefully maintained military road that ran from Dyrrachium on the Adriatic Sea eastward all the way to what we call today Istanbul (Turkey). It served as Rome’s main land route across northern Greece, and Paul and his team traveled west on it from Neapolis to Philippi, and later on to Thessalonica.

About 20 miles west of Pisidian Antioch, the road on which Paul, Silas and Timothy were traveling intersected with a smaller road which headed north. Initially it seemed right to these missionaries to continue going west into the highly populated coastal region called “Asia” and they may have passed the intersection and kept walking for awhile before stopping and turning around, because Luke says they were “…cut short from speaking the word in Asia by the Holy Spirit.” He doesn’t tell us how this was done, but there are a number of ways the Holy Spirit could have corrected them. He might have “spoken” to one of them, or imparted a “word of knowledge” (1Co 12:8) about what lay ahead, or He may have simply caused them to feel “grieved” in their spirit as they walked along (Eph 4:30). But one way or another they felt they should turn around and take the smaller road leading north. It skirted along the eastern border of a rugged hill country called “Mysia,” until it arrived at the city of Nicea on the southern border of the heavily populated area around the Black Sea, called “Bithynia.” And, this time, they thought they should go into Bithynia, but Luke says, “…the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them to do so.” In the previous verse he said the Holy Spirit was the One who prevented them from going into Asia, yet here it’s Jesus who guides them. While it is certainly true that the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Jesus, and for that matter, the Spirit of the Father, all dwell within us (Ro 8:9, 11), Luke is probably not trying to make a theological statement about the Trinity. Rather, it is much more likely that he’s describing the manner by which God’s guidance was communicated to them. Apparently, Jesus spoke to one or more of them in a dream or vision or they simply heard His voice, whether audibly or inaudibly, telling them to stop walking toward Bithynia, and to turn around and go back to the road that led west toward the Aegaen coast. This road ran along the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara, and then followed the Aegaen coast south, passing through the port-city of Troas (near ancient Troy). 

God knows all things, and even before He made the world He knew every person who would come to Him. He knew who would respond when He called us, and He knew we would sin and be damaged, but because He’s God, He knew He could rescue us, heal us and train us until we would fulfill our destiny. There was a very specific reason that God decided to create us: He wanted a huge family of sons and daughters, and He wanted them to become just like His divine Son Jesus.

We’re watching two estranged portions of a family trying to figure out a way to come together in peace. One side came from a rough, troubled background with no knowledge of the Bible whatsoever. The other was a very disciplined and exclusive group whose parents taught them to memorize Scripture from early childhood. They dressed differently, they ate different kinds of food, they came from different ethnic backgrounds, they spoke different languages at home. In fact, they were so different it’s hard to imagine how they could be part of the same family, but about 15 years earlier a “marriage” had taken place that had pulled these two groups together. For years they barely acknowledged the other’s existence, but members from both groups had started spending time together recently and that brought to the surface feelings that had long lain hidden. A few aggressive individuals told the other side of the family what was wrong with them, and that had created a crisis. People started arguing bitterly, so a meeting was called to try to reconcile the different sides so they could love each other and act like a family.

The Antioch church became the center of outreach to the Gentiles. They had successfully put behind them the issue of fellowship between Jewish believers and Gentile believers, and by this point in time (probably about 15 years after Pentecost) they were aggressively moving forward to evangelize Jews and Gentiles in other regions. They became a “home base” for missionaries who went all over the world. Paul, Barnabas, John Mark, Silas, Titus (Ga 2:1-3), and undoubtedly many more fanned out from that great metropolitan city carrying Christ to anyone who would listen.