to sing at my bedside when I was a child. And it's the same hymn you sang tonight! I tried, but that night during the Civil War, I was powerless to shoot you."
Ira Sankey pointed that man to Christ. He and thousands of others were saved under Sankey's ministry. All this stemmed from the fact that Sankey praised the Lord at all times.
CHAPTER 17 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews:
2 And Paul, as his manner was, went in to them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, 3 Opening and alleging, that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach to you, is Christ.
4 And some of them believed, and consorted with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.
5 But the Jews which believed not, moved with envy, took to them certain lewd fellows of the baser sort, and gathered a company, and set all the city on an uproar, and assaulted the house of Jason, and sought to bring them out to the people.
6 And when they found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren to the rulers of the city, crying, These that have turned the world upside down are come here also; 7 Whom Jason has received: and these all do contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, one Jesus.
"My main business is the saving of souls. This one thing I do."
CHARLES SPURGEON 8 And they troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.
9 And when they had taken security of Jason, and of the others, they let them go.
10 And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night to Berea: who coming there went into the synagogue of the Jews.
11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
13 But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was preached of Paul at Berea, they came there also, and stirred up the people.
14 And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul to go as it were to the sea: but Silas and Timotheus abode there still.
15 And they that conducted Paul brought him to Athens: and receiving a commandment to Silas and Timotheus for to come to him with all speed, they departed.
1 6 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
1 7 Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.
POINTS FOR OPEN-AIR PREACHING 17:22 Give Yourself a Lift If you are going to preach in the open-air, elevate yourself. For eighteen months, I preached without any elevation and hardly attracted any listeners. As soon as I did it
"soapbox" style, people stopped to listen.
Their attitude was "What has this guy got to say?" They had an excuse to stop.
Also, elevation will give you protection. I was once almost eaten by an angry 6'6" gentleman who kept fuming, "God is love!"
We were eye to eye ... while I was elevated.
On another occasion, a very heavy gentleman who had a mean countenance placed it about 6" from mine and whispered, "Jesus said to love your enemies." I nodded in agreement.
Then he asked in a deep voice, "Who is your enemy?" I shrugged. His voice deepened and spilled forth in a chilling tone, "Lucifer!" I was standing beside my stepladder at the time so he pushed me backwards with his stomach.
He kept doing so until I was moved back about 20 feet. I prayed, "Wisdom, Lord," then said, "You are either going to hit me or hug me." He hugged me and walked off. That wouldn't have happened if I had been elevated.
Elevation will also give you added authority. Often hecklers will walk right up to you and ask questions quietly. This is an attempt to stifle the preaching, and it will work if you are not higher than your heckler.
If they come too close to me, I talk over their heads and tell them to go back to the heckler's gallery. They actually obey me because they get the impression I am bigger than they are.
When Ezra preached the Law, he was elevated (Nehemiah 8:4,5). John Wesley used elevation to preach. Jesus preached the greatest sermon ever on a mount (Matthew 5–
7), and Paul went up Mars' Hill to preach (Acts 17:22). So if you can't find a hilltop to preach from, use a soapbox or a stepladder.
See Acts 3:4 comment.
18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached to them
Jesus, and the resurrection.
USING THE LAW IN EVANGELISM 17:29 Paul was preaching the essence of the First and Second Commandments to show his hearers that they were idolaters. See Acts
19 And they took him, and brought him to Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof you speak, is?
20 For you bring certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.
21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) 22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, You men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious.
23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
Whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare I to you.
24 God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he gives to all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like to gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent:
31 Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; whereof he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear you again of this matter.
33 So Paul departed from among them.
18:4 Paul did not go to the synagogue to keep the Sabbath holy. He went there to reason with the Jews about Christ. His manner was to become like a Jew to the Jews.
His heart's desire was to reach his own nation with the gospel. See 1 Corinthians 34 Howbeit certain men clave to him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
17:24 Evolution should not be taught. Dr.
Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, gave a keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, in 1981. In it, he explained his sudden "antievolutionary" view: "One morning I woke up and ... it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long ... I've tried putting a simple question to various people: 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?' I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural
History and the only answer I got was silence.
I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing—it ought not to be taught in high school.'"
17:26 Mormons believe that God cursed Cain with black skin and a flat nose.
However, the "mark" was set upon Cain before the Flood. In that Flood all flesh perished except for Noah, his wife, his three sons, and their wives. If the curse upon Cain was dark skin, the only way the race could have survived was for Noah to be a direct descendent of Cain. However, Noah's genealogy didn't come from Cain, but from Seth (Genesis 5:3,6–32).
17:30 Repentance—its necessity for salvation. See Acts 20:21.
"If my six-year-old daughter was out on the road playing in front of my house and I saw a huge truck barreling around the corner, what would I do in that moment? Out of my love for my daughter I would not gently invite her to step away from the street. I would command her to change her direction, and get off the road! Why? Because of my love for her. I know that the truck would not be able to stop in time and it would run her over and kill her.
The same is true of the Father's love for us.
Out of His love, he commands us to repent, because at any moment the truck of sin and