Acts 17 has Paul preaching the gospel in Thessalonica. “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ”. The message was simple and direct, and it connected with many in the city. That doesn’t sit well with the established religious leaders. “But the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar, and attacked the house of Jason, seeking to bring them out to the crowd”. The establishment wasn’t about to let this outsider come in and disrupt what they had going. They went on a hunt to find Paul and Silas to silence them.
They didn’t find them and the local believers sent them on their way to Berea. Paul discovered something different there. “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so”. Here is the example of what we need to do with the teaching we all hear – we need to take what we’ve heard to scripture and make sure it lines up. We shouldn’t just take the teacher or preacher at face value. We need to compare what is said to God’s Word. They did, and “Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men”.
Word got back to the Jews in Thessalonica about Paul’s success in Berea, so they went there to try and upset that like they had in their own town. They were successful and Paul was whisked out of town and heads to Athens where he begins to address the idol worship he discovered there. His teachings about Jesus were fresh and new, and the people were intrigued. “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything”.
He deals with their idolatry head on. But he gives them the perspective that they need to be curious about the God Paul talks about. “And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him”. God isn’t some unreachable impersonal being. He wants a personal relationship and Jesus Christ is the way to have that. His message connected and some Christ Followers came to be as he taught and challenged their status quo.
Arlin Sorensen's Thoughts on Scripture 