Garden Text

Here again is our garden text. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds. Acts 17: 13

Perusing the text, we note the name Jews and straightway we think of God’s chosen people. When we hear Jews, we think of commandments, religious, favoured, God’s treasured ones, God’s chosen ones and a lot more  wonderfully blessed things about them. Just to put it all into perspective, here is Scriptural proof of who Jews are to Sovereign Jehovah.

For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The LORD did not set His love on you or choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the land of Pharaoh of Egypt. Deuteronomy 7: 6 – 8.

We have spent time to remember who the Jews are and to note that because they have had God’s rich and abundant promises and have known His mighty Hand in their history, they have become totally glued to and staked in their history. As Paul, an apostle and servant of Jesus Christ, preaches about God, the Jews' God, through His Son, Jesus Christ, many Jews had different responses.

The garden verse lets us know of two sets of Jews. There were the Thessalonican Jews and the Berean Jews. Regardless of their different providences, they were Jews first and foremost and shared the same free, life-helping and life-healing words of Jehovah. Paul and his companions in ministry had planned to take the Word of God to Thessalonica. In other words, Paul represents the garden, uncultivated by human beings, which was taken to the Thessalonicans. In fact, Paul was that no-human garden, wherever he went. Listen to what he said to the believers in Galatia. But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Galatians 1: 11 - 12

Paul is clear on being God’s spiritual garden, in whom He has planted His words and maintains them, ever fresh, potent and true. This is the Gospel Paul preaches to the Thessalonican Jews. He is not speaking to Gentiles, Greeks, or any other non-Jews. He is speaking to people who already know God and God’s faithfulness to them through generations. Paul is bringing the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ to them and how, through Jesus as Messiah, they are free to know every single promise of God, in their earthly lives. Paul goes into the synagogue in Thessalonica and speaks of Jesus. Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ. Acts 17:  2 – 3.  

Some Jews who heard the Word of God, were persuaded, along with other non-Jews, and followed Paul and the other servants of Jesus. They were converted. However, there were other Jews who simply refused to follow Paul's teaching. They were stubborn in their Jewish ways of thinking, speaking and living. They openly and bluntly refused Paul and his anti-Jewish teachings, as they saw it.

Those anti-Jesus Thessalonicans are Jews who are now following, but how they follow and why they follow is altogether a different matter. We shall pursue this tomorrow.