November 26, 2025 | Acts 17
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Introduction and Thanksgiving Preparations
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. It is Wednesday. It is the day before Thanksgiving. So hopefully you got those turkeys brine in. They're all ready to go on the smoker. At least ours is going on the smoker. Some people are deep frying their turkeys. Make sure that they are dry before you drop them in the grease, because I've seen plenty of videos of the fire explosions that take place when the water hits the grease.
But yeah, it's it's Turkey day tomorrow, so happy Thanksgiving Eve, Eve. Yeah. If you celebrate. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, tomorrow morning we'll be out at Frontier Park at 9:00 AM playing some football in the cold. So come join us. Should be fun. Be sure to warm up beforehand. Yeah.
Clarifying Sermon on Wifely Submission
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Hey Sunday I preached to Anna wife's submission to her husband, so that you did overall, I think rather.
Innocuous. I got some good feedback from the people on the message. But there was one thing that I mentioned that caused a little bit of confusion and I thought it would be helpful to to kick it around a little bit on the podcast. So I made a comment about if a husband asked his wife to alter her physical appearance, cosmetic surgery, something like that, that a wife could have the [00:01:00] freedom to submit to her husband.
And not be in a situation where she was automatically ignoring the inner beauty. So it was in the point where I was talking about seeking true inner beauty rather than the external beauty. When Peter says, do not let your adornment be external. And so that created some questions about whether or not a wife should go through cosmetic surgery.
If a husband said, I want you to get cosmetic surgery.
Navigating Conscience and Submission
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And some of the questions had to do with, what about Romans 14 that talks about if you can't do something from faith, then it's sin for you, which we would talk about an issue of conscience. And lemme start by saying. If there's an issue of conscience and a real life example of this would've been COVID-19, we, in California, we were going through a lot of workplaces that were requiring the vaccine.
And so some people came forward and said, I've got an issue of conscience about the stewardship of my body. I don't feel good about. Putting something in my body that I feel like I don't know enough about, and I don't know what this is gonna do to my body. And so thereby by conscience, this would be a sin for me to take the vaccine.
And so they opted out of it. And I think that applies, and I think that would apply here if a wife said, you know what? I don't [00:02:00] feel good that this is a good stewardship of my body. And so thereby this is for me a conscience issue. And I feel like this would be sinning against my body to undergo cosmetic alterations to my physical appearance.
So thereby I'm gonna object on the grounds that I feel like what you're asking me to do would be sin for me to obey you in that. Grounded on that. I am in agreement with that and would say, no, you shouldn't sin in that regard. I what I think though that this is revealed for me at least, is that generally speaking, I think we have an anemic view of a wife's submission to her husband, by and large, based on the fact that, praise God, we have a lot of really good marriages in our church.
Where husbands are leading their wives really well, but I do think the call to submission is broader and more sweeping than we give it credit for initially. In other words, it's not always going to be easy to submit to your husbands. There are gonna be things that your husband may ask you to do that you may flat out disagree with.
Both feet anchored to the ground saying, I don't want to do that, and yet, if it's not sin, I believe my conviction is [00:03:00] that the biblical call would be for you to submit to your husband in that. Now, if that's a right or wrong decision to be made in the future, that's something that your husband will have to answer for.
And I think you can submit to him knowing that you are going to be commended by God. Well done. Good and faithful servant for your obedience to him, because again, as I talked about on Sunday, your submission is more an active obedience to the Lord than it is to your husband. So, I know cosmetic surgery is a Pandora's box.
And I think one important, caveat to throw out there is cosmetic surgery in a vacuum is not a sinful act. And so. There's a lot of extenuating circumstances on there, and that's where I would say my mistake on Sunday was that I brought up something that I didn't have time to fully develop.
And so that is something going back 20/20 hindsight, I probably shouldn't have brought that up in the context of the sermon when I did because I just didn't have the time to fully develop the argument. And that led to some questions and I appreciate those of you guys that texted or sent in emails and we've had some good conversations about this.
But, yeah I think the call for a wife to submit to her husband is [00:04:00] is much more far reaching than I think we give it credit for. And so those are some of my initial thoughts. But Pastor Rod, I'm sure you've got some clarifying questions for me.
Husbands' Sinful Agendas and Wives' Responses
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So all things being equal, you would say, obviously scripture says not just you, but scripture is saying that the wife is called to joyfully submit to her husband who is leading sacrificially.
Yes, he sacrificially leads. He's doing it for her good, for God's glory. She joyfully submits, assuming that he's doing that for the glory of God, and that's in a perfect situation. First Peter seems to be talking about a situation where. He's not a believer, it seems so at least he's offering a qualification.
So talk about then when a husband who's leading with a sinful disposition, sinful desire, he's got some sinful agenda and the wife is aware of that. Does that change anything? Does that create any kind of different obligation for her? How does she navigate something like that? So let's go back to the situation with the cosmetic surgery, just to use it.
The same one that we're working with here. If he's [00:05:00] got a sinful agenda in this, whatever that is, and he asks her to do that thing, is she still obligated or does that work out differently because she's a wife submitting to her husband. I mean, just flesh some of that out. Yeah. For me if it's not a sinful act for her, and again, that's where I go back to in a vacuum, cosmetic surgery is not a sinful act.
And if this is not a conscience issue for her, so let's say this is something that the wife would've considered on her own. She would've been wanted to do this if it was her own idea, but because it's coming from her husband she's resistant because she's got, whatever it may be. But it's not a conscience issue.
She doesn't feel like she'd be sinning against her body to do this. I would say her role, her duty is to submit to her husband regardless of her husband's sinful inclinations or not because of twofold, number one. The wife's submission to her husband in scripture is not contingent upon her husband's disposition or her husband's state.
That's what I mentioned on Sunday. It's not based on his character or state. He's gonna have to answer before God for his motivations, his character, his decision making. For her, it's a matter of, if [00:06:00] I do this, am I in sin? And I would say if she's not, then she should submit to him. Number two, I think if you're dealing with an unbeliever you
really can't expect an unbeliever to act like a believer. So I could see a scenario within a marriage where there's a believing spouse. Both are believing spouses and the husband is in a sinful state, sinful disposition. And his wife can tell that at that point, maybe there's a Galatians six responsibility that the wife has, that there's a care for his holiness, that this should be brought to his attention.
This should be confronted, this should be dealt with. But if you're dealing with an unbeliever then really there's no expectation that the unbeliever would act any other way than unbelievers would act, that they would have a disposition towards anything other than the self. So, thereby, again, I think it comes back to her relationship.
For the Lord saying, I'm not in sin to do this. This is not my personal culpability is not there, responsibility is not there. So I'm gonna submit myself in obedience to this decision that my husband is asking me to do, knowing that I'm obeying God first and foremost in him second.
The qualification then [00:07:00] is if in her conscience she feels like this is a sinful act, the obedience to the husband, there's evidence in scripture she has some kind of biblical reason for that. Am I understanding you right? In you saying that that's what would make it permissible for her to say, I can't do that?
Yes. Okay. If that's not there. Whatever it is it's not sin. She would have to be trusting God by submitting to her husband in whatever that thing happens to be.
Financial Decisions in Marriage
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She wants to buy the Prius. He wants to get the. The Escalade, she's gonna now have an Escalade instead of a Prius. Right.
And this is where, and I think there's nuance, and I think you and I might even be a little nuanced in our own views of this too, is for, let's take that example. The more financially fiscal responsible move would be to buy the Prius for the family. The decision, the husbands wants to make those to say, no, I wanna buy the Escalade, not the Prius because of X, Y, and z.
She sits there and she knows, okay, this is gonna put our family in debt. This is gonna be put in a situation where it's not as tenable for us to afford different things that, that we're gonna need to afford in the future. [00:08:00] Planning for our kids, college tuitions, things like that. That ultimate financial responsibility, my conviction is falls on the way to the shoulders of the husband.
And so for her job is to say, okay, then we're gonna do this. She can she voice her opinion. Absolutely. And I talked about that on Sunday, even though Proverbs 31 context talks about the fact that she opens her mouth in wisdom. And so there is gonna be an opportunity, there should be, at least I think in a godly marriage for her to say, you know what?
I'm concerned about this decision that we're making. I'll defer to you in the end. But I'm concerned about the decision we're making because of these reasons. But then at the end of the day, if the husband says, no, we're gonna get the Escalade, she can submit to him in that knowing that he's gonna have to answer for the stewardship of their resources.
There's their financial stewardship as a couple before the Lord, she's gonna have to answer for her submission to him. Does she have a moral obligation then to speak up? If in her mind this is, this would be a financially disastrous situation for us, it's gonna have all these impacts and all these blah, blah, blah, blah, blahs, does she then, as a [00:09:00] woman of God, she's a wise woman, does she have an obligation to say something?
Or is it more like, Hey, well what if this is what the Lord is doing to my husband, then okay, I guess what we're doing. Yeah, I think that's why when you're in the context of a church community, and that's why we often stress the importance of doing life in community. You have opportunities to lean into your brothers and sisters in Christ, to seek counsel together, to seek wisdom, even to your pastors.
And maybe that even looks like sitting down with your husband and saying, Hey, you know, I'm concerned for this. I think it would be good for us to sit down with somebody and to talk about this decision before we pull the trigger on this. But if he persist in that and says no, should she go over his head, so to speak, and go to the pastors and say, Hey, my husband's making this decision and I think this is going to put us in a bad situation where that's, that would be a unique situation.
That would be a unique situation. I think forecasting financial instability, I don't know if that would rise to that level because that's assuming. A lot there that you're not gonna be able to afford this, you're not. And that you're getting into a lot of subjectivity there as far as, well, where are the other resources going?
And do we, is this really an [00:10:00] occasion to sit down with the husband and open up the entire financial books with the husband and say, let's talk about your financial stewardship. It would have to be unique situation for a wife to say, I'm gonna go over my husband's head to the pastors to involve them in this situation.
So ordinarily then it's a posture of saying, Hey, whatever the Lord wants to do in my husband's life and leading our family, that's what I'm gonna let happen. And trusting him in that. Yeah. If the husband's a believer Yeah. Or in Peter's situation, the husband may not be a believer he's Right.
Doing whatever he does. Right. That's a hard situation for a woman to be in. So we recognize that yes. It's a hard place for you to be in, which is why First Peter three is so helpful because it says, we don't want you to fear anything that's frightening. And that would be a frightening prospect for sure to say, I'm following a sinful man.
And that's true. Even if you're in a Christian marriage. Yeah. You're following a sinful man who ideally is governed by the Lord, his leadership. Governed by his word. But even then, you're still in a sinful marriage in the fact that you have two sinners govern governing a life together, and that's gonna be fraught with complications and difficulty.
So, our counsel to you would be to trust the Lord. Ultimately, both of you. If you're pursuing the Lord, things are gonna [00:11:00] work out okay? Yes. You'll figure things out. Now these kinds of questions are important and they're difficult to answer, especially when you start getting into the complexities of everyone's individual circumstances.
Resources for Marriage Guidance
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Are there any books that you might suggest that someone read about the way that this kind of thing works, this dynamic between husbands and wives? We did cover the last two, so if you haven't heard those sermons yet, they're on our website. Our podcast as well, not this one, the Weekend Sermons podcast.
But are there any resources that you would recommend to help people maybe dive deeper into how this husband and wife relationship and these roles work together? Yeah, I put four on the back of the sermon worksheet from this past Sunday that I think are good True Beauty by Carolyn Mahaney, feminine Appeal.
Also, Carolyn Mahaney let me Be a Woman by Elizabeth Elliot is super helpful. And then the Excellent Wife by Martha Peace. Those would be four solid resources to, to look into that. And then for men, I would say, the books that I recommended the week before for our men as well as the, is it the, yeah, the exemplary husband, Stuart Scott would be another one that I'm not sure I put on that resource sheet or not, but that would be another one that I would recommend to our men.
In fact, I've got it right here. I can I can cite those [00:12:00] books. The Exemplary Husband, the Complete Husband by Lou Priolo each for the other by Brian Chapel and Reforming Marriage by Doug Wilson. Those would all be resources that I would recommend there. And here's the thing. Let me give this.
Statement as well. This is an extreme situation that we're talking about here, and praise God, this is not something that's coming up on a regular basis within the confines of our church. And I would say to the women listening to this, if you're listening to this going I don't like this, I like Pastor Rod said, it's a hard thing to wrestle with, but I would also say.
If you're not there, then praise God for the way that marriage works, when it works the way he's intended for it to work. When you've got a godly husband and a godly wife both pursuing Christ together then marriage is a joy, and submission is a joy, and leading your wife is a joy. So this doesn't need to be something where it, we spend a ton of time being exasperated over this because this is a rare situation when it comes up.
But I do think it is just a good reminder to us that. These are the roles that God is designed for the husband and for the wife, and he cares about what those look like as they're lived out. If you have follow up [00:13:00] questions, concerns. Compliments. You can send them to podcast@compassntx.org.
There it is. It's, don't forget the compliments. If you have compliments, feel welcome to send those as well. That ride hair on Sunday looked really good And yeah. Alright, let's get into Act 17.
Paul's Missionary Journey: Thessalonica and Berea
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Act 17. We have this next stop on the second missionary journey, which is gonna be Thessalonica, which by the way carve out a little bit more time for tomorrow morning 'cause you're in first and second Thessalonians both for your daily Bible reading.
But. Paul goes here to the synagogue again and begins to reason with the Jews there. And this is interesting because he's, and later on he's gonna say I'm turning to the Gentiles. But he still loves the Jewish people, and we see that even in Romans, in Romans nine, he's gonna say I wish that I could trade my salvation for the salvation of my countrymen.
And so he's still going to the Jews and trying to persuade them. But then he ends up in Berea. And this is because the Jews don't don't really like what's going on here. And they get upset and they try to take Paul out. And so Paul's gonna be [00:14:00] sent on and he's gonna be sent to Berea and he ends up in Berea where he is proclaiming the word and the Bereans.
And this is where you've. Probably heard the phrase, if you've been around the church to be a noble bean, which is representative of somebody who takes what they hear and goes to the word of God to examine it, see whether or not is true, and that is something that is, is commendable of these people there because they're are examining what Paul is saying.
Which by the way, remember they're not opening up the book of one Thessalonians to find out if what Paul is saying is true. They're going to the Jewish scriptures, they're going to the word that they have to find out, does this line up, does this measure up as Paul is proclaiming Christ to be the one, the Messiah that was prophesied about.
They're going to these prophecies saying, is this true? Do we see this to be accurate according to our understanding of this? And so, Paul is preaching to them. They're hearing this, they're checking everything against what they know to be true in the scriptures, and they are making a decision to, to follow him.
At least. A lot of them are. After this, Paul is gonna find himself in Athens.
Paul in Athens: Preaching to the Greeks
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And while they're in Athens, we get the famous situation here of Paul walking around and finding [00:15:00] these multiple statues. And he notices, and this is Paul just being shrewd as an evangelist that he notices all of these different gods and statues to different deities.
There deities, lowercase d and he has an opportunity to address. The men there in the Areopagus, in the public forum. And so he stands up and says, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. Again, Paul was a attentive to his surroundings and he begins to talk about one in particular statue that he saw, which was A God or an A statue to the unknown God.
And he uses that as a launch point for the gospel. And he says, what you worship as unknown, I declare to you this, I proclaim to you. And then he goes on to present the gospel to the people there, and he. Notice in verse 30 calls for a verdict. He doesn't just lay it out there and say, Hey, here it is, but he calls for a verdict.
He says, the times of ignorance got overlooked. But now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he's fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. Of this, he's given assurance to all by raising him from [00:16:00] the dead. So he's gonna call for them to make the decision and a lot of them do respond again in faith or want to hear him again at least.
And so Paul is just the shrew of Angelist here. And I love that about the Apostle Paul here. Yeah. This is cool because on his second missionary journey, Paul almost doubles. The territory that he covers. The first one, it was more mild. It's about half the territory that Paul covers in the first time.
It's multiplied. It's a hundred percent fold larger in the second journey. So he's all the way in Greece now. Greece Alley. You could go there today. Yep. You can go there today to see where Paul preached to the Grecians, the ath, the Athenian, greeks. It was called Akea back then. But you can still see all these things.
This is what's so cool about our religion. This is not just a legend, a myth, a fairytale or someone just pass it on from one person to another, like a, like an extended game of telephone. This is historical and that's what's so cool about this letter, particularly the Book of Acts. This is the first Century church.
As it's growing, you get to see a picture of each. Different season of how the church grew. It's not like what we have today where you got live photos and you got high definition videos. You could see every moment of your [00:17:00] kid's growth. But watching the church grow is particularly important, especially as Paul gets to Athens.
This is where you start get to, you start getting to see some of Paul's wisdom in dealing with these people. In fact, lots of people have written books about Paul's interaction with these guys, trying to draw out applications and implications for what it looks like to preach to an audience that isn't favorable to the message.
And you'll notice that some of the things that stand out here is he's well acquainted with their. They're Gods. He knows enough about their way of life. He knows enough about some of their poets to make an appeal that they're attracted by and notice that all of it revolves around Jesus and the resurrection.
This is one of the most important pieces of our religion. It is not based on, we think good ideas. That's what Jesus has done. It's his life, his death, his resurrection, which again, this is huge. This is the cornerstone of our salvation, one Corinthians 15. If Jesus has not been raised, we have no relationship with God to speak of, we're just guessing and hoping for the best.
But because Jesus raised himself from the dead in conjunction with the Father, by the power of the Spirit, we now have something that we could say to other people. And so notice this is what Paul does. He [00:18:00] speaks to them with their language. He knows what they think. He doesn't. Go through an extended Abrahamic tradition because not going all the way back to the Book of Genesis.
He's speaking to them at their level. I think there are so many important pieces of applications here for all of us as we engage with our relatives, our neighbors, and our friends. This coming Thanksgiving. Yeah, so when you're at your neighbor's house and they've got the statue of the unknown, God, some of our neighbors do have that.
You're right. They might, you're right, they might. Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Encouragement for Evangelism
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It is and this is the spirit that we want in the church. He's always ready to for it. He is the opportunistic evangelist. And I think that's something that, that all of us should aspire towards and be praying for. Especially right now.
You've got Thanksgiving coming up. You've got Christmas coming up right around the corner. Be praying actively for opportunities to share the gospel and then look for them because God is gonna delight to answer that prayer. I'm confident in that. That's right.
Closing Prayer and Farewell
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Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
God, thanks for reward that it gives us clarity and so many issues and even just direction in some other issues, there's issues that we do need to hold more loosely and open handedly Lord, such as even talking about what we [00:19:00] began this podcast talking about, that this is us just trying to apply as much wisdom as we can when there's not a clear directive one way or the other.
But we do thank you for marriage. We thank you for the husbands and wives that are in our church. We thank you for how you're are working and. At work in those marriages, but even marriages where you have unbelieving spouses Lord we've seen you work in, in, through those marriages too, and we're grateful for that.
We pray that you'd continue to do that. Give us opportunistic evangelistic hearts this this season during Thanksgiving, tomorrow, and also the. The Christmas season as well. Lord, help us to look for those opportunities, pray that you'd bring them across our path, that we might share the gospel with people that need to hear it and need to bow their knee in faith and repentance to Jesus Christ through the Lord and Savior.
And so we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep your new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See it. Bye.
Bernard: Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find [00:20:00] out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said