Acts 17:1-15

¹Paul and Silas went through the towns called Amphipolis and Apollonia and they came to a town called Thessalonica. There was a Jewish meeting house there,

²and Paul went to that meeting house every Saturday. He used to always do that. On each of the next 3 Saturdays he talked to the people there and showed them from God’s book

³that Jesus is the one that God sent to save people. Paul told them all about Jesus and showed them everything that God got his men to write in his book. Those words said that God will send a man to save us, but that man has to die, and then come alive again. He said, “I’m telling you about Jesus. He is the one God sent to save us.”

⁴A lot of people there believed that message about Jesus, and they joined Paul and Silas. Some of those people were Jews, and some were not Jews but they respected God, and a lot of them were important women.

⁵But some Jews there were jealous of Paul, and they went to the middle of the town, to where a lot of people were hanging around, and they found some trouble makers there. They told those trouble makers that Paul and Silas were bad people, and got them to be a big noisy mob, shouting and saying bad things about Paul and Silas. Some of them went into the house that belonged to a Christian called Jason. They were looking for Paul and Silas, to drag them outside so that the mob could beat them up.

⁶They couldn’t find Paul and Silas in that house so they grabbed Jason, and some of the other Christians, and dragged them to the town bosses, and they shouted, “Those 2 men, Paul and Silas, they make trouble everywhere, and now they have come to our town to make trouble here too.

⁷All this Christian mob are against everything that our big boss in Rome tells us to do. They reckon a man called Jesus is really the biggest boss. And this man here, Jason, he is letting them stay at his house.”

⁸All the people and the town bosses heard that story, and they got very upset.

⁹The town bosses made Jason and the other Christians pay some money, and told them, “You can only get your money back if Paul and Silas don’t make any more trouble.” Then the bosses let Jason and those other Christians go.

¹⁰Then, that same night, the Thessalonica Christians sent Paul and Silas out of their town, to another town called Berea. As soon as they got to that town Paul and Silas went to the Jewish meeting house to talk to the people there.

¹¹The Jews that lived in Berea were happy to listen to the message about Jesus and they thought about it carefully, not like the Jews in Thessalonica. The Berea people read God’s book every day to find out if Paul’s message was true.

¹²So a lot of those Jewish people believed in Jesus, and some of the important women and men that were not Jews believed in Jesus too.

¹³But the Jews in Thessalonica heard that Paul was in Berea telling people God’s message about Jesus. Then they got up and went to Berea and made trouble for Paul, and got a lot of other people to make trouble too.

¹⁴So some of the Christian men in Berea took Paul out of that town. They went down to the sea, and they all got on a ship and went to the town called Athens. But Silas and Timothy stayed in Berea.

¹⁵Then Paul said to the men that took him to Athens, “As soon as you get back to Berea tell Silas and Timothy to come to me here. Tell them to hurry and come here as soon as they can.” Then those men left Athens and went back to Berea.