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A lone traveler arrives in one of history's most celebrated intellectual centers only to be deeply disturbed by what he sees everywhere. Undaunted, he engages the city's leading thinkers and delivers a message that turns their worldview upside down. What did Paul say on Mars Hill that cut through centuries of philosophy, and how does his approach challenge believers facing similar cultural hostility today?
📝 Study Notes, Scripture List, Transcript, and more: https://medicallake.church/sermons/when-in-greece
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📝 Study Notes, Scripture List, Transcript, and more: https://medicallake.church/sermons/when-in-greece
#mlcc #church #churchonline
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00:00Don Buckley was talking about a guy named Albert Camus.
00:04He died, I think, in 1960, so he was back part of the 20th century.
00:08He's a famous atheist, a French atheist.
00:11He had played around with Christianity.
00:13In other words, he looked into Christianity, and he decided that's not for him,
00:17and he became actually one of the most vocal critics of Christianity until his death.
00:22I think it was 1960, 1961.
00:24But right before he died, he gave a message,
00:28and actually he's directing it to Christians.
00:31And this is basically what Camus said.
00:33Again, atheist, doesn't love God, but he is talking about Christians here.
00:38He says this.
00:40He said,
00:40The world expects of Christians that they will plant themselves squarely in front of the bloody face of history.
00:48We are in need of folk who have determined to speak directly and unmistakably
00:54and come to what may stand by what they have said.
01:00Courage to stand up in the midst of a society that is contrary to the gospel
01:05and doesn't love God and to speak the truth and to stand there speaking the truth,
01:11no matter what may come.
01:13That's exactly what happened to Paul on Mars Hill.
01:16He gets in the midst of a bunch of pagan philosophers surrounded by a city full of idols,
01:22hostile to the gospel message,
01:25and he stands up and he speaks directly and confidently,
01:28and he doesn't care where the chips are going to fall because he's going to speak the truth.
01:32That's Acts chapter 17.
01:34It's exactly what we see.
01:36We see is that God alone can redeem a person,
01:39for the philosophies of man only leave people in the dark groping for truth.
01:46I can't find it.
01:48The philosophies of this world will not lead a person to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
01:52Only the word of God that has been revealed to us can save people.
01:57It's not about human philosophies, but two philosophy groups, there's tons of them,
02:02but two specific groups are going to be mentioned in the text today.
02:05If you remember correctly, last week we left Timothy and Silas in Berea,
02:13and they escorted Paul from Berea to Athens, so he's alone.
02:19He's by himself, and so he's in a new city.
02:21He's probably doing what you and I would do if we're in a new city,
02:23where he's going to check out the city.
02:24He's going to walk around the city.
02:25What's the city like?
02:27What can I see?
02:28What kind of buildings are there, or people, or food?
02:30Or he's walking around the city looking as he's waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him in Athens.
02:38So that's where we find ourselves in verse number 16 of chapter 17 of the book of Acts.
02:43So open up your Bible.
02:45This is God's word.
02:46We want to look at it together.
02:47So look at verse number 16.
02:49Now, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, remember Timothy and Silas or in Berea,
02:56his spirit was provoked within him.
02:59He was irritated.
03:01As he saw the city was full of idols.
03:05So you remember what Paul said about idols later on in Corinthians?
03:08He said idols are demons.
03:11They're demons.
03:12So you can see how he's provoked.
03:14There's so many idols here in the city.
03:16So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews, as his normal practice was,
03:22and the devout person, so those God-fearing Greeks, who happened to be there in the synagogue.
03:27And some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers,
03:31again, these are the two philosophical camps we're going to look at today,
03:34also converse with him.
03:36And some said, what does this babbler wish to say?
03:41Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities
03:44because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
03:48So Jesus is a person, and the word resurrection, Anastasia in Greek,
03:51they're probably thinking that he's preaching about a God named Anastasia, the resurrection.
03:57So these foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
04:02And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus,
04:05saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting,
04:09for you bring some strange things to our ears.
04:14We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.
04:17Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time
04:22in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
04:27Don't they work?
04:28That was my first question.
04:29Don't you go to work?
04:30I mean, is all you do is just talk around about new things?
04:33I mean, how about going to work for a while?
04:34Anyway, that's what's taking place here as Paul is now introduced to these two philosophical systems
04:42that he's going to be talking about.
04:44Here's this picture we saw before as they're traveling around.
04:47They were up in the top left corner there.
04:51We see Philippi.
04:53We see Thalassanaica, Berea.
04:55He left Berea, went down to Athens.
04:57So he's just about done on his second missionary journey.
04:59He's going to come back to Caesarea Philippi here shortly.
05:01But he's in Athens right now, waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him in Athens.
05:07He's all by himself.
05:08All by himself.
05:10Athens was a well-known intellectual city.
05:12Very old city.
05:13You're probably familiar with it.
05:14It's still around today.
05:15Athens is very full of architectural buildings that are just amazing.
05:20Places that you would look at and say, that sculpture was fantastic.
05:24How did they do that?
05:26The problem is the city's buildings that were so beautiful and architecturally sound
05:32were all dedicated to pagan gods.
05:35So he'd walk along and he'd see this idol there in front of some building.
05:39This building's dedicated to this idol.
05:41Then he'd go to another building and dedicated to this idol.
05:44And all these architectural buildings were all dedicated to pagan idols.
05:49He didn't see the beauty of this architectural work.
05:51That's not what he saw.
05:52He saw the excessive idolatry.
05:56That's what caught his attention.
05:58It wasn't the buildings.
05:59He said the city is full of idols.
06:00It's full of demon worship, basically.
06:04As a matter of fact, a guy named Petronius, a contemporary writer at Nero's court,
06:08says satirically that it was easier to find a god at Athens than a man.
06:14That's how many there were.
06:15They were all over the place.
06:16And as a Jew, the overwhelming idolatry in the city was abhorrent to him.
06:23He believes in one true God, which we do as well, not a bunch of multiple pantheon of gods.
06:29But it was abhorrent to think that this was given over to so many demons in this city.
06:36He was irritated, the word says.
06:38He was provoked.
06:39And it's written in a way that he would see an idol and it would provoke him.
06:43And then he'd go to another one and it would provoke him.
06:44And he would go to another one.
06:45And it was just over and over being provoked, irritated at all of these idols that he saw.
06:52So he goes to the synagogue first.
06:55But not only did Paul preach in the synagogue, but also he reasoned with people in the marketplace.
07:01So he was in a religious house of worship.
07:03And he was also in the community, which is a great example for us.
07:07We don't want to isolate ourselves in this building right here.
07:10We want to make sure we get out into the community as well.
07:13So he's in both places, both the religious house of worship and out in the community,
07:17in the marketplace where people shop and talk.
07:19So he's there.
07:22This is what you and I would be so irritated probably of.
07:26Well, I'm irritated what I see in my society.
07:30But Paul did not abandon the city because it irritated him, but he preached Christ to it.
07:35I look at our society around us and I see, whether it's our state or this nation,
07:40so many things that are leading towards corruption and wickedness, evil that we see in our society.
07:46And you know what?
07:47I can honestly say, it irritates me.
07:51But that doesn't give me the right to withdraw myself and seclude myself in some little isolated bubble.
07:56Instead, I need to get out into my community and preach Jesus Christ to him.
08:00So that's what he's talking about.
08:05Epicureans, two groups, Epicureans.
08:08They did not deny the existence of gods.
08:11They did not deny the existence of gods, but they were really indifferent towards them.
08:14Ah, they don't really affect men's lives.
08:16It's no big deal.
08:17No.
08:17John Polhill said, Epicureans were thoroughgoing materialists, believing that everything came
08:24from atoms or particles of matter.
08:27There was no life beyond this.
08:29All that was human returned to matter at death.
08:33So since you're going to live and die and that's it, we party today because tomorrow we die.
08:42That's kind of the attitude.
08:43Dude, so I'm going to maximize pleasure and I'm going to minimize the pain in my life because
08:48I only have one life and then I'll go and that's all out.
08:51There's nothing left, nothing after life.
08:52You know that reminds me of Americans.
08:55They don't believe in a life after death.
08:56Most of them don't.
08:57So what do they do?
08:58They got one life.
08:59They're all they're doing is living to please themselves.
09:02Maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
09:04It reminds me of American society.
09:06Those are the Epicureans.
09:07The Stoics, the Stoics were pantheistic, which believes that God is everything.
09:13God is part of the created order, believing that God is part of the natural world.
09:18The Stoics relied on reason without revelation.
09:21They're big on reason, being proud and self-sufficient, placing a great value on high ethics.
09:27They were in need of nothing else other than their reason.
09:31Think Spock.
09:34Okay, Star Trek fans, think Spock.
09:36All reason, no emotions, all reason.
09:40Those are the Stoics.
09:43They believe that human could reach their full potential simply by reason.
09:47The problem is they didn't have revelation to go along with that reason.
09:51It was reason without revelation.
09:54Howson said the two enemies the gospel has ever had to contend with are the two ruling principles of the Epicureans and Stoics.
10:03Pleasure and pride.
10:04Pleasure and pride.
10:06Stoics are self-sufficient and need nothing else outside of themselves.
10:11So the Epicureans enjoying life, the Stoics enduring life, but neither of them knew the true life found in Jesus Christ.
10:21Well, Stoics guided by reason apart from revelation.
10:23They reject guidance by emotions.
10:27They're relativists.
10:29The Epicureans, they live from their head.
10:32The Epicureans are more emotional.
10:34They live from their belly, as the Greeks would say.
10:36The God is their belly.
10:37You've seen that in the New Testament.
10:40No life after death.
10:42Maximize pleasure.
10:42Minimize pain.
10:44They live from their belly.
10:46C.S. Lewis wrote something very interesting in his work, The Abolition of Man.
10:50He talked about men without chests.
10:52And what he meant was you have a group of people that just are totally governed by reason alone.
10:58And then you have a total group of people that live from their head.
11:01And then a total group of people that live from the belly.
11:03They live simply from emotional, animalistic instincts, pleasure, minimizing pain, head and belly.
11:11And Lewis says we need men with chests.
11:13Men who have the ability to take that reason and govern their emotions and live a life outside of this either head or belly.
11:21Men with chests.
11:23He said we make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.
11:28We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
11:33We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
11:38We live in a society with men without chests.
11:41Governed by reason or governed by emotions.
11:46They said, who is this babbler?
11:48It's a really interesting word.
11:50It's a seed picker.
11:51It has the idea of someone who goes along and picks up a piece here, a piece there, a piece there, a piece there.
11:55Tries to put together in a holistic concept of some sort of teaching but really doesn't know what he's talking about.
12:01That's the word babbler.
12:02He's picked up pieces along the way but he doesn't even understand what he's talking about as he's trying to put together a system of thought.
12:08He's just a babbler.
12:09Just a babbler.
12:11And then verse number 18 talking about foreign divinities.
12:14That word divinity in the Greek is demons.
12:17Oh, he's here preaching about foreign demons.
12:20That's how the Greeks viewed these things.
12:21So the Areopagus was both a hill and a council of people.
12:29So when it says he went to the Areopagus, it's hard to understand whether he went to the council of the people or he went up on the hill.
12:36Areopagus.
12:37Probably both.
12:38He probably went up on the Areopagus to meet with the council called the Areopagus.
12:41So that's kind of confusing at times.
12:43So he's up on this hill, the Areopagus, called the Hill of Ares or the Hill of Mars.
12:50Ares is Greek.
12:51Mars is Roman.
12:52The God of War.
12:54The God of War.
12:55So he's on Mars Hill, the God of War.
12:56And I want you to think about that.
12:57Can you imagine the spiritual battle that was taking place on that hill that day?
13:02You have the truth of the gospel being presented and it's packed full of demons and idol worshipers.
13:09You've got this.
13:10If you could hold back the veil and look at the spiritual world that was taking place that day on that mountain,
13:16it would amaze us the battle that was taking place that day.
13:20Just reminds us what Paul told us in Ephesians 6.
13:23He said, put on the whole armor of God.
13:26We live in a spiritual war.
13:27But you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil for we wrestle not against flesh and blood,
13:33but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness,
13:38against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
13:40He's fighting a battle that day and you could pull back this.
13:43You could see the warfare that's going on.
13:48So they lead him up to the Areopagus and then they start asking him a bunch of questions.
13:53Look at verse 22.
13:53So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, again, whether that's a council or the hill,
14:01again, probably both, up on the hill is the council.
14:04Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
14:08Now, I kind of put a tone of sarcasm in there.
14:11I don't think he did that.
14:12He's a little more gentle than I am, but I would probably put sarcasm in.
14:15Anyway, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,
14:19I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God.
14:24What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
14:29The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,
14:34does not live in temples made by man.
14:36Look at all your temples.
14:37He's not there.
14:39Nor is he served by human hands as though he needed.
14:42He doesn't need anything from humans.
14:44Since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything,
14:49and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth,
14:54having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.
14:58God's established the nations that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him
15:04and find him, yet he is actually not far from each one of us.
15:07For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said.
15:13So he's calling upon something that they knew about.
15:15He's using that as a reference point to make a connection to them.
15:19For we are indeed his offspring.
15:21Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone,
15:27an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
15:29No, he's not like that at all.
15:32The times of ignorance God overlooked,
15:34but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,
15:37because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed,
15:43and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
15:48He is that judge.
15:51Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.
15:54Okay, the resurrection is a big thing.
15:55We'll talk about it in just a second.
15:57Why it shifted gears as soon as they mentioned the resurrection.
16:00As soon as he mentioned the resurrection, everything shifted.
16:02Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, ridiculed, made fun of him.
16:07But others said, we will hear you again about this.
16:10So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed.
16:14Among them also were Dionysus, the Areopagite, probably one of the council,
16:19and a woman named Damaris, and others with him.
16:22Just a few people get saved now from this event.
16:26So they're now up on the Areopagus talking to the Areopagus, if you want to say that.
16:30And so what we see here is that Paul began where these philosophers were
16:34and attempted to correct their inadequate views of the truth.
16:38He didn't just start lambasting and say, what a bunch of idiots.
16:42Don't you know there's only one truth?
16:43No, he doesn't do that.
16:45He's starting where they're at, and he's trying to make a connection to them
16:47so he can give them the truth because they're not seeing the truth correctly.
16:50So he wants to make that connection to them so they can see the truth.
16:54He's trying to build a bridge between the philosophers and the revealed word of God
16:59so that they can trust and believe.
17:02He's out in the marketplace doing that work, and they call him up and say,
17:06hey, give us more information about this.
17:09Warren Wiersbe wrote in his book, God Isn't in a Hurry,
17:12a church on the move must confront reality and meet people where they are.
17:17Separation is not isolation.
17:19In other words, we can be separated from sin but not isolated in this world.
17:23It is contact without contamination.
17:28Jesus was a friend of publicans, tax collectors, and sinners.
17:31Many church members don't have any unsaved friends, or if they do,
17:34they keep them at a distance.
17:37Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem where the crowd was so cosmopolitan
17:41that the inscription on his cross had to be written in three languages.
17:45Many churches today have abandoned the marketplace
17:47and spend their time reminding one another of the gospel.
17:51Oh, it's a great message. Oh, it's a great message.
17:53Go out to the marketplace and tell them how great that message is.
17:58So Paul is attempting to win an audience.
18:00He wants to get their attention and not to alienate his hearers.
18:04Again, I would probably say, you guys are a bunch of fools.
18:07That would not get their attention.
18:09That would actually get their attention.
18:10They'd probably throw me off, I guess.
18:11Throw me off, I guess.
18:12Throw me off the area, I guess.
18:14That was kind of, yeah, okay.
18:17This was his philosophy.
18:19In Corinthians, this is what he said.
18:21First Corinthians.
18:23To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law.
18:26Not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ.
18:29This is Paul speaking.
18:30That I might win those outside the law.
18:32To the weak, I became weak.
18:34That I might win the weak.
18:35I have become all things to all people.
18:37That by all means, I might save some.
18:40So he was trying to build a bridge and make a connection to the people there.
18:43Instead of, yes, his spirit was irritated.
18:45I got that.
18:46But he wants them to hear the gospel message.
18:48So he's making it an open door so he can speak the truth to them.
18:53So he opens the conversation with a point of contact.
18:56Hey, by the way, I was walking around your city and I saw that you had a bunch of statues.
19:00And then you had one that said, to the unknown God.
19:02So you see, he opens up the conversation by something that they all understood.
19:07It was a good opening conversation to begin the conversation to talk about Jesus.
19:10It was a good conversation starter.
19:13And that's sometimes hard for you and me is to find, how do we move from golf to God when
19:18we want to talk to people about Jesus?
19:20I mean, we're talking about life and things that are happening, but how do we move from
19:23talking about golf to talking about God?
19:26How do you and I have conversation starters?
19:28And we've been talking about that in the Christian Education Hour.
19:31Some things we came up with was, for example, whenever you go shopping or out in public,
19:35people that you interact with usually ask you this question, how are you today?
19:39Or how are you doing?
19:41A simple response could be, oh, hey, God is so good to me.
19:44He's always good.
19:46It's just a simple conversation starter.
19:48They may bite, they may not, but it's a way to open the door.
19:51Or maybe something happening in national news or international news, you make mention, I
19:56wonder what God thinks about this.
19:57And, you know, he's talked about that in his word.
20:00Or if you're outside looking at the creation, you could say, oh, isn't God a great creator?
20:05They're just ways of making a connection and building a bridge to someone we're sharing
20:09faith with, conversation starters.
20:10So he used this unknown idol, this unknown God, as his conversation starters.
20:16And they had erected this altar to the unknown God because they didn't want to offend some
20:20deity that they may have overlooked.
20:22There's probably thousands in Athens, but they just want to make sure they didn't overlook
20:26one because, you know, his wrath may come upon them.
20:29Notice what it says.
20:31Their worship was a thing and not a person.
20:34He says, what you worship, not who you worship.
20:38Their worship was a thing, not a person.
20:40He's going to introduce them to a living person, a divine being, God himself.
20:48He emphasizes their ignorance, stuff that they don't know.
20:51For the Stoic, that's abhorrent to think that they didn't know something.
20:54Remember, everything's guided by reason.
20:56So he begins with God as a creator.
21:00God does not live in temples.
21:02God needs nothing from humanity.
21:04He is the giver of life.
21:06He doesn't need us to add anything to him.
21:09Stephen, when he was preaching in Acts 7, he said basically the same things.
21:13Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says.
21:17Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.
21:20What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord?
21:22Or what is the place of my rest?
21:23Did not my hand make all these things?
21:26It's the same thing.
21:27God doesn't need us.
21:29He doesn't need a place to dwell in.
21:31He doesn't need anything for man.
21:33He's the one who gives to man what we need.
21:37See, the Epicureans could care less about another god,
21:40for they sought help from no gods alone,
21:42but simply wanted to make their life better through pain or minimizing pleasure.
21:48If everything came from atoms or particles of matter,
21:51as Paul is explaining, where this matter came from.
21:54God created this out of nothing.
21:57He created this matter.
21:59So you're looking to just pieces and everything goes back to matter when we die.
22:03No, no, no.
22:04God is the one whom he stands outside of his creation.
22:07He's not part of it.
22:09The Stoics being pantheistic thought that God was part of the natural world.
22:12He's a stone or a rock or a tree.
22:14He's part of the world.
22:16Pantheism, everything is God, is the idea.
22:20Paul is teaching him that God is not part of the created order.
22:23He stands outside of the creator.
22:25He is the creator of all things.
22:27He's not part of his created order.
22:30He stands outside of nature.
22:33So Paul pointed out God's providence over humanity
22:35and then humans' responsibility back to him.
22:39Isaiah 42 says this.
22:40Thus says God, the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out,
22:45who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
22:47who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it.
22:51Yes, God cares for people.
22:53He's got a common grace.
22:55He allows rain to fall on us, which we're experiencing now.
22:59He allows the sun to come so that our crops will grow, that we'll have food.
23:02It was called common grace.
23:05God cares and provides for people.
23:07His providential care over humanity.
23:11In Luke and Acts, he said this.
23:14Yet he did not leave himself without witness,
23:16for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons,
23:20satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.
23:23He gives to all.
23:25That's his character.
23:27That's who he is.
23:28He gives.
23:30The Epicureans felt they were only responsible for themselves.
23:33They needed nothing other than pleasure outside of that.
23:36They need nothing else.
23:38The Stoics, they were self-sufficient.
23:40They didn't need anything.
23:41They needed nothing outside of their reason.
23:44And what Paul is saying is, no, listen, you need God.
23:47You need God, the true living God.
23:49Not all of these demons that you have here in Athens, these idols.
23:53You need the true living God who created all things.
23:56You need to know him.
23:58Really, isn't that our message to our society?
24:01You need God.
24:02You need Jesus.
24:03You need Jesus.
24:06For God has created humans to inhabit the earth,
24:08and he says that they should seek him.
24:12Now, Paul's writing it in such a way that he's doubting whether people are truly seeking God,
24:15but that's what he created them for.
24:18Hebrews 11, 6 says this,
24:19It was man's responsibility to seek after God in the creation.
24:32But, of course, we know that sin entered in, and now people don't seek after God.
24:35They don't want God.
24:36He says,
24:38From all, from one man came everything that we see.
24:42One man.
24:43One man.
24:44Of course, that's Adam.
24:45All people are descended from Adam,
24:47showing the universal relationship of all the nations around us.
24:51All the nations.
24:52God actually set the boundaries for the nations.
24:55Deuteronomy 32.
24:56When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
24:59when he divided mankind,
25:01he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the numbers of the sons of God.
25:04God desires nations today.
25:08He doesn't desire a global governance.
25:11The only global government that's holy and righteous is the global governance of Jesus Christ
25:16when he sits on the throne in Jerusalem on David's throne.
25:19World government is not what God desires at this point in time.
25:22He desires nations.
25:24He created them.
25:26And another thing to consider is this.
25:28There is only one race.
25:30Adam's race.
25:32Now, we have issues with ethnicities.
25:34I mean, people.
25:35Not you and I, hopefully.
25:36But people have issues with ethnicities, colors, melanoma content in someone's skin.
25:40All of a sudden, you prejudge them a certain way.
25:42But remember, there's only one race.
25:44We all come from Adam.
25:46There's one race called the human race.
25:50Idolagers are like people groping their way in the dark.
25:53They can't see.
25:55They had no verbal revelation.
25:56They were rejecting God's general revelation of creation.
26:02We've talked about this before.
26:03You go into a cave and they turn the lights off and you can't see your hand in front of your face.
26:08That's the idea of people.
26:09Without the revelation of God, they're groping in the dark for truth.
26:12They can't find it.
26:14They can't see even in front of them.
26:16They can't even see their hand in front of their face without the light of the revelation of God.
26:21It's reason without revelation.
26:24They're feeling their way.
26:26This blind person groping around.
26:29He quotes from their own poets.
26:31Again, it's a point of contact.
26:33He's not saying he agrees.
26:34Actually, this is true.
26:36God has created all people.
26:38But he's quoting their own poets.
26:39So he's making a point of connection with them again.
26:41It's good.
26:41I like that.
26:43But then it says, God overlooked their times of ignorance.
26:46See, God overlooked, not ignored.
26:50There is a difference.
26:52There's a difference.
26:54In his long-suffering, he bore with their ignorance without punishing it is the idea.
27:00Not that he overlooked sin.
27:02He never overlooked sin.
27:03But he was long-suffering, not bringing punishment to nations or people because of their ignorance.
27:08He overlooked it for a period of time.
27:10Over the ages, God held back his divine wrath against sin.
27:16Paul told the Romans in Romans 3,
27:18whom God put forth, that's Jesus, as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.
27:24This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, which is long-suffering,
27:29he had passed over former sins.
27:31He didn't ignore them.
27:32They will be held accounted for them.
27:34But he overlooked bringing punishment to them because they were ignorant.
27:38But now their times of ignorance are over, are over, because through Paul's preaching,
27:46now they have the truth.
27:48They are not ignorant any longer.
27:50Now they're held accountable.
27:53It's not unknown to them any longer.
27:56And the only response of a human being when God has been revealed to them,
28:00the only logical, reasonable response is repentance.
28:05It's repentance.
28:06Repentance.
28:08And I look at myself, and I look at him, and I say, I am completely depraved.
28:16I am without hope.
28:18My sins have separated me from a holy God, and I will spend eternity in the lake of fire
28:23apart from his presence.
28:29That's the natural, what's the only reasonable response is to repent of my sins.
28:34Say, you are right, God.
28:35You are so right.
28:36That's exactly what I am.
28:37But I see Jesus Christ in all of his glory raised on that cross, dying for me, buried and risen again,
28:45that I too would raise again one day to life.
28:49I repent of my sins.
28:51That's the only reasonable response.
28:53And that's what he's asking them to do.
28:54God commands all people to repent.
28:57All people.
28:58It's the only reasonable response to this revelation of God that we will repent of who we are and allow God to change us.
29:08True repentance hates the sin, W.M. Taylor said, and not merely the penalty.
29:13And it hates the sin most of all because it's discovered and felt God's love.
29:19It's felt God's love.
29:20Paul's saying, listen to God's word and believe the gospel message.
29:27You will not fall under God's judgment.
29:29For he has fixed a time that somebody is going to judge and that judge is Jesus Christ.
29:33John 5.
29:34For the Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son.
29:38He will be the judge.
29:39Confirmed by the Father that Jesus is a judge by raising him from the dead,
29:45gave confirmation not only of a sacrifice but who he is.
29:52They didn't want to be raised from the dead.
29:55The Greek view of the body is that it was a prison house of the soul.
29:59It could not wait for death for the soul to be released from the prison house.
30:02Why would you want to live in eternity with a body is a Greek way of thinking.
30:07Well, I would agree with them partially.
30:08I certainly don't want to live in eternity with this body,
30:11but I want to live in eternity with a glorified body.
30:15I'm all for that.
30:16That's exactly what it is.
30:18But they didn't want a body at all.
30:20So that's why the resurrection threw them off.
30:22They didn't want to hear about that.
30:24So Paul's not driven away from Athens.
30:27Only a couple of people get saved, a man and a woman that's mentioned.
30:32There's no church that we see founded in Athens that we're aware of.
30:35There's no church mentioned.
30:36Someone comes to faith.
30:37No church mentioned, and he doesn't write any letter to Athens.
30:40And as far as we know, he never goes back to the city again after this.
30:44This is his experience in Athens.
30:45So what do we get?
30:46What do we learn from this?
30:47Number one, look for ways to make contact and a connection with unbelievers to be able
30:52to share your faith.
30:54Look for opportunities.
30:55Look for open doors.
30:58Pay attention.
30:59There are people out there that need to hear the gospel.
31:01Two, when given the opportunity to share your faith, do not hesitate.
31:07Do not hesitate.
31:08Paul irritated.
31:09He still gave his personal test.
31:11He gave the truth.
31:13And third, human philosophies are insufficient to redeem.
31:17For people need to know God as creator, provider, judge, and redeemer.
31:22I'm glad he talks to people that's in our society today.
31:28These are the people you and I are going to meet.
31:30He gives us some good insight of what we can do when we share the gospel with them.
31:34Let's pray.
31:35Father, thank you.
31:36Thank you for this spiritual battle that took place on the Areopagus, that this battle took
31:41place of the truth of your word against the demonic idols of the city.
31:46And we know that you overcome.
31:48You win.
31:50So thank you, Father, for the message.
31:52May we be about, like Paul, sharing this message.
31:55Even when our society irritates us, we would rather preach the gospel to them than isolate
32:00ourselves.
32:01We pray in Jesus' name.
32:03Amen.
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