Acts 17 And Missions

It's a privilege to be here, it's an honor. I love being in the presence of saints who love the Bible, and Jesus, and the gospel, and lost, perishing souls. Praise God, there's not many churches who get up in the morning because those things are in their DNA.

And I feel at home here. There's lots of people around the world that confess to be Christian, but very few are people of the book. And that's why I love Bethlehem Bible Church. This morning we sang some great hymns that in the theology of those hymns really resonate with the message that I've prepared for today.

And you know, that's amazing to me that the Holy Spirit orchestrate that. But what is more amazing to me is that I'm amazed at that kind of thing. That as if God couldn't put that together. But I am constantly being grown in my trust in the sovereignty of God.

When Christi was sick and she was near death and I was talking to my boys, there were a few things that the Holy Spirit kept reminding me of as I was praying with my boys. One was the Westminster Shorter confession or catechism question of number seven, what are the decrees of God?

And my boys and I would say this to each other over and over, the decrees of God are His eternal purposes, according to the counsel of His will, whereby for His own glory, for His own honor, He has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass.

So God says to that parasite, you get down there and you serve my daughter for my glory and her good. And when enough is enough, it's gone. Every Adam is ordained by the good, gracious, sovereign God.

And the other thing that ran through our minds was God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage, take the clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan His work in vain. God is His own interpreter and He will make it.

David Livingston, a great missionary to Africa, came back speaking at a missionary conference and he said, you know, people say, thank you for the sacrifice you're making. Thank you for all these great feats you have done.

And he said, among many things, he said, when a king beckons a man, a soldier, to go fight for him, to lay down his life on the battlefield, we call it an honor. But why, when the king of the universe beckons a man to the front lines, we call it a sacrifice?

It is no sacrifice, it is indeed an honor. And thank you for the honor of being supported by this church, through your prayers and your partnership, that my family and I have the privilege of representing the king and proclaiming the gospel to the perishing and discipling the undrained.

So would you pray with me and then we will look into God's word. Thank you, Lord, for the honor of being here. Thank you for the freedom and the privilege we have in this country to stand in a pulpit like this and herald the good news.

Thank you that we can come and hear the Bible in our language. Lord, may we never take it lightly. May we never be casual about it, but may we be glad that we have the word and that Jesus stands risen, mighty to save.

Oh God, I pray if there are people in this room who have not yet submitted to the king, I pray that today, oh Lord, you would so work and move in their lives that he would irresistibly call those people in Jesus' name.

Paul’s Sermon on Mars Hill and the Sovereign God

If you would please open with me to the book of Acts, Acts chapter 17, verses 16 to 34. I cut my teeth on the NESB when I was in Bible school and college or seminary, but I'm reading from the ESV today because that's the Bible I use mostly because that's a little easier with people around the world, so that's what I've come to use mostly.

Acts 17, it's the narrative, the sermon on Mars Hill, Acts 17, verse 16. Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him and some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears, we wish to know therefore what these things mean.

Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.

For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God, what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 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.

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 and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us for in him, we live and move and have our being as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man, the times of ignorance God overlooked.

But now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Amoris and others with them.

Culture, Context, and Misreading Acts 17

So what do you think of when you hear the word culture? Culture is a often used term. Does anybody have a succinct definition for it? I think maybe the best, easiest definition of culture I've heard, and I'm a missions professor, so I teach on this a lot, is shared meaning.

That's a good way to define culture. There might be others, but that's how I do it, shared meaning. So, but we hear the word culture, and in our Christian culture, we also hear the word engaged culture.

What do you think of, this is just think to yourself, obviously, what do you think of when you hear the word engaged culture? Is that a positive thing? Is that a negative thing? Back to the word culture, is that a good thing?

Is that something we should adapt to, accommodate to? Or is that a fallen thing? Is that a result of the fall? How much, when we think of culture, do we think of image of God? How much, when we think of culture, do we think of the curse and fallenness?

These are issues that missionaries have to wrestle with, that all Christians really do wrestle with, whether we consciously think about it and articulate it the same way or not. We all wrestle with this in some way or another.

And then what about the word redeem culture, or classically, transform culture? As I go through this message, you will probably hear how I think about these terms, and what my opinion is, but undoubtedly, you have all heard those terms or phrases before, culture, engage culture, redeem culture, transform culture.

In contemporary evangelicalism, this text that I just read is one of the most popular and yet one of the most misunderstood passages in the whole New Testament, especially in terms of missions and evangelism and ministry.

If you've ever been around a seeker-sensitive church, or if you've ever received training in missions and outreach or evangelism, you would have likely heard Paul's sermon on Mars Hill commended as the premier example of contextualization and relevant cultural engagement.

When church growth gurus look to Paul's speech as a prescription for how we are to engage culture in a relevant way, the whole thrust of this passage malfunctions. And the term engage culture is actually a fairly relevant or recent term, not a biblical term.

It's not found in the scripture. This is a recent term developed in the 1970s, give or take, but really became popular in the 80s and 90s with the church growth movement. It has no standard definition.

So when there is no universal definition, then essentially it's everything we do. If mission is everything, then mission is nothing, Stephen McNeill says. Many Christian leaders claim Paul is employing some sort of post-modern method of attractional communication here.

It's actually quite inaccurate. It's not what he's doing. There was no mutually beneficial conversation where both parties walked away feeling enlightened and validated. He doesn't pretend to just be a truth seeker on his own spiritual quest or spiritual journey, looking for diverse perspectives.

He does not try to build bridges with non-Christian worldviews in order to win their admiration and their respect. He preaches the gospel, as he says in 1 Corinthians 2 .4, not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but with the demonstration of the spirit and power.

He went for the one truth that would sound ridiculous, the resurrection of the dead. This is massively important for us because the main point of the text won't be nearly as piercing unless we understand the context of Paul's audience.

Paul's theology of God is the main point of this text, not his methodology of communication. His theological potency is softened if we misinterpret his method. So if you're taking notes or you wanna remember something, if somebody were to ask you, what was that sermon about?

I miss church and what was Evan speaking about? This is the main point that if somebody were to ask you, I want ringing in your ears, is that the sovereign God summons everyone to submit to his son. The sovereign God summons everyone to submit to his son.

That's the telos, the main point, the thing I want to drive home. When I'm teaching overseas, I don't always give three points in an outline. Usually I argue for one point and I try to find the one overarching point in the text and show them how the rest of the verses build up and support and establish that one argument.

So if I were doing this in Asia or Africa, I would say the sovereign God summons everyone to submit to his son. So to keep us from falling into the error of postmodern me-centered interpretations of the Bible, there's one word we have to keep in mind when we come to any text and you sitting under Pastor Mike's preaching, Pastor Steve's preaching, Pastor Pradeep, is you understand the word context.

Context is critical. And there's many kinds of context. There's grammatical context, there's literary context, there's theological context, there's the historical context. And certain passages demand more attention or to certain types of context because of how the passage is written and you need to understand all the context, but sometimes a certain type of context is emphasized more.

So when you come to a passage, especially in Acts, which is a narrative, you never ask what is this verse or these verses mean to you. There's really one spirit-intended meaning, though there can be many spirit-led applications of a text, but if the full text is considered, the full context, then the spirit-intended meaning is truly communicated.

But because postmodern glasses are usually worn when we're reading the scriptures, popular interpretations of his sermon on Mars Hill become filled with distracting errors. So it's important to ask questions about Acts, let's say, with questions like this.

When the underground Christians, the persecuted Christians, received the book of Acts from Luke, would they have primarily asked what we ask? What was Paul's strategy? What was his missiological method here?

Or would they have asked, well, why did Luke, by the Spirit, highlight these certain aspects of Paul's sermon? And what is the Holy Spirit saying through the text to us that is transcultural and transgenerational?

So to understand that spirit-intended meaning, let's look at the historical context. Ask some simple interpretive questions. Question number one, how did Paul communicate? Now, this is not a methodological question.

This is not a prescription for how we are supposed to do it, though we can learn from it. There's some proverbial wisdom here. Acts is a book that is misused and misapplied around the world. It's a very popular book.

People go to it. Every description becomes a prescription for them. So let's not do that, but let's look at what Paul is doing. And just make some simple, logical observations. It says, now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was, notice, provoked within him as he saw the city full of idols.

So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. And then it says, some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him, and some said, what does this babbler wish to say?

Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting?

For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and all the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

Okay, I know I've read that, but it's worth hearing key words as I go through it. Here's the context. Earlier in Acts, Paul has offended the Jewish populace in Thessalonica. And their leaders stir up civil unrest.

And because he has no longer room for ministry there, he leaves at night to Berea. This is in verse 10. And then when he arrives in Berea, what does he do? He starts preaching publicly. Notice what he's doing.

He's not starting a conversation secretly, preaching publicly. And the Jews from Thessalonica, what do they do? They go there and they force him out again. So simple, obvious observations here. You don't have to have a seminary degree to make these observations.

It's obvious from the historical context that Paul is not secretly trying to fit in to the culture and employ friendship evangelism, throwing out some sort of God talk every now and then, passing the comments every now and then, dropping a little line to see if they're gonna bite.

He is in a public square proclaiming the gospel. He is clearly not trying to win the approval of the culture by seeking to blend in and have some sort of casual, cordial, charitable conversation. This is evident because wherever he ministers, people try to kill him.

Obvious, right? Right. To some postmodern interpreters, not so obvious. Paul is brought to Athens and he is waiting for a few weeks for Silas and Timothy to come join him. And while he waits, he investigates the city and its culture and starts preaching the gospel in the synagogue in the public square, not wanting to waste this providential opportunity.

It is critical to notice how Paul engages the culture, so to speak. I use that term lightly. He does not try to fit in and assimilate. He doesn't embrace the culture and look for tolerable ways to shape the gospel, to redeem the culture.

He's not walking around thinking, now how can I just transform this culture? Maybe they can still use their idols. Maybe they can become icons in the church. Maybe they can still burn incense. Oh, they don't really need to burn those idols.

They don't really need to turn from that stuff. How can I make this as palatable and as assimilating and accommodating as possible? None of that. He's nauseated by the culture. He's provoked by it. It's not angry at the people, per se.

It's the system. It's the spirit of the age. It's the deception that provokes his spirit. This word for reasoning, he's reasoning in the synagogue. It does not suggest a colloquium or a round table discussion.

It suggests a debate, a polemical argument. The fact that Paul did not have a cordial, mutually beneficial dialogue does not mean he was arrogant or belligerent, hardly. With loving truth, he proclaimed the gospel without shaving off its hard edges of the countercultural truths of the gospel.

He studied not to seek to accommodate and contextualize their false beliefs, but he studied the culture to confront the biblical truths that they would most likely reject, which is clear from the historical context of the beliefs of the hearers.

So this leads us to the next question. So who were these people? Who were the hearers of Paul here? Well, it mentions two people, the Stoics. Who were the Stoics? The Stoics were secularists. They believed that the peak of human enlightenment was achieved by complete indifference to pleasure or pain.

They believed everything is predetermined by random fate and nothing really matters. They sought to master their emotions by living simple lives without pleasure. The Stoic philosophy was about three and a half centuries old by this era, and they would have been the equivalent of maybe brainy science professors in the state university, let's just say.

Then you have the next group, the Epicureans. Who are the Epicureans? They believed the purpose of life was to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain. One of their central beliefs was that God was not to be feared, and they didn't even really believe in life after death, so they just lived for now.

They lived for this life, your best life now. They actually held to an early form of evolutionary theory. They actually had a developed theory of evolution long before Darwin, so this was native to them.

They would be the equivalent of deists, evolutionists, pleasure-seeking, educated urbanites in metropolitan America, living for the moment without fear of judgment. And then there was a third group. It's not mentioned in the text, but it's implied because of some of the things Paul says, and if you read about the historical context, it's clear that the most pervasive popular group that everybody would have assumed would have been there, because this was most of the population, were what was called the cynics.

They were actually the oldest of the philosophical traditions. The cynics sought true happiness by liberating themselves from wealth, fame, power, and living in harmony with nature. They neglected personal hygiene, accountability, family responsibilities.

I love Phil Johnson points to that, and he says, they were essentially the hippies of the day, the new-agers. So when you understand that Paul's communication was actually confronting these cultures, you can then see the convicting, penetrating force of his message and why it was not culturally accommodating.

God the Creator, Lord, and Judge

So let's now ask the million-dollar question. What was he communicating? What is the telos, what is the point, the chief goal of his message on Mars Hill? Now remember, the sovereign God summons everyone to submit to his son.

So what was the content of his message and how did he employ it so that it would have convicted his hearers? The content of the message revolves around basic doctrines of God that would have been outrageous and offensive to the people.

Before Paul could preach good news, there had to first be culture-confronting, fearful news that God is the sovereign creator, he's universally present, and he's the righteous judge. Number one, God is creator and Lord.

It goes straight for this, right out of the gate. So, verse 22, Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are religious. For as I pass along and observe the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you, 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.

And he made from one man, every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek God. And perhaps feel their way toward him and find him, okay?

So Paul's teaching, there is one God and by him, all things were made. Now remember the three major groups of people here. So as I'm going through the explanation of his message, keep those three groups in mind and what they would have responded to.

God is, Paul is saying, he is not just one of many gods in the Greek pantheon or in some multicultural, multi-perspectival Western society. He is sovereign over everything and nothing happens apart from his will.

This assertion is wholesale defiance against every aspect of Greek philosophy and every other contemporary religion today. It is defiance against Islam, Buddhism, atheism, evolution, deism, American civil religion, Mormonism, New Age-ism.

They're all shattered under the weight of this self-sufficiency of almighty God. The God of the Bible has determined the allotted existence of every nation down to the last second and not one more. When God says enough, Rome falls.

Constantinople falls. Athens, London, Moscow, Washington, D .C. fall. It's true of every world ruler down to the citizen of every nation. Isaiah says in Isaiah 40, 13, who has measured the spirit of the Lord or what man shows him counsel?

Whom did he consult and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket and are accounted as the dust on the scales.

Behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing in emptiness. America, Iran, China, Rome, Greece, Israel, Germany, nothing before the Lord, no competition.

Daniel says in Daniel 4, 34, his dominion is an everlasting dominion and his kingdom endures from generation to generation. All the inhabitants, all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing.

And he does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand or say to him, what have you done? A personal story, this passage from Acts changed my life forever in 2002.

I was wrestling with this whole issue of God's providence and his self-sufficiency, his lordship. It was a fresh concept for me, something I was still wrestling with. I had a sense that God was through the word leading me to know him in a new biblical way.

I decided to read through the Bible and mark every passage that suggested or taught about his power and self-sufficiency. And in the evenings after work, I would go outside and pray. I just pray, we lived out on the coast and I would pray up and down the coast.

And one evening as the sun was setting, I was crying out to God to just pray and open my eyes that I might see wonderful things in your law and not just insights for living, right? But wonderful, wonderful, amazing, beautiful things in your word.

And as I was praying, I was working through this passage actually and this verse came to my mind with such force and it reminds me actually of when Judson was praying in the woods behind Andover when he was a seminary student.

Mark 16, 15, he says, it so impressed upon my mind that I was obliged to obey it at all hazards. And in a similar way, this verse was impressed upon my mind and I felt like my eyes were opened to see the King for the first time in a very marvelous way.

Acts 17, 25 was that verse. It says this, God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything. Let that hit you. Isn't that amazing? Why? Since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and for the first time in my life, I was, as it were, swept away in the ocean of God's sovereignty and self-sufficiency and I was trembling, rejoicing in the fear of God.

I felt horribly insignificant and it was wonderful. I realized I could neither bargain with God nor give him anything that he had not already given to me. The question was no longer, what is God's will for my life?

But the question was now, what is God's will? Period. I realized I had been seeking to use God for me and my plans and my fulfillment, thinking I was actually giving to God something that he needed from me, but God flattened me and showed me that he was gonna use me for him, for his plans and his fulfillment.

And when he is done with me, my breath will stop and he'll just take me home. We're saved by grace, we're sustained by grace and we're glorified by grace alone, alone. Not in addition, but alone. It's all grace.

It's all faith alone. It's all grace. The truth is, God doesn't depend upon you and you cannot fail him or frustrate his sovereign plans. That's good news. That's really good news. You cannot fail God's plans.

This is the penetrating reality and truth of Paul's sermon, self-autonomy, independence, man-made religion. They are obliterated by this verse. These philosophers were seeking for what God had written on their hearts, in the image of God on their hearts, but they were blind.

They were looking for God in all their other gods and philosophies and nothing was satisfying their intellectual quest. So what did they do? They built an altar to the unknown God knowing they hadn't found him, but Paul says, though he's not far from each one of us.

So here's an illustration. This would be like somebody, I'm originally from the Northwest. I'm not from Seattle, but I've been to Seattle. Going to Seattle and they go there on holiday for a vacation to find, they've heard it's a beautiful place.

There's, it's majestic. There's magnificence there. It's amazing. They spend all their time slopping through the torrential downpours of Seattle, looking at all the tall buildings, maybe go to the Space Needle, the art museum with all its weird, bizarre art displays.

And the whole time they're thinking, there's gotta be more beauty here than this. Surely there's more here than this. And then rain stops. One of the three sunny days comes out. And to their astonishment, behind the Space Needle on the other side of Seattle is a volcano.

More majestic, more powerful, 10 ,000 times more beautiful than the Space Needle or any other postmodern art exhibit. It's right there. And inside Mount Rainier is more power than all the electricity and all the technology of Seattle.

And it could blow and wipe out that whole city in a day. The empires of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos would disintegrate. There's more power in that volcano, which is not even a god. It's just a mountain.

God upholds the mountains. I lift my eyes to the mountains from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth. The God who made that mountain sustains that mountain. And the reason that mountain hasn't blown yet is God hasn't said yet.

That volcano was there thousands of years before Seattle was ever settled and will be there long after Seattle is gone. That fearful discovery of breathtaking greatness is what Paul is driving at here.

He's saying, God's right there. He's not far from us. He's right here. And Paul couldn't have done that if he were just trying to contextualize and accommodate and highlight similarities between Athenian religions and Christianity.

God's Universal Presence and Righteous Judgment

Number two, God's universal presence. I alluded to that in the illustration I just gave, but he says in verses 27 to 29, yeah, he's not far from each one of us. In him, we live and move and have our being.

And as even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone or an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

So Paul's saying, this is obvious. God is not locked in carved idols of gold. He's everywhere. He's imminent. He's universally present. In verse 28, Paul quotes two poets. Many postmodern contextualizers will argue that Paul is quoting the philosopher's favorite poets to be culturally relevant.

Whole ministries, I'm just, this is a side note. Whole ministries are built around this fallacious observation that this is what Paul's doing, saying we need to contextualize to the culture so that they can understand us and accommodate and adopt their categories.

Whole ministries, and sometimes they're called Mars Hill. You can edit that before you put that on the internet. Many, the first quote is by Epimenides, a poet from the sixth century BC, over 600 years, 600 years before Paul was giving this.

The second quote is from Eratos, a poet of the third century BC, 300 years before Paul. Paul's not embracing contemporary culture by quoting these poets. These poets were not the equivalent of John Lennon, Paul Simon, Lady Gaga.

Paul is quoting from their ancient literature and ancient ancestors who once recognized these truths about God. That's what he's saying. The Athenian intellectuals, they were suppressing the common grace of God that was obvious to their forefathers.

Today, it would be like quoting a Christian truth from William Shakespeare or Thomas Jefferson and rebuking social liberals or evolutionary atheists, saying Shakespeare saw this, Jefferson saw this, Rousseau saw this, people from a long time ago that now people today are the offspring of those ideas.

Paul's saying, come on, guys, the people before you that you like, they saw this stuff, what's wrong with you? He was demonstrating that God is universally pervasive and their ancestors knew it. That historical context rightly understood takes talks and takes all the celebrating, the accommodating the culture, the transforming, the taking on of the culture and it blows those ideas out of the water.

Number three, Paul highlights God's righteousness, God's righteousness. Then Paul goes on to put the nail in the coffin, highlighting the righteousness. He says the times of ignorance God has overlooked and now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

These people, surprise, surprise, hardly thought of themselves as ignorant and it would be rare today to find anyone in our culture who willingly admits that they are ignorant. Paul's not looking for a fun conversation here, he's poking at them.

Moreover, Paul says God commands, he summons all people everywhere to repent. This is the gospel call. This is the gospel call. The gospel call is a summons from God. It's a declaration. One pastor I respect will often say this, he says the gospel call is not an invitation to a party that people politely decline.

He says the gospel call is a summons from the king that sinners proudly defy. All people everywhere are summoned to repent because God will judge the world and that is certain because he raised his son, Jesus Christ from the dead and through him God will judge the world and this is why the resurrection from the dead is such an offensive, controversial, laughable doctrine in every era, in every nation, in every culture.

It is the resurrection and so how did they respond? When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, they mocked. Others said, we'll hear you about this again. So Paul went out from their midst and some men joined him and believed among whom were also Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

So just some observations. Really, in the Bible, there are three general responses to a gospel call. You only really have three options. The gospel is offensive, it's foolish, or it's good news. So if you're preaching the gospel, you're in a taxi, you're out on the street corner, you're in a Bible study, you're at an English corner, whatever the context is, if you're proclaiming the gospel in a way that is understandable, those are the three possible responses.

If people walk away from what you might call gospel preaching and they say, well, that was some great advice. That was, that's interesting. Oh, thanks, that was really helpful. Or people hear you say, you know, that's just what I believe.

That's just what Christians think. But your religion is interesting too. It's disingenuous to say, that's just what I believe. Whether anybody believes it or not, it's true. It's the truth. So say it like it's true.

It's not just your opinion, it's not just what Christianity teaches, it's the truth. Whether there's one man who believes it or one million, it's true. So these people, they mocked, they believed, and all these philosophers, these materialists, even those who believed in an afterlife, the thought of people having resurrected bodies either on the new earth or in hell, it sounds like absolute nonsense.

The lordship of God, the resurrection of the dead always brings mockery. And everyone knows that if the physical resurrection of Jesus is historically true, he is physically alive in heaven today, then they are undeniably doomed if they do not repent and trust in Jesus and it's written on every heart.

When the lordship and the creative power and the universal presence and the righteousness of God and his son's resurrection are rightly proclaimed in any culture, people will balk at it or they'll believe in it.

Our gospel proclamation must never be more socially acceptable and more politically correct than God is. Fallen culture is meant to be confronted, yes, with winsomeness and kindness, but not accommodated.

And the gospel is a summons and it's not just an invitation. The sovereign God summons you to submit to his son. So the question is, do you fear God? Have you submitted to his summons? In this period of amnesty, this period of mercy, have you submitted to the lordship of his son?

My prayer for you today is that you would sing in your heart, crown him the lord of life who triumphed over the grave and rose victorious in the strife for those he came to save. His glories now we sing, who died and rose on high, who died eternal life to bring and lives that death may die.

Crown him the lord of years, the potentate of time, creator of the rolling spheres, ineffably sublime. All hail, redeemer, hail, for thou has died for me. Thy praise shall never, ever fail throughout eternity.

Let's pray. Our good God, I just pray there are people in this room who have yet to submit to the son, the resurrected son. And I pray, God, that you would work mercy and life in their hearts, that they might respond.

And for those of us who believe, may we be strengthened and bolstered and established in our belief once again, that we would go on believing, that we would look to Jesus and gladly, happily submit to the lordship of Christ.