Creator Lord Judge (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendrock. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Evangelizing the Biblically Illiterate and the Intellectually Impressive

Robert Thornton, professor at Lehigh University, has tried to figure out a way that he would construct some phrases so no one could sue you if you fired someone. What do you say in this litigious society?

And he's put together a little lexicon called the Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations. The acronym for that is LIAR. And here are some examples. If you have somebody who's not very apt to work, he's an inept person, I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.

Person doesn't get along, you need to fire them, you write this. I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine, somebody who doesn't work very hard. I can assure you that no person would be better for the job.

We've got a smart crowd here this morning. If this person's not even worth consideration, here's the last one, I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment. These lawyers are fairly smart people.

Here's my question for you this morning. If you had to preach the gospel to someone who could spin truth like that, what would you say? If you're face-to-face with somebody who is smarter than you are, more knowledgeable than you are, more educated than you are, how do you preach the gospel to people who are the upper echelon intellectually?

Everybody here has to have a friend that if you think you got into a sparring match politically, you'd lose. They're just smarter. About the world, about sports, about whatever it is, music, you're just going to lose every time because they're so smart.

So what do you do when you walk up to a person and you know they are smarter than you are and yet you know they're not born again? You'd like them to be forgiven. What do you tell them? If you were asked today to go to Harvard and speak at the commencement and you were given 15 minutes to stand up if they were to have a commencement today, what would you say?

If you could go to Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, you had 15 minutes and you could walk up to that microphone and say anything, what would you say? Well Paul goes to Athens, the cream of the crop intellectually, and he has a message for the people.

Let's turn our Bibles to Acts chapter 17 and we'll find out the answer to that today because I want you, if you are a Christian, I want you to know what to say to people who don't know anything about the Bible.

I want you to know what to say so when you evangelize people who have twice your IQ, you're not intimidated because you realize the power of the gospel is the gospel itself and salvation doesn't depend on how smart you are.

I want you to be able to stand there and say, I know what Paul would say when he walked into a group of people who were educated and he still had a message from God about God. And his message was simple.

Before he talked about forgiveness, before he talked about full, free grace in Christ Jesus, he said, I've got a simple three-point outline and that is God is your creator, God is your Lord and sovereign, and God is your judge.

That's the message. If I could stand up in Harvard, I got to speak at the Harvard legal school gathering but it was the Christian group only so that kind of took the edge off of it, but if I were to speak at Harvard today, I would stand up and say, I have a simple message for you from Acts 17.

God is your creator, God is your sovereign king, and God is your judge. That would be my message. Maybe catcalls, maybe cheering, maybe booing, maybe yelling, I don't know what they would do, but there's a simple message that you need to remember today in the pagan culture that we live in, your message shouldn't be the Bible says, although that's fine.

When Paul met a Jew that knew the Bible, he said the Bible says. When Paul went to a place that they didn't know the Bible because they're pagan, he didn't start with the Bible, he started with God is your creator, God is your Lord, and God is therefore your judge.

As our society becomes post-Christian, more and more, it is post-Christian, but it's going to keep going. Our evangelism strategy needs to move from the Bible says, initially, we'll get there, to God is creator, Lord, and king, and judge.

If you want to say the Bible says, that's fine, my point isn't that you can't say the Bible says, of course we quote the Bible, but when Paul met pagans, he said, God is creator, Lord, and judge. You know the outline for the sermon today?

You already got it down. When I was in India, and I couldn't find an internet cafe, remember internet cafes? Young people don't even know what they are, we have internet cafes right here. I said, could you take me there?

Yes, I can, very nice young man, and as we were walking, I thought I might as well evangelize this young man, and I said, what gods do you believe in? And he said, I believe in the God of money, the God of power, there are certain names for each of these gods, and the God of sex.

22 year old male, if you could pick gods, what would you pick? Power, sex, and money, that's what depraved people pick. And I said, well that's very interesting, see the sun right there? I worship the God who made the sun with the word, he's the only God, and he keeps the sun there, he keeps you alive, he's the only God, he made you, and therefore you're accountable to worship him.

So we had a good conversation. In Acts 17, Paul goes to the smartest place in the world, yes a few centuries ago, it was the glory days for Athens, and some of the intelligentsia have moved to Corinth, but still this is Harvard of the world, this is Yale, this is Oxford, this is Cambridge, and Paul has a message, and the message is God is creator, Lord, and judge, and when you preach that way, then people realize if God is my judge, I need a savior.

Because when you talk about who God is, and what his law is, and what his standards are, then you realize my only refuge from him, as Psalm 2 says, is in him. I need to be saved if God created me, and I need to give allegiance to him.

God is Lord, and gives me life, and sustains my life, and keeps my life, and then will judge me for every sin that I've ever committed, I need a savior. And too often, evangelicals, maybe you do it. We're too quick to say, Jesus is going to forgive all your sins.

Pray the prayer, and you're in. When today's society, they don't know who Jesus is, they don't know what sin is, sin, how about disease, or syndrome, they don't even know. And so, Paul comes into town, and it is just the best.

And if you're not a Christian today, I want you to realize God is your creator, Lord, and judge, and you need a savior. And if you're a Christian today, you can be reminded that this is a great paradigm on how to evangelize.

What do I tell people, not only who are smarter than I am, what do you tell pagans who aren't as smart as you are? This is the Christian message for people who are biblically illiterate, are close to it.

Paul's Arrival in Athens

Let's pick it up in Acts 17 .15. I just want you to see where Paul is. We're deviating from 1 Corinthians just for a Sunday or two, and then we'll be back into 1 Corinthians 15. It says in Acts 17 .15, those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens.

And after receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. Now, Athens is this city that Paul would have come to, walking probably five miles seeing all kinds of gods and goddesses from the port to the city of Athens.

So he has to walk by all kinds of even unmentionable kinds of gods, depicting horrible things. And he walks into this cultural setting, this city full of influential philosophers, home of Socrates, home of Plato, adopted home of Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno.

You've got the Parthenon there and all the gods, a temple of Athena, the patron goddess. Academy of Plato was there, Lyceum of Aristotle, Garden of Epicurus. Sculpture everywhere, literature everywhere, oratory everywhere.

It was a great university city, F .F. Bruce said. Verse 16, did Paul feel impressed by the great sculptures? And it says in 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.

And when I say full, quoting the scripture, it was full. And there were so many idols, Paul starts getting provoked. He starts getting mad. Now, there's a Greek word that means fly off the handle mad, and there's a Greek word that means kind of crockpot, simmering, stewing, and that's the word here.

Paul just started watching this and he would say to himself, this is making me upset. Exodus talks about God as a jealous God. And here, God made us to worship him, and all of a sudden, we're starting to worship these weird votives and weird idols.

And Paul was infuriated. The Greek word is where we get our English word, paroxysm. Paroxysm. Ever take hydrogen peroxide and pour it on a cut? What happens? All the bubbles and fizzing, and under adult supervision, if you have it poured in your ear, the same thing happens.

You just can't see it. You just hear it boiling in his heart, roused to anger. He's provoked. He's not losing his temper. This is a reaction to all these gods and goddesses. Because he wants God to get the glory.

Not these things that man made. You make some with wood, and then you take the other half of the idol that you didn't need, and you burn it in the fire. And Paul says, this is making me mad. God is provoked by idolatry.

Deuteronomy 9. Remember, do not forget how you provoke the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. Psalm 106, they joined themselves to Baal, Peor, and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. They provoked God to anger with their deeds, and plague broke out on them.

God has a right to exclusive worship because he's the creator and judge. God has a right to exclusive allegiance. Paul has something going on inside of him, and Pepsit or Tums isn't going to solve the problem.

Pagan, yet cultured. And the problem is, John Calvin would say, our hearts are like idol factories. We just make idols because of our fallen nature. Put that with the mind of a human, fallen nature, that mind creates because that mind is made in the image and likeness of a creative God.

And we're creatures who create our own little things. And if we're not reigned in by the grace of God through regenerate hearts, we make idols. And the more sophisticated you are with your intellect, the more idols you can make.

If you got a low IQ, you still will make idols, but they're just not as sophisticated. There's not as many. Well, Paul walks into the city and he sees idols to fame, and to famine, and to honor, and to duty, and to beauty.

He just doesn't know what to do with it because he thinks God alone gets the glory. Isaiah 42, I won't give my glory to another. And it's like when Henry Martin goes to India and he's going to preach the gospel to Muslims who don't worship Jesus.

And he said, basically, I don't want to live if people bow down to wrong images of God. Paul is feeling the exact same way. Now, the word there in the checks there was city was full of idols. It means the city was under them.

It's like underwater. There's so many idols. There's like a forest of idols. It just sinks you down. Petronius said it was easier to find an idol in Athens than it was a man. And actually, that's kind of right because they say there was only 10 ,000 people there and 30 ,000 idols.

India, 1 .1 billion people, 1 .2 billion people. And it said that she has 330 million gods. At the very top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon with Athena in it, large statue, beautiful gold spear. They said you could see it 40 miles away.

And, you know, the thing is it's pretty, it's beautiful. It's not the same as going to Florence and looking at David, but the creative mind of people, what they make, except they're making things that attract the image and likeness of God to put our minds away from the glory of God.

Problem with intellectual people is if they're not reigned in by the grace of God to worship God, then they just worship all these other things. You have to eat. You have to eat. I just said that, didn't I?

You have to sleep and you have to worship. It is a law, you will worship. It's not if you worship, it's what you worship or who will you worship. You've got to worship. So you create something and what does our society do?

Well, they make things to worship and those things that they worship aren't these small little things anymore. They become masters and masters have slaves and masters have servants and they create something with their own hands and then they are its slave.

No wonder our society has no idea what to do with addictions, zero. Why? Because they don't know that the real answer is you're made to have addictions. You are given, you know, people go, well, I have kind of an addictive personality.

I know what you mean. I have an addictive personality. It's, I can't ride one mile on the bike. It has to be lots. I can't just, you know, have one potato chip. I have to have lots. One scoop of Ben and Jerry's.

I know people can just take one scoop. Say, well, I have an addictive personality. I know what you mean, but everybody has an addictive personality because God has set eternity in your hearts. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, if the God's not sex, then it's money or it's power or it's fame or itself.

And what does America do? It's underneath the gaze, uh, underneath the, uh, underneath the, the, the glaze of I'm spiritual and America these days doesn't worship Hermes shame and desire. She too often worships what she calls Jesus, but he's really a grandpa or a grandma and he's not the thrice holy God in Isaiah.

He just loves, he just like a grandma, brute intellect, uncorraled yields itself an assembly line of idolatry and Paul couldn't stand it. Now, if you go to a city like that and you just see the utter abomination of idols, what do you do?

Well, there are a few options. Monastery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, retreat. I think there's some good people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That's how you get out of anything. They're really good people and then you just blast away.

Paul's Preaching in the Synagogue and Marketplace

What did Paul do? I think it's a paradigm for you. Paul preached. Paul evangelized. What do you do with a city that's underwater with idols? Paul just didn't get mad and then just made and just like forget it all to hell in a handbasket, there it goes.

Paul said, no, I've got a message and here's my message to the Athenians. Before we get into the exact message, see the setup here in verse 17. It's Paul's missionary MO, so he reasoned verse 17 in the synagogue with the Jews, the devout persons, monotheistic people, and in the marketplace, the Agora, which is right there by the Areopolis and right there by Mars Hill.

Every day with those who happen to be there. So here's kind of what it was like. Go to the synagogue, Saturday, then the other days of the week, I'll just live my life and whoever's my neighbor, I just talk to them.

I'll just preach to them one-on-one. Lots of busyness going on in the marketplace. That's where people hung out, going to the mall. Verse 18, there's a couple of different kinds of philosophers there.

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

Now, let's look at the Epicureans for a second and the Stoics and I think you'll see we're kind of living in an Epicurean Stoic society as well. Epicureans were materialists and they loved pleasure and they hated pain.

The gods are kind of far away, tranquil, so we can kind of be tranquil because you become like that of what you worship. They're remote. We're just kind of hanging out. They live in eternal calm. We want to do the same thing.

They're not really too just. They don't exact justice very much. So we'll indulge and do whatever we want. If it feels good, do it. We're only going around once in life. Something's bad for you, stay away from it.

Something feels good, might as well go for it. Stoics, on the other hand, kind of like the word that you know, Stoicism, self-mastery, use your reason. Stoic means porch, philosophers of the porch, fate reigns.

So resign yourself to that, love a little nature. And if you get kicked while you're down, stick your chin out, grin and bear it. Be strong, use reason, submit. And both the Stoics and the Epicureans had to try to figure out this.

Life is hard. There are consequences to action. The world doesn't always offer roses. There's all kinds of trials and physical issues. So how do we live with hardship? How do you think they reacted to Paul's message?

Take a look back at the verse. And they were saying, they just kept saying this. Here's ad hominem for you, attacking the person. What would this idle babbler wish to say? He's a seed picker. Literally, the word is he's a seed speaker.

Spermologists, spermologists. He is a seed word, seed speaker. I used to think this meant he was a hick from Nebraska. You put like a little stalk in your tooth, you know, and you're like a hayseed from Nebraska.

Well, that's not really what it means. When you watch birds, they just seem to hop around and just take a seed from different things. And you shush them away, and then they come back, they take another seed.

And so this was a derogatory term, and it meant, Paul, you have no systematic theology of philosophy. You have no, you haven't thought through anything. You just go around the world and you go, yeah, Jesus is God, I'll take that.

Jesus was raised from the dead, I'll take that. Yeah, God created the world, I'll take that. And you have a patchwork of your system, which is no system at all. You're just a seed scavenger. You just scavenge different thoughts and put them all together, so they heckle him.

There was a scavenging bird in the comedy, The Birds, Aristophanes' Birds. You're just like that character in that comedy, The Birds. In other words, you're a charlatan. But what did other people say?

What's the text say? He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities. What do you mean, deities? Jesus, masculine noun, resurrection, anastasis, feminine noun. Jesus is preaching, he's talking about Jesus and the resurrection all the time.

So he's preaching Jesus, the male God, and resurrection, his female consort. Jesus means to save, so he's preaching the healing God. And then resurrection means to be restored, he's preaching restoration.

So if you ever want healing and restoration, these two guys are good guys. Listen to what Paul says. And by the way, they're calling him a seed speaker. We're going to see soon enough that they're doing the exact same thing.

And they are polytheistic, and now they're turning Paul into being polytheistic. Paul talked about the resurrection so much, people thought it was another God. Why do we focus on the resurrection here?

Paul Before the Areopagus

Because it vindicates Christ's work. It confirms with God's amen, Christ, it is finished. Substitution, atonement, accomplished redemption. Verse 19, and they took him and brought him to the place where the guy who introduced the new God got forced to drink Hemlock, whose name was Socrates.

Let's take him to that place where we judge people. To this day, the Areopagus is the name for the Greek Supreme Court. They brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting?

Now that used to be the place where they judged judicially, religiously, and every other way, but now it's kind of relegated to just religious judgment. Are is Mars, in Latin. Pagas is hill, Mars hill, Areopagus.

Ares was the Greek god of war. Huge kind of rock outcropping, not as high as the Acropolis, but pretty high. Let's go take Paul and make him get some judgment. Verse 20, 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. They were the seed speakers.

They were the seed pickers. Give us something new. Let's judge that guy. We want to hear something newer. Demosthenes said the Athenians were going about the city asking for some new news at the very moment the armies of Philip of Macedon were knocking at the door.

They're gonna be destroyed by a army and they're still trying to say with insatiable curiosity, we want something new. So what does Paul tell them? What does Paul say? Well, let's find out in Acts chapter 17 verse 23.

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

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 AM and Sunday evenings at 6 PM. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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