The Blindness of Sin

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 14th chapter.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Over and again

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I am impressed in a very horrifying way that sin has horrific consequences.

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So horrific that we as human beings don't even know where we've come from.

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We don't even know how we got here. In fact, we invent all kinds of strange ideas and on top of it, we don't even know who the

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God is who made us, so what do we do? We make up our own. In fact, a good way to think of it is that we play the devil's game and we play it really well because of sin and our fall into sin.

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We are like our father, the devil. And so you'll note the devil pretends that he is

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God. He self -identifies as deity. Self -identifying. We all know about how that works nowadays.

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You can self -identify as anything. If I wanted to self -identify as a birch or a pine,

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I could, right? But that doesn't mean that ornaments are going to look good on me at Christmas time. But this is all part of the devil's game.

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The devil self -identifies as deity. His pronouns are the Almighty One and he teaches us to do the same.

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We lose track of reality and as a result of it, we create realities for ourselves.

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But let me remind you what the scripture says of our origin. On the sixth day of creation, yeah, that's right.

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It doesn't say in the six millionth year of evolution. It says in the sixth day of creation,

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God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit had a little conversation among themselves and said, let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

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So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female.

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He created them. Scandalous words nowadays. One has to wonder how long before the government decides to have that removed from our

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Bibles or forbid it from being preached. That's the trajectory that we're on. And that's not hyperbole to say that.

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But the reality is this, is that sin is its own consequence, but God, you'll note, because of our sin and rebellion against him, all the way from the

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Garden of Eden, has basically decided that he's going to let sin run its course.

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And when sin runs its course, it really gets scary as to just how bad things are.

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This is described for us, by the way, in the book of Romans chapter one. The apostle Paul writes, starting at verse 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and the unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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That's what sinners do. They suppress the truth.

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You speak truth to somebody who's dead and trespasses and sins, and you may risk losing your life.

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Or you might risk having yourself canceled. It's just kind of how this all works.

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So what can be known about God, it says in scripture, though, is plain to them because God has shown it to them.

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His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power, his divine nature, they have all been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that men are without excuse.

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Although they knew God, they didn't honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking.

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I like this phrase, futile in their thinking. When I hear this phrase, here's kind of what I think about. Did any of you ever learn how to drive a manual transmission car?

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Man, I love manual transmission cars. They're just the bomb diggity. But alas, everything is automatic here.

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If I want to drive a manual transmission car, I've got to travel to Europe. Europe is just chock full of manual transmission cars.

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But all that being said, to become futile in your thinking is like having a manual transmission car and doesn't matter which gear you put it into, the car still remains in neutral.

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You're going nowhere. And that's the problem. Sin doesn't make us smart.

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Sin doesn't make us brilliant. Sin makes us futile. Our thoughts become worthless and as a result of it, the scripture says, our foolish hearts are then darkened.

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You'll remember, it's the fool who says in his heart there is no God. Now those of you young kids here, keep an eye out.

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When you get to college and you're required to take Philosophy 101, you've got to think of Philosophy 101 professors the way you think of old school bad guys in the

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Western era. They're slinging their lead at Christians and they like to put notches in their belt for every

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Christian they can knock faith out of. When you get to that point and you have that professor, come see me, we'll bring the law to town.

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These gunslingers don't really know what they're doing. They think they're so smart, they think they're so wise, but scripture is clear.

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They are foolish. So claiming to be wise, they became fools and they exchanged the glory of the immortal

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God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, creeping things.

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We've all seen people who worship little statues and things like this. We've all seen photographs or even seen it in person and we all just scratch our heads and go, what is going on here?

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Consequences of sin. Does it make you smarter? It makes you really foolish and futile in your thinking.

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And then it gets worse. Therefore, God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and they worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

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Amen. For this reason then God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

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Scripture is very clear. The LGBTQ thing is a curse. It's a punishment from God.

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You don't want to worship God? Fine. I'm going to send you down the road of a debased mind and have within you come up dishonorable passions.

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This is all a punishment from God. And since they didn't seem fit to acknowledge God, God then gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

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And now here, this describes Twitter. By the way, if you haven't been following me on Twitter, this is all over the place right now on my

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Twitter feed. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

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They're full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They're gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil.

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Could you imagine having a patent on something evil? Okay, that's a form of evil we've never seen before.

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And you've got the patent on it and you get all the proceeds and the royalties from it. Yeah, inventors of evil, disobedient to their parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

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Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them, they give approval to those who practice them, and I would add, and cancel those who disapprove of them.

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This is the world that we live in. And you'll note that in our first reading today, the

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Apostle Paul is in the city of Athens. And if you know, if you remember when you were required to take

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Western civilization, the Greeks were the ones who gave us what? Philosophy.

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In human history, the Greeks were considered to be the smart guys. These were the ones who had their mental act together.

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And over and again, the ancient Greeks are held up to us as a model of wisdom, of the love of knowledge and things like this.

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But when Paul arrives in Athens, they aren't filled with knowledge.

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They're completely blind. And that is the nature of sin, and it's absolutely terrifying and frightening.

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Because through all of ancient history, only a few of these Athenians ever heard the truth of the

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God who really created us. They were utterly ignorant of our true history, and they were believing all kinds of, well, how do the kids say it?

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No, I'll just say it my way. Poppycock. They were just filled with all kinds of weird stories.

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And in our day, well, it's the scientists now. They tell us that God didn't create the world.

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No, no, no, no, no. There was an explosion, and then Mama and Grandpa, Amoeba, they got together, jumped out of the water, climbed up a tree, became monkeys, and then human beings dropped down, right?

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This is this nonsensical story. And as a result of it, you'll note that we are just as blind as these

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Athenians. And so now the gospel is going out. Christ Jesus, our great

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God and Savior, God in human flesh, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, buried, risen, ascended.

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He's commissioned his apostles to go and proclaim that in him is the forgiveness of sins and that the resurrection that he performed, that he rose from the grave bodily on the third day, was the proof that not only are we forgiven in him, but there is a day coming when he will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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The gospel is now going out, and it's reaching parts of the world where they have never even heard of the one true

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God at all. And the condition that they are found here in this account is terrifying.

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Because you'll note that as the darkness continues to increase in our days, and it is, we're going back to this.

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In fact, we're practically there now. But let me give you a little bit of background on this one, because I think it's kind of fun to kind of set the stage here.

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The Apostle Paul is on one of his missionary journeys, and he's wandered into the city of Thessaloniki.

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That's actually how you pronounce it. I've had some rip -roaring debates with people about how to pronounce this.

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Thessaloniki is apparently the right way of saying this. And we know that we have a letter, we have two letters to the

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Thessalonians. But when Paul had got there and he preached the gospel to the Jews in their synagogues, things didn't really go so well.

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They weren't really keen on this idea that Jesus was the Messiah. And as a result of it, they stirred up some trouble for Paul, and so Paul had to slink out of town.

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So next stop on his missionary journey is a town by the name of Berea.

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And it says they sent Paul and Silas away by night. They had to skedaddle by night, a cowardly thing to do, if you're thinking in manly terms.

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But better to be alive than to just do the stupid male bravado thing.

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So they slunk away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the Jewish synagogue, and now these

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Jews, the Jews of Berea, were of a more noble character than those of the Thessalonians. They received the word with eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

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What a stark contrast here. You'll note the apostle Paul, true eyewitness of the resurrection of Christ, he's the one who

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Jesus knocked down blinded, drug him into his kingdom, made him an apostle, and also gave him the gospel directly via a revelation from God.

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This guy, I mean, if anybody can claim that he's got apostolic muscle and can flex it, you'll note that in the book of Corinthians, he makes distinctions.

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He says, this is a command of the Lord, you need to acknowledge this is a command of God that I'm writing to you, that he has that kind of authority.

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And he can also say, well, this isn't a command of the Lord, this is just my opinion, he has to kind of like flip the switch to let you know which it is.

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That's the authority that this guy wields as an apostle of Jesus Christ, and when he gets to Berea, the

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Bereans listen to his presentation, they hear him open up the scriptures, him proclaiming

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Christ and him crucified for our sins, that in him we have reconciliation with God, and they are listening to this with all eagerness, and then they go, whoa, whoa, whoa.

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Okay, Paul, we need a little bit of time here. We're gonna grab our copy of the Old Testament here, and we're gonna check the receipts on what you're preaching here to see if this is really what the

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Bible teaches, because we can trust the word of God. And what do they do? They fact check the apostle

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Paul, and you'll note, he didn't have a hissy fit like today's false apostles do. Today's false apostles, you question them, ah, how dare you touch

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God's anointed, right? And so as a result of that, you're not allowed to question any of today's luminary apostles, which aren't really apostles anyway, they're false apostles.

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The apostle Paul, true apostle of Jesus Christ, it is noted in scripture that the Bereans had a far more noble character.

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Why? Because they fact checked Paul. So that means that everybody in the kingdom of Christ should be fact checked.

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From Joel Osteen, to Ken Copeland, to Chris Rosebro, right?

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Everybody gets fact checked because the Bible is true. Let God's word be true, and let men be liars if they are found twisting and manipulating

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God's words. Well, the folks from Thessaloniki got wind that Paul was in Berea, they showed up and stirred up trouble, and so Paul again has to slink away.

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This time they send him to Athens, and you'll note what Paul doesn't do in Athens.

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He doesn't do the tourist thing. He doesn't find a nice five -diamond resort on the

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Aegean Sea. He doesn't sit in one of them chaise lounges while tanning himself, drinking some ouzo, you have to go with the drink of that area, if you haven't had ouzo, if you don't like black licorice, you won't like it, but if you do like black licorice, you'll love ouzo, it's a fascinating drink.

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But anyway, he's not sitting there drinking ouzo. What is he doing? He's doing a little wandering around the city, and he's finding idol after idol after idol, and Paul can't remain idol when he sees idols.

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He's got to get to work because he's an apostle of Jesus Christ. The place is a complete and utter mess of darkness, idolatry, it is a stronghold of Satan himself, and so what does he do?

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He reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews. First stop, let's go find a synagogue, let them know that Jesus is the

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Messiah, and that he's risen from the dead, and there's forgiveness in him, and then he sets up a shingle.

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I'm not sure if he had... What is that? I'm not sure if he had to go out and get a permit to be able to preach, that we don't know, but he ends up in the

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Agora, the marketplace, and he is preaching Christ. He's preaching Jesus and him risen from the dead, and he gets the attention of the

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Epicurean... That's getting my attention. So here we are, just a little bit, okay?

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The Apostle Paul is in Athens, he's now preaching the gospel in the marketplace, and he gets the attention of the

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Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. It's important to note this here. These are men who are going to be embracing a kind of a proto -type form of Gnosticism.

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They're philosophers. They don't really have a love for the flesh, nor do they see any value in it at all.

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And so as they're talking with Paul, one of them says, what does this babbler wish to say?

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The Greek word for babbler is actually kind of interesting. The Greek word for babbler is seed picker.

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Let me just go with that translation for a minute. What does the seed picker wish to say?

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Now, if somebody were to say that to you, it would basically sound like you're not the smartest tool in the box, right?

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That's kind of the point here. By saying, they're not saying he's just babbling incoherently.

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By calling him a seed picker, what they're basically saying is that the Apostle Paul is saying words, but it's clear that he has not been able to attain to the level of wisdom that these

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Epicurean philosophers have attained to. So, others said, well, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities.

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What a strange statement. The one true God is a foreign divinity to you?

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That's the consequences of sin. And the reason why they were thinking he was preaching a foreign divinity is because he was preaching

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Jesus and the resurrection. We know what Paul was preaching. He was preaching that message.

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The gospel. Let me remind you of the gospel that I preach to, in which you stand, right? And that is the gospel that Christ died for our sins.

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He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. He's ascended into heaven. This is the good news that Paul is preaching.

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And they took him and then brought him to the Areopagus. Fascinating venue, if you would.

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It's in this little rock outcropping just below the same mountain where this temple complex is in Athens.

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And so there he is. He's going to preach to them. And he said, you bring some strange news.

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We would like to know what this new teaching is that you're presenting. We wish to therefore know what these things mean.

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They've never heard anything like this. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there, they would spend their time in nothing except for telling and hearing something new.

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It kind of invokes, if you would, that famous passage from the prophet Isaiah where God says, behold,

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I am doing something new. And the new thing that God is doing is that he's forgiving sins.

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And we'll note something here that Paul now begins his address by pointing out that they are very religious.

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Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. And I passed along, I observed the objects of your worship.

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I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Now Paul, as he's wandering through Athens, he would have seen temples and, well, little grottos and places and shrines set up to the different deities of the

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Greco -Roman pantheon, including Zeus and Poseidon and Athena and Persephone and Demeter and Dionysus and all these deities.

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And what's really fascinating is when you do the research on all of these deities, there isn't a single one of them that the

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Athenians could have prayed to for the forgiveness of their sins. Not a single one. They all had special reasons in which they existed.

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In fact, the Greco -Roman pantheon of deities was so broad that they practically had a deity for everything.

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Are you struggling in a romantic relationship? Are you pining for her but she doesn't seem to be interested in you?

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Well, there's a deity for that, okay? The proper offering made to get that deity's attention and that deity can all of a sudden get that girl to be interested in you, right?

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Do you have mold in your house? There's a deity for mold too, all right?

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I was wondering if there was a deity for clogged up toilets, you know? It just makes you wonder. The deity for practically everything except for what they really need, the forgiveness of their sins.

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But you'll note every one of these false gods are exactly that.

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They are demonic in origin and human beings have now abandoned the true

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God and God is handed them over to their wickedness and now they're worshiping stones and gold and silver and nonsense.

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All the art and imagination of a human being. But Paul finds in the midst of this a deity that they were kind of hedging their bets.

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If there's a deity we've forgotten about, the unknown one, well, we'll worship that one too.

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And that's the one that Paul zeroes in on. What therefore you worship is unknown.

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This now I proclaim to you, Paul says, the God who made the world and everything in it being

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Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands as if as if as though he needed anything since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

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And for the first time in these people's lives, they are hearing the truth of where they came from.

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And it has nothing to do with the pantheon of deities that they're worshiping.

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No, it has to do with the one true God, the one true God of Israel, Yahweh himself.

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And so Paul, beginning with the creation, says, here's the truth of where you came from. And he then notes that God is not served by human beings.

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Instead, God serves human beings. He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.

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The story of Adam and Eve is referenced here, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of their dwelling place that they should seek

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God, perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.

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We're in him. We live in him. We move in him. We have our being.

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He's quoting now from one of their own poets. This is Epimenides of Crete. And so he knows their pop culture a little bit.

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And as even some of your own poets have said, we are indeed his offspring.

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Quoting from a erraticist poem, Phenomena. It's a fascinating thing that Paul is doing here.

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But you'll note that at no point, despite the fact that he's trying to build some common ground where he can preach

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Christ from, at no point does he compromise and say, well, it's okay. If we just need to coexist, what we need to do is, you know, you guys have your deity and God is going to recognize the worship of these deities as worship of him.

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It's all good by proxy. Paul doesn't talk this way. And you'll note Paul very uncompromisingly puts them in their place and lets them know that their beliefs are not as wise as they think that they are.

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Instead, he notes that being God's offspring, then we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or an image formed by the art imagination of man.

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And you can only wonder what some of them were thinking at this point. Are you kidding me? This is

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Athens. This is the seat of wisdom in the ancient world. And you're telling us that because we are

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God's offspring, that therefore we shouldn't think the divine being could be worshiped as gold or silver or an image formed by the art and imagination of man.

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Are you out of your mind, Paul? Everybody knows this is how religion is supposed to work.

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And you'll note in our day, man, a bunch of people have invented all kinds of crazy things.

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I was reading one of these liberal college professor types who was arguing for that we need to get away from looking at how nature works so that we can embrace our own reality.

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And she specifically took issue with the fact that electricity, you have a positive charge and you have a negative charge.

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She said, this is a dangerous way to think because it starts getting people thinking in terms of things that are binary.

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You know, binary like male and female and stuff. It's the same thing.

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This is just nonsense. But then he says this, the times of ignorance

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God has overlooked. In the past, he's overlooked all this. But now, now that Christ has come, now that Jesus is crucified, risen, ascended,

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He, God, is commanding all people everywhere to repent.

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This nonsense that you guys have come up with, it's futile thinking. It's a result of your sin.

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It's a consequence of it. And God is telling you to change your mind.

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The world's wisdom is foolishness. Only the true worship and knowledge of God leads to real wisdom.

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So God is calling all people everywhere to change their mind, to repent. And here's the reason why.

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There's a day coming when God will judge the world in righteousness, a righteousness defined in Scripture by a man whom

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He has appointed. And of this, He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead.

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At this point, that's all he gets to say. Stop, stop, stop.

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You're done. Take him down. We're finished with you, Paul. And the reason why is because you'll note that these

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Epicurean Stoic philosophers, they don't have any value in the flesh. As proto -Gnostics, they would have thought that the spiritual is the thing that really matters.

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And this idea that God would come and take on human flesh and then die and rise again bodily with human flesh, that's just absurd.

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To them. And so when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, and this is what we all are hoping for, some of them mocked.

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Others said, we'll hear you again about this. So Paul went out of their midst, but some of the men, they joined him and they believed.

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Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ. Among them also were

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Dionysius the Areopagite, one of the fellows of the Areopagus on Mars Hill.

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One of the fellows who heard Paul preach this gospel said, this is true.

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This is finally the explanation of where we came from, how evil came into the world, and the good news that God so loved the whole world, including

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Athenians and Americans, that he sent his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but instead will have eternal life.

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This is the good news that we have the opportunity ourselves to proclaim.

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You'll note that we are all ambassadors of Christ. We have this same gospel, this same hope.

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Is it any wonder that the apostle Peter in our epistle text tells us that we should have no fear of those people who trouble us, slander us, who would make us suffer?

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Instead, we are to regard Christ the Lord as holy and always be prepared to make a defense, an apologia to anyone who asks us for the reason for the hope that is in us.

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And that's the point. The reason why we're here today is because we all share that hope.

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We have that hope of the resurrection of the dead ourselves. And knowing this, that yes, it is true that God has appointed a day in which he will judge everyone in righteousness, we know that we do not measure up.

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We too were born dead in trespasses and sins and left to our own ways. We would have all turned out to be as blind and futile in our thinking as the

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Athenians in our text today. And that's what's happening in the world around us as God's word is disappearing.

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Fewer and fewer men are preaching it. More and more are attacking it, attacking it from pulpits.

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But note here, Peter also makes it clear, Christ suffered once for sins.

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The righteous for the unrighteous. You and I, the unrighteous ones, Christ has bled and died for us.

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And he is the one who is now bringing us to God. He being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the spirit.

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And he has forgiven us of all of our trespasses. And so you'll note then, the scriptures tell us the truth.

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And they reveal the world's idolatry, but they also reveal our own idolatry and our participation in the works of darkness.

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And what does this call for? It calls for repentance. Even to this day, the daily life of a

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Christian is repentance. How many things do we look to, to be our deities?

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We don't pray to Athena or Zeus or anything of the sort. But always and again, put you into a stressful situation where anxiety is running out of control.

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The thing you turn to, if it's not God, that's an idol. Do you disappear into a bottle of booze?

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Take a lot of pills? Or maybe just put your pajamas on and put your life on neutral and binge watch

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Netflix for a week, right? What do you turn to?

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Decide that you're going to go grab your boat, head to the lake and disappear and just fish and have no communication with any other human being in order to calm yourself down so that you could have some good in your life.

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That's a good chance that's become your God. But in our times of trouble, we are to call to God.

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Ask Him to relieve us of our sufferings. Look to Him for the good that we need in this life.

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But each and every one of us, because we still have a sinful nature, even though we are forgiven, we struggle with this idolatry and we are called daily to repent, knowing that we are forgiven in Christ.

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So brothers and sisters, idolatry is run amuck. It makes you blind and stupid. It makes you look ridiculously foolish.

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And the worst part is you think you're wise in the midst of it. So change your mind.

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Embrace the foolishness of the scriptures, the foolishness of the gospel itself, the idea that Christ is our

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Lord and Savior, the crucified, risen Lord and Savior. Well, it's foolishness to Greeks, a stumbling block to Jews.

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to us, it is the power of God unto salvation. In the name of Jesus, amen.