Living in the Mission Field

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I invite you to remain standing as we read from God's Word in preparation for hearing the message.
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We're going to be in Acts 17 this morning, we're going to be reading verses 30 and 31.
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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.
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And of this, He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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Father God, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to preach it.
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I pray that you would.
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First and foremost, keep me from error, as I am certainly a fallible man capable of preaching error.
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And I pray also, Lord, that you would give me a passion for the truth and that I would preach in such a way as to never preach again, as if this were my last, that this were the last opportunity to share the gospel.
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Let it be, O Father, that we leave nothing on the table, as it were, but say it all and speak the truth.
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And I pray that the congregation would receive it and you would open the hearts of those who have come who are not believers and bring them to the truth.
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And Father, for the believers, we pray that this would edify them and draw them closer to you and remind them of their responsibility, their responsibility, rather, of engaging the culture for Jesus Christ.
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And it's in his name we pray and for his sake, amen.
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Today is Missions Celebration Sunday.
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We've set aside today to be a day wherein we would remember not only the missionary that we support, Walter Heaton, but also wherein we would remember all missionaries and that we would remember that we ourselves are called as missionaries of sorts.
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So as we began this morning, I want to talk about the word missionary, what it means and how it applies.
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The word missionary comes from the Latin missio, and it means one who is sent off, as I mentioned earlier in the time of prayer.
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Missio is also the same root from where we get the word missile.
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We think about sending off a missile.
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That's where the idea comes from.
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A missile is something that's sent off.
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So, too, is a missionary.
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A missionary is one who is sent off for the task of bringing the gospel.
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And typically, missionary work is intended to relate specifically to those who bring the gospel into a culture which is different than their own.
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It's going out and engaging another culture with the gospel.
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And when you think about missionaries, oftentimes I imagine you think about someone going into a deep, dark tribe in Africa, or maybe you think about somebody like Walter, who is in Croatia in a land where they speak a different language and they live very different lives.
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Or maybe you think about someone going to a Muslim nation and being a missionary in a place where it's dangerous, in a place where you could even be killed for sharing the gospel.
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That's often what we think of.
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We think of missionaries living in huts.
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We think of missionaries living among some type of indigenous people.
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We that's the mindset that comes to our brain when I say missionary.
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In fact, this week, I just in search of graphics, because when I send out emails and stuff, I use pictures and I was searching.
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I just typed in the word missionary to see what would come up.
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And almost in every case, what came up under missionary was some type of African tribe or some type of South American tribe.
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It was it was one person who was who was dressed kind of like us and everybody else was wearing some type of garments, which would indicate that they were of some type of other life.
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So that's what we think of when we think missionary.
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And that makes sense.
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However, I want to key in on one idea, if the term missionary simply means to take the gospel into a non-Christian culture, if that's if we limit the definition, I think we can.
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I think we can say that the goal of the missionary is to take the gospel to a place where the gospel is not to plant a flag which says repent and believe on Christ in a place where that flag is never flown.
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To engage a culture with Jesus, if that is the mission of the missionary, then I want to throw a thought toward you this morning.
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You are a missionary.
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Because you live in a land which is not Christian, now you may want to argue with me about the Christian roots of America and we can have that conversation and likely we'd agree on many points of that argument.
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However, I will argue with you to the dying breath that America is not a Christian culture.
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If it ever was, it is not now.
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It is not a Christian culture.
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Now, I'm I'm being specific with my definitions.
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A culture indicates how people operate their lives, how they dress, how they act, what they watch and what they eat.
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That's what makes up a culture.
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And beloved, our culture, our people don't dress like Christians.
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They don't act like Christians.
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They don't eat like Christians.
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They don't sleep like Christians.
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They don't watch like Christians.
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They don't listen like Christians.
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So they it's not a Christian culture.
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It's just not.
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You live in a mission field.
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Yes, they're not wearing African tribal garb.
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In fact, the picture that I sent out for the sermon this week, I don't know if you if you got the what I was saying with the picture, you have these these children from another land all surrounding a water spigot and they were you know, you think that's the people we want to mission do missions work to.
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What was the picture right next to it? Three girls sitting around cell phones.
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Beloved, it's just as much a mission field.
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Those three girls sitting around the cell phones in the Starbucks are just as lost as those tribes in Africa.
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And you see, that's the point.
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We live in a in a in a non-Christian culture and actually there's good and bad there.
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And I want to share with you something.
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There was a time when you could argue that American America had somewhat of a Christian culture.
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There was a time when you didn't go out on Sundays.
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There was a time when nothing was open on Sundays.
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And why was that? Because there was a belief that Sunday was the Sabbath and it was sacred, right? There was a that was the Lord's Day and you just didn't do things.
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You could argue there was a time in America's history where there was a Christian culture.
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But here's the problem with a Christian culture.
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A Christian culture creates a group of people who think that they're Christian simply because they're in the culture.
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Let me say that again, a Christian culture produces a group of people who believe that they're Christians just because they're in the culture.
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And that's why there was a generation that preceded mine of a ton of people who had a Christian title without a Christian faith, the generations that preceded my own.
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There were so many people who would say, yes, I'm a Christian because I'm an American.
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And if you're an American, that equals being a Christian.
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And if you're a Christian, that equals being an American.
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And if anything, I'm Christians on American and everything American is on Christian and Christianity is like apple pie.
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But beloved, it is not that way.
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And so I would say there is a blessing of sorts in there not being a Christian culture anymore, because at least people are not living under a false pretense.
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People don't claim Christianity anymore.
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Look at the latest polls.
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What are the latest polls say? The most the highest a steadily rising group of people are the people that identify themselves as unreligious or non the nons is what they call themselves the nons.
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They're nonreligious.
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And quite frankly, they're the most some of the most religious people in the world.
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They're dedicated and devoted religiously to their atheism, sometimes to their evolutionary mindset.
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They're religious.
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Don't let them kid you.
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But they ain't Christian.
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And at least they know it because there was a time that they didn't.
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So as I said, there's good and bad.
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There's bad in the sense that we see all this negative rise up in the culture.
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But the good one good thing is people are by and large not under false pretenses anymore.
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So this opens a door for us.
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This gives us the opportunity to share the gospel with a culture that doesn't have it and knows it doesn't have it and in most cases doesn't want it because they don't know they need it.
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So last night, Aaron and I were having a good conversation about short term missions trips.
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I wanted to add this in as just a thought, because obviously some of you probably know people that go on short term missions trips and what they mean by short terms is there's no intent to stay.
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It's just you go maybe for a week, two weeks, sometimes it's longer.
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And obviously there's value in that of sending people out because you learn about other cultures and you learn what it's like to engage a culture that is not like your own.
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Because one thing about I mean, go back to the thing about cultures.
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Yeah, we're in a non-Christian culture and many Christians live non-Christian lives.
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So let me just throw that in there because you live like the culture.
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And when we live like the culture, we're not living like Christians.
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Just throwing that out there.
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Just remember that we'll come back to that later.
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But the point is we have these short term missions trips and obviously they have some value.
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Aaron was mentioning that he had been on one as a young man and had been a very encouraging to him.
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But my only thought and I just want to add this.
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Is that while those trips obviously have value and can do a great in the life of a person and reminding them about how missions work and what missions are for and the value of sharing the gospel cross continentally and things like that.
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The thing we don't need to forget and we should never forget is that we don't have to board a plane or train.
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And go thousands of miles to find a culture that's un-Christian because we aren't there.
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We aren't there.
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I could throw a rock and hit 15 people, not necessarily all y'all, but I could throw a rock out this way and hit 15 people before it hit the ground and every one of them's lost.
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I'm serious.
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And that should you know, that's that should break our hearts.
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We don't have to go all the way around the world to find a culture that's un-Christian.
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We're there.
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So what do we do? What do we do if America is the mission field, how do we engage her? Well, for that, I want to spend some time in Acts 17.
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I absolutely love the Apostle Paul, I think many of you know that as far as biblical heroes go outside of obviously Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul is one man.
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And I would say probably that him and Peter, Peter, I like Peter because he didn't know when to be quiet.
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And I tend to have that problem myself.
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So Peter and I relate.
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But Paul, his missionary endeavors were amazing.
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His life lived to share the gospel for Christ.
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If you read through the book of Acts, you know, you come to chapter 14, I believe, and he's being stoned for the faith.
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You come to chapter 15.
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He's being imprisoned for the faith.
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I mean, you're you have this man who is just tenacious about sharing the gospel.
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I may have been off on those chapters.
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It may have been 15 or 16 because it leads up to where we are today, chapter 17.
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And in chapter 17, the Apostle Paul is in Athens, he's he's.
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Coming out of the situation in Berea and this was the intent, I was going to preach on this in Sunday school this morning, but the Sunday school class took me in a different direction, but I was going to talk about the Bereans, I don't know if you've ever heard the term Berea or like a Berean church.
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The Bereans are those who were who the Apostle Paul preached to.
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And it says they search the scriptures daily to see if what Paul was saying was accurate.
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And that's what we need to be.
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We need to be people who search the scriptures.
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We need to be people who know the word of God.
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If somebody comes to us preaching, we need to know what they're saying is correct because we know the word of God.
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That's the goal is to be Berean in our attitude.
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Well, it is after this.
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Where Paul has had this this influence.
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He's being chased down there, there are people that want to chase him out of town, there's Jews that are literally following him around everywhere he preaches, there are these Jews that come after him to run him out of town.
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He was not the most popular of preachers.
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It's not these people that are just they're aching to run him out of town.
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So in verse 15, it tells us, if you want to back up from where we were earlier, back in chapter 17, verse 15, says those who conducted Paul conducting those people who were traveling with him, taking him from place to place.
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This is 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.
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So they took and left him at Athens all by himself.
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He didn't have Timothy and Silas.
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They were his they were his ministers that went with him on this particular journey, had three missionary journeys.
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This was the second.
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They didn't have his partners, he didn't have his conductors, they left.
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He's all by himself, he's been chased, he's been stoned, he's been imprisoned.
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You think he'd take a break? You think he'd say my sabbatical, he was in Athens, he was in the one of the most cosmopolitan places in the ancient world, it was a place of knowledge, it was a place of culture, it was a place of learning.
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It was a place where there was so much to do and so much to enjoy.
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And this is where Paul was, he could have just laid low and waited for his partners, he could have just hung out.
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In fact, there are some commentators who have made this point that because of his persecution and his being hunted effectively by these Jewish people who are trying to push him out of wherever he goes, he's effectively in one of the low points of his ministry.
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He's lonely, he's beaten and tired.
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And yet this is the man who in Second Corinthians 1210 says, when I am weak, it is then that I am strong.
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So we find in this weak time, in this weakened state, one of Paul's most powerful engagements with the culture.
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You know, we find any excuse we can not to do whatever it is we should be doing for Christ.
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I can't go to church today.
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I hurt my ankle.
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I can't go to church today.
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I'm tired.
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I worked all week.
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I can't get up and go do what I need to do.
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I can't share the gospel.
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I don't know that person.
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They might be offended.
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I can't tell my friend about Jesus.
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They might not any longer want to be my friend.
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And isn't my friendship more important than their salvation? I mean, that's what we think.
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And we find any excuse we can.
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And again, that's why I love the apostle Paul and those people who rail against him, rail against so much positive, because the one thing he was, he was tenacious.
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He had a mission.
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He had a goal.
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It was to preach Jesus Christ everywhere he had not been preached.
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And here he is in Athens, a place which is filled with idols, as we'll see in a moment.
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Here he is in a place that hasn't heard of Christ.
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And he says, you know what? I can't go get me a lodging and just relax.
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I can't.
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I've got to preach Jesus.
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And so it goes on in verse 16.
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It says 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.
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Leave that word up.
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I love that it landed on that word.
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We don't we don't tell the screens what to do.
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Sometimes they just do.
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But this time it did right, because it's interesting.
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This is this is a land.
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And.
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As I said of the ancient world, which was in and of itself a beautiful place, it was the headquarters of art and literature and wisdom and knowledge from a worldly perspective, it was the capital that Paul looked at it and he didn't appreciate the art.
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He didn't appreciate.
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The culture.
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He didn't appreciate the architecture, I mean, the architecture of Athens, some of it still there, I mean, you know, a lot of it has been destroyed in its ruins, but but there's some that still demonstrates the massive amount of genius which went into the building of Athens.
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What did he say, man, look at those buildings, click, click.
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Obviously, he didn't have a he didn't have a cell phone camera.
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He wasn't taking selfies there.
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What did he what did he say? It's all idols.
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I can't appreciate a city whose foundation is built on idols, no matter how beautiful it is from a worldly perspective.
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You know, some people talk about going over to Rome and looking at St.
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Peter's Basilica.
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St.
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Peter's is a Roman Catholic institution over in Rome.
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You know, that place was built.
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That place was built on the money which was taken from indulgences during the time of the Reformation, wherein people were sold a bill of goods about their salvation.
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Johann Tutsal would go about from town to town saying that if you would put money towards St.
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Peter's, it will give you an indulgence, which will get not only you, but your family members out of purgatory and people would pay.
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When a coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs and it rhymes in German as well as it does in English, that was his statement.
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And people believed it and they paid for it.
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I don't go and look at pictures of St.
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Peter's and go, look how beautiful it is.
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I say, look at this, this building of idols.
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It's a shame.
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And that's what Paul had.
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His heart was overturned with the idolatry of Athens.
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His stomach was sickened by the idolatry of Athens.
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He was not impressed.
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He was oppressed by it.
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So in verse 17, he did as his normal thing was to go into the Jewish community first.
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Jesus is the Messiah.
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He is the Jewish Messiah.
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It makes sense to go in and reason with those who knew the Old Testament.
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So in verse 17, so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there.
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So he goes and speaks with the Jews on the Sabbath.
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And then during the week he's out of the marketplace.
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He didn't believe that he had to necessarily.
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And this is I hope I don't offend anyone.
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I'm not intending to.
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But I want to tell you something.
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We have and some of you have this conversation with me.
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We say we've got to make friends with people before we can tell them about Jesus.
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That is not true.
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If that were the case, then we would have no hope of really sharing Christ because it takes a long time to make a friend, really.
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And here's what happens.
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We say we've got to make friends with somebody to tell them about Jesus.
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And then we make friends with them, say, well, I can't tell them about Jesus.
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They might not be my friend anymore.
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We cut our throat, we cut off our nose to smite our face.
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You know, Paul wasn't worried about making friends.
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Paul wasn't worried about developing his own self-interests or creating for him a network whereby he could create a missionary crusade and come back and have his own celebration of Jesus Festival, you know, you know, 85 or whatever.
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Yeah.
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Rock the house with Jesus.
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Fifty five AD, you know, he wasn't he wasn't worried about that.
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He was worried about proclaiming Christ.
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So he he spent a Sabbath with the Jews and he spent every other day.
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Engaging the culture now in verse 18, it tells us how he was responded to, said some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him.
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And before we go on, let me explain who those are.
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The Epicureans were the people who were they were the students of Epicurus.
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Obviously, they were believers.
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They were effectively atheists.
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They believed that this world was all there is.
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So their idea was that pleasure is man's highest goal, because if this world is all there is, then what do you want? I want to feel good.
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I want to eat good.
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I want to sleep good.
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And I want to do good for me all the time, because when this world's over, it's over.
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So I might as well enjoy it.
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You know, you only go around this big old merry-go-round once.
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The better grab for all the gusto I can get.
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That's the Epicurean attitude.
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Get all I can, do all I can.
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Doesn't sound familiar, does it? He said with great sarcasm, of course, it's a modern American way.
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Get all I can, enjoy all I can, fulfill every lustful desire that I can.
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That's the Epicurean way.
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And they were philosophers.
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They felt very proud of this philosophy because it does make sense.
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If this world is all there is, might as well enjoy it.
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That was their attitude.
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Now, the Stoics were the opposite end of the spectrum.
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The Stoics were the students of Zeno.
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And the Stoics believed that they should rise above feeling and suppress their desires and show no emotional response, pain or otherwise.
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If you ever heard of somebody who has a very Stoic demeanor, means emotionless.
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That's where the idea comes from.
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And this idea was the Stoics were pantheists.
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They believed that God was everything.
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You know, we would say God is everywhere, but we wouldn't say God is everything.
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I wouldn't say you're God and I'm God.
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And this stage is God.
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And this is a chancel, by the way, not a stage.
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And this pulpit is God.
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And this microphone is God.
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And air is God.
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And the universe is God.
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That's pantheism.
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That is not biblical Christianity.
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The Bible says God is the creator of all things.
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He is not part of his creation.
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And though he is everywhere, it's different.
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And so their idea was because we're part of this thing, which is God, then really what we need to do is just control ourselves and just be at one with the universe.
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To be at one with this great pantheism view.
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So they have these philosophers who debated back and forth.
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Now in comes the Apostle Paul.
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And they said and some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Obviously, they didn't think much of his of his teaching, called him a babbler in the Greek.
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It's a term, a seed picker.
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The idea was a bird that goes and picks up seeds, you know, a bird, just seeds that don't get into the ground.
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The bird will pick them up before they take root.
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The idea was you don't have any thoughts of your own.
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You just picked up a bunch of thoughts from other people and you've combined them into some idea of your own.
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You're a seed picker.
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You're not really a philosopher.
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You're not as smart as us.
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You just come up with a bunch of different things.
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You've heard other people saying you've combined them all and you've created your own ideas.
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So effectively, they were calling him less than intelligent.
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You're a babbler, I think that makes makes it kind of easy for us to understand.
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Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
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Now, here's the thing about Athens.
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One thing you have to remember, there was nothing wrong with having gods.
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They were all about gods.
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They were all about many gods.
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They were as many as you can have.
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Bring them in and sign them up.
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You know, there was nothing wrong with having multiple gods.
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It was a polytheistic culture.
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It was somewhat like America today where people will say you can have your God.
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Don't bother me with him.
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But if he's your God, that's fine.
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But don't tell don't don't don't don't engage me.
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I have my God.
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You have your God.
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You see, what happens is America is the modern polytheistic nation like Athens was at the time.
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You get your own God.
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I get my own God.
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My God told me what to do.
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Your God tells you what to do.
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And if you try to infringe on me, anything that your God tells you to do, he's not telling me to do it.
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You're wrong.
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Well, that's the situation that Paul's going into.
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Yeah, I don't mind that he's preaching another God.
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We got shelves filled with them.
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Just add them to the list.
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No problem.
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So verse 19, by the way, we haven't even got to the text that I'm expositing today.
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I'm sorry.
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Well, I'll kick it in gear a little.
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And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting? The Areopagus was the Supreme Court of Athens.
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It was called the Hill of Ares.
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Ares in Latin is Mars, the god of war.
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So if you've ever heard the term Mars Hill, that's the Areopagus.
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It's the Hill of Ares.
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It's Mars Hill in the King James.
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It says Mars Hill in the ESV, New American Standard.
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It says the Areopagus.
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Just so if there's any confusion in your Bible, you'll know what's happening here.
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So he brings they bring him to the Supreme Court.
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This is the place where civil, criminal and religious matters were settled.
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All of the brilliant people of Athens, all of the philosophers of various sort were convened in this court.
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And this court's responsibility was to see the right and the wrong, to make the decisions.
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And then verse 20, it says, for you bring some strange things to our ears.
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We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.
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Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there would spend their time and nothing except telling or hearing something new.
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That's an interesting passage.
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I could spend more time on.
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I'll just basically say the thing of the thing about the Athenians is they were they were lovers of philosophy.
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They love to hear something new.
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They want to hear some new idea, some new concept, some new view of the world.
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They loved philosophy and they love to hear some new thing.
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So here comes the Apostle Paul.
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He's talking about Jesus and the resurrection.
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We want to hear him.
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That's new.
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That's different.
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We've never heard that.
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Bring him.
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So they bring Paul into the court to have his case heard.
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They bring him into this this place of higher learning, this place where decisions are made about the truth.
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They bring him in and they set him down and they say, talk, OK? They know that we're getting themselves into.
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So Paul, verse 22, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, standing on Mars Hill, as it were, said, men of Athens, that was the proper way to address the court.
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Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way.
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You are very religious.
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Deza de mon in the Greek.
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God fearing is what it means, fear of deities, deza de mon.
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You are I can see you guys fear God later on that could be translated superstitious, but it's not intended that way.
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If you read a Bible where it translates superstitious, sometimes we think of superstition as a negative thing.
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I don't think Paul is intending at this point to insult them.
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And at this time in history, deza de mon did not have an insulting connotation that would come later.
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So to say that he's insulting them is anachronistic.
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It's reading back into the text.
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I don't think that's what he meant.
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I believe that he was intending to at least in some way appeal to their religiousness.
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I see that you're religious and it goes on to verse twenty three, for as I passed along and observed the objects of worship, I found also and also with this inscription to the unknown God, what therefore you worship as unknown.
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This I proclaim to you.
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The thing about Athens is they had a they had a they had a God for everything.
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And just in case they missed anything, they had a God for nothing.
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They had a God that they didn't know.
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In fact, historically speaking, they had many of these.
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It doesn't tell us which one Paul passed by, but there's a chance that he might have passed by many of them, because what had happened was 600 years prior to this event.
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The man by the name of Epimenides had tried to solve an issue in Athens wherein there was a plague.
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A plague had affected Athens and they were trying to determine which God they had offended.
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So they said, well, we don't know which God has brought this plague upon us.
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We need to satisfy all the gods.
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Here's what we'll do.
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We will take sheep and we'll put them on Mars Hill there.
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We'll put them on the hill and we'll let them go.
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And the gods will tell us who needs to be placated because the gods will draw on to them the sheep and wherever these sheep go, wherever, whatever temples they go to, whatever altars they go to, we'll sacrifice them right there and we'll appease that God.
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Here's what they didn't realize.
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The sheep didn't know what was going on, so what happened was some of them went to altars and they got sacrificed and some of them went and laid in the grass.
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And they did not go to an altar.
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So you know what they did? They were they were industrious.
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The Athenians.
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They said, well, there must be a God that we don't know.
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So wherever there was a sheep there, they would slay the sheep and create an altar.
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To the unknown God.
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Must be one we don't know and we want to make to make them all happy.
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It was like Mike Warnke.
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I don't know if you know Mike Warnke.
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He was a Christian comedian back in the 80s.
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He said he met an atheist when he was going to Vietnam.
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He said, but the third week in Vietnam, the guy walked out of his tent.
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He had a chain on his neck.
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He had a star, a Buddha, a star and crescent and an Indian arrowhead.
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And he said, what's going on? He goes, I don't know, but I don't want to make anybody mad.
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So that was the attitude of the Athenians.
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They had this.
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They said, you know, the unknown God.
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We have so many gods, there's got to be ones we don't know.
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We're going to sacrifice them all, try to satisfy them all.
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So verse 24, Paul says, I'm going to proclaim this God to you.
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Verse 24, 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.
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This.
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Is a different God.
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Than the God that the Athenians were used to.
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So this God is the creator of all things.
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He's not the creator of the wind and the wind, God, or the creator of fire and the fire, God, or the the bringer of death, the the angel of death or something like that.
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This is the God who created all things.
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And he doesn't live in temples.
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And he's not served with human hands as if he needed anything.
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He gives to us all mankind life and breath and everything.
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He is the only God.
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And then he goes on to say, by the way, that was a shot, in a sense, at both the Epicureans and the Stoics.
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Epicureans didn't believe in a God that would that essentially that would save them.
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And here he's talking to them about a God who created the world.
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And they also the Stoics believe that everything was God.
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He said, no, there's a creator.
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So he's attacking essentially both in verse 26.
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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.
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But let me just stop right there very quickly, by the way.
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And this is not the sermon of the day.
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But if you are if you are any way prejudiced in a racial way, this verse should slap you right in the face.
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And that's not the focus of today.
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But it should be in thinking about missions.
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You know, what does this verse tell us? He made from one man every nation of mankind on the earth.
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There is no such thing as different races.
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There's only different ethnicities.
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All we are all of the human race.
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And if you are racist because somebody is different color than you, then you are wrong and you're in sin and you need to repent.
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But going on, he made of every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods in the boundaries of his own place, this God is sovereign.
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That's another thing he's expressing in his sermon.
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This is a sovereign God.
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He's determined where people can go and what they can do.
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There are a lot of times and there are a lot of places.
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Isn't that nice? Paul's preaching missionary and he's preaching sovereignty.
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And then he says in verse twenty seven that they should seek God and hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.
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Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.
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This is Paul's statement.
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He said God gave all these things out there that men might grope for him.
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I like the King James at that point, because it says that men might grope after him.
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God's given us all these things that men would reach for him.
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And yet they don't.
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Sorry, God has given all these things that men might reach out to him.
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And yet they don't and they won't.
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But can they? They can never lay at God's feet a charge of impropriety because he has placed all of these things in the world to point towards him.
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The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament above his handiwork.
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No man can look to God in the face of judgment and say, you didn't give me enough evidence that you exist.
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He goes on to say he is not far from each one of us.
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He is everywhere.
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He's not far from us to grope for him.
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There's no need to grope.
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He's there.
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And then he goes on to say, for in him we live and move and have our being.
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He's actually quoting Epimenides at this point.
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This tells you that Paul is a man of knowledge and of culture himself.
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He knows to quote from.
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Their teacher.
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Epimenides said, for indeed, in him we live and move and have our being.
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And then he goes on to quote another when he said, and even some of your own poets have said, for we are indeed his offspring.
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Verse 29, being then his offspring, God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver stone, an image formed by the art of the imagination of man.
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So here he is attacking their idols.
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He said, if God created the world and God created men and God allowed them to have certain boundaries in certain places and God established all of these things and God is the God of the he is the sovereign God of the universe.
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How in the world could we be so foolish as to think that we could encapsulate that God in some figurine? How foolish is it of us to think that we can encapsulate that God in some gold or silver statue? What foolishness is it for us to consider such a thing? So we get to verse 30 and 31, our passage for today.
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All that was an introduction.
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Now we get to the meat, he says in verse 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked.
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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.
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And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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Now, I want to I'm going to give you three points today.
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They don't rhyme and they don't all start with the same letter.
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So I apologize for my lack of of ambition when it comes to alliteration, but I'll give them to you anyway.
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Number one, God has held back his judgment for a time.
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That's the first thing that we need to understand.
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God has held back his judgment for a time.
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Number two, God has commanded repentance of the whole world.
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And number three, God has determined a day of judgment.
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That's pretty simple, I guess it did all start with the same letter, it all started with God, so I guess I can claim some level of alliteration there.
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God held back his righteous judgment for a time.
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Look at verse 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked, the time of ignorance God overlooked.
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Now, here's something that we need to understand when it says the time of ignorance God overlooked.
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We need to understand what it means, what it doesn't mean, and let me first say what it doesn't mean, because I think this is important.
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That does not mean that everybody up until this time were saved and that God simply looked over their sin and said, oh, well, we'll do better next time.
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But you guys are come on, come on in.
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And to think that way would mean that we would have to just simply throw away a lot of the scripture.
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I mean, Romans chapter two, verse 12, says that those who sin without the law perish without the law, even though they didn't have the law.
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I read it just Romans two.
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Very quickly, I'll read Romans two verses verses 12 through 16, just to ensure that we understand this.
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Romans chapter two says, for all have sinned, all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.
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And all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.
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So right there, I mean, we just stop there, right there.
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You know, whether or not they had the law doesn't matter.
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What matters is the fact that everyone before and after Christ, everyone has all have all been judged.
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And if they have not received the revelation of how to be saved, they're judged by the law.
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And guess what? Under the law, we're all condemned.
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We talked about this in our dads and dudes group this week about natural revelation.
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You can't be saved by looking at the fact that God simply exists.
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You have to be saved through Christ.
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And before Christ, you were saved through that which pointed to Christ, which was the system which God had set up through his prophets and through his patriarchs.
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So my point in all this is, is don't let the term overlook and verse 30 make you think that God overlooked it in the sense that that sin wasn't judged.
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That's not the case.
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I think the probably the place I would go to Luke 16.
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And when I pull this up on the screen, most of you know the story, Jesus said there was a there was a rich man who who ate and he had all the food that he wanted.
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And there was a poor man who sat outside of his home and the poor man wanted nothing but to have the scraps that came off the rich man's table.
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Both of them died.
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And it said the poor man was ushered into paradise, Abraham's bosom.
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But the rich man closed his eyes here and opened his eyes where in torment and Hades.
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It was an immediate.
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Action.
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What's interesting about that story, my wife and I were talking about death this week, had to do a funeral, we're talking about what it's like for somebody to die.
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I said when a Christian dies, they're ushered into God's presence by the angels as the as the poor man was ushered by the angels.
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But the people who die in their sins close their eyes here and they open them in torment.
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There is no intermediated state.
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There's no there's it's just an immediate torment forever.
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How frightening, how frightening.
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So so that being said, when it says it was overlooked, it doesn't mean that individual sins were not accounted to people and that they were judged on the individual scale.
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No sin has ever been overlooked.
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However, on the grand scale, all sin has been overlooked.
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What do I mean? On the grand scale, all sin has been overlooked because God's judgment on sin has not yet fallen in its fullness.
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Maybe if I paint a picture for you, go to Revelation, I do want you to go here.
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Revelation, chapter 20, one book of the Bible.
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I never have any trouble getting people to follow with me is Revelation.
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People like to go look up Revelation, Revelation, chapter 20 and verse 11.
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This is the judgment which is coming upon the world.
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This is the judgment that Paul is going to talk about in a moment.
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Then I saw a great white throne, chapter 20, verse 11, and him who was seated on it from his presence, earth and sky fled away and no place was found for them.
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And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne and books were opened.
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Then another book was opened, which is the book of life, and the dead were judged by what was written in the books according to what they had done.
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And the sea gave up the dead who were in it.
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Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them according to what they had done.
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Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.
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This is the second death, the lake of fire.
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And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
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That is the judgment that has not yet come.
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That is the judgment which is coming.
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This is how we can say up till now God has overlooked.
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The sin, because the very fact that you did not fall into the precipice of hell at the very moment which you first sinned against God is testimony to the fact that he is yet to bring the full judgment that is deserved.
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The King James Version says the sin God winked at, Act 17 says he winked at it.
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That doesn't mean he winked at it with some kind of an approving like wink.
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No, it means he turned his eye away because it wasn't yet time for the judgment to fall.
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God has held back his righteous judgment for a time, but the Apostle Paul says back in Act 17, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.
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I thought about the you know, that was the one word that made me want to preach this sermon.
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I want to preach this text.
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This is the word command.
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Because I think that we have gotten and this may be where I start to draw to a close, I may just have to draw here, but I want to share this with you, beloved.
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Repentance is not a suggestion.
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Repentance is not a request.
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Repentance is a command.
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God has commanded all people everywhere to repent.
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Somebody says, I thought Jesus invited us to him.
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Well, let me talk to you a little bit about that invitation, because I'm not going to deny that there's an invitation coming to me.
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All ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give thee rest.
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Right.
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The scripture says come and there's the invitation.
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Come.
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Revelation chapter 20 ends with the great and chapter 22 ends with that great invitation.
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Come.
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Let me share with you something that I think is it was profound when I thought of it this week and when I heard I think I heard another pastor say it was so profound.
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It hit me in the chest and I just stopped for a moment.
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I said, you know what? That's profound.
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He said this.
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He said, when you think about the invitation, when God, when that invitation is extended, there is implied in the invitation a command, because here's the thing, the difference between an invitation and a command is if you don't respond to an invitation, there's no consequence.
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Think about it.
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If you invite me to your house and I say, oh, I don't think I want to come.
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There's no consequence.
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You might be mad at me, but I mean, other than that, there's no consequence.
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If the city of Jacksonville calls me and says, hey, do you want to come and serve on a jury? And I say, no, thank you, because that's an invitation.
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Right.
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They're inviting me to come.
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And I say, no, thank you.
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There's no consequence.
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But if I receive a summons.
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You will appear on this day at this time and at this hour and I choose not to come, then there will be a consequence.
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So, too, with the invitation to repent.
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Yes.
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Can I say can we say that Jesus has come? Yes.
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Can we use the language of invitation? Yes, because Jesus use the language of invitation.
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There's no problem using language of invitation.
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But what you must understand is built into that invitation is the command of God that you must repent.
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If I say to my son, come to me.
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And he chooses not to come.
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Well, we know built into that invitation was a command.
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And as soon as he disregards that invitation, it becomes rebellion.
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So there's a lot more I'd like to say about that.
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But for time's sake, let me just say this.
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God has commanded all men everywhere.
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There is no one left out of God's command.
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There is no one left out.
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No one in the world can say they are not commanded to repent.
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We all are commanded to repent.
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No one will under their own power.
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It takes a miraculous act of God on the heart to cause a person to change and come to him and enable him.
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And somebody asked, well, does that mean then that if God has to enable it, the Bible says he's delighted when we repent.
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How can he be delighted in our repentance if it's something that he enables us to do? I actually thought about this last night.
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I was thinking about my daughter.
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I have two, so I'll be more specific.
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I was thinking about the little one and I was thinking about the fact of enablement because we know that to repent, we have to be enabled to repent.
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And yet the Bible says that God delights in our repentance.
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It says there's delight among the angels when one sinner comes to repent.
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How? Why is there delight in something that God enables us to do? And I got to thinking, you know what? My little one, there's a lot of things that she's not able yet to do.
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One of those things is she can't quite get into my lap yet.
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She tries.
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She loves to come stand next to my chair and look up at me and I know what she's saying.
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Get after it, big boy.
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Come on, get me up there.
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That's what she's having in her little mind of mine.
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That's her thought is I want to be up there, but I can't get up there.
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Now, I want to let you know, there's not a perfect example here of the analogy because we don't stand asking God to pick us up.
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We rebel.
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God has to come and pick us up and he has to change our hearts.
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So there's not a perfect analogy.
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But the analogy is this.
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There is an analogy here just because I have to reach down and pick my baby up and just because I have to set her in my lap and I have to enable her to come.
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That doesn't make it any less delightful for me to sit her down on my lap and enjoy her presence.
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So, too, when God reaches down into our sin and he changes our heart and he enables us to come to him.
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And when we come, there's no less delight in our coming.
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It's a command.
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And when we come, it's a delight to God that he brings us into his presence and he loves us as his adopted children.
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I'm just going to hasten to the end because it goes on to say the reason why he's commanded all men to repent is because he has fixed the day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed and he's given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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So he tells them about Jesus.
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He tells them about the resurrection and he tells them the resurrection is our assurance.
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Back at Resurrection Sunday, I talked about the resurrection being our assurance in Christ.
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So I won't spend a lot of time with that now, but I do want to read verses 32 to 34.
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And I'm going to end with this, because here's the thing.
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When you engage a culture like Paul did, when you engage your Athens, which is USA, when you engage America with the culture, not everybody's going to respond positively.
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Not everybody's going to respond nice or even tactfully.
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In fact, some people will call you fool, the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.
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But here's how they responded to Paul, and I leave this as an encouragement to you for your missionary endeavors.
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Because here's what happened in verse 32, it says, Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, they mocked the Apostle Paul for his words.
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You say, I'm afraid somebody's going to make fun of me if I tell them about Jesus.
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Yes, they will.
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No, they will.
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If they made fun of Paul, are you better? Are you are you do you think you don't deserve it? You will be made fun of.
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You will be mocked.
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So be it for the cause of Christ.
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Wouldn't it be great if we could all say that we were mocked for the gospel? Not mocked for our own meanness or mocked for our own prejudice or for holding a sign that says God hates this or God hates that, but that we were mocked for the truth of the gospel.
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That's what Paul was mocked for.
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Then it goes on to say, But others said, We will hear you again on this.
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You have those who mock and those who procrastinate.
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There's a reason why the Apostle Paul says that today is the day of salvation.
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But yet these people say, We'll hear you again.
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Come on back.
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Tell us some more.
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We like new stuff.
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Come on back any time we'll listen to you again.
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You funny, Paul.
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Some people procrastinate.
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But it says, So Paul went out from their midst, verse thirty four.
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But some men joined him.
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Beloved, that's the blessing.
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So some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius, the Areopagite.
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So he got one of the head guys.
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He got one of the brilliant guys.
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This is like going into the middle of a brilliant school, a university where all these people are mocking you, but he got one.
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He got one of the Areopagites, one of those guys, one of those brilliant minds, one of those philosophers heard Jesus and he was saying, Don't let you think because somebody may be smarter than you intellectually that you can't share Jesus with them.
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Don't you let you think that because somebody may know more philosophy than you that you can't share Jesus with them.
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Don't you let Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens? Well, he's dead.
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Don't let Dan Barker or any of the rest of these guys and make you feel inferior because you carry with you a message which outdoes any one of their messages.
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And it's the message of Jesus Christ.
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Paul did not feel inferior because he knew he had Christ.
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And it said he got one.
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And a woman named Damaris and others with them, it doesn't say anything about the others, but I love the fact that it mentions he saved one who was one of the brilliant men and he saved a woman.
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By preaching the gospel, he saved these people.
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And beloved, so too ought we.
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I heard a minister this week say something that touched my heart.
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He said there are more people lost today than have ever been in the history of the world.
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There are more lost people today than have ever been in the history of the world.
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We have a mission field.
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The field is white for the harvest.
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Somebody asked John MacArthur, do you have a missions, do you have an evangelism program at your church? He said, yes, go.
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That's our plan.
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You don't plan for evangelism, you do evangelism.
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We don't plan evangelism, we do it, go and preach Jesus, go and share the gospel, go and be missionaries to a culture.
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You don't need me to give you permission for Christ has given you permission.
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Go, I say, go.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I thank you for the gospel.
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And I thank you for giving us the heart to want to take the gospel into a land which is not Christian.
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And I pray that we would be ambassadors for Christ.
59:41
And all that we say and do in his name, we pray.
59:46
Amen.