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Resurrection Sunday morning, 1997 was my very first sermon here as your pastor at Bethlehem Bible Church, Bethlehem Baptist Church at that time. So I've been here a pastor now nine years officially, and I have a confession to make.
It's actually a strange confession. I know that you pay my salary so that I'll be freed up to study the Word of God and to dig deeply into the scriptures and to be a Berean and to preach sermons, but my confession today is I am sorry I'm preaching another man's sermon.
Tuesday I got into my study and I began to work on Isaiah 53, that it would please the God of the universe to crush the Son of God, the Father killing the Son, having the Son die for the sins of the people, and then having the Father so pleased with that wonderful crucifixion and Christ's sin bearing for sinners.
He was so pleased he raised Him from the dead. Wednesday I got into my study and thought, no, I think I want to change that. I'm going a different direction. I think I'd like to talk about how the Jews in almost a Pavlovian sense were taught by God that if there was a sin, there needed to be bloodshed, whether that was back at Passover time or that was at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, that when there's a sin, there should be bloodshed.
Then on Thursday I thought, well, I think I want to change that. You know, here's what happens if you don't preach verse by verse and you get a free week, you don't know what to do. And I thought, no, we need to go a different direction.
I did not steal the sermon on sermons .com or pastors .com, but I wanted to hear from someone who was an authority on the resurrection, and then I wanted to have you hear that person, someone who's one of the greatest preachers of all time to hear what he said about the importance and value of the resurrection.
Not the resurrection that we sometimes hear about, how to make good out of bad. That's kind of the resurrection service. Or not as one president said some time ago, let us recognize that in Jesus' resurrection, we see both the promise and the proof of love's capacity to triumph over the forces of misunderstanding, fear, and hatred.
No, I wanted to hear what does this preacher have to say about the resurrection in a way that we don't normally understand. And so today I'm going to be preaching another man's sermon, and his name is the Apostle Paul.
And if you'll turn your Bibles to Acts 17, I want to preach Paul's sermon to you with some exposition, and I want you to understand what Paul said to these people who were very, very religious. Acts 17, it's in the New Testament.
If you can't find it, you can go to the table of contents. There's a Black Pew Bible in front of you. We want to encourage you to follow along to see what God would tell you from His Holy Word. Certainly the resurrection is important because it gives us hope of eternal life.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless, for you are still in your sins. He said your faith is in vain without the resurrection. That is important fact. It is very important in Romans 1 where Paul said, the Son of God was declared to be the Son by having Him raised from the dead.
The word declared means horizon, and as you see the line of demarcation between the earth and the sky, here God puts His line of demarcation out there saying, it's clear for everyone Jesus has been raised from the dead.
Well, that's very important as well. But today we want to look at something else that's very important, found in the resurrection that you might not think of in Acts 17. And I'll just tell you ahead of time where I'm going so that you'll know when we get there.
Here is the logic of Paul that we'll see in Acts 17. That if there's a resurrection, there will be judgment. The resurrection we'll see from this passage that one day there will be a judgment. There will be a tribunal before God.
And we want to find out about that because if we're all going to be judged, we need to know about that particular judgment. When Jesus was raised from the dead, that confirmed in our minds, or it should have confirmed in our mind, that there will be a judgment of God.
And I found lots of people this week who try to spin that. God's a God of love, but the other stuff, judgment and righteousness, no, we don't like that. We want to take those sharp corners with the scissors of our mind and kind of contour it into a nice shape of He's loving and He's kind and He's merciful only.
But the Bible teaches other things, and the resurrection should confirm to our minds that Jesus is a judge. As Don Richardson said, the missionary in New Guinea, he said, you know, Christianity, it's meddlesome.
It is meddlesome, and I'm going to meddle today. If you're not a Christian, I want to proclaim to you the truth that God can forgive all your sins, which implies you're a sinner in need of that. Forgiveness I proclaim today to you, full and free.
And if you're a Christian, you'll be reminded today that somebody was judged in your place. You don't have to go through judgment anymore. God's not so unjust to exercise double jeopardy and judge His Son and then judge you too.
So if you're a Christian, to all those who look to Christ and say, I've repented of my sins, I'm looking to Christ. I trust in Him. He's my salvation. He's the only one who's been raised from the dead, and I am placing my eternal soul in His eternal hand.
Today for you as a Christian, you should have hope. Acts chapter 17 is one of the most amazing sermons of all time. And God wanted this sermon to be recorded. Certainly Paul had preached other sermons that aren't in the Bible.
Ask yourself the question, why is this one in the Bible? Why is this one inspired? Why is this one for you throughout all time to know what Paul did? And you know what Paul did? He preached the sermon to religious people.
I would assume you're all religious today. It's funny, Haley and I were driving in to church for the sunrise service, and I saw all the fishermen out there. It's fine to fish and fun to fish, and maybe they were going to fish early and then go to worship service.
I don't know. But I said to Haley, oh, the worshipers are out early this morning. Now you're here at the church, and to some degree you must be religious. You might say, I'm a spiritual person. I'm a religious person.
And this is the kind of sermon that Paul preached to people who are just like you in that regard, religious, spiritual. What would God say to those who consider themselves spiritual or religious on a day that we celebrate the resurrection?
Well, Acts chapter 17 verse 15 gives us the setting, and then we'll move into this very sermon. And I'm just going to preach it and give you some elucidation on this very thing, and I want you to hear what Paul says.
I don't really care if you hear what I say, but I want you to hear what God says through Paul through someone like me. And when you're reading about Athens, I want you to think to yourself, this is just like the United States.
He could be preaching to Harvard. He could be at the Supreme Court. This is so relevant. This is transchronological. It goes beyond time. The eternal message of the eternal God about the resurrected Christ, Acts 17 verse 15.
And if you're new here, we just go through a passage and just let the Bible preach. I don't have to defend the Bible. I don't have to tell you why it's true. It's like the guy who's standing next to a lion cage with the cage closed.
He's standing there with a spear, guarding that lion, protecting that lion. The guy came up and said, you don't need to do that. Just let the lion out of the cage. He'll protect himself quite nicely. And that's what preaching is.
It's not a defense. It's a proclamation. It's a town crier who says, I have good news for you. There's bad news first. And that news is God is a judge. But the good news is he's not just a judge. He's a savior.
And he saves those who know they don't want to be judged. And it's just like the United States. It's just like today. Now, those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.
So Paul is at Thessalonica in chapter 17, then to Berea, these cities on the other side of the world. And now he comes to Athens, the great and glorious Athens. Used to be the center of the world, and now maybe just kind of culturally the center of the world.
Religiously, maybe the center of the world. It's lost some of its luster over the last few hundred years. But this is a city with literature, philosophy, science, rhetoric. If you were somebody, you were in Athens, or you had visited.
So much so that Aristotle, Zeno, and Epicurus adopted that as their home. Socrates and Plato from Athens. You've got the Parthenon with the Temple of Athene. And here comes Paul to the cultural, intellectual center of the Roman Empire.
The empire that has the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, all kinds of things. It's a celebrated city. And what does he do? Verse 16, now Paul was waiting for them at Athens. His spirit was being provoked within him as he was beholding the city full of intellectual brilliance.
No, the text says he was beholding the city full of idols. And Paul, do you see the word there in verse 16? He was being provoked. He was infuriated. He was bugged. He was mad. He was greatly distressed, excited.
He had agitation, provoked, roused to anger. And literally, it wasn't, oh, I'm so mad at these people. It was, I'm beginning to be infuriated, and I'm remaining in that condition. This was not a sudden loss of temper.
He was looking at the city, and here you've got this monotheistic Jew. Jesus alone is God, and everywhere you go is full of idols. If he were to take a ship from Berea and come to the port, he'd have to walk five miles to get to the city.
And guess what was on the side of the road as he would walk for five miles? Idol after idol after idol. And some were so bad, I wouldn't even say them from the pulpit. What they depicted, what they represented, all these false gods.
These golden calf type of things, except worse. 10 ,000 people lived in Athens, and they said there were 30 ,000 gods. Petronius said there were more gods in Athens than there were humans. Only thing close to it that I could think of is in India.
Going to India a couple times, and Lord willing, going again. One billion people and 330 million gods. We certainly have ours too, and we'll get to that in a minute. As God gets provoked by idolatry, so too his servant was being provoked by idolatry.
Does God like idolatry? I read this verse in the Bible when I was a new Christian, and I've never forgotten it. Exodus 34, 14. In the Mosaic law, for you shall not worship any other god for the Lord Yahweh, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.
This is not some kind of sinful jealousy. This is the kind of jealousy that says, I have a spouse, and her name is Israel, God says. And any other people that try to come and get in between us, as a husband and a wife, no, no way.
Psalm 106 says, they provoke God to anger with their deeds, and the plague broke out among them. He was provoked, and so Paul, a Christian godly man, comes to the city, and here were some of the gods.
Piety, pity, modesty, fame, energy, persuasion. And literally the word means that they were submerged with idols. It was a city that was underwater with idols. There were so many, they were just over, and you were just a man walking around.
They said Athena's golden spear in the temple could be seen 40 miles away. Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus, Neptune, Dianne. Dianne. It was put two of those together. They probably had a Dianne false god too.
Dianna. Shame, famine, desire. And I just think of Isaiah 42. I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not give my glory to another. God has created everyone. He has created you. And he's created you to be a worshiper of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
To love him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. To love your neighbor as yourself. To give all your desire and adoration, honor, glory, praise to God. And people exchange that for some kind of other thing to worship.
And for Paul, he was provoked. Just like Henry Martin, the missionary to India, to the Muslims. He said, I could not endure existence if Jesus was not glorified. It would be hell to me if he were to be always so dishonored.
And you know as Paul was walking down, all past that, and he arrives to the center there. He just was provoked in the spirit. He was upset. And rightfully so. Just like America, I think. We have all kinds of idols.
It's easy to pick on India. But the big buzz word I hear all the time is, I'm spiritual. I'm into spirituality. I'm not kind of a religious freak like you, Mike. But I'm just spiritual. I'm not religious, but I consider myself spiritual.
I'm a worshiper. And I went to the Watchmen organization. And in the A's only, there were 120 false, weird things to believe. I found things like the Abbey of Thelema. Aaronic Order. Ahabba Asa Prophetic Ministries.
Alphabiotic New Life Centered. Altered States of Consciousness. Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America. I kid you not. Anchor of Golden Light, Dorothy and Henry Leon. Ancient Mystic Order of Melchizedek.
Melchizedek Z York. Apostolic Overhealing Holiness of God Incorporated. Arm of the Lord. I always liked Arm of the Lord because they say if you invite Jesus in your heart, that's satanic. Just built a whole religion around that.
Strange, wacky. Automatic writing. Astral projection. We think, those people in India, falling down to Ganesh or something else. I can't believe it. We don't do that. It's just not right. All these other people in A's and B's and C's in the Watchtower organization, whatever that Watchmen organization.
That's just so horrible. That is beneath me. Yet, if you don't worship Jesus Christ and Him alone, you too are an idolater. Maybe more sophisticated. Maybe dressed up real nice. But if your praise and adoration is not to the one Son, the only Savior, their salvation and no other Jesus Christ, and you follow Him, you're an idolater.
You are a born worshiper. And Calvin was right when he said, our hearts are like idol factories, except these are the gods of today. A God who's not really on the throne. He's not totally sovereign, but he's kind of kneeling down a little bit.
And not a God who's a God of wrath and justice and judgment, but he's kind of kind and nice. You know, George Burns' God, oh God. Remember him? Kind of a cosmic genie. He's there to help you in times of need and get you out of those sticky wickets that you're in.
And as people start to take the knife of their mind and slice off the attributes of God, His greatness, His holiness, He's unchangeable. Does that unnerve you that God never changes? It's one thing if God is holy all the time, and if He could just stop being holy once in a while, I might be able to take a break.
But He's unchangeably holy. He's unchangeably righteous. He's unchangeably just. And left to myself, I'm unchangeably sinful. And if I was a leopard, I couldn't change my spots. And if I was a dog, I couldn't turn into a tiger.
And I'm stuck and I need help. We have idolatry here. But here is our idolatry. I believe in Jesus, but Jesus has a different definition. It's not the Jesus of the Bible who says, you want to follow me?
Then turn your back on yourself and then you follow me and there's true forgiveness. It's the Jesus that people worship today is the fun Jesus. Jesus is kind of like my buddy. And whatever I do, Jesus likes.
Kind of like a dad. You know, the kid does something and I just like it that my job sometimes as his dad is just to go, great job! Way to jump! Way to ride! And then Kim and I look at each other going, that was really good.
Maybe not so good, but good job! It's like the kid who said to the dad, Dad, my job is to hit the ball. Dad, your job is to say good job. We just create these gods in our mind. Somehow we know that God's holy and God judges, but you know, our conscience needs to be assuaged and so we kind of just make up our own God.
And that's what they were doing back then, except they were just more blatant. Paul was provoked. Not everybody liked Christianity. Look at verse 17 of Acts 17. So he was reasoning in the synagogues with the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles, the monotheistic Gentiles.
That's what Paul did. That was his M .O. Hey, show up at the Sabbath, teach the Bible. He also was a street preacher. And in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be present. He just would show up where people congregated and began to tell people the truth.
There's one Savior. You'll die one day. Life is short. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. Jesus is the only Savior. He's like John the Baptist who said, he's not like John the Baptist, but like John the Baptist said, there's that Lamb, that Savior who's slain in the place of sinners.
Believe in Him. They had some really smart people there, and there were kind of two categories. Look at verse 18. Also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. They were talking back and forth.
By the way, here's a good truth for you. If you want to talk religion theoretically, you're fine. I've got friends on e-mail, kind of a chat list kind of thing, and they say, tell me this about religion, your religion, Mike.
Tell me how God can be sovereign and men can decide. Tell me all those things. And everything's fine as long as it's theoretical. But when that long finger, Allah Nathan, comes pointing down to them and say, this is not just theoretical, but God requires you to repent, or there's perdition for you, then the smoke comes out of my computer.
As long as it's theoretical, and these Epicureans and Stoics, that's just what they did. They just talked all the time. Well, what about this? What about that? What's new? Oh, that's interesting. But you'll see in just a little bit, once Paul turns it up and says, by the way, there's a resurrection.
And if there's a resurrection, that means when you die, you'll still be alive, your soul will be, and your soul's not going to do some kind of weird transmigration like some of the Epicureans, some of the Stoics thought.
Your soul's going to migrate to the throne room of God, and then what? Paul, you're so unloving. You're just talking about hell, judgment. Come on, we need a quick picker-upper message. I need a shot in my arm today.
It's Easter. Come on, we've got a barbecue. I don't know what you do on Easter or Resurrection Sunday. Come on, I just want to feel good. How unloving is Paul? Paul's love went this way. He loved God enough to preach his message.
And he loved people enough to tell them the truth, even though they didn't like it. That's Christianity. Paul knew the Jews wanted signs. The Greeks wanted a bunch of wisdom. And Paul said, here's your Messiah that died on a tree.
Isn't he lovely? People don't want that. People want to work. People want to try to get to heaven with God. Me and God hop, skip and jump, triple jump to heaven. I hop with baptism and confirmation and good works and being good, not being as bad as my other friend.
And God kind of jumps. And God does a few things, yes. I know God has to help in some way. And the Gospel is we can't help ourselves. We're fallen and we can't get up. We come to God needy. And it's love to tell people the truth.
You might not think I love you, but I love everyone here enough to tell you the truth. And if you're mad at me, then I'll take that. But I want to tell you the truth because you will die. And I'll probably do lots of your funerals if you don't do mine first.
And listen to what they were doing. By the way, the Epicureans, they were kind of the materialists. They were in the hedonism. They wanted pleasure. They thought pain was bad. They wanted to kind of club med vacation kind of people.
That's who they were. God exists, but He doesn't really do anything. He's not a personal God. He doesn't arrange anything. Eternal calm is what He's doing. And if God or the gods are up there in eternal calm, then maybe we should be like those gods too and live in eternal calm.
I mean, who wants to be having anything but sensual pleasure? And the Stoics, they weren't really into escape and pleasure. They were into self-mastery, endurance. Can't control everything, so stick your chin out.
Take it like a man. Rational over emotional. Lots of fatalistic thinking. Lots of pantheism. Everything's a God. Lots of nature worship. But what was similar in both of these is they were trying to exist without God.
How do I arrange my life and my mind so I can live with myself and not have my conscience keep me up at night when I know there's a God and I'm going to die? What do I do? And what did they say? Look at the text.
Some were saying, why would this idle babbler wish... what would this idle babbler wish to say? This was slang for them. This guy's literally a seed picker. He's like a bird that comes over here and just pecks indiscriminately.
Doesn't even know what he's pecking. And so here Paul is a guy who goes around and says, you know, I'll take a little bit from Judaism, I'll take a little bit from Christianity, I'll take a little bit from something else, and kind of in a plagiaristic way, I'll just take a little bit from every religion.
You know, every religion has some truth. And he just starts proclaiming it. They were not impressed. They were slamming him. And here's a weird one. Others were saying, he seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.
Two gods for Paul. Jesus, the male god. Jesus is a male verb, a male noun. And resurrection is a female noun. Jesus has two gods. I mean, Paul has two gods. Jesus is the male god, and his consort is resurrection.
Anastasia. Paul's got two gods. Weird. People think the same now of Christianity. Oh, three gods, polytheism. And they challenged him, verse 19. They took him and brought him to the Aragopagus, saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are proclaiming.
We like new things. We want to talk about it. For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. We want to know for the second time, therefore, what these things mean. Now, all the Athenians and strangers visiting, they're used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.
And as several hundred years prior, they brought Socrates into the same place and said, you proclaim false gods and made him drink hemlock. They are now telling Paul the same thing. You've got weird gods.
We want to talk about it. We're curious. But when it comes to me doing something, no. And that's almost a fallacy we have today. I want Jesus as my savior, but I'll make him Lord later. Translation, God, give me forgiveness.
But when it comes to loving you enough to obey you, I'll take a pass. I don't want to go to hell. So I'll just kind of throw you out a little bone. Here's the bone, God. Thanks for sending me to heaven.
But don't you dare tell me what to do. And when Jesus comes, God the Father said he has declared him both Lord and savior. And you are to follow him. And if you don't follow him as Lord and savior, you're not following the wrong Jesus.
And you're turning Jesus into a little idol. An idol where Jesus is only savior, but not Lord. He is Lord. Once Paul started talking about sin, they didn't like it. And I agree with John Stott. We are not in the least ashamed of the fact that we talk and think a lot about sin.
We do it for the simple reason that we are realists. Sin is an ugly fact. It is to be neither ignored nor ridiculed, but honestly faced. Because you need to be forgiven of your sins. Why would we go around saying that there's never sin?
Reminds me of what Billy Graham used to say to people as he heard a London psychologist once tell him that 70 of the people in mental hospitals in England could be released if they could find forgiveness.
Whether that's true or not, what is true is we need forgiveness. And the right knowledge of sin and a personal ownership of it is at the key of Christianity because then Jesus comes to save us from that.
You've got to have the right diagnosis before you get the cure. It's like the late Walt Kelly, his Pogo comic strip character. We have met the enemy and he is us. London Times once asked prominent people to write an essay on this topic.
What is wrong with the world? A famous writer wrote very shortly, very pointedly, Dear sirs, I am. Gladly though, Jesus comes to seek and save those who were lost. Luke 1 .77, to give his people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their syndromes, by the forgiveness of their diseases, by the forgiveness of their addictions.
No, he saves sinners. That's the good news. Jesus heard this and said, It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. Everyone's sick, but it's those who recognize their sickness, call the doctor.
We don't have many spiritual kleptomaniacs. What's the, hypochondriacs? Both might work for a sermon illustration. But if some are real hypochondriacs, they're sick about everything and they've got to go get some doctor's information.
I wish we had more spiritual hypochondriac thinking. We need help. We don't talk about sin. Matter of fact, we don't even talk about death. Can you think of some synonyms for death? Gone. Passed away.
Expired. Sleep. Kick the bucket. There's all kinds of things, but we don't even want to say dead because there's something terminal about dead, isn't there? Very much so. Dead. The wages of sin is death.
And we have a Savior that couldn't be held by death. Can you imagine Jesus' body? As Pastor Dave was reading in Acts 13 today, going back to the Psalms, His body didn't even decay in the ground because He's God Almighty enfleshed.
And we have the Savior who was raised from the dead who's triumphed over death and therefore over sin. And He is the one to be worshiped. Jesus came to save sinners. He was a friend to sinners. He didn't come to put His arm around people who didn't think they were bad.
Addicts in need of recovery. Addicts may need recovery, but they need forgiveness more importantly. We don't like sin, and therefore we don't like holiness. How about this for God? Habakkuk 1,. Thine eyes are too pure to approve evil, and thou cannot look on wickedness with favor.
What are you going to do with your sin? Hope God forgets? Try to be good? I loved it what a man said. He said, When David is rebuked for the crime, he yields the point without argument. He is told he has done wrong and receives the profit in the prophet's name.
When has this been done before or since? It's when David got caught with Bathsheba, killed Uriah. Queen Mary of Scots would declare that she was above the law. Charles I would have thrown over Bathsheba.
James II would have hired witnesses to swear away her character. Muhammad would have produced a revelation authorizing both crimes. Charles II would have publicly abrogated the seventh commandment. Queen Elizabeth would have suspended Nathan.
Who has ever acknowledged any error of any magnitude if it has been in his power to maintain that he was right? If you've got the power, you spin it. But if you don't have the power, the right godly attitude is, God, I am a sinner and I need help.
I need salvation. I need forgiveness. Now if you were Paul and you walked into this place, what would you say? You had just five minutes, ten minutes to preach, what would you preach? If you had to go to Harvard today and go preach at the Divinity School, what would be the message?
If you had to go to the Supreme Court and you got to stand up and preach, what would be the message? Here is the message. And this is from Paul. Verse 22. Paul stood in the midst of the Aragapagus and said, Men of Athens, I observe you're very religious in all respects.
Oh, he's trying to play up to them. You're very religious. You're religious. I'm religious. We're religious. That's not what Paul was doing at all. Remember, he was very provoked. He was agitated. This word has some ambiguity, but these are the three words that are put together to get this word.
Fear, evil spirits, and firm. Their ideas about worshipping evil spirits were rock hard and nobody was going to change them. And Paul walks in and says, You know, you are worshippers, but you're worshipping demons.
And you say, No, he was trying to flatter them. Do you know, even in the secular literature of history, you did not walk into this court with flattery because that's not how you win an argument in Greek philosophy.
You have to bear the truth. So Paul doesn't go in and say, Well, I'm okay, you're okay, and you're just kind of like me. He said, You know, you don't worship the real God. You worship demons hard. Paul wants Jesus Christ to be worshipped.
And any spirituality without following the resurrected Christ Jesus is a slap in the face of God. You don't worship God your way. You worship God His way. And so Paul says, verse 23, For a while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship.
I also found an altar with this inscription, To an unknown God, what therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. Back in those days, there wasn't very good medicine. And so there was a plague in the city.
This was about 600 years before Paul wrote this. There was a plague in the city, and there must be some God killing people with the plague. So how do we assuage this God from killing? Well, they brought in an outside consultant.
It's a good thing to do. So this guy came in from Cyprus, and he said, listen, I think there is a bad spirit around here, but I don't know his name. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a bunch of lambs, some black and some white, and we're going to get them really hungry.
And we're not going to feed them at all. And then we're going to let them loose on this area that has plush grass, velvety food for all these things to eat. And the ones that go and eat, that's normal.
Sheep eat. But the ones that just go lay down and don't eat, there's some kind of evil bad spirit affecting them because they normally would eat. And if they just go lay down, something must be sick with them or wrong with them or some kind of God that's mad at them.
And so when they lay down there, then you go over and take the knife, slit their throat, sacrifice that sheep right there to that God that you don't know his name. You don't want him mad at you anymore.
You want the plague stopped. And then built an altar there to the unknown God. And Paul says, you are made with the image and likeness of God. You know there's a God. You don't know his name. You don't know how to worship him.
You're ignorant. How can you worship somebody with ignorance? Let me tell you the God that you need to know about. It's the most loving thing you could ever do. Let me tell you about the name of this God who is different than you think.
But you think he's unknown and God has made himself known to us. It's almost like America today. In God we trust and we have no idea who this God is. Let me tell you about this personal God. And then he preaches.
Here's the sermon. I'll give you two points. It's not three points in a poem, just two points. Here's the sermon to people who are religious that have the wrong view of God. God is a creator. God is a judge.
Don't even both start with the same letter. He's creator and he's judge. What do you tell people in Christianity today? By the way, if you're a Christian, you don't know how to witness to people because they don't even know the Bible.
God is creator and he's judge. Take a look at what the passage says. It's absolutely amazing. God is your creator. He made you. Verse 24, the God who made the world. And by the way, on a side note, I wish I had more time to develop it, but he's blasting everything they believe.
Whatever they hold dear, Paul says he made the world, they don't think he did. Paul said he sustains, they don't think he did. Whatever he says, he's attacking them because he wants to tell them the truth.
The God who made the world and all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven, does not need to dwell in temples made with hands. Do you think the God of the universe can be contained in some little Hermes God?
1 Kings 8, it says, Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, God. Stephen said in Acts 7, Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. Exodus 20 says, The Lord made the heavens and the earth.
Anything less than the believing that God is the creator falls into the folly of idolatry. A God who didn't create anything. What a popular concept today. Think about it. I know that I kind of do things wrong and I kind of just, my conscience doesn't like it and so I'll just be out and be, just have some kind of anesthesia with movies.
I used to do that before I was a Christian. If I had some horrible trial in my life, at least I could go to a movie because for two hours I wouldn't have to think about it. Drinking, kind of just pummeling your conscience down to harden it.
But if you know God made everything, He's not only creator, He's judge and guess what's going to happen? So let's try to figure out something that even the ridiculously stupid Epicureans and Stoics would never think about doing and that is this.
Create a God who over 15 billion years create a world that over 15 billion years left into existence because see, if you have a God who's a judge, you answer to Him. If you have evolution, you answer to no one except yourself.
The creator has power, control, ownership. He has laws. Here's God's law for you to get into heaven. Here's the creator's law. How about this one? You have to be perfect to get into heaven. There's God's law.
Be warmed and be filled. Let's pray. How about this? James chapter 2. The God who creates. Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he's guilty of all the law. I did more good things than bad, but if you've got one bad and you do because we have Adam as a father and we're sinners by nature and deed and thought and commission and omission.
God, I've sinned, therefore I'm under His judgment. What do I do? Paul said in Galatians 3, Cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law. I don't even know all the law.
How can I keep it all? Jesus made everything. All things came into being by Christ, John 1 says, and apart from Him, nothing came into being that has come into being. See, I don't believe any of it. It's like somebody says, do atheists believe in God?
John Blanchard's retort, does God believe in atheists? And He does because the world and the earth says that everyone knows about God. But see, unbelief is a moral problem. It's a sin problem. People that like to sin have to create a thing, a God, so they don't have to report to such a God.
Psalm 14, 1 says, The fool has said in his heart, there is what? No God. You know, the word there for fool is not, the stupid person says, oh, there's no God. Here it is, the morally vile person says that because God, I can't have you intrude on my life.
I want to do what I want to do. And God says that is vile. And every one of us was born in the world that way. We need someone to help us. We need someone to rescue us. Paul says in verse 27,. Neither is He served by human hands as though He needed anything.
What does God need from you to make Him complete? Nothing. He's the giver of all. He's a sustainer. He's self-sufficient. Nothing from humans completes Him as though He needed anything. Since He Himself gives to all life and breath and all things, you are breathing today because the creator of the universe has given you breath.
Job 12 says, In whose hand is life of every living thing? All things were dependent upon God. Paul says, You have your different philosophies, but God created you and He sustains you and you're breathing because this God has you breathing.
He doesn't need anything. Psalm 50 says, If I were hungry, God said I wouldn't tell you. And then look what He says in verse 26, He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth.
Adam. And here's how sovereign this God is. Can't run from Him. Having determined their appointed times and boundaries of their habitation. Nations falling, rising, history. He's sovereign over everything.
And He's sovereign over everything because He wants Himself to be worshipped. Verse 27, That they should seek God if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him though He is not far away from each one of us.
The word grope, it was used by Homer in this way. When Cyclops the one-eyed giant was stabbed in the eye and blinded and then he began to grope around for the man who blinded him. Paul is saying, Mankind were originally made to seek after God and to search for Him and to find Him.
But now because of sin, we are like spiritual Cyclops groping around for God and we can't find Him. We need somebody, some Calvary, somebody who was at Calvary to come over the hill to save us because unbelievers grope for God and they can't find Him.
Cyclops was groping for Odysseus. Sin has blinded us. And then Paul says, For in Him we live and move and exist. Even some of your own poets have said, Broken clocks write twice a day for we're also His offspring.
And then, here comes the main point of the whole sermon. Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that God, His divine nature, is like gold or silver or stone like all these idols. An image formed by the art and thought of mad, that would be kind of a joke.
Here's the sermon. Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God's patient, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent. Think the right way about God. Think the right way about God.
To turn your back on what you used to think because it wasn't biblical. And then he says, this is the second point of the sermon, God's judge, because He fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom He has appointed.
How do you know that this God, this man, Jesus Christ, is going to judge everyone? Answer, having furnished proof, Acts 17 .31, to all men by raising Him from the dead. Personal judgment to these Greeks?
No way. Personal judgments to maybe many of you? I don't want to hear it. But there will be a judgment because God has raised Him from the dead. Jesus said, there's going to be a judgment. Jesus gets killed.
He's raised from the dead. Well, what He says must be true. It's going to be what kind of judgment? If you look at verse 7 .31, a righteous judgment. No hung juries, no partial judges, a righteous one.
Well, what do we do? What's the response to that kind of message? Well, there were three responses. Do you see what happened? Maybe you fit in one of these categories. I would imagine you do. Which category do you fit?
Verse 32. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some, the Epicureans, because they didn't believe in resurrection, began to sneer. Now, you all so far haven't yelled. You haven't sneered.
You might sneer when you walk out, but for now, you're not sneering or yelling. I appreciate that. Our off-duty policemen appreciate that too. The ushers. Who wants to hear that? The first time someone told me, you call yourself a Christian, and you live the way you do?
I wanted to hit the guy. Because who are you to tell me about my life? That guy, I don't even remember his name. He was nobody. He was a sinner saved by grace. But he knew God loved to hear these words.
There's a Savior who saves people, His way and only His way. There's a Savior who's high and lifted up. Not on Calvary anymore, but He's raised from the dead. And He is the one that is the eternal destiny decider.
Well, some sneer. What do others do? Others began to say, see you next Easter. Oh no, sorry. We shall hear you again concerning this. We'll hear this again. Very interesting. I kind of like to talk about it.
Very interesting. We can talk. Here's my religion. That's yours. That's fine. As long as it works for you. The great news is, when people preach, God saves. But some men joined Him and believed, among whom were also Dionysius, the Aragapagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
The word of God saves people. It saves all kinds of people. It saved Jews and Gentiles, men and women, children and senior citizens. It saves. It's the proclamation, the power of the word of God that says, actually something in here that is not recorded, but we know Paul said it.
Jesus Christ is the perfect man who lived a perfect life. So when God requires perfection, Jesus says, I'll be the substitute, and I'll live a perfect life that gets put into their spiritual bank account when they believe in Me.
So Jesus not only dies for sinners, but He also lives a perfect life, so Jesus gets our sin, we get His perfect life, and God says, you know, you didn't break the law, because I don't see you, I see My Son.
Paul could have talked about the cross the whole time, that there's a substitution aspect. Jesus dies in the place of sinners, on behalf of sinners, for sinners. But friends, my goal today was to tell you that you're a sinner.
And if you're a sinner, then you're going to go, you know, I better stop making excuses, because I might rationalize this, like smarter people did, Epicureans, Stoics, but one day I'm going to meet God, and then what?
And I tell you, in love, with boldness, you need to repent, and believe that Jesus is the only God. And we think somehow, God is pleased, when we just walk over, and take some little communion cup, and go, God's happy, go live like hell the rest of the week.
Please. No, we obey God with communion, but that's a sign that we are saved, it doesn't get us saved, do you understand? We're saved by grace, as that song we sung today said, by grace alone, God's favor alone.
Jesus is the substitutionary lamb for us, Philip Bliss said, bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood, hallelujah, what a savior. Peter said, he himself bore our sins, in his body on the cross.
Paul said, he made him who knew no sin, Jesus to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Paul said in Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.
The writer of Hebrews said, Christ having been offered once, to bear the sins of many. John the Baptist said, behold the lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world. We have a substitutionary lamb, who died in our place, and then God said, I am so pleased with that death, that life, that I will raise him from the dead, as savior and judge.
And so the good news is, we serve a risen savior as Christians. And beloved, I hope you just have a hop, skip and a jump in your step today, and say, I don't have to go to hell, I deserve it, but I get to go to heaven.
I used to be an enemy, now I'm a friend. I used to be not in the family of God, now I'm a child of God. We were listening to Fernando Ortega, on the way to church today, the sunrise service, and the song was, sing oh sing of my redeemer.
I'm an emotional guy, but I don't cry that much, and I just thought today, thinking about resurrection Sunday, I have my sunglasses on, I just began to cry thinking, I have a redeemer. Redeeming means, I was in the slave pit of sin, and he bought me out with an expensive price, the price of his son.
I would never do that. How could that happen? Yet he died for me, he loved me. God, you're to be worshiped. God, help me to worship you today, by telling people the truth. Christians, rejoice, we have hope.
Unbelievers, there still is hope, while you're alive. Maybe the prayer for you, as an unbeliever, should be, God, if these are true, confirm them to my heart, and God, have mercy on me, a sinner, I don't know what to do.
Some people say, accept Jesus in your heart. Some people say, come up to the front. Some people say, sign a card. Some people say, catechism, confirmation, whatever they say. But I don't know what to do, because I tried all those, and they didn't work.
The prayer of the penitent man, would be, our woman, God, have mercy on me. If what that guy said, from that pope, at that Easter day, was true, then God, I need to have my sins, as John the Baptist would say, taken away.
I need to have my sins, as the writer of Hebrews says, purged. I need to have my sins, put away. I need Jesus to bear my sins. God, help me, and help is a synonym for, save me, help me, rescue me. I love preaching, that Jesus Christ's death, is greater than any sin.
I love preaching, that it's the grace of God, His only favor, is bestowed to all kinds of people. I love to say, that a word for, favor, a synonym for favor, is grace. And that God has favorites. You believe that?
God graces people. He gives favor to people. And here are God's favorites, those who have bowed their knee, to the Son, and as the Psalms said in Psalm 2, have kissed the Son. The favor and grace of God.
Would you believe today? Let's pray. Father in heaven, we would look to you, to bless your word, and we know that the preaching of the cross, is foolishness, to those who don't believe. But Lord, we do know that it's powerful, and I pray that you would make it, something that is lovely today, in the eyes of all the people.
Lots of visitors here. Lord, we want to tell them the truth. We want to show them our kindness and love, with cookies and a handshake, and greetings. But Lord, we want everyone who comes into this building, to know, that the clock is ticking, and that you are, a very merciful and patient God.
Yet one day that patience is done, and that is upon their death. And we want them to be saved. We want them to be added to the number, to the throng of those who will pray, worthy as the lamb that was slain.
And Lord, through a man's persuasion, and eloquence or lack thereof, no one could ever be saved. But your spirit taking the word, and making it run swiftly into the hearts of people, we know that you save.
And oh God, we will praise you today, that the truth has been trumpeted, and we will praise you too, if you turn the hearts of some, to your son. Jesus is a fair Lord. He's a beautiful Lord. And we want people, to not worship idols, but to worship him properly.
And we know it's only by your grace, alone in Jesus' name. Amen.