Acts 17:24-27 - Feb 18, 2024

The Call to Stop Living by Dreams and Regret

Again, it's so good to be here today. I'm just thankful for this opportunity. So, thank you for allowing me to do it. I do want to take a minute to thank David for all that he's been doing for the last several weeks.

I had to reflect on the fact that it's just amazing that you can find somebody who's willing to step in and do this for an extended period of time for the sake of the church. So, thank you for doing that.

I greatly appreciate it. And I went back and forth as to whether I should continue, you know, just pick right up in Matthew chapter 4, wherever we were, or whether I should just do kind of a one-off thing.

And, you know, I always have a lot of ideas floating around in my head. There's always things going on up here, things that I want to talk about. And I decided to go with one of those things this week instead of getting into Matthew.

Because I felt like this is something that I wanted to get out, and it was something that I wanted to talk with you all about. And it is a topic. You know, there's a big difference between topical sermons and expositional sermons, and I hope to kind of thread the needle and split the difference between the two, because this is a specific subject.

However, as usual, there's also a passage of Scripture that goes along with this. I didn't take a topic and find a passage of Scripture. This passage of Scripture just happened to hit me and hit with what I wanted to talk about.

And, of course, as usual, we'll also be pulling in verses from all over Scripture, from all over God's Word, to reinforce the ideas that we're going to talk about today. And actually, it's really interesting.

I went to the men's breakfast and David gave a brief presentation. Very brief. So brief that people were telling me that I should be taking notes on how brief his presentation was. And I told them, he even asked me if I had anything I wanted to contribute, and I said, no.

I have something to contribute from the hours of 10 to 11 .45. And that's what we're doing today. But back to what I was saying, he talked about something that dovetailed in so nicely with what I want to talk about today, and just the basic takeaway of his message was, you get what you expect, or you get what you're looking for.

If you're looking for something, you're going to find it. If you're looking for a situation to be bad, if you're looking for a reason to be upset, or if you're looking for a reason to be dissatisfied, you will find it.

And that's not what this is specifically about, but it's related so well that it was, it was just perfect that he said that. And he told a really great story, but I can't tell it like he can, so you have to ask him to do it for you later.

Make sure Donna's around too. She wants to hear it again. But let me ask you a couple of questions. So, have you ever heard anybody say this, especially recently? No, we're not going to have kids, because I can't imagine bringing kids into a world like this.

You heard people say that? You know, younger people, I know that, I know that we're not in a situation where a lot of us are going to be thinking about that particular part of our lives. But people use this, I can't imagine bringing kids into a world like this, as an excuse for not having children.

And we don't want to be too contrary, right? We don't want to be too argumentative with these people about this stuff. So we'll, we'll usually just go along. And we'll agree, because on a surface level, when we look at the world, it makes a lot of sense, right?

Yeah, why would we want to bring another person into this? This is terrible. There's a lot of bad stuff that's going on. In fact, this is probably the most dangerous world to children for a variety of reasons that we've had in a long time.

If they're not trying to kill them before they're born, they're trying to do crazy stuff to them after they come out. So, you know, if we don't go too far below the surface, we could say, yeah, I get that.

And the whole idea, that may not seem like a big deal. But I'll tell you in just a little bit why it is a big deal. But let's look at another scenario. Because it's easy to look at other people, and it's easy to criticize other people for stuff like this.

But what if we turn the lens onto ourselves for just a minute? Have you ever wished that you had been born at a different time for some reason? Born in a different era? Born just a few years earlier? Born a few years later?

There's actually an old song that I bet a lot of you know. It's called Born Too Late. This is by the Ponytails. And I know, I hear people laughing because they know this song, right? It's an oldie. And the whole idea is it's a woman regretting the fact that she's too young to have a relationship with somebody who's older, right?

But have you ever wished that you were born at a different time? You know, you wish that you lived in a different era. Or have you ever wished that you lived somewhere else? That your parents had moved somewhere else when you were a kid so that you didn't wind up where you are?

Or let's take this even another level deeper, and maybe just the other circumstances of your life are not exactly the way that you hoped they would be. And it's not like things are bad, but they're just not what your dream was.

When you were a kid, your life is not what you pictured. It's not glamorous in the way that you wanted it to be, or whatever. On a semi-related note, not too long ago, I drove by a church recently and they had a sign, and I read what was on the sign, and it just killed me because, and it wasn't even one of those, like, corny Baptist signs where they put a bad scripture pun on it.

It said this, the sign only said, you were created to dream. And I don't have enough time to go into exactly why that is just horrible, horrible theology for a church to be putting on their sign and for a church to be telling people.

But it is. That's not a message that we need to hear because it's not the truth. Okay? To put out that we were created to dream flies in the face of the true reason that we were created. And I'm going off on a little rabbit trail here, but the reason we were created is to worship God and to serve God.

So, the big problem with a message like that is it turns the focus of an individual's life, it turns the focus of your life in onto yourself. And we don't need any encouragement to do that. We're already more than willing to focus on what we want to do, right?

We don't need a preacher telling us that we were created to dream. Because if we spend all this time thinking about our dreams and we spend all this time thinking about our life and how we want our life to look like or how we want it to turn out, then what are we worshipping?

We're worshipping ourselves, right? We're worshipping our own preferences and our own desires and our own ideas of what's good. And if we are basing our whole life on our dreams, we don't have to even be concerned about what the Bible says.

But that's actually exactly what we need to be concerned. Beloved, we were not created for that. And it's not what we're supposed to have at the center of our life. It's not what's supposed to be the core of our being.

Let's just say, for example, hypothetically, let's say you're a woman, and I know for some of you this isn't even hypothetical. It's reality. And you have, you have a job that you love, right? It's just so cool.

It's become a part of who you are. It's how you define yourself. You know what? We don't, so we don't, let's take the gender part out of it, right? As I think through this, I'm like, this is for men too.

So you have a job. You have something that you're thrilled with. You can't wait to get up to do it every day. It's something that defines you. It's literally, literally the job of your dreams. You throw yourself into it in full every day.

And then one day something else happens. Another person comes into your life. You like them. You love them. You want to spend the rest of your life with them. You want them to be permanently a part of your world.

So you get married. And then for a lot of people, the ones that aren't saying, I can't imagine bringing a child into this world, children are the next thing that follows through. And then all of a sudden, what you find is that this job that you love, that was your world, has moved away from the center of your life.

Because there's other things that are more important. There's other things that are at the center of your life. So now you've got to figure out how to split the focus between your family and this thing that used to define you, this thing that used to define your identity.

Or hey, even worse, right? One day you wake up and find out this decision has been made for you and you don't even know what hit you. One day you were doing something really cool. And the next day you're changing diapers or you're cooking meals for people, you know, and you're in the house and you're not doing anything that's, that's fancy or, or prestigious or, or luxurious or, all of a sudden, you need to provide for a group of people.

So you can't just go out and live like a feast or famine kind of entrepreneurial lifestyle because people are relying on you. Or you can't just spend your time playing your guitar. Not like we're getting autobiographical here, right?

But things, things change and all of a sudden your life, it doesn't look like exactly what you maybe planned, maybe what you wrote out or maybe what you had in a journal or dreamed about or whatever. Or how about, how about one more scenario while we're going there?

Maybe something that you find yourself in a job that you find yourself doing or some kind of circumstance has taken you away from your family. We could be talking about me, but I could just easily be talking about some of you I know.

You know, like going to Vietnam, something like that, right? All of a sudden you have been separated from these people that you love. Maybe you're even off having to do something dangerous. So these are all these scenarios, right?

Where we're, we've got a picture of our life, but the reality isn't matching up with it. Now, if I was doing this as a TV show or a commercial, I'd set these different people side by side in a frame and they'd all just be looking in deep despair like, like that, wondering what happened to them or wondering how God could let that happen to them.

And that's why You Were Created to Dream is such a dangerous message for Christians to internalize as the main focus of their life. Because if we're being honest with ourself, I bet we've all had moments when we thought that we were in a place where we just didn't understand because what we had didn't match up with what we thought we were going to have or what we wanted to have.

Acts 17 and the God Who Creates and Rules

Well, my focus today is not to drag you down. It's not to be a bummer here and, like, tell you that you'll never have your dreams or your life will never look like you want it to. What I want to do is uplift you, and I want to uplift you not with a pep talk from me or not with a catchy sign, but I want to uplift you with the Word of God and specifically some words that the Apostle Paul wrote.

So, Parker put this up on the board. In your Pew Bibles, this scripture is on page 1494. And what we're going to be looking at is a few verses in Acts chapter 17. I'm going to start in verse 24, and I just want to read these few verses real quick and then we'll talk about them here a little bit.

Starting in verse 24, it says, I'm going to stop right there. That was verses 24 -27. And what I want to do with these verses is pull out three points or three lessons that I think we can take from this.

The way this is going to work is we're going to start with two things that are foundational to what I want to talk about, and then we're going to move to a third application that is a little more personal and is going to be individual to each and every person in this room.

But before I do that, let's look at the context just briefly here. So, these verses in Acts. Who's Paul speaking to? What's the reason that he's doing this? What's the reason that he's saying these things?

Well, I want to start with a quote by Charles Spurgeon. He said this in 1855. Charles Spurgeon said, The loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father.

Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go. Plunge yourself in the Godhead's deepest sea. Be lost in his immensity, and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated.

I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow, so speak peace to the winds of trial as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. And when he says the Godhead, we're talking about the Trinity.

We're talking about God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And this is the proper perspective for every Christian to have, that the best thing that you can study is God. The best thing that you can learn about for the greatest benefit of your life, not that it's about the benefit to your life, but it's God and it's learning about who he is and what he says.

Now, to be sure, this is not the perspective of most secular fields of study. That's not why they exist. From social sciences to hard sciences, those researchers are out looking for answers that don't involve God.

They're looking to explain everything from the existence of the world to why we are the way we are without considering God. And sadly, even a lot of churches and people who call themselves Christians do the same thing.

We're a lot quicker to try to solve our problems with psychology than we are with the Word of God. And even some Christian counselors, the basis for their methodology is secular theorists. You know, it's Freud, it's Jung.

It's not always scripture, so you have to be careful. But back to Paul. In this scenario, he's in Athens, Greece. And I talked about the social scientists, hard scientists, and when I say hard science, I mean physical science, biology, chemistry, that kind of thing.

He's in a city that's well known for being the center of thought. You know, these are smart people, these are academics, the intelligentsia, all those kind of folks. And one commentator said that he was primarily meeting with two specific groups of people, two different philosophies.

On one hand we have the Stoics, and on the other hand we have the Epicureans. Now, Stoicism is a philosophy that's basically centered around the idea of self-control as being the way to deal with any kind of difficulty or being able to deal with any kind of situation or even negative emotions.

What it is is it's staying even keeled no matter what's going on. And Marcus Aurelius, if that's a name that you've ever heard, he's a well-known Stoic. He wrote a book called Meditations, which is something that a lot of people get their information on Stoicism from.

But in Stoic philosophy, there's no need for God. There's no use for God. Because it's our own ability, it's our own strength, and it's our own self-control or willpower that we use to overcome whatever's going on.

Now, first of all, I know from my own personal experience that willpower is not something that you can rely on in the long term for anything at all, much less overcoming a difficulty or overcoming a temptation.

Your willpower will run out. And ultimately, something like Stoicism is ultimately a hopeless perspective. Now, it's considered very masculine. It's considered very manly to be able to control yourself and be able to be stone-faced and unemotional no matter what's going on.

But there's also no meaning to any situation. It's just something to be endured. Self-sufficiency. Now, on the other hand, I said we have the Epicureans, and they were entirely different. These groups are very much apart from each other.

They were basically indifferent to the gods. They figured that the gods, and these are little G gods, not like our big G god, were just so distant that they didn't really have any kind of effect. They didn't matter to the people.

So, one ancient philosopher summed up the Epicurean view of life this way, nothing to fear in God, nothing to feel in death. Pleasure can be attained, and pain can be endured. Epicureanism is also about just achieving as much pleasure as possible and avoiding as much pain as possible.

Once again, this is, hey, this is your created to dream. Attain whatever pleasure you want. But for as much as these two groups differed from each other, they had one thing in common. They did not agree with Paul.

Paul was talking about God, and they had a couple of things going on. One, they didn't agree. They thought it was stupid. But two, this god that he's talking about is a different god from the one that they're familiar with.

So, while they may disagree, they want to hear more because it's an academic curiosity, a philosophical curiosity for them. A big part of their lifestyle was simply to attain knowledge for the sake of attaining knowledge.

So, if there was something they hadn't heard about, they wanted to learn about it. But Paul saw what was going on in their society, and that's what drove him to speak. Paul was righteously angry about what they thought about God or about what they thought about religion.

So, he was starting to speak to them and tell them about God. And that basically brings us to the passage that we just looked at. And I mentioned that I wanted to pull out three points. So, here's the first two.

The first one is God is the creator of all things. And the second one is God is sovereign over all things. Now, you all are probably looking at me like, this is a kid's Sunday school lesson, right? But these things are so foundational, and it's true.

These are the basics. But we've got to talk about them. We've got to understand, and we've got to look at what Scripture has to say about this. So, one, God is the creator of all things. So, we look back at Acts 17, 24, and this is what Paul says.

He says, Now, that's just the first part of that. So, what else does the Bible say about this topic? Well, honestly, I could go on and on all day talking about what Scripture says about God creating things.

So, let's just look at a few passages to drive this point home. Now, we can go all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1, 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Right?

So, we've got that right there. First page of the Bible. Isaiah 42, 5 says this,. There's a prayer in Nehemiah. Nehemiah 9, 6 says this,. And Colossians 1, 6 says this,. Now, one more verse I want to look at, just to take this concept one step deeper, is Genesis 1, 27.

And, obviously, there's all kinds of implications of this passage. There's all kinds of directions that we could take this. But, for our purposes today, it's enough just to see from this very, very, very small sample of passages what Scripture has to say, how Scripture acknowledges that God has created everything.

You know, it wasn't a big bang. It wasn't evolution. God created all these things. And this is significant, because the things that Paul was seeing in Athens that drove him to speak out was the prevalence of false religion.

He saw these temples, and he saw all these idols. But one of the most interesting ones is in verses 22 and 23, if we back up just a little bit. It says,. Because they have gods for everything. Temples, idols for everything.

And he says this,. And the reason they had this was this was basically like a catch-all. They wanted to make sure that they weren't missing out on any kind of worship that they needed to be offering.

So they even had this altar to an unknown God. And Paul says, I'll tell you what, the God that you don't know about, this is who He is. And that's why Paul starts talking. And Paul lays out a foundation for them and a foundation for us by rightly pointing out God as the creator of all things.

So that's point one. Number two is that God is sovereign over all things. Sovereign means that God is in control. God is all-powerful. God knows what's going on. So if we look at verses 25 and 26, it says,.

So again, this gets at the sovereignty of God, that He rules and is in control over all things. Once again, let's take a look at some verses that support this. Now we looked at the Old Testament just a minute ago.

And I want to remind you, the reason we do this is because the Old Testament is not just some dusty, old, outdated book that we don't use because Jesus died and we're under the New Covenant. The Old Testament is the foundation for the New Testament.

The New Testament wouldn't make any sense. The teaching of Jesus wouldn't make any sense without the Old Testament. So we look at some of those first. Psalm 115 3 says this, as we again are thinking about God's sovereignty, Job 42 .2, this is toward the end after everything that's gone on with Job.

He suffered. He says,. 1 Chronicles 29 verses 11 through 12 says,. Like, this is profound stuff. Daniel 4 .35 says this,. But He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth, and no one can strike against His hand or say to Him, What have you done?

Proverbs 19 .21 says,. That one has gotten me on more than one occasion. One more. We'll step into the New Testament briefly. Ephesians 1 .11 through 12,. And Charles Spurgeon, again, put it this way, sum up this idea.

He says, No blind fate rules the world. God hath purposes, and those purposes are fulfilled. God hath plans, and those plans are wise and can never be dislocated. Think about that for just a second. He says, God has purposes, and those purposes are fulfilled.

God has plans, and those plans are wise and can never be dislocated. You can try. I've tried. But I failed, absolutely. I failed because God is sovereign. And the fact that God is sovereign and is in control of these things, and understand me, I don't mean that God is making me sway to the left and the right right now as I stand here and talk, right?

We're not talking about that kind of stuff. We're talking about the overall purpose and direction of your life and of the world. But the fact that God is in control should be a comfort to all of us. And that brings me all the way around to the third point.

Because we've established these two foundational truths that God created everything and that God is sovereign over everything that He created. And we can use both of these facts, these two simple facts, that even the youngest child in here can probably understand, to make peace with our situation in life.

Now notice I said make peace. I didn't say to understand, or to figure out, or whatever it is that we want to do. We can make peace. Because listen to what Paul says in the second half of verse 26. This is so important for all of us, all of us to understand and to internalize.

God has determined that you would be alive now. And God has determined where you would be. This goes for nations like Israel. This goes for individuals. I know that some of you think that it sounds crazy.

I mean I hope that you don't think that. But you might. But what I want you to understand, and why I think this is so profound, is that this really, really gives you something to fall back on in good times and bad times, right?

Because we talked earlier about wishing that we had been born at a different time, or wishing that we lived in a different place, or wishing whatever was different. You know that missed opportunity that you had?

That missed opportunity at a job or a sale? The missed opportunity at a move or a relationship? The chances are good that wasn't actually missed at all. You weren't supposed to do that. But a lot of us take those things and we dwell on them.

And we just, we're so upset that we didn't get the thing that we thought we were supposed to have because we felt like we were supposed to have it. What about the fact that all of a sudden your kids have taken you from working at that job that you loved?

That's what God has for you. And what I always want people to know is that there's literally no job that you could go out and work that's more important than raising up kids to follow God in the next generation because if nobody is raising children to follow God, our society is going to get even worse.

No job is that important. Or what about the fact that you live in Madison or you live in Green instead of New York or Los Angeles or Hawaii or Europe or, you know, Wyoming or South Dakota or wherever it is that you think is an exciting and glamorous and desirable place to live.

God has appointed the boundaries of habitation. You're walking in the will of God. So do you realize what kind of peace that you can have? And this is easier said than done. Don't don't get me wrong. We all struggle with this.

But do you realize the peace you can have if you trust in God, if you pray, if you study his word and you focus on his will instead of your dreams? And again, this is not the message that we get from society.

The reason you have to be here is because if you look at Facebook or you look on television or whatever, it's going to tell you that you need to follow your dreams. And it's going to tell you, yeah, go let somebody else take care of your kids so you can make more money or so you can do that job that's fulfilling to you.

Or you could take the stoic path and just endure the difficult times, put on that manly face. But is it satisfying to realize that it's all for nothing, if that's your perspective? Or you could take the Epicurean path and live for pleasure.

And a lot of people do this. And people will not let anything stand in the way of their pleasure, including their families. But you still have no way to explain the bad times. And I promise you that pleasure is fleeting because that pleasure is often sinful.

And I mean, I can't even begin to tell you for me how many things didn't go the way I wanted them to or didn't go the way that I planned for them to or even the way that I thought they should, whether it's big things, small things, medium things.

But if I had my way, I wouldn't have anything that I have today. I wouldn't have my family. I wouldn't have you all. I wouldn't have any of this stuff because those decisions that I would have made would not have put me here.

There's no way. And I know that... I'm not saying this to focus this on me because I know that you all have similar stories and you all have similar decisions and you all have things probably even more than me that cause you to know exactly what this is because I'm not a special case.

But what I'm saying, here's the main point, is that, Christian, do not live a life of regret over the things that you think that you missed. Look at the things that you have because these are the things that God has given you.

Now, that's an encouraging message, but I do have... I have a small caveat that I have to put in here. This does not mean that you'll never experience regret at all because you're going to sin. You're going to go against God's will.

You're going to make a choice to do that. And in these circumstances, you will feel regret. And when you make a choice that you know is in opposition to the will of God and it doesn't work out, you're going to have regret there too.

And it's because of your own sinful heart. And remember what James 1 .13 says about these situations. It says,. And 1 John 1 .5 says this, That God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. So God never causes us to sin.

And God never directs us to move outside of His will. We do that on our own. But here's something else that I'll tell you. You can't override God's ultimate plan. You cannot change it. You know when kids go bowling and they put those little bumpers in the lane so that the ball doesn't go in the gutter?

And you roll the ball, and instead of going in the gutter like if you were an adult, it bounces back. Well, when it happens in your life, it's usually not quite as gentle as that. Sometimes you might be beaten up and thrown back on the path, but you will wind up back in the path that God has appointed for you.

And again, I'm a living testament to this, and I know a lot of you are too. But I say all this to say, embrace your life. Embrace even your negative situations. I can't tell you why you're suffering. I can't tell you God's purpose for that.

You may find it out later. You may find it out just somewhere a little bit down the road, and you may not. But we have to be grateful for what God has given us, even when it doesn't look like what we thought it should look like, because what God has planned for you is greater than anything that you could imagine.

Remember? Greater than you could ask or seek or imagine. And we know this because we see what God has ultimately given us. We see in the Scripture that He gave us the gift of salvation through the death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus.

That that part of the plan for our ultimate salvation is better than anything that we could have ever given ourselves. I know that we like to focus on what we have. I know we like stuff. I know we like to be entertained.

But this life is temporary. This life's not forever. Those things you have, you can't take them with you. Here's another thing for you, parents. I heard somebody say this recently, too. And they also said, the theology might be a little bit questionable, but it's still an interesting idea.

The only thing you can take with you to Heaven is your kids. Because if you give them the foundation, then hopefully they'll make those choices, too. But our life is temporary, and salvation is eternal.

So we have to trust in God. And what I want to do is close with these words from Romans 8 .28. You all know these, but it says this. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.

Trust in God. Trust the plan.