A Message For Harvard, Yale And Oxford - [Acts 17:16-34]

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Robert Thornton, professor at Lehigh University, has tried to figure out a way that he would construct some phrases so no one could sue you if you fired someone.
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What do you say in this litigious society? And he's put together a little lexicon called the
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Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations.
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The acronym for that is L -I -A -R. And here's some examples.
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If you have somebody who's not very apt to work, he's an inept person,
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I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.
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Person doesn't get along, you need to fire them, you write this. I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine, somebody who doesn't work very hard.
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I can assure you that no person would be better for the job. We've got a smart crowd here this morning.
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If this person's not even worth consideration, here's the last one, I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment.
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These lawyers are fairly smart people. Here's my question for you this morning. If you had to preach the gospel to someone who could spin truth like that, what would you say?
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If you're face to face with somebody who is smarter than you are, more knowledgeable than you are, more educated than you are, how do you preach the gospel to people who are the upper echelon intellectually?
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Everybody here has to have a friend that if you think you got into a sparring match politically, you'd lose.
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They're just smarter. About the world, about sports, about whatever it is, music, you're just going to lose every time because they're so smart.
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So what do you do when you walk up to a person and you know they are smarter than you are and yet you know they're not born again?
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You'd like them to be forgiven. What do you tell them? If you were asked today to go to Harvard and speak at the commencement and you were given 15 minutes to stand up if they were to have a commencement today, what would you say?
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If you could go to Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, you had 15 minutes and you could walk up to that microphone and say anything, what would you say?
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Well Paul goes to Athens, the cream of the crop intellectually, and he has a message for the people.
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Let's turn our Bibles to Acts chapter 17 and we'll find out the answer to that today because I want you, if you're a
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Christian, I want you to know what to say to people who don't know anything about the Bible. I want you to know what to say so when you evangelize people who have twice your
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IQ, you're not intimidated because you realize the power of the Gospel is the Gospel itself and salvation doesn't depend on how smart you are.
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I want you to be able to stand there and say, I know what Paul would say when he walked into a group of people who were educated and he still had a message from God about God.
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And his message was simple. Before he talked about forgiveness, before he talked about full, free grace in Christ Jesus, he said,
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I've got a simple three -point outline and that is God is your creator, God is your Lord and Sovereign, and God is your judge.
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That's the message. If I could stand up in Harvard, I got to speak at the Harvard legal school gathering but it was the
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Christian group only so that kind of took the edge off of it, but if I were to speak at Harvard today, I would stand up and say,
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I have a simple message for you from Acts 17. God is your creator, God is your Sovereign King, and God is your judge.
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That would be my message. Maybe catcalls, maybe cheering, maybe booing, maybe yelling, I don't know what they would do, but there's a simple message that you need to remember today.
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In the pagan culture that we live in, your message shouldn't be the Bible says, although that's fine.
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When Paul met a Jew that knew the Bible, he said the Bible says. When Paul went to a place that they didn't know the
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Bible because they're pagan, he didn't start with the Bible, he started with God is your creator, God is your
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Lord, and God is therefore your judge. As our society becomes post -Christian, more and more, it is post -Christian, but it's going to keep going.
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Our evangelism strategy needs to move from the Bible says, initially, we'll get there, to God is creator,
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Lord, and King, and judge. If you want to say the Bible says, that's fine, my point isn't that you can't say the
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Bible says, of course we quote the Bible. But when Paul met pagans, he said God is creator,
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Lord, and judge. You know the outline for the sermon today? You already got it down. When I was in India, and I couldn't find an internet cafe, remember internet cafes?
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Young people don't even know what they are. We have internet cafes right here. I said, could you take me there?
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Yes, I can. Very nice young man, and as we were walking, I thought I might as well evangelize this young man. I said, what gods do you believe in?
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He said, I believe in the God of money, the God of power, there are certain names for each of these gods, and the
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God of sex, 22 -year -old male. If you could pick gods, what would you pick?
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Power, sex, and money, that's what depraved people pick. I said, well, that's very interesting.
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See the sun right there? I worship the God who made the sun with the word. He's the only
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God, and He keeps the sun there, He keeps you alive, He's the only God. He made you, and therefore, you're accountable to worship
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Him. So we had a good conversation. In Acts 17, Paul goes to the smartest place in the world.
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Yes, a few centuries ago, it was the glory days for Athens, and some of the intelligentsia have moved to Corinth, but still, this is
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Harvard of the world. This is Yale. This is Oxford. This is Cambridge, and Paul has a message, and the message is
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God is creator, Lord, and judge. And when you preach that way, then people realize, if God is my judge,
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I need a savior. Because when you talk about who God is, and what His law is, and what His standards are, then you realize my only refuge from Him, as Psalm 2 says, is in Him.
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I need to be saved if God created me, and I need to give allegiance to Him. God is
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Lord, and gives me life, and sustains my life, and keeps my life, and then will judge me for every sin that I've ever committed.
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I need a savior. And too often, evangelicals, maybe you do it. We're too quick to say,
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Jesus is going to forgive all your sins. Pray the prayer, and you're in. When today's society, they don't know who Jesus is, they don't know what sin is, sin, how about disease, or syndrome?
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They don't even know. And so, Paul comes into town, and it is just the best. And if you're not a Christian today,
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I want you to realize, God is your creator, Lord, and judge, and you need a savior. And if you're a
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Christian today, you can be reminded that this is a great paradigm on how to evangelize. What do
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I tell people, not only who are smarter than I am, what do you tell pagans who aren't as smart as you are?
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This is the Christian message for people who are biblically illiterate, or close to it.
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Let's pick it up in Acts 17 .15. I just want you to see where Paul is. We're deviating from 1 Corinthians just for a
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Sunday or two, and then we'll be back into 1 Corinthians 15. It says in Acts 17 .15,
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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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Now Athens is the city that Paul would have come to, walking probably five miles, seeing all kinds of gods and goddesses from the port to the city of Athens.
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So he has to walk by all kinds of even unmentionable kinds of gods, depicting horrible things.
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And he walks into this cultural setting, this city full of influential philosophers, home of Socrates, home of Plato, adopted home of Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno.
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You've got the Parthenon there and all the gods, a temple of Athena, the patron goddess.
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Academy of Plato was there, Lyceum of Aristotle, Garden of Epicurus, sculpture everywhere, literature everywhere, oratory everywhere.
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It was a great university city, F .F. Bruce said. Verse 16, did
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Paul feel impressed by the great sculptures? And it says in verse 16, now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.
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And when I say full, quoting the scripture, it was full. And there were so many idols,
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Paul starts getting provoked. He starts getting mad. Now there's a Greek word that means, fly off the handle mad, and there's a
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Greek word that means kind of crockpot, simmering, stewing, and that's the word here.
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Paul just started watching this and he would say to himself, this is making me upset. Exodus talks about God as a jealous
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God. And here God made us to worship Him, and all of a sudden we're starting to worship these weird votives and weird idols.
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And Paul was infuriated. The Greek word is where we get our English word, paroxysm. Paroxysm.
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Ever take hydrogen peroxide and pour it on a cut? What happens? All the bubbles and fizzing and under adult supervision, if you have it poured in your ear, the same thing happens.
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You just can't see it, you just hear it. Boiling in his heart, roused to anger.
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He's provoked. He's not losing his temper. This is a reaction to all these gods and goddesses.
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Because he wants God to get the glory. Not these things that man made. You make some with wood, and then you take the other half of the idol that you didn't need, and you burn it in the fire, and Paul says, this is making me mad.
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God is provoked by idolatry. Deuteronomy 9. Remember, do not forget how you provoked the
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Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. Psalm 106.
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They joined themselves to Baal, Peor, and ate sacrifices offered to the dead. They provoked
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God to anger with their deeds, and plague broke out on them. God has a right to exclusive worship, because he's the creator and judge.
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God has a right to exclusive allegiance. Paul has something going on inside of him, and Pepcid or Tums isn't going to solve the problem.
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Pagan, yet cultured. And the problem is,
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John Calvin would say our hearts are like idol factories. We just make idols. Because of our fallen nature.
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Put that with the mind of a human. Fallen nature. That mind creates, because that mind is made in the image and likeness of a creative God.
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And we're creatures who create our own little things. And if we're not reigned in by the grace of God through regenerate hearts, we make idols.
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And the more sophisticated you are with your intellect, the more idols you can make. If you've got a low
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IQ, you still will make idols, but they're just not as sophisticated. There's not as many.
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Paul walks into the city and he sees idols to fame, and to famine, and to honor, and to duty, and to beauty.
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He just doesn't know what to do with it, because he thinks God alone gets the glory.
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Isaiah 42. I won't give my glory to... And it's like when
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Henry Martin goes to India, and he's going to preach the gospel to Muslims who don't worship
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Jesus. And he said basically, I don't want to live if people bow down to wrong images of God.
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Paul is feeling the exact same way. Now the word there in the text there was city was full of idols.
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It means the city was under them. It's like underwater. There's so many idols. There's like a forest of idols.
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It just sinks you down. Petronius said it was easier to find an idol in Athens than it was a man.
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And actually that's kind of right, because they say there was only 10 ,000 people there, and 30 ,000 idols. India, 1 .1
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billion people, 1 .2 billion people. And it said that she has 330 million gods.
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At the very top of the Acropolis is the Parthenon with Athena in it.
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Large statue, beautiful gold spear. They said you could see it 40 miles away. And you know, the thing is, it's pretty.
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It's beautiful. It's not the same as going to Florence and looking at David, but the creative mind of people, what they make, except they're making things that attract the image and likeness of God to put our minds away from the glory of God.
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The problem with intellectual people is if they're not reigned in by the grace of God to worship God, then they just worship all these other things.
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You have to eat. You have to eat. I just said that, didn't I? You have to sleep.
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And you have to worship. It is a law. You will worship. It's not if you worship, it's what you worship or who will you worship.
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You've got to worship. So you create something. And what does our society do? Well, they make things to worship.
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And those things that they worship aren't these small little things anymore. They become masters. And masters have slaves.
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And masters have servants. And they create something with their own hands. And then they are its slave.
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No wonder our society has no idea what to do with addictions. Zero. Why? Because they don't know that the real answer is you're made to have addictions.
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You are given... You know, people go, well, I have kind of an addictive personality. I know what you mean. I have an addictive personality.
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I can't ride one mile on the bike. It has to be lots. I can't just, you know, have one potato chip.
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I have to have lots. One scoop of Ben & Jerry's. I know people who can just take one scoop. Say, well,
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I have an addictive personality. I know what you mean. But everybody has an addictive personality because God has set eternity in your hearts.
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Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, that if God's not sex, then it's money, or it's power, or it's fame, or it's self.
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And what does America do? It's underneath the gaze, underneath the glaze of,
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I'm spiritual. And America these days doesn't worship Hermes, shame and desire.
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She too often worships what she calls Jesus, but he's really a grandpa or a grandma, and he's not the thrice holy
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God in Isaiah. He just loves. He's just like a grandma. Brute intellect, uncorralled, yields itself an assembly line of idolatry, and Paul couldn't stand it.
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Now, if you go to a city like that, and you just see the utter abomination of idols, what do you do?
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Well, there are a few options. Monastery. Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
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Retreat. I think there are some good people in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That's how you get out of anything. They're really good people, and then you just blast away.
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What did Paul do? I think it's a paradigm for you. Paul preached. Paul evangelized.
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What do you do with a city that's underwater with idols? Paul just didn't get mad and then just made, and just like, forget it all, to hell in a handbasket.
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There it goes. Paul said, no, I've got a message, and here's my message to the Athenians. Before we get into the exact message, see the setup here in verse 17.
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It's Paul's missionary M .O., so he reasoned, verse 17, in the synagogue with the
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Jews, the devout persons, monotheistic people, and in the marketplace, the
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Agora, which is right there by the Areopolis, and right there by Mars Hill, every day with those who happened to be there.
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So here's kind of what it was like. Go to the synagogue Saturday. Then the other days of the week,
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I'll just live my life, and whoever's my neighbor, I just talk to them. I'll just preach to them one -on -one. Lots of busyness going on in the marketplace.
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That's where people hung out, going to the mall. Verse 18, there's a couple different kinds of philosophers there.
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Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. Some said, what's this babbler wish to say?
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Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching
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Jesus and the resurrection. Now let's look at the Epicureans for a second and the Stoics, and I think you'll see we're kind of living in an
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Epicurean -Stoic society as well. Epicureans were materialists, and they loved pleasure, and they hated pain.
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The gods are kind of far away, tranquil, so we can kind of be tranquil because you become like that of what you worship.
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They're remote. We're just kind of hanging out. They live in eternal calm.
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We want to do the same thing. They're not really too just. They don't exact justice very much. So we'll indulge and do whatever we want.
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If it feels good, do it. Don't only go around once in life. If something's bad for you, stay away from it.
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If something feels good, might as well go for it. Stoics, on the other hand, kind of like the word that you know,
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Stoicism, self -mastery, use your reason. Stoic means porch, philosophers of the porch.
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Fate reigns, so resign yourself to that. Love a little nature, and if you get kicked while you're down, stick your chin out, grin and bear it.
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Be strong, use reason, submit.
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And both the Stoics and the Epicureans had to try to figure out this. Life is hard.
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There are consequences to action. The world doesn't always offer roses. There's all kinds of trials and physical issues.
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So how do we live with hardship?
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How do you think they reacted to Paul's message? Take a look back at the verse. And they were saying, they just kept saying this.
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Here's ad hominem for you, attacking the person. What would this idle babbler wish to say? He's a seed picker.
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Literally, the word is he's a seed speaker. Spermologous, spermologous.
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He is a seed word, seed speaker. Now, I used to think this meant he was a hick from Nebraska.
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You put like a little stalk in your tooth, you know, and you're like a hay seed from Nebraska. Well, that's not really what it means.
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When you watch birds, they just seem to hop around and just take a seed from different things. And you shush them away, and then they come back, they take another seed.
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And so, this was a derogatory term. And it meant, Paul, you have no systematic theology of philosophy.
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You haven't thought through anything. You just go around the world and you go, Oh yeah, Jesus is God, I'll take that.
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Jesus was raised from the dead, I'll take that. Oh yeah, God created the world, I'll take that. And you have a patchwork of your system, which is no system at all.
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You're just a seed scavenger. You just scavenge different thoughts and put them all together, so they heckle him.
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There was a scavenging bird in the comedy, The Birds, Aristophanes' Birds.
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Just like that character in that comedy, The Birds. In other words, you're a charlatan.
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But what did other people say? What's the text say? He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities. What do you mean, deities?
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Jesus, masculine noun. Resurrection, anastasis, feminine noun.
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Jesus is preaching, he's talking about Jesus and the resurrection all the time. So he's preaching Jesus, the male
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God, and resurrection, his female consort. Jesus means to save, so he's preaching the healing
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God. And then resurrection means to be restored, he's preaching restoration. So if you ever want healing and restoration, these two guys are good guys.
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Listen to what Paul says. And by the way, they're calling him a seed speaker.
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We're going to see soon enough that they're doing the exact same thing. And they are polytheistic, and now they're turning
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Paul into being polytheistic. Paul talked about the resurrection so much, people thought it was another
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God. Why do we focus on the resurrection here? Because it vindicates Christ's work.
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It confirms with God's Amen, Christ, it is finished. Substitutionary atonement, accomplished redemption.
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Verse 19, And they took him and brought him to the place where the guy who introduced the new
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God got forced to drink Hemlock, whose name was
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Socrates. Let's take him to that place where we judge people. To this day, the Areopagus is the name for the
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Greek Supreme Court. They brought him to the Areopagus saying, May we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting?
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Now, that used to be the place where they judged judicially, religiously, and every other way, but now it's kind of relegated to just religious judgment.
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Are is Mars, Pagos is
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Hill, Mars Hill, Areopagus. Ares was the
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Greek God of War. Huge kind of rock outcropping, not as high as the
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Acropolis, but pretty high. Let's go take Paul and make him get some judgment.
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Verse 20, For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean.
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Now, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
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They were the seed speakers. They were the seed pickers. Give us something new.
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Let's judge that guy. We want to hear something newer. Demosthenes said the
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Athenians were going about the city asking for some new news at the very moment the armies of Philip of Macedon were knocking at the door.
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They're going to be destroyed by an army, and they're still trying to say with insatiable curiosity, we want something new.
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So what does Paul tell them? What does Paul say? Well, let's find out in Acts chapter 17, verse 23,
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For as I passed along and observed objects of your worship,
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I also found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God, What therefore you worship as unknown,
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This I proclaim to you. How many people here have been to the
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Areopagus in Greece? A few. By the way, you should be going with us in April 2013.
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Stand there when you look around and you think, Okay, now I get it. The tomb of the unknown soldier?
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No, that's not what this says. To the unknown God. Where's the altar that says that? So here's what happened.
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There's a plague in the 6th century B .C. Lots of people are dying. So what do they think?
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We're a good pagan. Here's how we think. We've offended some God someplace. Let's placate that God.
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Let's satisfy that God's wrath. Our goddess needs some fruit or some slain people or whatever that God needs.
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Slain animals. We need to placate that God. But you know what? We've done that and the plague still happens, so we don't know what to do.
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So what do you do if you've got a God who's mad at you and you don't know what to do? You hire a consultant. That's exactly what they did.
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So they got the big shot from Cyprus, the island of Cyprus, and Epimenides said,
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All right, I think I know what to do. Here's what you do. There must be a
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God we forgot about. So here's what I suggest. Take a bunch of sheep.
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Don't let them eat for several days. Get them nice and hungry. And then take them up to the Areopagus, to the top of this place where there's this lush grass all around.
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There's the marketplace down below, lush grass in the agora there. And you let them out. Now what would a sheep that hasn't eaten in a few days normally like to do?
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He'd like to go graze and eat. So if a sheep does that, no sign. But if a sheep that should eat goes over and just lays down, kill the sheep to the
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God who's dwelling there at the moment and put up an altar to the unknown God. So the sheep that lay down, that's where that God is, that's where the shrine needs to be.
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Kill the sheep there. Offer it to that unknown God and God will be happy. Actually, the rumor is that the plague went away.
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So now let's look at the verse again. I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this
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I proclaim to you. Now you say, you've missed verse 22.
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I think if you get 23 right, you'll see 22 in its right context. So Paul, standing in the midst of the
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Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
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He's not flattering them because you can't use flattery at the Areopagus. That's not called for.
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It's lowbrow. It's out of bounds. So what Paul is saying with his ire and with being irked because of all the false things going on, he's not complimenting them.
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You guys worship a God, you don't know His name. I'll tell you about Him. And actually when you look at verse 22,
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I perceive that you're very religious in every way. Literally it means you're demon fearers.
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That's not a good way to try to... If you go to Harvard and say, Thank you for this commencement opportunity.
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I'd like to thank the Board of Regents to be here. Men and women of Harvard, you all worship demons.
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Nobody would take that as flattery. Paul is not trying to flatter them.
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He wants to tell them the God that they can't know because of their rebellion, he's going to tell them about.
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They try to put up some little altar because they think they've offended some deity that they don't know.
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So Paul is going to say, Let me tell you about that God. And he has a three -point message. Message one is that God is your
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Creator. Found in verses 24 through 25. This is all in the context of idolatry.
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Every one of these points smashes the idols. Idols that try to tame
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God and domesticate God and to plane God. You've got these 90 degree corners of maybe something you're building with wood.
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And in this particular case, it's with God's holy, holy, holy, that concept or that idea. And you go,
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I don't really like that holiness of God. So you take a little block plane, a wood plane, and you just go, I just need that smoother.
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That's too sharp. You might poke your eye out or something like that. I've just got to plane that down. And you know what?
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Let's also plane down immutability because God doesn't change. That's kind of frustrating to me because if God was holy most of the time, but once in a while He wasn't, maybe my sin would match up at the time that God wasn't really holy at that moment and we'd be okay.
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But God is holy, holy, holy, and He is immutably holy. And so what do you do? Paul said,
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Let me tell you, number one, God is a Creator. Verses 24 and 25. The God who made the world and everything in it.
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See, these are scriptural concepts, but he's not saying it is written. Because to pagans, you start with creation.
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You start with creation. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.
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That's crazy. He's trying to expose their idolatry, their misunderstanding.
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Nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything. We're dependent on God, not the other way around.
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Idols depend on you. Pick them up. Move them. They get knocked over. You've got to pick them up. Since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything, to Gentiles, you preach,
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God is Creator. He gives life. He gives breath. He sustains all.
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God is greater than creation. Listen to 1 Kings 8, but will God indeed dwell on the earth?
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Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this house which
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I build. How much less than this little statue of a person or of a monkey.
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Stephen said, however, in Acts 7, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says, heaven is my throne.
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The earth is the footstool of my feet. What kind of house will you build for me?
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Or what place is there for my repose? Was it not my hand which made all these things?
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For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. So why do you worship the thing that was created instead of the
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Creator? That's Paul's point. He gives life to mankind and breath.
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And if you're not a Christian here today, He gives you life and breath. Job 12 says,
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In whose hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind. David prayed in 1
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Chronicles 29, For all things come from you and from your hand we have given you. Jesus is the
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Creator, Colossians 1, for by Him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth. Visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by Him and for Him.
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And He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. When GM makes a car, what do they expect it to do?
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When you're on the assembly line, I don't know what you make, but if you put something together, you expect it to work.
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God created us that we would worship ourselves? No, He created us so that we would worship
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Him. You say, you know what, but if I tell this to an unbeliever, he's going to say, I don't believe in God, what should
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I say? Well, do you know what every unbeliever believes in God? But Romans 1 says, they've got that belief in God through conscience and creation, but they suppress the truth in what?
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Unrighteousness. Everybody believes in God. Psalm 14, verse 1 says, the fool has said in his heart, there is what?
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No God. Why does he say that? Because he has to construct a life that says in his heart, he didn't even really want to say it out loud back in those days.
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There's no God. I know there's a God, but I've got to push it down. I've got to suppress it.
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I've got to hold it under water, because when it rears up its head of truth, then I feel conviction, and it's no fun fornicating and committing homosexual acts and lying and cheating and stealing when
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I realize there's the day of judgment. You know there's a truth if you're going to suppress a truth in unrighteousness.
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Philosopher Kaufman wrote a book, and it was called God, the Problem. Philosophers would lose their paychecks if they would open up the
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Bible and see what God has revealed. And even though he was trying to denigrate
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God, in one sense, he was right. We have a problem with God because we have a personal relationship with God, and God right now is
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Creator. And if there's no worship through the Mediator Christ Jesus, there's judgment.
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So Paul goes on and gives another point. Number one, God is your Creator, therefore give Him allegiance.
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Number two, God is your Sovereign, therefore submit to Him. Sovereign, King, Ruler, Sustainer.
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Verse 26, And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth. What do you mean one man?
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First of all, Paul's not coming here saying, I serve the little Jewish God. He goes as far north as Dan and as far south as, oh, as far as you want to go,
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Dead Sea area. You know, that little localized God. No. Paul says, I'm bringing to you the
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God who made the world. And also, you Greeks that think you're at the center of the universe, you're not at the center of the universe.
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You think everybody else is extra pagan. If you weren't a Greek, what were you?
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Barbarian. Why are you named barbarian? Because if you're not speaking sophisticated Greek, it just sounds like you're saying what?
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Bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. They can't even... I'd rather have a laugh than somebody say
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Barbara Ann or something like that. It's just like, you know, where does the mind go? Through one man.
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What's the text say? Through Adam. As the Confession says, both Westminster Shorter and Longer Catechism and Westminster Confession, He's a public man.
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Because what Adam does affects everybody in Adam. That is, everybody except Christ Jesus. Through one man, every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth.
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That's what God has made. You think you're great Grecians?
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No, you're sinful like all the rest. No wonder in 1 Timothy 2, what does it say? There's one mediator between God and man, the
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Jew Christ Jesus. That's not right. Because He isn't just the
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Jewish mediator. Of course He was Jewish. But He's a mediator to all kinds of men, including kings that He talks about in verses 1 and 2.
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This God is so sovereign, look at the end of verse 26, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, appointing times in history.
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This sounds like Daniel 4 and Daniel 7. Everything in history is sovereignly decreed.
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God's marked it out. Where you live, how you live, for you here today, how old you're going to be when you die, who your parents were, what the color of your skin is.
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God is sovereign and in control. He's the Lord and Most High. What's the purpose for all this, for God's creation and God's sustaining sovereign hand?
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Verse 27, there's a purpose. There's a reason why God shows Himself as this. Verse 27, that they should seek
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God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him, yet He is actually not far from us.
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Now, the fall has prevented man seeking. There's no one who seeks after God. But God made
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Adam to seek after Him. And we still are responsible to seek after Adam, even though we can't.
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The word used here is used when Odysseus takes the spike and runs it through a guy, a huge giant of a guy, kids.
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What's the guy's name, kids, who has one eye? He's a big giant in Homer. What's his name?
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Cyclops, you know. I can't believe your dad lets you read Greek mythology. Blind, groping around, can't see.
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And Paul is saying that's what sin has done. And it's just this outgrowth of idolatry and of worship.
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You worship some kind of statue? How can you put God in a little statue? By the way, before Genesis 1 -1, where was
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God? God was nowhere because there was nowhere.
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There was only God. How cool is that? Where was
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God before Genesis 1 -1? God lisps, Calvin said, and stoops down and talks baby talk in Scripture so we can try to figure out this infinite
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God. And he says, before the foundations of the world. Eternity passed.
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But what kind of time was there before Genesis 1 -1? There was no time. Because time started in Genesis 1.
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There was no time. There was nowhere. There was not even nothing there. There was no thing.
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Now you try to get the concepts about an eternal God, an eternal Son, and a
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God who should obliterate us with a spiritual nuclear winner because of our rebellion and sin against Him, and yet the
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Person of the Son cloaks Himself with humanity and then becomes the High Priest and the sacrifice for us, and one man destroys everything and sullies everything, yet God stoops low, not just with language, but in the
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Person of the Son, and is crucified by created beings on Calvary.
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And now, let's put all that in a little kind of idol. No wonder people freak out if there's some movie made about Jesus.
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Passion of the Christ, or... I remember when I was growing up, as a new Christian, everybody would tell me, my favorite movie about Jesus is...
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What? The Robe. Because you can't see
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Jesus' face. We're not meant to see His face. Now this isn't a tirade against images.
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If you've got a picture of Jesus in your kid's room, there's a different sermon we could talk about all that, but here's my point.
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Whatever you know about Jesus outside of the Scripture, it's too low. Where was
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God before time? He wasn't anywhere. He was just existing. You say, I can't figure that out. I'm so glad you can't figure it out.
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A God like that deserves worship. A little statue God, I kept remembering in India, we'd go see all these monkey gods everywhere.
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They'd carry these big maces. I mean, not live monkey gods, but there's these gods, and what does that tell you about anything?
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Paul says, you know what? Look at the text again in verse 27. God is a
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Creator and Sovereign Judge. I know the fall has affected us, and we can't seek God. But before the fall, that's exactly the right response.
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And God's responsibility for us hasn't changed, even though we're fallen in Adam. We should be seeking
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God, and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet, He is actually not far from each one of us.
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Morally obligated to seek after God. If you're an unbeliever, and you aren't seeking after God, it is sinful.
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Search after God. Look for God. Inquire after God. I know sin has blinded you, but God calls you to look, to live, to believe, to repent.
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One commentator said, the God who was to them unknown is a
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God who has made Himself known. God is not trying to hide from men.
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Men are hiding from God, and often by means of their religion.
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I'm quite certain religion has damned more people than the sins of Las Vegas.
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We're going to have to stop here, but I'll just read these verses, and we'll talk more about them next week. He does quote two philosophers, two poets, that talk about Zeus, except he redeems these lines in the poem, and instead of referring to Zeus, he refers them to God.
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Verse 28, In Him we live and move and have our being. Epimetides said that of Zeus, but that's not true of Zeus.
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That's true of God only. And even some of your own poets have said, Eretus said this, the Stoic, for we are indeed
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His offspring. That's not about Zeus. That's about God. There's a relationship between God and people.
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Even poets know it. Even Zeus would know it. Therefore, shouldn't there be that in reality?
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So, here's what we're going to do. Next week, not next week, but next time when I'm back, we'll learn about Judge and Savior.
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But when you have an opportunity to talk to someone today who doesn't really know much about religion, doesn't know much about the
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Bible, then you talk to them about God the Creator, God the
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Judge, and secondly, forgot the one, I didn't forget, I just put it out of order, God the
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Sovereign. And at the end of that kind of preaching, Romans chapter 3, verse 19, would just basically have it be like this.
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The person says, If the God you've just preached to me is true and real, I'm going straight to hell because of my sins.
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And then you say, there's a Savior, Christ Jesus the Risen Lord. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we praise you today that you have let us in on your revelation and you've illumined our minds.
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When you quickened us in Christ Jesus, you allowed us to see in your full glory how you are a Creator and Sovereign and Judge.
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Thank you that for us as Christians, Jesus has been judged in our place, on our behalf, in our stead.
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Payment fully made for us. How great you are. How gracious you are.
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Father, if there's anyone here today who has not bowed their knee to Jesus Christ, the Sovereign Creator, Lord and Judge, who offers himself as Savior for all those who would look by faith through repentance,
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I pray that you would grant them saving faith this morning. And for Christians this morning, Father, I pray that you would give them people in their lives this week, maybe smarter than they are, maybe not as smart, and that they would be able to tell them about your
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Son, the Creator, your Son, the Sovereign, and your Son, the Judge.