Study Acts Chapter 17 verse 30- Pastor Jeff Shipley

Now, I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military style.

Many of you may be not understanding what I'm about to say, but last Sunday we crossed the finish line of certain things that I have been preaching about for about four and a half years.

And it is a new day as far as my focus and my attempting to convey maybe the gospel of Jesus Christ to a whole new section of folks.

And so, take that for what it is, but you might notice some slight changes in the presentation of the gospel than we have done before.

Instead of going through a three -point homily, we're going to be looking at this in an expository viewpoint.

Now, what's that mean? It don't really matter. It's just going to be the level of presentation in which the

Word of God is going to be brought to you. I'm going to ask you to look at Acts chapter 17, and we're going to start through verse 30.

We're going to start in verse 30, and I just want you to read along with me, whether you pulled it up on a phone or whether you have the

Word of God in front of you. Just take some time, and instead of just going through the motions, what does every single word mean?

Starting in verse 30, it says this, The times of ignorance

God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which

He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom

He has appointed, and this He has given assurance to by raising him from the dead.

Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear of you again about this.

So Paul went out from their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among whom were

Dionysus and this other chick, and yeah. What does this mean?

Guys, this is such a great story, and on your pieces of paper, okay, something's big time wrong here.

It's like going out here, deaf here, something's not right. But I'll let you all play with it.

I'm going to keep going, huh? You know what?

Then let's ditch this microphone, and I'll just do this, because I feel like I'm in a bad -ass trip. All right.

Yeah, welcome to Whitten. All right, so listen. There we go. I'll just be tied right here.

I want us to look at each one of these. First of all, I want us to see the backdrop of the

Word of God and how it's being preached. Now, why is this important? It's because the city of Athens is a great microcosm of our culture in America today.

Athens, at one point, had been the center of the Greco world, of antiquity.

But as they had the Grecian states, those city -states, as they had declined...

Baby, Pops can't talk to you right now. I'm a little busy. She's trying to outdo me.

Good luck, baby. But as it had decreased in its political influence in the

Greco -Roman world, it actually excelled in the area of intellectualism and culture.

In other words, Athens was the new Oxford. It was the new NYU. It was the new

Cambridge. It has been accepted by that entire world culture that this is where the great philosophers and this is where the great intellectuals came to discuss the different various things of the world.

One of the main things, though, was, of course, origins or creation or how did we get here or the famous one, what is the meaning for life?

Now, I want you, just for a second, before we delve into this, is ask yourself this question.

In this room, we have people who are atheists. They are still trying to figure it out.

We have trans people or a person, I know of one, in here. We have a couple of folks that are a little light in the loafers, you know.

We got folks that are not atheists, but they're not really sure why they should believe

Jesus and not the other ones. All that is cool because we also have born -again

Christians who still struggle with pornography. We have born -again

Christians in here who still struggle with that loose tongue. We have born -again Christians in here who their faith is so weak they doubt the grace of Almighty God.

So let us do this. From this pulpit to that back row back there, let us all relax and be on the same level as totally depraved humans, but also the object of God's love and affection.

And let's hear what God would say to us today. Here, Paul is going around speaking and he's speaking in the synagogue, in the marketplace, and all of a sudden all the great philosophers hear what he's talking about, this new

God. They hear him talking about a new God, this God Jesus, and they're wondering, hey, let's hear more about this.

So they take Paul up to this special place, and on the back of your paper there's actually a picture of, in real time today, of where they took him.

You go up these stone stairs and there was this great open area in which people would sit and talk.

And they said, we've got to hear about this new deity, because in Athens they believed in 30 ,000 different gods.

30 ,000 different idols. And it's called today in America, pluralism, meaning that Jesus is only one way to get to God.

There are many ways. You can be an agnostic. You can be this.

You can be that. It's all okay, because all paths lead to God. Unfortunately, Scripture is in direct opposition to that mindset.

Yet the vanity of man's intellect today, Romans 1 .22 says, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.

Some of the most insecure people are the ones that I meet that are that angry and hateful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You see, it's because that conviction of the Holy Spirit of God, that calling out of truth, will hammer that heart.

But the pride and arrogance of man will not let them submit to something, anything else other than themselves.

And so to keep God off the throne of their life, the only philosophy they had is this must not be true.

I don't feel this way. I don't think this way. But as we see here, it says in verse 30, in times of ignorance,

God overlooked. Let's talk about that for a second. What's that mean? Guys, what is the number one sin

God will not forgive? There is one. Blasphemy of the

Holy Spirit. Now, many people who grew up in church know that right away. But the real question is, what does that mean?

What does it mean to blaspheme the Holy Spirit of God? You see, all of those sins which are culturally reprehensible to church folks, that are absolutely reprehensible to those of character, are sometimes seen as the greater sin.

And the second -hand sins are those that respectable people do. In other words, rape, child molestation, homosexuality.

Those things are seen as more reprehensible. But I want you to understand this.

It doesn't matter what sin you have in your life today. It could simply be the sin of disbelief.

It could be the sin of pornography. It could be that private sin in which you say it is victimless.

But I tell you this, after 30 years of talking to you, I've seen the scar tissue of silent and private sin that has not only destroyed that individual life, but has transferred quicker than any virus to their children and their children's children.

There is no victimless sin. God, when He says here, has been overlooked in the past, is because of this.

The revelation of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament all the way back in Genesis when

God told Eve the seed of your womb will crush the head of Satan.

When God said the children of Israel being persecuted, lift up this bronze serpent that if anyone looks to it, they can be healed.

Again and again in the Old Testament, God told His people, sacrifice. There has to be a blood sacrifice for the payment of sin.

They were ignorant. They didn't understand. God had been promising Messiah for 4 ,000 years and people did not understand.

He would forgive them of those little sins that we think are so huge, but the greatest sin is the rejection of the blood of Christ, which is the only payment for not sins, but your sin states.

You see, we want to judge by acts of indulgences or acts of committing or going against, of trespassings.

Ladies and gentlemen, your problem is not that you sin. Your problem is that you are a hopeless sinner.

You will never get perfection from corruption. So you see here today, if you look and you judge who and what you are based upon your moral sense of right and wrong, your destiny,

I promise you, is not the grace of God. It is not heaven. It is the pits of hell separated eternally from God.

Because it's not based on what you do or don't do. It's based upon the subjugation of your will to the only payment that can be given and that's the blood of Christ.

In the past, God said they didn't understand. They didn't understand. The world didn't understand. I sent out a whole people to be an example and those people messed up.

They didn't understand. But now, look at this next verse. But now, he commands all people everywhere to repent.

Here's one of the problems I have with modern church. Jesus is an invitation.

How many of you have ever heard the term invite Jesus into your heart? Like he's a little

Labrador retriever in the rain sitting there with those big puppies. I can still remember that Memphis Humane Shelter commercial.

Where shall I go? Most of y 'all are too young but y 'all remember that.

You know? Like Jesus is this little puppy in the rain and if you want to find peace and a connection, if you will just invite him into your heart.

Look what scripture says. The blood of Jesus Christ is not an invitation to a moral superiority.

The blood of Christ is commanded by God. He commands all men everywhere to repent.

Oh but pastor, what about the person born in India? They weren't raised in Christianity.

The Word of God still calls out to repent for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Oh but pastor, they may not understand. The understanding comes from the Holy Spirit.

The command comes by God. The price was paid by Jesus and it's going to be eternal.

Understand this. That God's command to repent has absolute, absolute consequences of rejecting that.

Which is blaspheming the Holy Spirit. To blaspheme the Holy Spirit means this.

If you are sitting here today and there is something inside of you going,

I know I'm not a Christian. And you keep pushing that away and pushing that away.

If God is calling you whether you are a non -Christian or a Christian to repent, that means changing your heart and mind which will lead to a change of action.

And you continue to resist and reject that. If you die in that ignorance of Christ as your

Savior, there remains no hope for you. Now let that sink in for a second.

For some of you, you need to hear this. That there's not a weekend you can suffer till you get there.

There is no, for some of us in our church, there ain't no parole, man. There is no vacation.

There is an old military adage that says this when you're going through training or whatever, it says, well this can't last forever.

I got news for you, hell will last forever. It will last forever.

There is an eternal destiny for all mankind and that is either heaven or hell.

And it is eternal. Why am I harping on that so much? It's because of this. You becoming saved is not you inviting

Jesus Christ into your heart, it is you submitting to the deity and the power of Jesus Christ as your

Lord. Now I know I preach on this a lot and I know it worries the veteran

Christian. But I tell you, there is not a message in today's church culture that needs to be preached without any more clarity than the reality of your prayer and your heart and your invitation to a sovereign

God is the evidence of which you must be saved. I tell you, the evidence of Christianity in your life is the repentance of your life.

Well brother, I prayed that prayer, ergo I'm saved. Oh I tell you, you have no fruits of the

Spirit. You have no conviction of your sin. You have no repentance of your actions and yet you claim the assurance of Jesus Christ as your

Lord. You want your emotions tickled with the warm fuzzies that will somehow get you through the convictions and sleepless nights of God wooing you to come and understand the power of repentance.

And every sermon that you shop for, every web page that you keep looking up to give you a false hope of security in the moral and cultural awareness of who you are, still keeps turning to ash in your soul.

And the reason why is because you have to understand that God commands us to repent.

Not to feel. It's the command. It's not for you to live a moral life. It's for you to recognize your total hopelessness without the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Look at this. Verse 31. He commands us, all people everywhere to repent.

Verse 31. Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world.

I was a senior in high school and the first semester

I was wanting to keep my grades up because in my school, if you didn't have at least,

I can't remember what the grade point average was, you could not play football. So I had to keep my grade point average because I loved school.

I loved school. I loved going to school. I hated going to class.

That was kind of an interruption in what, which other was a great social experiment in my life.

I loved playing football. I loved being around my friends. Right? Just hated going to class.

Well, they had this thing called a senior paper. Now, this lady, who was my

English teacher, had been telling us about this senior paper since the beginning of the school year.

She said, you got to turn in a thesis. I didn't know what a thesis was because she was explaining to us, but at that point, me and THC were sleeping in the back of the room.

She would explain that you have to turn in a basic outline. Okay. I'm going to talk about this.

No, man, you've got to write it down right. Anyways, four months later, the paper is due, not in a week, that day.

Now, this whole time, I had been saying, I'll do it later. I'll do it later.

Have y 'all, I'm sure none of you good people ever procrastinate. But man,

I'll do it later because tonight's the finale of Miami Vice, man. Got to watch it.

Right? Tubbs and Crockett forever, man. And you never know, someone actually might die on the

A -team. I got to watch that, right? Man, do 15 flips, everybody gets out of the car.

I didn't ever understand that. That day, I actually said this.

English is six period. It's only eight in the morning. Roll another one, brother.

Let's hit that sucker one more time. Rod, what that means is it's an application of the delivery of marijuana into a human, you know?

At lunchtime. At lunchtime. I'm sitting there going, well, it's too late now.

Not even one little try. The period before six period was something called study hall.

I sat down with notebook paper and I came up with this.

The political, economic, and military effects of the bubonic plague in medieval

Europe. Y 'all think I'm joking. I'm being God serious with you.

I think I still have this paper somewhere. I wrote like 10 pages of total crap in one period and I got an

A. A couple years later, my wife had a report due and my father and me wrote my wife one of those papers because she didn't do it, you hypocrite, and she got an

A. True is redundant when

I speak, woman. Go make me a turkey sandwich. My point is this.

You will tell yourself some of you young people need to listen. You will tell yourself that the time to repent is tomorrow.

The time to repent is when you grow older. The time to repent is not why now you're figuring yourself out.

Let me speed that process. You're an idiot. You're sinful. You're totally depraved.

Class over. You're in desperate need of Jesus Christ because your pride, fears, insecurities, and intellect will lead you to absolute destruction not only in hell but in your life here today.

Guys, you have to understand that you can keep procrastinating but verse 31 says there is a fixed day.

Right now. Absolutely right now. Boom.

That eternal clock on your life is ticking. You say, oh, but that's when the beast shows up and Pastor Josiah talked about the dome of the rock and Brother Jeremiah was talking about the beast.

Your fixed day is not a fixed day of eternity for all mankind.

Your fixed day may be before the end of the clock today. You may be dead before the end of this day closes.

And you will stand not in some dream or religious concoction.

You will stand in the reality and the understanding that there is a

God. And you owe. You owe a debt that you cannot pay.

There is a price for our sin and the rebellion against God and you are left with empty pockets and empty hopes.

You will stand before God one day. You will. Oh, but I've been to church my whole life.

You will stand before God. I pray Jesus Christ in my heart. You will stand before God because the hall to repentance if you go back one verse is to every person everywhere.

I will stand before God one day. Now the cool news for me is I'm not going to answer for my sin because someone picked up that tab.

But I will answer what I did with the grace of God that He gave me. Did I hide it under a bushel?

Heck no. I'm going to let that bad boy shine. Yesterday on the way back from the men's retreat

I had the honor and privilege of riding with Pastor Josiah and Mike and Roderick came along.

We were in Mike's truck and Roderick and Mike were navigating with Pastor Josiah and sometimes with me.

Now little Jeff who is smarter than I'll ever be looked at us leaving the campsite and said,

Do not take Highway 14. Mike, Pastor Josiah, myself and Roderick are all either 30 years old or older.

Jeff's a 23 year old kid. We said, and Mike said, I quote, Let's go on 14.

Here is, where were we?

What's the town? What's the little Blanchard Springs? Here's Memphis. It's east, maybe a little south, but you go in that direction, you're going to get it.

We got on exit 14, which is a highway and turned 17 times.

How do you turn 17 times both right and left on the same highway?

Because you had four idiots like us navigating. And here's what Jeff was doing in the back.

He was alone in his car behind going, I could see him in the rear view mirror.

We pulled over for gas. Jeff gets out of the car and goes, Hey guys, we might want to try a different approach here because when you make four right turns, it's also called a circle.

Sometimes in our world, in our life, we listen to those that are closest to us and we get blinders on us.

We come to a place where we listen to people who feed us what we want to hear.

I tell you this, if you don't have someone in your life, if you don't have someone in your life telling you, do not believe your own press.

Yes, you do have a drinking problem. No, I'm sorry. Your cultural acceptance in that is not copacetic because you were drunk.

If you don't have someone in your life saying that your silliness and your moral perspective or your cultural high ground is somehow pleasing to God.

If you don't have someone in your life telling you the truth, that lack of accountability will put you in a circle.

If you're a plain, that's called a tailspin. In life, you know what a circle is?

It ain't that rut. It ain't nothing but a grave with both ends kicked out of it. Die in that arrogance.

There is a fixed time coming, people. And it's not based upon stupid Baptists or sermons or preacher's belief.

It is the Word of the living God. Quickly, he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

What is the standard in which you're gonna be judged? What's the standard? I mean, we have standards in our lives.

Our culture, our society has standards. But you know what human beings are adapted to do?

We are con artists extraordinaire. We will take a standard and gray it up a little bit.

When I was in school again, my favorite technique was this. I would put everything

I had in my book bag on my desk. I would make it cluttered and I would make it unorganized.

That's also called camouflage or for my younger brothers, flogged.

I ain't A1 Yo -Yo. This is Bustin' Bustin'. Listen up, listen. Y 'all can't handle how fresh

I am. Mike and Rod taught me a whole new vocabulary on the way home. A1 Yo -Yo, baby.

I am so fresh. And by the way, you kids, listen. It's not fire.

It's not fire. It's fi. Fi. I'm such an idiot.

All right, guys. Here is the standard that you must measure up to.

You must be, listen, you must be culturally accepted by the church.

Read that verse again. He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

Do you know what the standard for your entry into heaven is? It is the life of Jesus Christ.

It is absolute perfection without sin.

But pastor, that's a little sin. That's just a little sin. Uh -uh.

You will be in hell forever for the smallest of sin. You see, your problem isn't your sin. The problem is no matter what you do, you will still remain sinful.

Baby Alina, the cutest four -month -old baby that God has ever placed on this earth.

Whatever. She is a sinful human being in need of a

Savior. I promise you. Guys, remember this.

Do not rest on the laurels of your religious acceptance or your cultural adherence.

Do not judge yourself based on I am a good person because there are no good people.

I always laugh when I hear atheists say, why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?

There ain't no good people, dummy. There's no such thing as a good person. Keep going and we're almost done.

For you believers, I love this verse. Listen to it. And this He has given assurance to all by raising

Him from the dead. In a couple of weeks, we're going to celebrate Easter. When's Easter? Is that next week?

This is Palm Sunday? Sorry, Jesus rode in Jerusalem. Everybody freaked out.

It was a cool time. That's your Palm Sunday sermon. Sorry, I forgot. I'm so busy preaching the gospel,

I forget to preach cultural and religious things, okay? But listen, listen. Blessed assurance,

Jesus is mine. I'm sorry, I forget the general. Oh, what a full taste of glory divine.

Do you know that some people come to church to hear songs of the nostalgic nature so they will feel a certain way they felt when they first got saved?

People, listen to it. I'm not going to fuss at you. I'm going to invite you to leave that ball and chain behind.

No, Paul, not Cindy. I'm talking about... I will pay for that later.

I'm talking about the emotional stranglehold that your doubt has on your life.

You know what the assurance of my salvation is? It isn't my feelings. It isn't my belief. It's a resurrected

Jesus Christ who reigns and is coming back to get me. That is it. Last thing and I'm done.

How are you going to respond to what you heard today the same way they did 2 ,000 years ago?

Read the rest of it. It says this. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

Others said, we want to hear about this again. But others went out from their midst.

When Paul went out from the midst, some joined and believed. Listen to me today. Listen.

Guys, you are sitting in this room today. You're sitting in this room today and the

Word of God is telling us that judgment is coming. It is telling us that the standard for salvation is the perfection of Jesus Christ.

But it is also telling us this, that the hope that we have is not based in our churches, our sermons, or our cultural acceptance.

It's based in the resurrected Jesus Christ. Now, we're going to have a time where you're going to have to make a choice.

Some of you will sit there and go, oh man, this is stupid. I'm bored. I want to go play

Call of Duty. I've got to go. Some of you people in here are like, oh my

God, I've got to get the roast on. We're going to be late and the Pentecostals are going to beat us to the lunch line again.

We're never going to get in Longhorns. Some of you other people, you've got different things.

You're sweating. But listen, you're either mocking Christ today, you're pushing off repenting, or you're going to believe.

Now, look at the last part of Scripture. When it says they believed, what did they do?

Did they stay where they are and continue to believe? I'm sorry, say again?

They joined up. You know what one of the marks of Christianity is? It's that you leave everything that was behind, behind, and your whole life is new.

The Word of God tells us if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. Old things have passed away.

Behold, all have become new. If you have the same stains and scars that you did ten years ago at your salvation, if nothing has changed in your life, if you say my life is not new, it's the same,

I tell you again, you need to revisit the idea of salvation and see it through the lens of repentance rather than accepting

Jesus Christ into your heart. For the hell is going to be filled with people who prayed that sinner's prayer yet remained stained with sin but that the repentance of the

Word of God at the feet of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Man, you can be made new.

And it's not just about heaven. Those shackles and chains and shame of sin that has eaten your lunch for a generation, maybe two, can fall at your feet and you can dance a victory dance at the freedom of what it is to follow

Christ rather than this world. Wherever you are today, I'm going to ask the music dudes and the pastors to come up, listen, if you're in this room today and you're not sure about your

Christianity, don't mock it, don't ignore it, come and get perspective from the

Word of God rather than your feelings. Maybe you're doubting your salvation and you need a little encouragement.

This is the place, this is the hospital of encouragement and you don't even have to come down to one of these pastors to swing a dead cat in here.

You're going to find a believer who will encourage you right where you're at. Oh, but pastor, I've been doing too much.

Man, don't play war stories in here, baby. I promise you, for every war story you got, I got five people that done done it.

And not only are healed from it, but will minister to you because of it. Guys, listen to me today.

Maybe you truly need to get saved. Maybe some of you need to get that accountability because the standard you've been measuring your

Christian life on has been based upon something silly you've heard in the past. Get in some accountability with God's people.

They're going to tell you not what you want to hear but what you need to hear to live that Christian life. And then lastly is this.

Maybe you need someone just to love on you for a second. Maybe you just need someone to pray with you and to look at you and say it's going to be okay.

Maybe you feel like you're in a place where there's no way out. And that you have somehow out sinned the grace of God.

Let somebody share with you the hope that until the day you die the call of God still says come unto me all you that are just tired, broken, and worn out.

For I will give you rest. I'm going to ask you to stand with me this morning. And if God has spoken to you,

I'm going to ask you to come. Whether it's to be saved, to join a church, or to get some encouragement, you come down here.

And for you believers in this room, don't stand in idleness. For today is not just the day of salvation, it is the day of work.

Seek out today those whom you can minister to. Be like Paul and don't wait.

Go into that marketplace. Go into these places and find someone who needs to hear the Gospel.