Acts 17:16-34 - Breakin' it down Athens Style

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Don Filcek, Solid Foundations; Acts 17:16-34 - Breakin' it down Athens Style

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You are listening to Recast Church of Madawan's Podcast. Listen in as our lead pastor,
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Don Sopec, is in a sermon series entitled, Solid Foundation, A Journey Through the
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Book of Acts. It's been 10 years, obviously, this morning.
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It's been 10 years since 9 -11. And the fact of the matter is that culture changes and times change, but God and His Word stand firm.
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Can I hear somebody say Amen to that? God's Word and God Himself stands firm.
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And so, to be quite honest, I'm not preaching a 9 -11 service this morning. I'm not diverting from the
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Book of Acts because I'm convinced, and I say this often on special days, but I'm convinced that God knows what we need this week.
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And He's put this system down and this plan to march through the Book of Acts and to consider it. So we're going right on.
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And we're actually in one of my favorite passages in the entire Book of Acts, one that I've studied in depth.
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I've led others in studies on it, and I'm gonna talk with you a little bit about that later. But in this passage, we're gonna see an excellent model of the way that we are to interact with the culture around us.
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You see, I am convinced that many of us as Christians live with a cultural schizophrenia. We go to movies and we watch
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TV and we're not quite sure if that's okay. Like what rating is okay? And what music is okay?
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And you know what I'm saying? Anybody there or are you not understanding what I'm saying? Like that schizophrenia of like,
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I'm in the culture, but am I of the culture? What am I supposed to be doing in this culture? Is it okay to like jump up and high five when
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Michigan got that winning touchdown last night? Or the walk -off home run by Brandon Inge. Anybody see that yesterday?
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I mean, you're like celebrating and you're enthusiastic, and it's like when you really think about, no, no, just take a moment. Think about the enthusiasm that happened in the sporting realm yesterday.
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And what does that matter in the scope of eternity? Have you ever asked yourself that? Like you just be so enthused about whatever that is, or maybe it's just buying something new, or whatever it is that just gives you delight at a moment, and it's just like, oh, this is awesome, this is so great, this is so cool.
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We can jump up and give high fives and just be like, yeah. And then if you really think, how does that matter?
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How does that really fit in? And is your worldview consistent and things like that? So we're gonna be looking at some of that because it can be easy for us to slide into adopting the culture around us without giving much thought, without being intentional about the way that we live.
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But on the flip side, we could also go to the far extreme and completely reject culture and hide out in the church, hoping that Jesus comes and protects us and saves us and pulls us out of this infestation, right?
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So you see how you can be on opposite extremes of that? Do you guys see what I'm saying? And ironically,
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I am convinced that both extremes have the same end results, no impact.
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Okay, so if we look just like everybody else and we just wholesale adopt the culture around us, what does our message look like?
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Do we have a message? We can water down that message so much that there's nothing that we have to share that's different.
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We just have the same message that the culture has to share. They see materialism in us, they see licentiousness and evil in us, and they see all of these things in us and there's nothing new in that.
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So there's no impact. Or the opposite, obviously, if we hide from culture, then we just don't even have any friends to share and interact with, right?
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We just pull back and not even know a person who doesn't believe. So in our text, we're gonna see
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Paul hanging out in Athens. And this town, Athens, is the capital of philosophy.
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And while he's there, he's gonna give us a lesson in working with the culture around us. You see, because I'm convinced that as we come and read this text and as we come to worship
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God, I'm convinced that God is concerned for the people that live around us every day, the people that we have in our sphere of influence.
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And that really is our culture, right? Raise your hand if you have a culture that you live in. Is it just the stuff?
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It's the stuff that we value, it's the things that we do. So yeah, we live in culture. And God is concerned about that culture and the people in it.
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So open your Bibles, please, Acts chapter 17. That's page 793 in the Bible in the seat back in front of you.
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793, but it's Acts 17, and we're gonna read verses 16 through 34. We're basically gonna get a chance to hear,
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I'm gonna preach another guy's sermon this morning because it's Paul's sermon, so as we read it.
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And if you don't own a Bible, I want you to take the Bible that's in the seat back in front of you. We've got a box of Bibles in the back room here that we just fill in, the ones that you take.
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So go ahead and take one if you don't own one. I'll follow along as I read Acts 17, 16 through 34.
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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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So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
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Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, what does this babbler wish to say?
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Others said, he seems to be preaching of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the
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Areopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears.
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We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. 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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So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.
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For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown
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God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.
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The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
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And he has made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek
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God in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him, yet he is actually not far from each of us.
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For in him we live and move and have our being, even as some of your own poets have said, for we are his offspring.
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Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
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The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
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Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
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Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we'll hear you again about this.
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So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were
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Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
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Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Thanks a lot to the band for leading us.
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Now you can go to be seated and open your Bibles to Acts 17 if you don't have them already there, haven't kept them open.
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We got a lot of ground to cover, so we're gonna just jump right in this week. Because last week we left
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Paul waiting in Athens for Timothy and Silas to join him. So he's in Athens, and Athens is one of the largest cities in the ancient world, okay?
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So you kind of think Athens, Rome, very large cities in that era and that time.
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And so he's there, and he's been run out of town up in Berea, and so he's gone down here, and he left
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Timothy and Silas. He sent for them and said, get down here as soon as possible. And so he takes a stroll through the city.
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Like what do you do when you are a visitor in a city you've never been to before, and you got a little spare time? What are you gonna do? You're gonna walk around a little bit?
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How many of you just kind of stay in the airport and just hang out? You get out and you kind of just see the sights and figure out what there is to see.
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So he does that and takes a stroll. And it didn't take Paul long to get bent out of shape. Now I think you get this personality of this guy in Scripture and you find out that he's just a fiery personality.
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But he's walking around, taking a stroll through the city, and he gets bent out of shape about the idolatry that he sees. He sees idols everywhere, inscriptions, statues.
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Everything is focused on worshiping these statues made out of ivory, gold, silver, wood, all different kinds of stuff.
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And so he gets bent out of shape. But one thing that's interesting is the last phrase, the last word in verse 16, so look at it in your text here.
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ESV says, full of idols. His spirit was provoked within him. That provoked word is anxiety, like intensity.
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His spirit was provoked within him because he saw that the city was full of idols. The word that's used there has the flavor of drowning in.
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It's drowning in idols. It's submerged in idols. Like it was just, that's the media in which the people of Athens lived and breathed and moved was idolatry.
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Like it was just like they were drowning in it. It's submerged in it. So the first place
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Paul goes is of course, where? Synagogue, of course. That's what he does. So like normally he goes to the synagogue.
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It says he reasoned with them. That is that same word that we had from last week if you were here, dialogue. He interacted with them in the synagogue.
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But now in Athens, he does something different. He doesn't just go to the synagogue, but he goes to the Agora. That's the
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Greek word for the marketplace. It's still called the Agora today. It's still there.
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You can go and see some of the ruins from the ancient Agora that Paul himself walked through and proclaimed the gospel in.
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It's a famous marketplace on the north side of Athens. Again, just an ancient site that if you were in Athens today you'd want to go walk through the
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Agora. Now have you ever been, Rachel, I asked a second ago, but have you been in a city that was not your home?
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How many of you have been there? Now how many of you have been there alone? Okay, alone with some time to spare? Have you been in that situation before?
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Now ask yourself this. How high would preaching in the public square of that city be on your list of things to do?
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No hands? No takers? It probably wouldn't be the first impulse on our mind.
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You know, I'm gonna go find the most populated area of this town and go and set up a little stage and proclaim the gospel.
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Now how many of you are surprised that that's what Paul chooses to do? Again, no hands because it's
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Paul, right? But there is something that we need to understand. I have to point this out. And maybe at the risk of cutting ourselves a little bit of slack here and it could sound a little self -serving, but what you need to understand is how culturally relevant what he's doing here in the text is.
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So some of us have a tendency to take scripture and take these ancient forms and bring them right into modern application and be like, well, if you're gonna be faithful, what do you need to do?
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You gotta go down to Crossroads, right? Right down in the center of Crossroads Mall where the kiosks are all set up.
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You know, because from there you can reach the upper deck too, right? And then you need to get a megaphone and just start proclaiming the gospel there, right?
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How many of you know that's culturally not going to get you very far? It's gonna get you probably booked, okay?
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The police are gonna show up and disturb the peace and all that business. So do you see how that's not a cultural application of what
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Paul's doing here? Do you understand that? But sometimes we have a tendency to just take this and rip it right out of the page of the scripture and expect that we ought to be able to apply it directly.
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But we need to understand the culture. And the Agora, the marketplace, was a place, we're gonna see later in verse 21, that the
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Athenians in general were open to new ideas. And in the marketplace that was an acceptable place for this kind of dialogue to be going on.
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It wasn't out of the ordinary. So the only thing that I've experienced in Western culture that's similar to this is when
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Lynn and I lived in England, we went down to London several times to work with some organizations that were working with Muslims down there.
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And there's a place, have any of you been to London before? Have any of you ever been to Hyde Park? Hyde Park, one of the largest parks in the city of London.
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There's a section of Hyde Park that I love. Matter of fact, I just look forward to going back there someday.
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It's called Speaker's Corner. They've been doing this, it's this corner of Hyde Park for decades now, people will come and they will bring their stepladders with them.
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They used to be soap boxes, but now it's stepladders. And you stand up on your stepladder and you preach.
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You proclaim the truth, or falsehood. And so you have Muslims that are standing up and proclaiming the
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Quran. You have atheists up, and there's just all this banter going on, and there's heckling going on.
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Some people bring along an extra step stool so that if you disagree with them, you get to stand on the step stool and they get to toss questions at you.
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How many of you would love that kind of atmosphere? How many of you would be scared to death in that kind of atmosphere? You see, we're all different kinds of people.
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That was just, oh, that was so exciting to me. I love that. But you see how, I mean, there are cultural places where that's acceptable, right?
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And then there's places where it's kind of like, well, that's gonna run counter to your culture, and it's gonna be weird.
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Not that you can't do that, but there are cultural ways that we go about proclaiming the truth.
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So while on the market, he is proclaiming, I don't know if he's standing someplace, standing by an altar or whatever.
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He draws the attention of some Stoics and Epicureans. Now, I don't have time to make you experts in these two philosophies and these two concepts, but I think it's important that we understand just a little bit about them at least.
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They're the two primary philosophies. Now, don't get them confused with religion. The primary religion in Athens is what?
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Polytheism, the worship of the pantheon of God, Zeus and his, everybody. So that's the primary religion, but there's philosophies that dovetail with that religion, and these are the two primary philosophies in the city of Athens.
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So the Epicureans, many of you have heard that word, Epicurean? It's kind of a, we think of it maybe as hedonism.
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Is anybody familiar with the word hedonism? That living for pleasure, living for yourself, well, that's really ultimately what
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Epicureanism was kind of like. They believed that tranquility, peace and pleasure are the primary purpose of humanity.
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So your happiness, whatever makes you happy is right for you, and so that's the concept there.
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But understanding what they believed about the afterlife is important because we're gonna hear their interaction with Paul about that.
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They did not believe in resurrection, and they did not believe in any afterlife. So no afterlife, no resurrection, so that if you wanted to summarize
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Epicurean philosophy, it's kind of, you can quote scripture and summarize it. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.
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Okay, so that's Epicureanism. But what's Stoicism? I don't think you could get two more opposite people, the two opposite philosophies, and it's ironic that they're both calling
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Paul together to listen to him. The Stoics believe in a rigid, rational sense of living, and a strong sense of duty to what would be kind of, if we were to translate the word that they would use in Greek for it, the tribe of humanity.
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So you have this sense of duty to all people, and your sole existence is a cog in the wheel of human culture in a bigger picture, and so you just have your, and pain and suffering is part of being that cog turning in this world and just doing what you were designed to do and made to do, and probably not liking it too much.
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So that's Stoicism, very rational. Depriving yourself leads to higher levels, and again, that high sense of duty.
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They also did not believe in resurrection. It's important for me to explain, what is the distinction between resurrection and afterlife?
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You can believe in an afterlife without a resurrection, right? Because what is the hope of the Christian faith?
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Resurrection that these bodies will be raised again. That's resurrection. Now some, like these
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Stoics would believe, some of them, now there's varying degrees within Stoic philosophy, but many of them would believe that there was an afterlife, but it was a disembodied soul, and you would just go on and maybe potentially be snuffed out eventually or gain a higher level or be united with this cosmic soul or something like that.
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Does that make sense? But no resurrection. Neither one of these groups, there's one thing that Stoics and Epicureans agreed on, no resurrection, okay?
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So here, Paul takes, I'm sorry, they hear
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Paul, and then take him to the religious political center of the city. So they hear him, these
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Stoics and Epicureans, and they're like, we're not quite getting it, but we wanna hear more about this. And so they take him to the rocky hill that overlooks the entire city, still there today.
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The rock and the group that met on that rock, are known by the same name, the
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Areopagus. The Parthenon, the Parthenon is located on the top of that hill overlooking the city.
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And it is, the Areopagus is a group of leading people who govern the city in both politics and religious life.
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So they wielded two sets of judgments, both on politics and religion together.
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The place is named after Ares, the god of war. So Ares, Areopagus, and pagus, meaning hill, so the hill of Ares, which,
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I just wanna point this out, another translation of that. So Ares being the Greek god of war, the
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Romans called it Mars Hill. Okay, Mars being the Roman god of war.
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So you get that picture that you've got, you got Mars Hill here, and that's where, anybody ever heard of a church named
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Mars Hill before? There's a pretty decent sized one in Grand Rapids. There's also one out in Seattle.
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I really appreciate the one out in Seattle quite a bit. But they get that name because Mars Hill is the confluence of culture and religion.
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And so that's where these churches are naming themselves because that's a good place to be. Would you agree with that? A good place to be, it's a place where culture and the ability to bear the truth meet.
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Verse 18 through 20 simply highlights the confusion between the Stoics and the Epicureans about Paul's teaching.
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Now, you've gotta put yourself in their shoes. They have no framework of the Old Testament. This is brand new teaching.
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Now, put yourself in their shoes, and you're hearing this stuff about Jesus and about resurrection and stuff, and you haven't even got to the point where you believe that there's a single god yet.
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You may be a little confused. Can you kind of understand where the confusion is? It's like, I understand the word you're speaking.
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You're speaking Greek, but you don't understand the Greek. I get that. I know every word you're saying, and I just don't understand your philosophy. So that's what they're saying here.
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It's not that they were ignorant and Paul wasn't speaking clearly. They were getting it, but it just wasn't getting in there.
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But what's interesting to note is if you look at the end of verse 20, I love what's stated here. They say, you bring some strange things to our ears, but look at what they say.
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We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. How many of you know?
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How many of you believe that there are people that you know that would make this statement to you?
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That would literally say to you, I wish to know more about what these things mean.
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Do you believe that there's people that you know that are not in the faith, that are not here at church, that haven't believed yet, but they would say, if you would just talk with them about it,
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I want to know more. I don't understand it, I don't get it all yet, but I want to know more. Do you know people like that?
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Do you believe that you know people like that? Sometimes I think our assumption is that the moment that you talk about this, they're gonna pull out a two by four and beat the tar out of you.
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And there are some people that you are scared to open your mouth about the truth of the gospel, and do you know what their response would be?
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Could we get together for some coffee and talk more about this? Imagine that.
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Have you ever experienced that? I've experienced that, where I was literally afraid to open my mouth and come to find out, or what's even more funny is when you're with a coworker and you finally get up the nerve and they're like, yeah,
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I'm a Christian too, I go to the church. Have you ever had that happen? That's really funny, because then you just realize both of you are totally failing on that one.
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You hug each other, forgive each other, whatever. But do you get what
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I'm saying here? There are some people in our culture that are not in church this morning, and not being in church means that they're, but you know what
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I'm saying. There are some who are not in the faith, who just don't even understand things of Christ, and they wanna know it.
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They would like to know more. You agree. Appreciate that. Verse 21 makes me laugh just a little bit.
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Apparently Athens was like one big state college, okay, like a university, because everyone wanted to tell others something new or hear something new.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Okay, a lot like college. That's not meant to be an insult, but how many of you know that life is more than accumulating knowledge and disseminating knowledge?
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Is life more than that? Yeah, but how many of you would admit that maybe there was a phase in your life where that was the sum total of everything?
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It was like, knowledge is everything, and what I know I'm still, and then you get some years and you realize that you really don't know that much, and the older I get, the less
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I know. So that kind of makes me chuckle just a little bit, just that statement that Athens was a group of people who just loved to hear new things and tell new things and all of that.
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So how does Paul start? He's taken to this hill. He's placed in the center of this austere body of political and religious leaders of that community.
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They are austere, elite, but they are also idolatrous pagans, and he has them right where he wants them.
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They're sitting on the edge of their seat. They want to know, tell us something new. He's like,
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I'll tell you something new. How many of you know that at this point in the story, he has the ability to lower the boom on them, okay?
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He can start off any way that he wants in this presentation. He can lead off with how wicked and idolatrous you are, right?
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Can he lead out that way? How foolish you all are. How their worship of Zeus amounts to demon worship.
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It's interesting to note that later in the letter to the church in Corinth, he's going to literally say, he's going to equate idolatry with demon worship.
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Speaking to a church, he's going to say that. This is after these events. So was that in his mind?
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Did he kind of have some notion that this is not a good thing to be worshiping idols? Maybe he could have just lowered the boom right there on them and just totally hit them over the head.
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Or he could have talked about how sexually immoral their culture was and just hit them because it's true.
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It was. How does he start? He starts with a compliment.
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You get that? Starts with a compliment. I perceive that you're all very religious.
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Does that seem weird to any of you? It seems a little bit different to the Paul that maybe we envision in our mind.
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You see, some scholars from about 50, 40, 50 years ago when the whole liberal conservative battle was going on, they said that this couldn't have been
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Paul. That Paul couldn't have said these things because it seemed so out of his character to be so generous and gracious and kind.
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But my solution to this discrepancy in Paul is really ultimately the point of this entire passage. That's the point, is that there is what appears to be a discrepancy in it.
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You see, because when speaking about idolatry to the church, Paul laid it out the way that it was.
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He spoke like a prophet, calling it demon worship. But when speaking to idolaters, he's reasonable.
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He's trying to reason with them. And some of you might just kind of say, is that, does that sound two -faced?
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To speak to the church this way and to speak to them? I would not call it two -faced. I'd call it kind, friendly, and gracious.
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Right? Like being sensitive and kind of understanding where people are coming from and figuring that out and being kind -hearted.
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And so in this talk, he starts off with a compliment. I sense that you're very religious and I've been around your town and I've seen that you're religious.
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Let me tell you some of the things that I saw in your city. As I walked along, I found this altar.
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Now, what do you do on altars? What are altars for? Sacrifice. Okay, so whether there was a little basket of grain there for this unknown
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God, or whether there was some gore there from sacrificing goats. I don't know what this place looked like, but whatever you have in your mind about an altar, it's probably different than what it looked like there.
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Probably kind of messy and not so clean. But he says,
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I saw the inscription on this altar and it said, to an unknown God. It's as if the people in Athens didn't want to leave any gods out.
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Like, what if we forgot one and we offended that god or goddess and then they came back at us and totally, you know, lowered the boom on us because we forgot them.
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So, hey, we'll just go ahead and make an altar, put it to an unknown God just in case and people can sacrifice that one too.
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See how, I mean, is the human heart an idol factory? Do we manufacture idols?
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We're looking for things that, you know, we don't even understand it, don't even know. Maybe it doesn't exist, but we'll worship it just in case.
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How many, does anybody think that's a little weird? Okay, that's kind of human though. So Paul grabs that hook.
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He sees it as a hook. He's literally walking around the city looking for ways to convey the message of who
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God is, the almighty God. And he says, you worship this God that is unknown to you.
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Let me tell you about it. Let me tell you about the God you don't know. You're right that there's a God that you don't know and I can tell you who he is.
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And as I tell you who he is, you're gonna realize he's supreme over all and you don't know him yet. Hear what he's saying?
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And now we get to some of the core theology of Paul. We figure out what Paul thought was necessary or essential. What he says next is a case study and where I would recommend you take people who have little or no understanding of the
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Old Testament. Now, how many of you know that if you run into an American, they're probably gonna have some kind of understanding, some kind of connection with the
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Old Testament in some way, but it's becoming less and less likely. Did you know that?
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I mean, it's becoming more, I'm sorry, it's becoming more and more likely that you will encounter an American that is not versed in the
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Old Testament. Even those who don't know the general things like psalms or songs in the
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Old Testament. We're gonna see in a video here in a minute a guy who's like, psalms, I think it's in the New Testament, I'm not sure. Just some general things that they don't know.
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But if you encounter somebody who doesn't know much about the Old Testament, I mean, this is a great passage to take them. When I worked with international students at Western Michigan University, some of the highlights of my ministry there,
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I loved it, working with internationals, we would literally go and knock on doors in the section of campus that housed most of the international students and say, hey, would you be interested in studying the
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Bible with us? It was amazing how much uptake there was on that. I mean, wouldn't your natural thought be that you'd get the door slammed on you?
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They'd invite us in, make tea, and talk. And we'd set up a time for the next week to come in.
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This was always, with Hindus, this was the first passage that we would study. It spoke right to where they were at.
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It was like a way, and I remember sometimes we would have like 10 guys sitting around a table in an apartment, listening carefully and just with attentiveness to walking through this passage about who
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God is. And maybe by the next study, we'd have half of those guys back because they'd understand what this meant.
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They'd get it and they'd be like, oh, you're saying that there's only one God. So listen to the seven things that Paul communicates about God to the
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Areopagus, to these idol -worshiping leaders. First, and this is gonna be,
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I mean, it's seven things, but it's not gonna take long. So if you're taking notes, get them first time. First is that God is creator of everything.
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God is the creator of everything, verse 24. Okay, that's kind of a fundamental thing, would you agree?
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Kind of foundational. Second, and that's what all of these are. They're foundational elements of theology. It's like the building blocks of it.
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Second, he is ruler. He is the ruler. The text says he is Lord over heaven and earth in verse 24.
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And then later in verse 24, which is number three, he is uncontainable. We just used that word in the song, didn't we?
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Uncontainable. Right here in the text of Scripture, it says God is uncontainable. He doesn't live in temples made by man.
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Now, what about that whole Old Testament temple thing? Like, could that be maybe confusing to you? Like, didn't he live, did he live there?
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Well, no. No, I mean, it was a place that was an interface between God and humans for sacrifice for the nation of Israel, right?
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But did God live there? Was he isolated to there? And no, he was everywhere.
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He is everywhere, right? So he doesn't live in a temple made by human hands. And not only does he not live in a temple made by man, but he is self -sufficient.
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He doesn't need anything from us. Number four, God is self -sufficient from verse 25. Did you know that?
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God doesn't need you, he doesn't need me. He doesn't need recasts to accomplish his goals. He chooses to use us, and I say glory to God for that.
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It's amazing, but he doesn't need anything from us. And not only does he not need from us, but he is gracious.
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Number five, he's gracious in that he gives to all humans. And I picture when Paul writes things like this,
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I picture sometimes he just gets so emphatic and he gets ahead of himself, and finally he's like, yeah, God gives us stuff, he's gracious.
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He gives to humans life and breath and everything. And everything,
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I mean, it's just like he just, I could stand here for hours and tell you the things that God gives you, but he just gives you everything.
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What has God given to you? Your abilities, your talents, your intellect, your ability to fill out an application for a job, your usefulness, your spouse, your everything.
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Your hands, your eyes, your muscles. Everything is from God.
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Is he gracious? Very gracious. He's given us everything. God is sovereign, number six.
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He goes, as a matter of fact, maybe one of the ones that he spends the most time on is the sovereignty of God.
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Interesting to note. He has made the nations from one man and even determined when and how long they will exist and where their boundaries will lie.
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He is the one who raises up, and he is the one who tears down. And the ebb and flow of history is just marching forward, and he is in control.
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Isn't that something that's important for us to remember in America in the day and age that we live in, when things feel like they're tossing and turning and we're remembering 10 years of tumult from September 11th and been at war for how long and how much longer is it gonna go?
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And the economy and all of this. Who's in control? Who is sovereign? God.
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He is imminent, number seven, the last one. That is that he is close. My spell check didn't kick this word out, so I guess it's a word.
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I thought I had invented it, but findable. He is findable. In verse 27, he is close.
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As a matter of fact, he wants and desires for us to seek him. It's implied that he's done all of these things and revealed himself so that we can find him.
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He wants us to seek after him. So I'm gonna just say that Paul has a pretty good theology spelled out here.
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Some good building blocks to base your life on, understanding who God is. He has their attention.
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And with the last point, he's seeking to move them to action because theology, that is what we know about God, what he tells us about himself, should always move us to action.
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It should never be the end that we gain knowledge. The purpose of knowledge is that we go out and act upon that knowledge, right?
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Knowledge isn't an end in and of itself, and so he's trying to move them to action. If we find out that there is a
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God and he is a God who wants us to seek him, and we genuinely believe that that is true, then could
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I maybe suggest to you that we should seek him? Right?
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And that's what he's recommending to the Areopagus. Verse 28 is amazing because now here,
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Paul quotes from their own poets, from the rock stars of their day and age.
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He does this to show that they themselves acknowledged God's imminence. He says, I'm not making this up, and not only that, but this is part of your culture too.
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You acknowledge God is imminent. Look at your own writings. Look at those who write poetry in your culture.
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He's done some research. He knows his audience.
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Paul would not endorse, I wanna say this, Paul, there is no way that the apostle Paul would endorse everything that was written by Epimenides, one of these guys that he quotes.
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A writer in 600 BC. Nor would he endorse everything that was written by Eratus, the second one about offspring.
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So the first one, the first quote that you see there, in him we live and move and have our being is a quote directly from a poem by Epimenides, and then the phrase, for we are indeed his offspring is another quote from a guy named
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Eratus, separated by over 600 years. So Epimenides being the writer earlier.
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And what he quotes is not from some neutral poem. It's not something that culturally would have kind of like a nice poem about nature, about Greek culture or something like that.
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He's literally quoting from anthems of praise to Zeus. Like how many of you have maybe an issue with that?
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Doesn't it seem a little uncomfortable? What I'm trying to point out is how dicey this would have been in his culture.
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For him, as a Christian, stand up and quote from this. And so then you've got to ask yourself this question. And we've got to just think it through.
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He's quoting from these poems. Ask yourself in what context was a man like Paul who was raised in a strong Jewish family, raised to be a rabbi, taught and trained by one of the prominent rabbis of the day,
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Gamaliel. And he's trained. In what context did he sit down and read Epimenides? When would he have done that?
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Why would he have done that? Not only reading it, but memorizing it.
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Having it attainable at a time like that. Do you think maybe he had an intentionality about preparing himself to reach the people he was called to?
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Maybe there was something intentional about the way that Paul lived? I would say so. He was focused on them.
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He wanted to understand them, to be able to present the gospel to them. He goes on to explain that we are
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God's children from the offspring passage. And if we are God's children, and we have life and breath and feelings and movement, then we ought not to think of God as something made out of gold, silver, or stone, because that would make us better than God, right?
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Because we can at least move, stone can't. But here he tackles their idolatry head on, striking a nerve in their culture.
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Now, he's not being mamby -pamby, okay? He's not just kind of being wishy -washy and just letting things go and just being like,
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I just agree with your philosophy. How many of you know that we can tend to slide into that in our culture?
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And just be like, well, yeah, whatever you say. Somebody at work says, all roads lead to heaven.
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All roads lead to God. I mean, and mumble something. Do you know that conversation
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I'm talking about? It's like, do I want to get into this right now? And you're kind of, ugh. He's not being mamby -pamby that way.
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But he has been culturally sensitive in his speech. He is trying to communicate on a level that they can understand, trying to bring the gospel to them.
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His logic continues by answering the unspoken question of why God has endured so much idolatry.
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The implication of that is that the question that might have been on their mind that he's trying to answer is, okay, if we are idolatrous, we've been worshiping all of these things, and there is one almighty
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God who is opposed to that kind of thing, then why are we still here? Why hasn't he just snuffed us out?
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And so Paul kind of answers that unspoken question by saying God has graciously overlooked the times of ignorance.
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How many of you know that's not a really nice word? Try that sometime. No, don't try that sometime. But say, well,
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God has looked, say that to one of your coworkers sometime. God has overlooked your ignorance, but now it's time to repent, okay?
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You see, I mean, Paul is being direct, okay? During the times of ignorance, idolatry, but he says now times have changed, and he is commanding people everywhere to repent, to turn from idolatry to the true and living
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God. Repent, turn from your way of life, from all of these gods. So why should we repent?
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Well, I'm glad that you guys asked. Because he answers that directly. Because God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world correctly.
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That means, or he says in righteousness, which means correctly or justly or righteously. He's going to judge all.
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And he's appointed a specific man to do the judging, he says. And not only that, he has assured that this man is the chosen one and demonstrated that this man is the chosen one by raising him from the dead.
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He mentions the resurrection. Anybody questioning who the man that he's talking about in the passage is?
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Anybody have any? He doesn't mention his name. He doesn't say who he is. He says that there's been a man who is appointed to judge the nations and the seal of God on his life was that God raised him from the dead.
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Anybody want to suggest a name for me? Jesus. Jesus is the one.
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Now, how many of you know that Paul has been trying to be kind in this talk? The things that you see, Paul, the way that you see him interact with people, he's working to be kind, but he has not soft -pedaled the message.
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He tells them to repent of idolatry. He warns them of judgment. How many of you like to talk about judgment in America?
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Like you do with your friends and your coworkers and it's just like judgment is a really comfortable topic. No, it's not. And I doubt it was in his culture either.
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But worse would have been his comments about idolatry and then even worse was the comment about resurrection.
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All three of those would have been stumbling blocks to his audience. All three things that, how many of you know if Paul could have removed them, he would have, but he couldn't.
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They were important to the message. You must repent of your idolatry. There is a judgment looming and resurrection is the way that God has given to come out from underneath that judgment.
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We see that some of the crowd literally made fun of him when he mentioned resurrection, like a literal mocking of him, maybe even spitting at him.
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And that's because one thing was consistent in Greek philosophy at the time. So there's Epicureans, there's
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Stoics, I mentioned, what did I say they have in common? They don't believe in resurrection, absolutely.
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All of them believe that material existence, stuff, physicality, body equals evil.
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And the notion that once our spirit departs our body that they would be brought back together was repugnant in their mind.
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It was just like, oh, for real? He'd come back into this flesh? Well, part of that's because of a misunderstanding that resurrection is to an eternal life without sin, without suffering, right?
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So a little bit of a misunderstanding there, but still, that's the way that their mind worked. So why even address these three subjects that they knew that the culture was going to struggle with?
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The fact of the matter is that the Gospel, the reason he addressed these three things is that the
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Gospel has a minimal content. There are things that must be communicated in order to call it the
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Gospel, in order to be honest. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you know what I mean by minimal content?
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It's like there's a threshold, and if you don't communicate, if you don't fill up the container past this line, you're not talking
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Gospel. There's things that need to be in that container, right? Like maybe
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Jesus. Okay, would you agree with that? Because you're not talking Gospel if you don't have
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Jesus in there. You're talking about something else. Okay, you might be talking about good thoughts or good notions.
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You might even be talking about true things, but you're not talking about the Gospel if Jesus hasn't been crucified in there somewhere.
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There's a minimal content that's necessary for the Gospel to be communicated. If we say we're proclaiming the
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Gospel, we don't mention crucifixion out of fear that we might offend somebody, or we don't want to mention sin because someone might think that we're narrow -minded, or we don't feel comfortable declaring that Jesus is the only way to the
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Father because we might be perceived as intolerant, then we begin to speak something other than the good news.
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Do you hear what I'm saying? We begin to communicate something else. And we are either at that point telling half -truths, leaving people in a problematic situation, telling half -truths, or we're inventing something new, founding our own religion.
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We're starting something new here. Do you see what I'm saying? Some actually that were there at the
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Areopagus wanted to hear more. And some joined Paul, it says in the text, and they believed. One man on the council of the
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Areopagus named Dionysius and a lady named Damaris believed. And by implication, her name is mentioned, she must have been a leading woman in the town.
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Some commentaries think, it's interesting, they think this is an epic failure on Paul's part, that this was not a good thing, and we don't ever see anything about a letter to the church in Athens, we don't see a church founded here.
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How many think Paul failed in this? Did people believe? Did he proclaim the truth?
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Was he faithful to the message? Absolutely. I see an amazing success here.
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I believe that God was at work here, and we see that by people putting their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
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So Paul demonstrated in this text a life lived with focus and purpose. And that provides the outline for my application.
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Three applications that I'm prayerful every time that I step up here to preach, that one of these strikes you, or something else from the text strikes you, but that you walk out of here with something to say,
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God help me with this. Help me to do a better job with this. Paul provides the outline, and it's about evangelism, it's about the way that we interface with our culture, about the way that we bear the truth to people.
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And there's three things. We see in Paul the will of evangelism. If you're taking notes, write these down.
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The will of evangelism. Secondly, we see the way of evangelism. And lastly, we see the words of evangelism.
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And yes, I used to work at a Baptist church so I can alliterate, okay? So I can do that from time to time.
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The will, the way, and the word of evangelism. First is the will of Paul.
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I want you to see this. He intentionally put himself in situations to be used by God.
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He saw everything from pagan poetry to an unexpected layover in Athens as a chance given by God.
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Do you see that in Paul's life? Not just in this text, but you see it all throughout that he's looking for opportunities.
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He had a will of evangelism. He had the willingness to go out and to proclaim.
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Do you see that? Now you might ask me, Don, are you suggesting that I need to live my life alert, always looking for opportunities, always looking for opportunities to share the gospel?
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Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact, that's what I'm suggesting. Is that you live a life alert, ready, looking for opportunities.
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Being intentional and looking at the ways that you can do that as well. But then you might ask, do
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I ever get a vacation from that? Is there ever a time where I can kind of let my guard down and just kind of be like, okay, I'm just gonna float for a little while here.
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It gets a little stressful. I want you to acknowledge that like maybe it's a little bit stressful to constantly be looking for opportunities to share the gospel with people.
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That maybe is. So do we get a vacation from that? No, let's move on to the next point, okay?
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Now that we got that over. Seriously, you ask yourself this question and then
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I think you'll find your answer. Is your faith something that you do or is it something that defines you?
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Is it something that you do? Are you here on Sunday morning because this is what people do on Sunday morning in our culture and they just come to church and that's what we do?
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Or is your faith something that defines your character and who you've been made to be?
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Do you see how that's gonna affect the way that we view? And by the way, let me just suggest to you that after going through the book of Jonah, I don't imagine that any of you could think that taking a vacation from God was a good idea.
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Like remember Jonah trying to take a vacation from God and storms and whale guts and all kinds of crazy stuff going on there.
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That's the will of evangelism. Do you have the will to do it? The will to share your faith. The second thing is the way of evangelism and the way that Paul did it.
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See, Paul was intentional about the way he interacted with the culture around him and that's what I'm asking. Key and focus is on that word intentional, okay?
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Intentional for the sake of the gospel. And one thing that you can ask is how many of you know there's all different kinds of ways and facets that we can interact with our culture from the way that we dress to the way that we talk?
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And I wanna get into the nuances of that. I'm not gonna tell you how to dress, what to wear. You know, be yourself. I think that that's important.
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But I think that when it comes to trying to reach out to our culture, a very good diagnostic question to ask yourself, to diagnose your motives and why am
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I doing what I do, ask yourself this, am I doing what I do so that people like me?
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Or am I doing what I do so that the gospel is better communicated? You see how that's gonna help us when we interact with our culture and the people around us?
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You know, sometimes we can talk a certain way to make people like us better. We can dress a certain way to make people like us better.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Am I the only one that does that? Okay, three of you are on board with that.
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Thank you for being honest. There's a guy named Mark Driscoll.
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He's at Mars Hill, one of those Mars Hill churches in Seattle. I like to hear him talk.
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I feel like he's got a good handle on the culture and the word. But he talks about this, and this is what I mean when I talk about intentionality.
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How many of you watch TV? Be honest with me. I watch TV from time to time. I didn't see everybody's hands.
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Some of you don't own a TV? For real? That's amazing. So for those of you who do watch TV, like you're already watching
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TV. Okay, we're on that page. Okay, so that's kind of obvious.
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But what he does is he literally sits down and watches TV with a three -ring binder. Like, whoa.
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Like, intentional. Like he's taking notes on TV shows, and he's pausing it, and he's writing things down, and he's analyzing and working through the cultural things that he's taking in.
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So that when that show, when that thing comes up, or when that movie comes up, he has some hooks to hang the gospel on in that.
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He's thought through it from a Christian mindset, not just, how many of you would be honest and that you can relate to this confession on my part that I can sit in front of the
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TV and loaf, and that's vacation from God. Can you ever do that?
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Sit back and it's like, click, on, brain, off, uh, drool.
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And then you get done and you're like, that was awesome until you start explaining it to a Christian brother or sister, and it's like, yeah, that movie was, ooh, ooh, don't go see that movie.
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Nevermind, I was talking about a different movie. That's not the one that I was thinking of. Any of you ever recommended a movie to your chagrin?
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You recommend it and then it's like, oh, I saw that? Or you go back and watch something that you watched when you were in high school, and it's like, you go back and it's like, oh, that's not quite how
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I remember it. That was not that good. Do you know what I'm saying?
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Thinking through, because the fact of the matter is, I think it's much easier for us to just swim in our culture without engaging it, without thinking about it, without interacting it, because are you in culture?
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You are in culture. You can't break free from it as much as you try. You'll either be in a Christian subculture over here trying to hide out from that culture, but whatever happens, you're in a culture.
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So swim in that culture intentionally, with purpose, to serve God and to communicate the gospel with those around you.
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Looking for hooks, there are hooks in every culture to bear the weight. And do you understand what
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I'm saying when I say hooks? Picture that hook that's on the back of your bathroom door that bears the weight of your towel, okay?
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But there are hooks in our culture that when you set the gospel on it, it fits, it works, it holds the weight.
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Are you getting the picture of what I'm talking about here? No? Like a conversation, like how many of you know that when somebody in your workplace is going through divorce,
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I'll just use that as an example, but they're going through a nasty divorce, and there are times in people's lives when there are hooks, and they're like setting the hook out for you to hang something on.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And they're like, I'm really, and they just open their heart to you. That's a hook.
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That's an opportunity for you to speak into somebody's life words of comfort and hope. But I don't know of any other hope than Christ, so I'm sorry, but I'm gonna just have to tell you the only hope that I have, and here it is.
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Do you see how that works? Pretty natural opportunity versus trying to force, here, hold this hook, gah!
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And they're putting it out for you, it's there. Are you getting that? And there's all different kinds of things that are like that. I'll give you just that as an illustration.
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The question is how intentional are we? That's the way of Paul. He was intentional. He was interacting with their culture.
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He was reading their poetry. I don't even like poetry. He's reading their poetry and memorizing it and spitting it back at them and hanging truth on it.
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So be intentional is the point. And then the last thing is the words of the gospel, the words of evangelism, and noting that Paul did not water down the message.
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He addressed judgment, repentance. Repentance from idols, specifically. He addressed resurrection.
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He recognized that there were some uncomfortable things he was going to have to say to present the gospel, and he didn't shy back from that.
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The fact of the matter is, it's not that Paul was looking for stuff to say to turn his audience against him. Did you know that?
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He was trying to communicate the truth, and he just wanted to be faithful to the message, and he was willing to get mocked for it.
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So by putting the gospel out there, it doesn't mean that everybody's just gonna love you. And by following this concept of will, way, and words, it doesn't mean automatic results, that everybody's gonna love you.
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Even Paul got mocked, and he was doing it. But it is a method, a way, of trying to communicate the truth.
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When it comes to the way we interact with people in our sphere of influence, then I want you to think about those three words, will, way, and word.