First Church – Acts 17 An Insurgent Church
Introduction: Sometime you look up from our small town world
and realize how much the world has changed and how suddenly. Since March we
have been scared witless by a Pandemic that was predicted to kill millions,
we’ve seen our economy turned off like a water spigot, the entire country was
put on lockdown, our churches were closed and just when it seemed it was
getting better we had protests, riots, lootings and now in one city and the
leftists have taken over about 6 city blocks and established their own nation.
I don’t know about you but I don’t recognize our country anymore. We seem to be
like Moses, “stangers in a strange land.”
I look around and realize, there is a lot of sinners out there and a lot
of them are completely crazy. So how do we as a church deal with this brave,
new world?
Let me share a story with you about how our view point can
change everything.
More ducks than you can shake a stick at. A man was showing
off his new hunting dog to his friends as they drove down the road in south
Louisiana. He stopped the truck and sent the dog out to a pond and when the dog
came back it barked once and then sat down. The man’s friends asked what the
dog was doing.
“Well, this dog is so smart he is telling me there is one
duck on the pond up ahead.” His friends laughed at him but when they checked,
sure enough there was one duck swimming in the pond. The man sent the dog ahead
to another pond and he came back and barked 5 times. Again, the men were
skeptical but when they checked they found 5 duck.
They asked him to do it one more time and there was a big
pond a little further up the road. So they drove down and once again sent out
the dog, got out of the truck and waited. In a few minutes the dog came back,
this time with a stick in its mouth, furiously shaking it and even running up
and down hitting the men’s legs with the stick. The friends thought the dog had
gone crazy and jumped up in the back of the truck, scared for their lives.
“What is wrong with that crazy dog?”
The man smiled and said, “There ain’t nothing wrong with my
dog. He is just telling us that there are more ducks on that next pond than you
can shake a stick at.”
Maybe for us today in this brave new sinner infested world
of ours, we should be thinking, “There are more lost people to share the Gospel
with than you can shake a stick at.”
This sermon, the last in our First Church Series is from
Acts 17 where we find Paul a stranger in a strange land when he was in Athens
waiting for news from the church in Thessalonica. Here he was in a culture that
knew nothing of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They knew nothing of God’s
truth, his people or his Word. Yet rather than retreat into a friendly
synagogue somewhere, he went on the attack. Paul and those with him like Luke
became insurgents, going on the offensive with the Gospel of the Unknown God.
Motivation - Acts 17:16
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was
stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.
The Ancient And Old Idolatry
The population of Athens was at least a quarter of a million
people and was the seat of Greek art and science. Philo, the Jew, declares that
the Athenians were Hellenon oxuderkestatoi dianoian ("keenest in
intellect") and adds that Athens was to Greece what the pupil is to the
eye, or reason to the soul. –ISBE
The city of Athens was wholly given to idolatry on a scale
that we growing up in a Christian influenced world cannot possibly imagine. One
ancient wirter, Petronius, says
humourously of the city, that “it was easier to find a god than a man there.”
–Barnes
This is the city that Paul found himself in in Acts 17 and
though we don’t yet have the experience of the same kind of paganism of
Godlessness of Paul’s time, still there are things in the culture we now live
in that make us realize that this society today may be closer to Paul’s world than
to the world our grandparents knew.
The Modern And New Idolatry
Today we find ourselves in a an increasingly non-Christian
world and neo-pagan society.
Post Christianity and Neo-paganism in America
U.S. church membership was 70% or higher from 1937 through
1976, falling modestly to an average of 68% in the 1970s through the 1990s. The
past 20 years have seen an acceleration in the drop-off, with a
20-percentage-point decline since 1999 and more than half of that change
occurring since the start of the current decade.
Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism,
down from 51% in 2009. And one-in-five adults (20%) are Catholic, down from 23%
in 2009. Meanwhile, religiously unaffiliated population, a group also known as
religious “nones” – have seen their numbers swell. Self-described atheists now
account for 4% of U.S. adults, up modestly but significantly from 2% in 2009;
agnostics make up 5% of U.S. adults, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of
Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12%
in 2009.
It has been estimated that the number of Americans that are Wiccans,
or White Witches, is doubling every 30 months, and at this point there are more
than 200,000 registered witches and approximately 8 million unregistered
practitioners of Wicca. There are many
other “darker” forms of witchcraft that are also experiencing tremendous
growth.
The American
Religious Identification Survey gives Wicca an average annual growth of 143%
for the period 1990 to 2001 (from 8,000 to 134,000 – U.S. data / similar for
Canada & Australia). According to
The Statesman, Anne Elizabeth Wynn claims “The two most recent American
Religious Identification Surveys declare Wicca, one form of paganism, as the
fastest growing spiritual identification in America“.
Wicca is anticipated
by some Christian religious experts to become the third largest religion in the
United States early in the 21st century, behind only Christianity and Islam.
We now also have the growth of the Satanic Temple. And they
were growing, exponentially. Since TST’s founding in 2012, the organization has
increased from a handful of members to tens of thousands, with chapters all
over the US and the globe, from Stockholm to London and Los Angeles to Texas.
Paganism has its own convention every year as up to 70,000
Wiccan, Satanists, nudists, new agers, sorcerers, earth-worshippers, party
revelers and curiosity seekers descend to Black Rock Desert in Nevada for 8
days of debauchery and spiritualism every year around Labor Day weekend. The
annual “Burning Man Festival” is the largest gathering of its type in the world,
where drugs and debauchery are mixed with paganism and pleasure.
We must admit it, we are a Post-Christian Nation, but even
harder to admit is that we seem to also be on the verge of becoming a Neo-Pagan
Society as well. Not just at the Burning Man festival, but in our hall of
government with the worship of mother earth disguised as a battle against
Global Warming. Wherever ecology, the
the green dragon comes to power, paganism is marching with it.
In an online article Albert Mohler writes, “In several ways,
though, Paganism was waiting for modernity to catch up with it. The emphasis on
the worship of nature in virtually all variations of Pagan faith, and the
embrace of a female divinity in many, situated the religion to mesh with the
environmental and feminist movements that swept through the United States in
the 1970s exactly. The resurgence of paganism in our times is not the recovery
of ancient traditions simply reasserted in a new age, but a selective New Age
embrace of pagan symbols, themes, and practices in order to add
"spirituality" to ideological movements such as feminism and the
radical ecologists.”
Not only does our society and government worship the earth,
they also worship man as his own god. Sexual sin and perversion is looked upon
as the ultimate defining experience of life. It is their spiritual experience,
their moment of conversion and commitment.
Our society also worships athletes, politicians,
entertainers, fame and wealth. We worship debauchery and drunkenness but in all
these what we are really worshipping is ourselves. We have replaced the true
God of the Bible and even the false gods of the Greeks with an even poorer
substitute for worship, ourselves.
This is what Paul said in Romans 1:24-25 Wherefore God also
gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour
their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie,
and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed
for ever. Amen.
And you may say, but we have always had these sins and
always will and you are right but there is now a cultural difference, a
societal difference. In the past we as a society, knew that these sins were
wrong and we believed that we would be punished for them. We believed that one
day each of us would stand before a holy and righteous God and be punished.
Today, however, we actually believe that these sins are not wrong but indeed
are right, good and desirable. When a woman says she is proud of her abortion,
and marches to encourage others to kill their unborn child, something has
changed. We have made ourselves our own god and “the god that is myself” wishes
us only to do whatever we want to do. There is no right nor wrong there is only
lust and the fulfillment of that lust.
So, the question is, what does knowing that our world is
increasingly pagan do to our spirits? Stir them or stifle them.
Transition:
Paul’s spirit was stirred up and he preached to pagan people
in the most pagan city of the Roman world, people who had never heard the
gospel. Our attitude should be the same, but notice how Paul preached that
message. Let’s look at the medium, the
channels he used to tell people of Christ.
Medium - Acts 17:17-21
17 Therefore disputed
he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the
market daily with them that met with him. 18
Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks,
encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He
seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them
Jesus, and the resurrection. 19 And they
took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new
doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? 20
For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know
therefore what these things mean. 21 (For all the Athenians and strangers which
were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear
some new thing.)
Three Channels of Communication in Ancient Athens
The Luke records that Paul disputed with the Jews in the
synagogue, the devout persons in the Agora marketplace and with the
philosophers and judges in the Areopagus. These were three mediums, three
channels of communication that in some cases he chose and in other the medium
chose him.
The Agora, the Marketplace -The Channel of Commerce and
Social Networking
The Synagogue, the Church - The Channel of Religion and
Education
The Areopagus, the Court -The Channel of Law and the
Intellect
These were three arenas of battle for the souls of men,
where Paul went on the offensive. Paul begin to preach, he began to teach, he
began to challenge, discuss and get in people’s faces, minds and hearts with
the Good News. He rejected their paganism even at risk of his own life.
Paul preached the message we have in Acts 17 in the Areopagus.
The Areopagus saw that the laws were observed and executed
by the properly constituted authorities. The Areopagus protected the worship of
the gods, the sanctuaries and sacred festivals, and the olive trees of Athens;
and it supervised the religious practices of the people, their moral conduct,
as well as the education of the youth. Without waiting for a formal accusation
the Areopagus could summon any citizen to court, examine, convict and punish
him.
To this high court Paul was summoned, at this time it was
probably meeting in one of the porticoes, the porches that surrounded the Agora
marketplace. He may or may not have been
forcibly arrested. In vs. 19 it says “They took him.” It appears that he was
taken but not arrested yet still under the judgment of the Areopagus court Paul
could be condemned and killed it was found he was “preaching a new god.”
Preaching a new god was in this time a capital offense in both Athens and throughout
the Rome empire
It is interesting what the philosophers and judges said as
the reason they were interested in what Paul had to say.
First they asked in vs. 18, “What will this babbler say? The
word babbler literally means seed-picker. They were liking Paul to one of the
little birds in the Agora which would swoop in and opportunistically snatch
seeds that had fallen to the ground in the market. It was a common phrase and
had the meaning of someone who is grabbing bits and pieces of teaching or truth
from others and then trying to present it as their own coherent and systematic
beliefs.
Others said, He seems to be a setter fourth of strange gods.
This was a serious charge for as we have said to introduce a strange god in this
culture and time could be considered a capital offense. The reason they thought
he was introducing gods rather than God was because Paul was preaching Jesus
and the resurrection. The Greek word for resurrection was anastasis and they
thought he spoke of Jesus and Anastasis, two gods.
To Paul it did not matter why they had brought him to court.
All that mattered was that he was going to have a chance to sow the seeds of
the Gospel in pagan hearts, where it had never been sown before.
Three Channels of Communication in Modern Athens
What we see in Paul’s actions in Athens is that he was
willing to use any medium to reach men. In our Neo-Pagan society today, we also
must take the Gospel to the lost by all means and mediums possible.
We must dispute with them as Paul did. The passage says that
Paul “disputed” with them. The word is the Greek word dialegomai, it means
dispute, reason, preach, or dialogue with. The TDNT says it means to “mingle
thought with thought.”
In order to do that you have to reach people through the
channels that are open to us today.
We must reach them in the arena of religion through our
churches, writing and preaching. We must reach them in the arena of the
marketplace, and commerce, the places where people congregate and share their
thought and ideas. Today that is TV, radio and especially the internet. It may
still be a real open marketplace like fairs, festival and community parades or
events. We must reach them in the area of the law and the intellect. This is
the voting booth, the colleges, the schools and the legislatures of our nation
and our state.
In so many ways, we have neglected the channels that God has
opened for us and we are losing the battle for souls and our nation because
they have not been challenged with the Gospel or the truth of God’s Word. We
have forgotten that we are to be on the offensive, we are not the home team
here, this is Satan’s world and we should understand that we in a spiritual
sense are the invaders, the insurgents.
Jesus declared, Matthew
16:18 “…upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not
prevail against it.” That sounds like and offensive plan, not a defensive one.
We are to be on the attack against the ramparts of Hell.
Illustration: Adonirom Judson
Adoniram Judson,
the great Baptist missionary to Burma of the early 1800’s, endured untold
hardships trying to reach the lost pagans of that country. For seven
heartbreaking years he suffered hunger and privation and preached without a
single convert. During this time he was thrown into prison as a spy, and for 21
months was subjected to almost incredible mistreatment. As a result, for the
rest of his life he carried the ugly scars made by the chains and iron shackles
which had cruelly bound him. Upon his release he asked for permission from the
same ruler who had imprisoned him to enter another province where he might
resume preaching the Gospel. The godless ruler indignantly denied his request,
saying "My people are not fools enough to listen to anything a missionary
might say, but I fear they might be impressed by your scars and turn to your
religion!"
Adoniram Judson’s Hymn of Faith. – “In spite of sorrow, loss
and pain, our course be onward still: we sow on Burma’s barren plain, we reap
on Zion’s hill.”
Transition:
Finally, we must know this that the as important as the
medium is it cannot replace the message. No medium no matter how powerful will
bring revival or save a single soul but the message Paul shared changed the
world and it still can today.
Message -Acts 17:22-31
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, Ye men
of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I
passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription,
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto
you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of
heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as
though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all
things; And hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they
might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own
poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think
that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and
man’s device. And the times of this
ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which
he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained;
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from
the dead.
An Unchanging Message to a Unknowing People
Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, he said, “I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” The word here for
superstitious is the word deisidaimwn it is a neutral word not a negative one
(from deidw, to fear, and daimwn, deity). Paul was saying to the Athenians I
see you are very religious, very reverent and worshipful. He then began to
preach to them the “unknown God”
He tells them as he went through the city he saw altars,
places of devotion, inscribed to “the unknown god.” These were pillars or small
columns which had been set up at various places in Athens. During a plague, a flock of sheep was let
loose and everywhere the flock stopped one of the sheep was sacrifice to the
god that was closest to that spot. If there was no god near, then the animal
was sacrificed to the “unknown god” and a pillar set up to mark the spot.
Paul preached to them the unknown God, by doing so he could
not be accused of introducing a “new god” they already worshipped the unknown
God but did have a full knowledge of Him. Paul would now simply fill in the
gaps of their knowledge.
Paul then proceeded to preach a masterful message of the one
true God, and the man appointed by God, Jesus who will judge all of the world
and that man’s resurrection.
He told them that the true God was the creator of all. He
was Lord of heaven and earth, He needed
nothing from man as He was the giver of
all life and breath. The true God is the
maker of all nations from one blood. The true God was sovereign. He
determined the times and the boundaries of their lives. As sovereign and creator He had made it
possible for man to seek after him.
He is the God of life and existence. All man, everywhere are
his offspring. How could we possibly think then that the one we sprang from was
constructed of gold, silver or stone.
Finally, Paul says God has overlooked those times but now
commands all men everywhere to repent. Repent now because God has appointed a
day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man, the man
Jesus Christ, who God has ordained to be the judge of the quick and the dead.
He concludes and says God has given evidence of the truth
through the resurrection of Jesus.
An Unchanging Message That Changes The World
When we enter into the arenas of this neo-pagan world we
must always carry with us one weapon the Gospel.
Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also
to the Greek.
John 3:14-15 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must
the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in
him should not perish, but have eternal life.
John 12:32 And I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.
You must never underestimate the power of the Gospel. Paul
says it is the power of God unto salvation. we must believe that there is a
power, unmistakable, undeniable in the good news of Jesus Christ. There is
something supernatural in the story of the death, burial and resurrection of
Jesus that draws men to salvation. We have to believe that and act on that
belief. We have to preach Jesus above all other subjects of our sermons and
lives.
Paul could have argued philosophy with the Sophist, the
Stoics and the Epicureans. It is obvious in his quotes that he was schooled in
the philosophies from his time in Tarsus. He often uses Aristotelian logic in
setting up his arguments of theology in the book of Romans but he does not try
to use these things to win lost souls.
As a good pastor friend of mine has said, “You don’t argue
people into the kingdom of God” – David Pittman.
Paul takes only one weapon with him when he enters the arena
of the Areopagus, he takes the Gospel of Christ. The message that overcomes the
ages, crosses the centuries and pierces the power of sin, is and always will be
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No matter
how much this world changes, no matter how alien it may become to us we can
only effect it, change it as insurgents taking over Satan’s territory with the
Good News, that Christ redeemeth sinful men!
Conclusion
What was the result that day in the Areopagus?
Acts 17:32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the
dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. So
Paul departed from among them. Howbeit
certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the
Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Did all believe? No. Did most believe? No, But did some
believe? Oh, yes! And those few changed the world by becoming insurgents in
other lands until that wonderful message of hope came to us.
What will be the result or our taking the Gospel to the
world around us using every channel and medium God opens? What will happen in
our own neo-pagan culture? Will the United States be swept into revival? No. I don’t think it will. Will many be saved?
Probably not. But will some be reached? Will some be turned from death and
destruction? Will some be brought to repentance and faith? Will some exchange
their burden of sin for the joy of a relationship with God their Creator? Yes,
yes and yes, and every time it will be worth it.
Let me close with a favorite story that took place about
this same time in the Roman Empire and shows the change that the early church
had made through the message of the Gospel.
Forty Wrestlers
In the days of the
Roman Emperor Nero, there lived and served him a band of soldiers known as the
"Emperor's Wrestlers." Fine, brave men they were, the best and the strongest
of the land, recruited from the great athletes of the Roman amphitheater.
In the great
amphitheater they upheld the arms of the emperor against all challengers.
Before each contest they stood before the emperor's throne. Then through the
courts of Rome rang the cry: "We, the wrestlers, wrestling for thee, O
Emperor, to win for thee the victory and from thee, the victor's crown."
The great Roman
army was sent to fight in Gaul and no soldiers were fiercer or more loyal than
this band of wrestlers led by their centurion Vespasian. Back in Rome, news
reached Nero that many Roman soldiers had accepted the Christian faith.
Therefore, this decree was dispatched to the all the army and to the centurion
Vespasian; "If there be any among your soldiers who cling to the faith of
the Christian, they must die!"
The decree was
received in the dead of winter. The soldiers were camped on the shore of a
frozen inland lake. It was with sinking heart that Vespasian, the centurion,
read the emperor's message.
Vespasian called
the soldiers together and asked: "Are there any among you who cling to the
faith of the Christian? If so, let him step forward!" Forty wrestlers
instantly stepped forward two paces, respectfully saluted, and stood at
attention. Vespasian was surprised and shocked. He had not expected so many of
his best men to step forward.
"I will ask again at sundown. Consider carefully your
answer," said Vespasian. Sundown came. Again the question was asked. Again
the same forty wrestlers stepped forward.
Vespasian pleaded
with them long and earnestly without prevailing upon a single man to deny his
Lord. Finally he said, "The decree of the emperor must be obeyed, but I am
not willing that your comrades should shed your blood. I order you to march out
upon the lake of ice, and I shall leave you there to the mercy of the
elements."
The forty wrestlers
were stripped and then, falling into columns of four, marched toward the center
of the lake of ice. As they marched they broke into the chant of the arena but
with a change, "Forty wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O Christ, to win for
Thee the victory and from Thee, the victor's crown!" Through the night
Vespasian stood by his campfire and watched. As he waited through the long
night, there came to him fainter and fainter the wrestlers' song.
As morning drew
near one figure, overcome by exposure, crept quietly toward the fire; in the
extremity of his suffering he had renounced his Lord. Faintly but clearly from
the darkness came the song: "Thirty-nine wrestlers, wrestling for Thee, O
Christ, to win for Thee the victory and from Thee, the victor's crown!"
Vespasian looked at
the figure drawing close to the fire. Perhaps he saw eternal light shining
there toward the center of the lake. Who can say? But off came his helmet and
clothing, and he sprang upon the ice, crying, "Forty wrestlers, wrestling
for Thee, O Christ, to win for Thee the victory and from Thee, the victor's
crown!"
What are you fighting for today? What are willing to risk
everything for? If not for the Gospel, if not for eternity, if not for the love
of Jesus Christ….then what? What could be more important or powerful or needed
in this world today than the good news of how God loves us so much that he send
Jesus to die for us and then proved that love, that power, that good news by
the defeat of death at the resurrection?
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