All Men Everywhere

If you have your Bibles and you want to turn with me, we'll be reading from Acts chapter 17.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Acts chapter 17, and we'll be reading down through to verse 34.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

Acts 17, verse 15.

Acts 17:15

Remember that what I'm about to read is God's holy and inspired words,

so give attention as such.

Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a

command for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed.

Now, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within

him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

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.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him And some

said, what does this babbler wish to say?

Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities Because he was preaching

Jesus and the resurrection,

And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying May we know what

this new teaching is that you are presenting For some bring strange things to

our ears 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.

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said,

Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious,

for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,

I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God.

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

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.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth.

And having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling

that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him.

Yet he is actually not far from each one of us for in him we live and move and

have our being as some of your own poets have said for we are indeed his offspring.

Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like

gold or silver or stone and imaged, formed by the art and imagination of man,

the times of ignorance God overlooked.

But now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a

day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked,

but others said, we'll hear this again.

So Paul went out from their midst. but certain or some men joined him and believed

among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

This is the word of the Lord.

You can be seated. Let's pray together.

Holy Spirit, we ask that now you would come to be with us and help us and give

us clear minds to think and to listen and to hear and to understand all that this text has for us,

but particularly how this text, like all of your word, drives us to Jesus Christ himself.

We pray this in his name. Amen.

Acts chapter 1730, Paul says something of a conclusive demand to his preaching,

gospel at Athens. He says, now God commands all men everywhere to repent.

It's an amazing statement after an amazing address to an amazing audience in

Athens, particularly at the Areopagus, something like the Supreme Court of Athens at the time.

And you'll notice he didn't say something that I always heard when I was growing up.

When the gospel was distilled or broken down into its basic parts,

it usually went something like, accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal Savior.

Believe in Jesus and you'll be saved. That's it.

Repent. I never heard that.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I never heard it, really.

I heard just believe in Jesus, come to Jesus, accept him into your heart as your personal savior.

As if the gospel, and I know you've heard me say this in various forms,

but I'm not going to give up.

I think it's all throughout the book of Acts. And it's come to something of

a poignant and beautiful head here with Paul's address in Athens.

Paul doesn't say, smile, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for you.

Just accept him into your heart.

His presentation of the gospel is an amazing presentation that takes place in

what we might even call a cosmic conflict between two great cities, Jerusalem and Athens.

Paul presenting the gospel from Jerusalem as it comes from Christ himself,

the philosophers in Athens presenting the best that the world has to offer in

terms of Epicurean or Stoic philosophies.

And he outlines for them not just a point at which they can accept Jesus,

but a place at which they can repent and all their lives will change.

And you'll notice it's bigger than that.

The whole world will change.

When people hear the gospel, they're not hearing just a small section about

what Jesus did on the cross to save you from sins and keep you from hell.

They're hearing what God did through Christ to change the whole world and the

whole direction of history.

We've heard it already from Peter, Peter in chapter 3, verse 17.

When he's addressing the people there, he says in verse 19, repent therefore

and turn back that your sins may be blotted out.

And notice what he says. Paul says the same thing, that times of refreshing

may come from the presence of the Lord and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.

Things change here and things change for these individuals, but not just as individuals.

Things change for everyone, everywhere.

And there's not just a pleading that they have, please accept Jesus.

There is an apostolic command.

Because of what Jesus Christ has done, and particularly his resurrection to

the right hand of God the Father,

all men everywhere must repent, turn away from their sins, turn to Jesus,

and move forward in the mission of history itself.

It's an amazing presentation of the gospel. It's much bigger than just a small

sort of individual package delivery that says, you won't go to hell anymore, you'll go to heaven.

We see it in the very context of the setting here. When Paul goes to Athens,

he is going to the very pinnacle of Greek civilization.

It's a confrontation. It's really set as a confrontation between the best that

the classical world has to offer in Athens and the gospel.

Athens was the premier city of Greece, the only city in Greece that Rome gave

the status of independent polis, independent city.

They were allowed to govern their own administration. The Romans had such great

respect for the city of Athens as the center of Greek philosophy and theology

and teachings that the Romans themselves were borrowing from.

Athens by this time was known as the center of all the intellectual and philosophical

ideas that molded, shaped, and founded the whole classical world.

All of Rome was built on these ideas. All of Rome was so respective of Athens

that they loved the city.

The great historian Herodotus writes about this. Thucydides,

Herodotus was from Athens. Thucydides eventually lived there.

F.F. Bruce says this, he says, The sculpture, literature, and oratory of Athens

in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.

Have never been surpassed. In philosophy, she occupied the leading place,

being the native city of Socrates and Plato, and the adopted home of Aristotle,

Epicurus, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism.

In all these fields, Athens remained the unchallenged leader of the classical world.

So in consideration of their splendid past, as I said, Rome gave them a place like no other.

And so when Paul goes there, he's not going there as a tourist.

Like if I went to Athens today, it probably would be different.

It's mostly secular now, but I'd want to see the Parthenon. I'd want to see

Areopagus or sometimes called Mars Hill.

I know there's a prestigious school not too far from here named after this very place.

Mars Hill, the Areopagus sort of acted as like the symbol of all that was glorious

and great of the classical world.

But when Paul went there, you'll notice what happened. He says,

verse 16, Paul was waiting there in Athens and his spirit was provoked within

him because he saw the city filled with idols.

Notice how Paul sees things and draws attentions to things differently than

most of us. When most of us were in high school or college and we took a class

on Greek philosophy, you would have never known that they had a theology.

Aristotle's logic, Aristotle's rhetoric. You might read his ethics.

You might read as if they were just guys who didn't believe in God or gods.

They all believe in gods.

They all had different theories about the gods. You never learn about the theology

of the Greek philosophers in schools.

You learn about them as if they were neutral intellectuals, just bantying about wonderful ideas.

But Paul looks around and sees the whole city is full of idols.

It's a polytheistic city, many gods. They all believed in many gods.

By the way, I want to make an analogy here that I think is helpful.

When we look around at our culture today, we see a polytheistic culture as well,

only it's called pluralism.

You have your God, you have your religion, you have your way,

your truth, my truth, everyone has a truth, idols everywhere defining our truths.

And just as Rome sat as sort of a neutral, secular authority over all the vast

gods of their empire, So today, we have our government supposedly neutral,

secular, supposedly overseeing all the different gods of pluralism that are

meshed together in our culture.

Paul was vexed by this. He was grieved by it. It was horrible. He couldn't sit still.

I love Paul. I have to admit, I like him a lot. He couldn't sit still.

He had that preacher instinct to go, and he went everywhere.

He talked to the Jews. He talked to the people in the marketplace.

He talked to philosophers. Everywhere he went, he was interacting with people

about this context that was so horrible.

Everyone is involved in pagan adultery and he can't take it.

He confronts Epicurean philosophers and Stoic philosophers, which are very important.

By the way, I'm not in any way, as I go through this, I'm not encouraging you

to not read the Greek philosophers. Everyone ought to read the Greek philosophers.

Everyone especially should read the Stoics.

I think it should be a signed reading for every young man in America.

I like the Stoics. And for the record, I'm not the only one who loves the Stoics.

John Calvin, those of you who loved Calvin, John Calvin's favorite philosopher,

as I understand it, was Seneca. He was a Stoic.

The Stoics taught that life should be led. And by the way, the Epicureans and

the Stoics were both sort of trying to think through what is the good life?

What are we here for? What's our purpose? What's the good life?

And both the Epicureans and the Stoics were talking and thinking about living

a virtuous, good life that was in accord with one's own nature.

The Epicurean idea of living for pleasure, not physical pleasure,

but philosophical, theological pleasures, being satisfied with food, water, and friends.

And the Stoics being satisfied to live according to all the virtues.

The Stoics were the ones who virtually developed wisdom, courage,

temperance, and justice.

Not naming the person, kids. Those are the Stoic philosophical ideas here.

They developed them, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, all of these. They emphasized duty.

We could use some of this, right? But I want you to notice that when Paul went

to Athens, Paul never did this. Paul never said, you Epicureans are onto something.

Let me just add Jesus to it. You Stoics have got an understanding.

After all, Jesus said, don't live an anxious life.

Don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

You couldn't change the hairs on your head. You can't change tomorrow.

Paul didn't say, add Jesus, and you could be a Christian Stoic,

or a Christian epicure. He didn't do that.

I love what Paul did. All week long, I was going through this and I had it into

two sermons. So I'm gonna jam pack it all into one sermon today.

So put your seatbelts on, I guess.

So Paul went to Athens and he didn't just say, you guys have got this right.

You guys have got that right. But let me add Jesus to it and let's dial in Jesus a little bit.

A lot of commentaries you read on this, they say things like this,

like the philosophers were just this close, just slightly off.

But if you put Jesus into it, well, the philosophers are kind of lined up and everything's okay.

You'll notice that he approached it so radically differently.

They even thought, they called him a babbler. He says he reasoned in the synagogue.

Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversed with him.

Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities.

What does this babbler have to say?

Spermologos was the word. It's like a seed picker. They thought of Paul as someone

who'd picked up enough of this, enough of the Romans, enough of the Greeks,

and he was sort of throwing things out as if someone who didn't know what he was talking about.

I think the reason they did that is because Paul was approaching all of their

philosophy from a fundamentally radically different perspective.

And so he goes and they call him, they say, come up to the Areopagus.

Again, the Areopagus at this time was something like the Supreme Court in Athens.

And I want you to understand that because many commentators get to the end of

this section and they say, well, when things went pretty well in Thessalonica,

not bad in Philippi, great in Berea, but crashed and burned in Athens.

Because at the end, it says a few believe.

The word there is not a few, some. It's very close to what it's always been

saying. And those who were appointed to eternal life believe.

And it's no small feat to be taken to the center of the Supreme Court in Athens

and to stand before the entire nation symbolically and speak the gospel to them.

Athens was not a failure. Not only was it not a failure, it becomes a real strong

model for us to be ready to speak to our culture today.

So Paul says, standing in the midst of the Areopagus speaks to them.

Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are religious.

He immediately starts to talk about their worship.

And you'll notice from start to finish, Paul doesn't say, you're doing a pretty good job.

Let me add Jesus to that, dial you in and you'll be okay.

No, what he does at every single point along the way is he takes the existing

philosophies, the existing ideas, and uses them against them.

He doesn't say you're okay because you're religious.

What he'll end up saying is your religious expressions are a result of the fact

that that's how God made you.

You were made to worship. You were made to have a religion.

The only problem is you don't have any understanding of the true God to whom

you should be giving this worship.

Their false worship testified against them. It didn't work in their favor.

Again, he didn't say, you're just this close.

He said, you have missed it completely.

All of their deeds and all of their works bear witness against him.

He's not saying we are one with God as the poets. Later, he'll quote a Greek poet, Epimenides.

He doesn't say that. He always goes to the root issue, which is authority.

Authority. Paul masterfully strikes at the heart of the Greek rebellion against

God. They want to define themselves, and they want to make up their own gods,

and make up their own religions, and make up their own ethics,

and make up their own virtues.

Rather, Paul goes straight to the heart of issue and says, not only does your

worship testify against you, it makes you culpable for rebellion against the true God.

You are guilty for this worship. He doesn't say, good job, guys, way to go.

Let's help you out a little bit. He says, this testifies against you.

And always and everywhere, Paul is pointing back to the resurrection.

The earlier these guys, they actually were confused. They thought,

seems like he's teaching two gods, Jesus and Anastasis, like Jesus and the resurrection.

So they were mixed up, and Paul kept going back to the resurrection.

And in this sense, the resurrection of Jesus Christ stands as a two-edged sword.

It is our hope if we believe in Jesus Christ. It will be our condemnation if we don't.

Paul raises up the resurrection and says, this is the moment.

This is the event to which all men everywhere must look and either repent and

believe and receive life or be condemned.

It's the crossroads of all human history The resurrection of Jesus Christ Earlier

in his discussions And particularly later,

Verse 23 says in his address I passed along and observed the objects of your

worship I found also an altar with this inscription To the unknown God,

What therefore you worship as unknown This I proclaim to you Now I want to remind

you He's not just saying Guess what guys You've been worshiping Jesus you just didn't know it.

So plug in Jesus and you'll be okay. Now that's not what he says.

Because right away, he's going to say, the God, this unknown God,

this deity that you know is out there, that you know exists,

you're trying to worship him as if he's like all these other gods, but he's not.

He's not made with human hands, and he's not made of gold or silver.

It's interesting that these unknown, these idols or altars to the unknown God

occurred because of a plague several hundred years earlier in Athens,

where there was a plague because of what the king had done, slaughtered some innocent people.

The place was supposed to be polluted. And ironically, they called in the great

Greek philosopher from Crete named Epimenides.

And Epimenides said, here's what we do. We get a bunch of sheep,

we send them out. And if they lay down during the day, we'll sacrifice there.

And we'll sacrifice if they lay down in a property that we know is occupied

by a god, we'll put up a marker to that god.

But if they lay down in a property that we don't know who that god is,

let's just cover our bases and make that the unknown god.

And evidently, there were many markers where they weren't quite sure which God

occupied this territory.

So Epimenides, Epimenides will come back later because he's the one Paul says,

as he quotes them, in him we live and have, move and have our being.

So Paul is finding common ground, but you'll notice he doesn't find common ground

in order to agree with them.

He finds common ground in order to condemn them.

He was using the monument to the unknown gods as testimony against these people.

Paul used it against them. It's a classic Proverbs. Those of you who were in

our apologetic study, yay, you were there. You remember that Proverbs says,

do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise.

And then the very next section says, answer a fool according to his folly,

lest he be wise. So Paul does that.

He doesn't say, yeah, you guys got this right. Let's talk about it.

No, he says, I understand what you're doing and it's foolish.

The true God doesn't fit into that. And then later he will present the truth of the gospel itself.

So Paul, does all the religious confusion in the world testify?

Haven't you ever noticed that, by the way? Haven't you ever heard anybody say,

you know, nobody really knows how to get to God?

I mean, the Hindus think this, the Muslims think this, the Mormons think this,

you Christians think that. Look at you Christians, there's thousands of denominations.

You guys don't, so it doesn't really matter, right?

There's a mountaintop and we're all going to the mountain the same way as long

as we get to the top. of the mountain. Paul doesn't say that at all.

He says there's only one way. In spite of all the confusion,

he doesn't say the confusion somehow testifies that we should all be confused.

He says the confusion actually testifies that there is one true God and we ought to worship him.

There is one, the actual living God who testifies against you,

even in the very temple that you built to him.

You thought you would cover your bases by putting a shrine and say,

to this God out there, there's probably more gods there.

We know that there's, a lot of the Greek philosophers, by the way,

believed that there was this sort of overarching logos, fiery substance in the

universe that somehow held everything together. They weren't quite sure what it was.

Paul is telling them who, not what, but who it actually is.

He says this, The God who made the world and everything in it,

being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.

He doesn't recognize their worship as admirable.

They're condemned by it. Verse 25, Nor is he served by any human hands as though

he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

You can imagine these people here hearing this. When Paul says the true God,

cannot be confined to shrines or temples or trees or rivers or whatever,

he is exploding everything that they believe in.

And you can imagine Athens was the place surrounded. They were under the shadow,

perhaps, of the Parthenon itself.

Scholars aren't sure where they were on the hill, but certainly there were temples

and shrines everywhere.

There were priests and prophets who daily attended to the needs of the gods.

You always had to bring the gods flowers or food or money or something to them

to keep them happy, to satisfy them. And Paul says, guess what?

The true God doesn't live in temples and you don't feed him and he doesn't need your help.

And they were surrounded by, they were a very religious people.

If you read Herodotus' history of the Persian invasions over,

centuries, all the way from Darius to Xerxes, if you read the stories of Xerxes

coming in with the Persian armies,

everything they did, Herodotus recorded their religious activities.

And everything anyone did then, you didn't do it unless you sought the Oracle

of Delphi or sought the prophet or sacrificed to your priest to see what the

bones and the blood would say. Should we cross the river?

Should we pick up camp? Should we build this bridge? They were very superstitious, very religious people.

Herodotus records the religions of the Ethiopians, the Libyans,

the Arians, the Chaldeans, the Indians, and they all had these same views of their gods, all of them.

Funny story about Xerxes once when he was building a bridge across the Hellespont

and a storm from the Hellespont came up and ruined his bridge. He spanked the waters.

He sent his priests down to beat the waters you have dared to raise up against the great Xerxes.

And he, I call this spanking. He beat them.

He put chains into them to bind the waters and he rebuilt.

You cannot, and so he conjures up his gods against the gods of those waters,

because everyone everywhere thought of these things. Believe this.

And Paul rejects all man-made gods, all idols.

God, and you'll notice by the way, You'll notice some people say,

well, Paul moved, he shifted in

Athens because he's no longer quoting the prophets and the Psalms as much.

And it's true. He adjusts his message to the audience, but he's always quoting the scriptures.

Even his statement where he says God doesn't live in temples reminds us of 1

Kings 8 where Solomon himself, when he built the temple said,

oh Lord, will you really dwell with us?

You cannot be contained in a temple. Even this glorious temple built for your

presence does not contain you.

So Paul goes on to talk about the sovereign, transcendent God who's not like

any of the other gods of the earth.

You'll notice Paul says there's two kinds of people in the world.

He doesn't say there's Epicureans and there's Stoics and then there's Aristotelians or whatever.

He says there's two kinds of people in the world, those who worship the true

and living God and those who are in rebellion against him. That's it.

Two groups. And today we would plug in any other false religion in all the world.

They're not just this close. They're not going up the same mountain.

They are not even in the same ballpark.

Paul continues in verse 26, he said, And he made from one man every nation of

mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods

and boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps

feel their way towards him and find him.

It is actually not far from each one of us.

The apostle Paul tells the people of Athens in verse 27 that God created humanity,

and they're not particularly special, it would blow up the Athenian myth about themselves.

The Athenians actually thought that they sprang from the ground of Attica itself.

They were a unique and special people. There is no one on the earth like the

Athenians. The people of Attica were the most profoundly virtuous,

intelligent, bright, and superior tribe of the whole world.

So when Paul goes after him, he said, you're not special.

You're like everyone else that God made, and you owe God obedience the same

as everybody in the whole earth owes God obedience.

Evangelism in this case, again, he's not looking to see or ask them the question,

if you died tonight, would you go to heaven or hell? And what would you say

to God or St. Peter at the pearly gates?

He is commanding them. He is explaining to them. He's teaching them this body

of knowledge that we might say is much like the Nicene Creed that we use every week.

This body of the Lord, almighty creator of heaven and earth,

maker of all things visible and invisible.

And we believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, goes on to the resurrection,

to the ascension, and to the movement of the right hand and to the change of history itself.

Paul's gospel requires us to teach, preach, and understand the gospel as a change in our worldview.

The way we view everything in the world is now changed by the gospel.

It's a clash of worldviews. It's not just, again, Epicureans,

Stoics, and wondering about all the disagreements.

All the religious confusion doesn't mean that we should change the exclusive

claims of Christ. It simply means that there's a lot of religious confusion.

A lot of it. And that's why Paul would say in the verses that we read from Romans,

although they knew God, they did not glorify him, nor were they thankful,

but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened.

And listen to this, because this is commonly run through many of the letters

of Paul, professing to be wise, they became fools.

And that's what Paul is going to present at the Areopagus. That's what he is.

Professing to be wise, they became fools. Again, dividing all mankind into two

groups or classes of people, either those who submit to the claims of the proper,

God, the only true God, Jesus Christ, and those who will come under judgment.

Paul takes, by the way, all the abstract theories of the philosophers,

all the different things they were thinking, and narrows it down to culpable

ignorance. You guys are going to have to give an answer, and you're guilty. You are guilty.

He says, basically, by talking to them about their religion,

their own conscience and their own religious expression testifies against them.

And they're definitely not racially superior to anyone else.

They didn't spring from the ground or soil of Attica.

They had a word, autothokunus, I think was the word, that we sprang up from

the earth. We self-sprang.

And by the way, every tribe always has this. Every tribe always has a description of their origin.

The Aztecs, the eagle and the cactus eating the serpents, and the Incas from the sun god.

We served a tribe in Africa that believed that Masaba, which means mountain,

Bamasaba, the people of the mountain, came from this one great chief who came down from the mountain.

The Basoga tribe along the Nile River had their theory of their origin.

There was a powerful witch doctor who lived in the cave. I know because I saw the cave.

The cave there on the side of the Nile, and from that cave, he doled out magic

and witchcraft. And from that witch doctor came the power and strength of the Basoga.

On and on, every culture, every tribe has its origin myth, has its way of saying

we are the special people. We're the ones blessed by God.

What a horrible blow it must have been, particularly for the Athenians,

who have for centuries now thought they were the center of the whole world.

Now, Paul says there's only one way, and it's exclusively Jesus Christ. There's only one way.

Come to him. And I love the way he's calling them to this, because now we see

here the literal fulfillment of the reversal of the Tower of Babel,

where Paul is going out. Remember, from Acts, from Jerusalem,

Judea, Samaria, to the uttermost parts of the earth.

And now the gospel is going out. And all of those nations, once scattered by

Babel, once pitted against each other, all of the different tribal groups thinking

they're better than the other group, all of them squabbling and fighting over tribal boundaries.

Now all men everywhere are told it's time to come back to the true and living God.

God had, we'll see, for a time, for a time allowed such scattering.

But now he commands all men everywhere to repent.

And I want to go back to this when Paul says, when he starts to talk about the

appointed boundaries for the earth and where people live, of,

let's look at some of this Old Testament language, just so you know,

Paul didn't just become a Greek in Athens, and then he became a Jew when he was with the Jews.

When he was with the Athenians, yes,

he spoke like he understood Greek philosopher. And by the way, he did.

Paul was a very well-educated man.

He didn't just come up with these quotes. He knew the quotes of Epaminides,

and he knew Epicurus, and he knew Zeno, and he knew the Stoics.

Very well-educated. But also, in his answer, he said things like this,

When you reconstruct his speech, I just wanna highlight a few points just to

know that Paul's still preaching from the Old Testament.

In six days, the Lord made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them.

That's what he said. The Lord God made everything. That comes from Exodus 20.

But will and God deed dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot

contain him. How much less this house? 1 Kings 8, 27.

If God were hungry, remember Paul says he doesn't need, if God were hungry,

what did he tell you? For the world is his and the fullness thereof. Psalm 50, 12.

He created the heavens, also gave breath unto all the people upon it,

and the spirit that they have to walk therein, Isaiah 42, 8.

When the Most High divided the nations as their inheritance,

when he separated the sons of Adam and set the bounds of the people according

to the number of their children, Deuteronomy 32, 8.

Paul didn't give up the Bible when he went to Athens.

He took the Bible and presented it to them in a way they could understand it.

I love this story because Paul as a missionary is doing the best he can to contextualize

the gospel without changing it.

I'll tell you, as a missionary, when we went to our missionary training,

the big word in missions today is contextualization.

You have to contextualize the gospel, by which many people mean change it.

Change it so it's not as offensive. Change it so that it's not as grating against the culture.

Of course, you have to textualize. You have to speak the language.

And by the way, Paul most likely was here speaking in Greek.

Gotta love this guy, multilingual. He speaks to the Jews in Hebrew.

He speaks to the Romans in Latin. He speaks now on the hill of Areopagus,

Aries or Mars Hill in Greek.

And he's speaking to them, the words of God.

And he's reminded them, he says, and God has made from one blood,

Adam, every nation to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their

pre-appointed boundaries of their dwellings so that they should seek the Lord

in the hope that they might grope for him and find him,

though he is not far from each one of us.

No people or person may claim some kind of special standing from who they are

or in their origin or in their nation.

Very humbling for all of us, actually. And I'll just say this brief.

You MAGA people can get a little irritated with me if you want. I don't care.

I'm a MAGA guy. But sometimes, let's be honest, when we speak of America's the

greatest and we're the best and we're the strongest and we're the brightest. No one can defeat.

That's the language of an empire that sometimes needs to be humbled.

Yes, I love America. Don't get mad at me. Of course, I love my country, but come on.

Sometimes in our rhetoric, we speak as if we're Athenians, at the center of

world history, at the center of the whole world, as if God came to do nothing but bless America.

We need to be humbled if that's the case. Pray to God that we'll humble ourselves,

right, so that we will be blessed and we'll be a blessed nation.

But no nation, no nation has a special standing before God any more than the

Greeks or the Romans or the Assyrians or the Babylonians.

And God is telling us here that I raise up nations and I bring them down all

for the purpose of bringing salvation to my people.

God says, I determine the allotted periods and the boundaries and the places

where everyone would go. I put them there. You didn't spring up from the earth. I put you there.

And I am the sovereign God who can take away anything I want to take away.

He begins to go through and he says, God put them there for the very purpose

that Paul is there right now, that they might find God when it was time.

It's interesting. He said, as some of your own poets have said,

in him we live and move and have our being.

A quote from Epimenides, the very man who put the shrines up to the unknown

gods, the same philosophers.

And it was a poem to Zeus at the time.

And he said, in him we live and have our being. and actually Epimenides was

probably what we would call a panantheist. He believed God is in everything.

And immediately most theologians are like, wait, Paul quoted a panantheist about

God living in everything?

But no, he didn't, not with affirmation. What he did was he said what Epimenides

was onto and what Erratus was onto when he said we are his offspring,

they were onto something. But what I'm here to tell you is the true and living

God gives meaning to these things.

It is true that in him we live, and move and have our being,

not because God is in us, but because as Paul says in Colossians 1.15,

in him, in Christ, all things hold together.

The sovereign creator God put everyone where, created everything,

put everything in its place and sustains everything perfectly.

And as his offspring, as those who God has generated as human beings, we owe him obedience.

This God, the one whom I present speak to you today, the one true living God,

he said, the God who made the world and everything in it.

Does not live in temples. He's not affirming Epimenides' statement.

He's saying what Epimenides was onto you, I'm explaining to you how it really works.

And by the way, in this outline, mythology is completely decimated.

And mythology is the idea basically that we have these ideas about our gods,

and we project them upward to the gods.

For the Greeks and the Romans, they thought of their gods as basically like human beings.

Zeus and Hera were a couple, as in married couples, married couples fight.

So they got into fights and they were jealous and that caused wars.

What Paul was saying is all, every religion that has its idea first in the human

mind and then projected onto God is wrong.

The only way we know God is if we accept God's thoughts from him.

Theology. Theology is receiving the words from God and believing them.

Mythology is any projection of our ideas onto God.

And it happens all the time, even among Christians.

Anytime you and I want to say, well, I like to think of God as all loving.

I don't like to think that God would judge anybody by sending them to hell.

We're involved in mythology. That's classic mythology. You and I projecting our own minds onto God.

But Paul said, this is not acceptable. Not only are we not allowed to project

our thoughts to God, we must accept God's thoughts to us.

And if we don't, we're morally accountable for it.

He will judge you if you don't, or if you do.

And Paul says this too, and this is sort of a, brings it to a height.

Verse 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent.

What do you mean by the times of ignorance?

I read one scholar who said, well, God basically, it was sort of in the Old

Testament, before Jesus came, it was sort of ollie ollie income free.

You know, at the end of tag when you weren't caught, ollie ollie income free.

As if God didn't punish anybody Or judge anybody in those old days Because they

didn't know Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?

I mean, fire and brimstone, we know that in the Old Testament,

it wasn't like God said, well, I don't care about sin until Jesus comes.

So we know that's not true. What does he mean that there were times of ignorance that God overlooked?

It doesn't mean that he didn't judge the earth, but it did mean that for a time,

his grace and his goodness was focused narrowly on like Noah and his family in the ark,

and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses and Israel and the prophets and David

and his kingdom, all of which were pointing, all of which were bringing us forward.

In the meantime, there were many other nations across the world that were under

the dominion of darkness. They were, as it were, overlooked by God.

Yes, Satan rules here, there and everywhere, but I'm saving a people and these

people are going to be the means by which the seed which will strike the head

of that serpent will come. And when he comes, Thank you.

Amen. When he comes, then that Jesus Christ will begin to move into the world

and reclaim his world for himself.

That's what Paul is asserting here. Pretty powerful.

The resurrection stands as the fulcrum of history.

It's the point at which everything changes. And all the people groups that had

been somehow left to Satan and left to his kingdom are now being reclaimed by

the power of Jesus Christ, the resurrection.

That's why we as Christians mark out history as B.C., the very Christi,

before Christ essentially, and A.D., in the year of our Lord. I love that phrase.

This is the year of our Lord, 2026. This time, this place, this world belongs to Jesus Christ. Why?

Because Paul said Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.

Paul puts the resurrection at the very centerpiece of history itself.

Everything from the fall that led to this point when Jesus coming and his resurrection,

and now, beloved, all of us in this glorious time of refreshing,

that's what the apostles are saying.

When Jesus comes and people start to believe the blessings of the kingdom will

be poured out on people, and we are receiving those blessings right here and

right now as we gather from the world that was once belonging to Satan but now

belongs to Jesus Christ.

And it gives us hope, doesn't it? We're people of hope. The resurrection gives

hope. By the way, if you're not willing to believe this, there's no hope for you.

If you're stubborn, if you don't believe it, if you wanna make your own way,

if you think you can be okay with Jesus and do what you want, nope.

Paul's addressed to the Athenians when he says, all men everywhere must now repent.

And it's not my word. It wasn't even Paul's word. Paul didn't say, because I say so.

Paul said, because God has shown it to everyone everywhere in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Amazing. Judgment and blessings. And then at the end, it says,

now when they heard the resurrection of the dead, some mocked,

but others said, we want to hear it again.

Verse 33, so Paul went out from there in their midst, but certain men,

sometimes the translation says some as if wah, wah, wah, failure.

But instead, it's like certain men joined. And you want to talk about a great success?

One of the judges of the Supreme Court of Athens, Dionysius the Areopagite.

One of the judges of the greatest city in Greek, classical Greek culture was converted.

This is not a failure, beloved. This is a great success for Paul.

And churches were established in Athens and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ

went out because Paul challenged the wisdom of the world with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it wasn't a gospel that was narrowed to some exchange where he died for

you so you don't go to hell, but it was preached as a powerful world-changing

history-changing moment in the life, not just of Athens, but of the whole world,

which is why Paul can say in many different ways, in many different places, where are the whys?

Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? And then say with

confidence and boldness.

God has made foolish the wisdom of the world. For after that,

the world by wisdom knew not God.

It pleased God to the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

Amen. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the life, ministry, work, and words of the great apostle Paul.

We thank you, Lord, that he stood where he stood, preaching and teaching the

resurrection of the Lord Jesus

Christ, providing for the Athenians and for us, the hope of salvation.

Each one of us here this morning, O Lord, needs to know again that our own origin

is not in a national origin, but in the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

The Athenians were reminded that their origin and their destiny did not lie

in the soils of Attica, but in the grace of God.

Lord, remind us all this morning as well that our hope, our origin is found

in Christ and our destiny, our mission, and our hope for this week forward even,

is found in none other than Jesus Christ, the resurrected Lord of glory.

As we celebrate this Lord's Supper, Lord, help us to be thankful for Jesus,

for his death, for his resurrection, that he rules now and that in his rule,

he lovingly and kindly reminds us how much he loves us.

We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.