Preach the Gospel. Words Are Necessary. | Darren Roaunzoin

You're listening to GARDEN CHURCH Podcast. We're in a series called Church on Fire, a journey through the book of Acts. This is the story of ordinary people filled with the spirit carrying the presence of Jesus into every corner of the world. The same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and in us today. Join us as we step into the call to be people set on fire for his mission.

What's up? 9AM Huntington Beach. Hey, we have this. So would you wave to Costa Mesa because we're broadcasting this to Costa Mesa. Everyone turn.

Say hi, Mesa. Oh, you can do way better than that. That's we got people outside. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us.

Grab your Bibles. Let's see the Bibles. Let's raise them up in the sky. Costa Mesa, we wanna see your bibles. Wow.

Come on, over this section right here, your light in the back. I see I need to make sure that you're you're okay. We're good. We're good. Hey.

I'm so glad to be with you, HB. I was with Costa Mesa last week and I'm just grateful to be with you today. We're in Acts 17, we're going verse by verse. We're gonna pick up in verse 16 in just a moment. But I just wanna settle in because I don't have to hurry the 09:00 to rush to ten.

So I'm gonna relax myself. Is that okay? I don't need permission. I'm gonna do it. I know there's a clock and we do have to get out of here for the eleven at some point, but I'm gonna break all the rules because I love you so much and I wanna be here.

And I'm just so grateful that you're joining us. All the people outside, there's literally every seat is filled outside. I saw it. I love you guys. I hope the cool sea cools you off.

I don't know if that's possible today. But we're gonna we're gonna dive into the word of God and I'm so excited for this talk. It's one of the ones that I'm I just love. I've studied it before and I'm really praying that God would release something for this moment of time that we are in because this is a special time. Can you feel it?

It feels I I feel I feel this Like when I was in high school and junior high, we The only thing we could do was like meet you at the pole early in the morning and maybe pray for the school. There are young people starting Jesus clubs all over Southern California right now. Like, they're not like meet you at the pool, they're like, let me tell you about Jesus and I'm all for it. They're leading the way, it's exciting and I think there is something in the air, there's something in the water and I'm praying that God would release that today in us. So Lord Jesus, we welcome your presence.

We love you God. And whatever agenda we carry in here, we want yours. Whatever story we've invested in, we wanna we wanna rewrite our story to be aligned with your story. So, we've invested in the wrong story, we're ready to put it all in in your story today, Jesus. We don't Some of us don't know why we're here.

Our friend brought us, but we are here to meet you and I just know that's clear that you're bringing people to yourself, Jesus. I pray as the word is preached, you would light a fire inside of us. You would reconstruct our lives in Jesus name. Amen. Can I just say something?

My father-in-law is here and I've never done this publicly but if it wasn't for him, I would not be a pastor today. There was a moment where I remember I was, I was in Costa Mesa going to my last interview with Rock Harbor Church that hired me as a missions intern. And I was talking to him because I was engaged to my wife. And he's And I was like, I don't know if I should do it. It doesn't pay any money.

And he said to me, what do you think I want for my daughter? He's like, if you don't go into ministry, I'll be disappointed. And he just gave me full permission. So thank you. Appreciate you.

Love that love that you're here. Alright. Send it. Acts 17 verse 16. Here we go.

Acts 17:16

Oh, I'm already fired up. I can't believe it. I'm not even in the text and I'm like, maybe it's just you. Yeah. Okay.

Costa Mesa, can you feel the love right now? Because there's so much. Know where's where I see you, I love you, here we go. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, remember he was left alone because Silas and Timothy were in Berea. The people from Thessalonica came.

He had to flee. He goes down to the coast of Athens. So it says this, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So, he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God fearing Greeks as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. Alright.

Let's just pause here. I'm gonna break this whole text out. I got a lot to go through, but I wanna I want you to understand what's going on. Paul is alone. He was a rabbi who traveled with community.

N t Wright says, when he would go to different places, sometimes up to 40 people would join with him. Meaning, his church was with him. He wasn't just alone planting by himself. He was bringing community. He was bringing the culture of the kingdom with a community of disciples wherever he went.

Except when he's in Athens, he's alone. And we read about that season in other other epistles. He talks about how excruciating it was to be alone. And so, doesn't have a team. He doesn't have a plan.

He's waiting on the coastline to see what's happening. And while he's there, he's walking around Athens. I have some AI generated images for you to imagine Athens. I don't know if this is helpful, but here's what it would look like kind of, maybe. Gemini put this together for you.

So forgive me, this is But this is helpful. I'm visual. So this would be Athens most likely. A city built for like 250,000 people. Yet, there's only 30,000 people living there.

It's five hundred years past its time. And, Athens was the intellectual capital of the world. It was the Harvard of its day, only it lost its endowment. And now, it's a cathedral, a museum for people to visit. So he's in Athens where Socrates and Plato and Zeno, the father of stoicism started.

And he's walking around and Luke says, it's full of idols. But that's not the word. He makes up the word for it. It's submerged. No.

It is deck not decorated. It's drowning in idols. Literally, idols everywhere you go. And we have Pliny, a historian talk about places he visited and he says that in one place there were 3,000 statues dedicated to various gods, no less in Athens. So Athens, everywhere you went, there was a statue for God.

It was overflowing. And it says, he's greatly distressed which means in imperfect tense, a settled burning. It's not a flash temper of what happens when you stub your toe when that guy cuts you off and you wanna call down God's fire on that guy in the four zero five. Am I I'm not I don't do that. Alright.

I'm just saying. I don't I'm not It's not me except on Sundays when I was driving back and forth. Had to I had to pray a prayer cleansing before I got here, you know. No. I'm just kidding.

But it's the same family of words used in the Greek translation of the old testament where in Deuteronomy nine, God's God is provoked by the idol worship of Israel. So Paul's walking around. He's not annoyed. He feels what God feels for Athens. He feels what God feels for Athens.

So, he goes to the synagogue as was his custom and he begins to reason. He dialogues. Let me say this another way. He his burden becomes a dialogue. Not opposed of your view to challenge the other view without relationship.

He enters into the synagogue, to the marketplace, to anyone that wants to reason with him and he speaks the words of Jesus. It's not enough to post your opinions. He's provoked to say something. And they had loads of idols. They had they had loads of idols.

So he's walking around and he sees Zeus. Again, these are some I want you to see it. So is this going like crazy, Al? Is this okay. I hear it.

I won't touch it. Zeus and like, you know, that you walk around, you see statues of Zeus. Go to the next one. See statues of Aphrodite. You see statues of Bacchus or Dionysus and the goddess of party, basically, the god of party.

And and you could see those statues, those temples, those artifacts. The problem for us today is we don't have the statues. We have things in our lives like this that have the same idolatry. But we don't see, we don't feel the distress of what it's doing to our souls. Or it's something like this, know.

Oh, you can't see that? Am I the only one? Oh, the iPhone is what I was talking about. Sorry. You're doing great.

I've I've told my friend who's doing the slides and I'm like, good luck today. So so this is what I was referring to like, we might not have a statue of Zeus with a lightning bolt but we we are being shaped and we've done so much work to talk about the kind of discipleship that is new that is our default is the phone that is influencing our mind, influencing our allegiance, influencing our internal state of being. We are being overwhelmed with content and ideologies and narratives that we are being shaped into the image of whoever is producing these things. But we don't feel distressed about it. We don't walk around watching people on their phones going, oh my gosh, you need Jesus.

We don't go to the next one. We don't recognize in Southern California, there's nothing wrong with lavender lattes. I just wanted I I put that in there because I keep hitting up. I love baristas. Thank you so much.

Pour over coffees. I love you guys. Thank you so much. But you know what we have a problem with? Our particularities.

Our gluttony. When was the last time we we repented from gluttony church? You're like, oh, I'm not overindulging. I'm just so specific in my desires that I can't drink a Folgers cup of coffee when I'm hosted by a friend because I have the pour over machine. Now, I'm just confessing my sins right now.

Okay? So that's what I'm doing here. But are we distressed? Are we moved? No.

We're numb. We're numb to the idolatry. And you know what I think has happened is I think, oh man, this is going to eleven already and I'm not even I'm two verses in. Like, what provokes you? What provokes you?

Hold on. What provokes you to say something? You wanna know what's happened to the American No. I'm gonna be specific to my experience. The Southern California church, we've become so passive.

So, we we live with a veil of of Christianity where it's just so convenient for us. We don't wanna speak it. You know why? Because we heard this quote and it's misrepresented. You know, preach the gospel all the times and when necessary use words.

You've heard that quote? How many of you love it? Of course, you love it because it puts you off the hook. It takes you off the hook from actually speaking the things of Jesus. That is attributed to Francis of Assisi, he never said it.

He's never said that because Francis was a preacher. He wrote a book for preachers. He would go to anywhere gospel. And you know what Paul would do? Paul would never say that.

He would say preach because you don't see him walking in saying, let's just be kind and tip well, and that will be a good enough expression of the gospel. No. Because nobody looks at your kindness and figures out that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified under Pontius Pilate and raised from the dead on the third day. Somebody has to say it. And your deeds, your words, your deeds make your words believable.

They will never make the words unnecessary. So let me fix the quote if you've been anesthetized by this quote. Preach the gospel at all times. Words are necessary and live a life that backs them up. Now, you're convicted, good.

You should be convicted because this is what happened to the church. We have softened what it means. At the very beginning of this this series in acts a year ago, we said, Jesus gives us our mission to be witnesses. And, we wanna we wanna soften it up to live our blessed life in the Southern California vision and think Jesus affirms that rather than follow him as witnesses of the resurrected Christ. And so, what I wanna now do, if you feel that conviction, I wanna show you how Paul contextualizes the gospel to Athens.

I wanna help you see that this is the strategy. He has a strategy and it's so brilliant. And oftentimes, people think, oh, he didn't do a great job in Athens. No. He read the moment, he built a bridge and he allowed people to walk over it and we'll see it at the end.

So let's go through it. You guys good? Are you okay? Costa Mesa, you good? You're not gonna hear them here but Costa Mesa, I wanna hear you from Huntington Beach.

Alright. Ready? Verse 18. Here we go. A group of Epicureans and stoic philosophers began to debate with him.

Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say? Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him into a to a meeting of the Areopagus where they said to him, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we would like to know what they mean.

And I love this parenthesis. Ready? All the Athenians and the foreigners who live there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. All they do is listen to podcasts. That's what he's saying.

They just consume content all day long. Sound familiar? Oh, gotcha. Paul is so brilliant but he runs into two schools of philosophy that are alive and well in Southern California. The Epicureans, right?

These are the original YOLOs, right? They created, you only live once. Gods are God The gods are far away, so we're gonna cease to exist. There's no resurrection, so the goal is pleasure. Avoid pain, just entertain yourself, pursue your dreams, pursue your sexual desires, let's just go after a party.

You need to sleep in because you're staying up late to the party. And then there's the opposite, the stoics. Right? And the stoic philosophers, they were the opposite. They were the ones that cold plunged by 04:45, they listened to Huberman, they have David Goggins on the run, they have a whoop band to track their sleep cycle.

They're all about self mastery. The gods are close and fate runs our life. And so discipline equals freedom. Does that sound familiar? Both of them, here's the thing.

One of them numbs the ache. The other one outworks the ache. And underneath both, they agree on one thing that that matters. No one is coming to save you. That's their viewpoint.

So save yourself. And so then they call Paul, these these two philosophies, they they philosophers, they use this phrase, seed picker, which is a a gutter sparrow pecking up scraps, essentially. That's the image of other men's ideas. He's just kinda picking out there. They're just insulting him.

And, the reason they're insulting him because the the places he's preaching is they say, you're advocating for foreign gods. You're introducing foreign gods which that is a death sentence. Socrates was brought to the Areopagus where he was advocating foreign gods and he was executed. Socrates was executed at the Areopagus for advocating for foreign gods. And they said, what are these new gods?

You're preaching about Jesus and Anastasis which is resurrection. It sounds like Tom and Zendaya. It's it sounds like a new divine celebrity couple. That's what they hear. The the good news of this Jesus and the resurrection and they're hearing it as this new new divine couple.

That's how they hear it in the Greek. And so, they bring him to the Areopagus, which is the supreme council. Now, I talk about that, I just wanna say what I love about Paul's strategy is he's gonna start where they are. He's he's not gonna start where they should be. So watch now what he does as we get into the text in verse 22.

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, to an unknown God. So, you are ignorant of the very thing you worship and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, rather he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.

God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him though he is not far from any one of us. For in him, we live and move and have our being. As some of your own prophets have said, we are his offspring. Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill. In the past, God overlooked such ignorance but he commands all people everywhere to repent.

So, right there. Okay. So, the strategy for Paul in Athens is this mission phrase called contextualization. Can you say contextualization? Alright.

Here's what I have. This is my definition. Contextualization asks what language this audience already trusts and builds the bridge out of that material, so the gospel can walk across intact. So, when Paul's in the synagogue, we've read about this and I just wanna highlight, when we're As we've been studying the book of Acts, it starts in Jerusalem and when Stephen preaches the gospel and the gospel's recorded with the Sanhedrin, he he starts with the foundation of the scriptures, of the holy scriptures of the Old Testament and he shows from the entire Genesis to Malachi how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He starts with their language, they're the Sanhedrin, they're Jewish.

He starts with their story. Paul is so far away from Jerusalem and we've been seeing him contextualize the message of Jesus, not compromising the gospel, changing illustrations, using things to make sense. This is the only time Paul will not quote the Old Testament as he proclaims Jesus. Remember in Thessalonians, he claimed in the synagogue, Jesus is the Messiah. That is a Jewish phrase for king.

And he gets kicked out of Thessalonica because he's advocating for a new king and Caesar was king. So, they get him out of there. Now, he talks about Jesus and the resurrection. And he doesn't start with, well, let me walk you through Genesis. He begins by quoting their prophets.

So, is what contextualization does. I came across this last year in January 2025. Oh, I have some pictures. So he goes to the Agora, which was a public square and then he gets to the Areopagus where he would be communicating this. Now forget that.

Twenty twenty five in January, I came across a podcast of Wes Huff on Joe Rogan. Has anyone seen that? So nobody knew who who Wes Huff was. This is a Canadian nerd and he'll say that himself. He likes swords, he he will lift weights but he's an expert in ancient manuscripts.

And Joe Rogan came across him because he was brought into a debate online. I've never saw I watched the debate with this guy named Billy Carson who tries to argue about the Ethiopian manuscripts that that contradict the New Testament and and as he's using his arguments, Wes Huff in this debate is like, oh, what manuscript are you referring to? And then he says it and then Wes Huff grabs this book behind him and goes to the page And he's like, that's not here with this guy Billy Billy Carson. So he goes on Joe Rogan, is one of the number one podcasts in the world, which is all about mystery and MMA and if the earth is flat and all sorts of things. Wes Huff meets Joe where he's at.

He starts talking about textual criticism. He starts walking through the reliability of the New Testament. And it is a Paul in Athens moment for our time. Where the one of the most a 100,000,000 people watch his show at times. Like so many people.

And this man, this this Weshoff doesn't start with Leviticus. He spoke to the room's language with manuscripts and evidence and he got to Jesus and the resurrection as the most reliable thing you can put your faith in. That's contextualization, it's packaging. It never is the message. The message stays the same but the packaging has to change.

And this is so important for us today because if you were trying to witness thirty years ago, like I remember years ago when I came back to faith, I would go to Huntington Beach Pier and try to convince people that they were going to hell. I started there. You know, and I did the Roman, the four, the Roman Road and I walked them through apologetics. I studied this karm.org, Christian Research Apologetics Ministries. And I would learn how to debate the Mormon community and Jehovah's Witness community and I would look at all the ways people wanna debate the Christian viewpoint and I would love to debate.

Today, it's very different because where it was modernistic arguing, today, people are completely open to the reality of the spiritual world like never before. Like in the past, you had to prove that there was an unseen realm. Now, they believe in an unseen realm. When their dog's sick, they go to a dog psychic. This is true.

I'm not This this happened in my in my gym. I'm like, don't do that. Go to a vet. The worldview shifted. You know, we're we we believe like Stranger Things was the number one show of all time on Netflix and it's about this unseen reality.

The up side down. And now people are engaging in those things. My point is contextualization. One of my favorite stories I learned at Vanguard in my intro to intercultural studies class where the the preacher sorry. The professor's the right word.

Talked about this book called Peace Child. Have you ever read Peace Child? So I'm gonna I'm just highlight contextualization. Don Richardson was a missionary who moved his family to Sawi, a Sawi people in New Guinea in the nineteen sixties. The Sawi prized betrayal the way we prize courage.

So their whole social fabric ran on if there's a man that you're fattening up with friendship, you feed him and you laugh at him and you make him feel safe like he's never felt safe. And the best thing you can do in that community is is basically fatten him up so you can kill him and eat him because they were cannibalists. So that's a whole other story. But this is the highest art form to their culture. So when Richardson finally translated the gospels far enough to reach the betrayal of Jesus, the kiss in the garden from Judas, the room came alive.

Judas was the hero, not Jesus, according to their culture. So, Richard had built all this trust for all these years and they were celebrating the wrong man in the story of the gospel. He nearly gave up, but then he watched something happen between two Sawi villages, exhausted from killing each other. They wanted peace and nothing could hold the peace. So, one village handed the other village a living child and and raised the child as their own.

And as long as that child was alive, there would be peace. So, was children from both tribes swapped so that there would be peace amongst the the warring tribes. And, they called it the peace child. The one thing sacred enough to end the bloodshed between the two tribes. So, Richardson found the altar and he saw the Sawee and he told the Sawee people that Jesus was God's peace child given to his enemies and as long as Jesus lived, the peace could never be broken again.

Judas had been their hero. Now, they had a better one and the whole tribe that had celebrated the betrayal of a tribe of as a tribe of worshipers because of this missionary found Jesus and they all became Christian through the peace child. What's my point? He contextualized the gospel to the culture. Here's the strategy that Paul lays out.

Verse 23. For I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship. I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. He starts with their altar, not his outline. Let me just make this clear.

The altar that Greece put there comes from an event in their history. It comes from a wound. Years before Paul shows up, they experienced a plague in Athens that they started worshiping all their gods that they knew and the plague wouldn't go away. So, they constructed an altar to an unknown god. And, they offered sacrifice to that altar and the plague stopped.

So, Paul sees 3,000 idols. He's walking around a city drowning in idols and statues of false gods. And he sees the one. He sees his entry. He sees this is where I can get in.

The wound of Athens. Can I say something to you? Everyone has an Athens. Every single Thanks for your permission. I needed that today.

The one of you guys. We're together. Everyone has an Athens. It's your office, it's your school, it's your neighborhood, it's your group chat, it's the community that you're a part of. Brothers and sisters, God has already given you an Athens And what Paul is trying to teach and what I think we should lean into right now is that every Athens has an altar.

Every single community, every office space, every person that you're a part of, they have an altar in their heart. And, our job is to do some work to see what the entry point might be for that relationship. It might just be a welcoming voice that holds space for their brokenness. It might just be a reminder as they press their ideas that they're actually, they need to hear a different side to the story. It might be the Christian who actually is overly generous and kind because all they see is the judgment online.

Right? But you know the altars of Southern California. There's so many. The idol of self, that we worship ourselves. Everyone in SoCal is pursuing their dreams.

They're working to be accepted. They're working to have the perfect body. These altars are all around us. It's the pursuit of wealth. It's the pursuit of your career and and safety through through securing wealth.

There's so many alters but it's not just that. We've built alters around our pain. And, I just wanna say, I see and I've talked about this in the last few weeks and I just wanna highlight it. We we have a therapeutic culture. And, in some ways, and there's nothing wrong with therapy.

I'm gonna keep saying that therapy is a great thing. But, there is a therapeutic culture that has made our wounds the center of our life. And, we need to heal those wounds. We need to do the work and we need to process them. We need to work on them.

But, in some ways, they've become the idol we build our life around. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Some of you are unaware of the kinds of callous heart you have because of the wounds and I think those are alters that we can enter into. For example, people are lonely. Forty one percent of people are lonely.

Could you imagine just being a good friend? Just being a friend, what is a good friend? Nowadays, it's someone who just texts back, who just includes, hey, I'm headed to the beach, why don't you just come with us? You're at new school, some of you have started new school, some of you are It's paying attention to the ones that don't have anyone with them. It doesn't take much to be like, hey, you wanna eat lunch with me today?

How scary is that? What I'm saying is that there that Paul has this emotional movement towards doing something about the crisis. He's overwhelmed by the idols and he enters into the story where they are. And then, number two, I just wanna make this point. He quotes their poets not your proof text and this is so important for Christians.

Hear me. The world does He he says, for in him we live and move and have our beings. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. So, he's quoting their sources, their belief systems, their narratives. He starts with their Netflix shows.

He starts with the Joe Rogan or the Mel Robbins. He starts where they're at. Right? The world doesn't need to start with what you believe about scriptures in order to name their pain and draw them to Jesus. Like so many of us are trying to convince the world of what we believe.

We believe this because we have a relationship with Jesus. We don't have to start with all of this stuff coming into your mind and believe in changing all your behavior. Why don't you just show them Jesus and then we'll work on the rest later. Does that make sense? Now, stuff matters, but we don't start there.

Is this okay? Maybe it doesn't. I'm trying to raise up evangelists. And who's the evangelist? Y'all.

I'm not talking about special anointing for evangelism. We are evangelists. We share the good news of Jesus. That is what we're commissioned into. Do you remember?

9AM. Come on. Where we at? Can you can you get me in this? I'm gonna I would do this in Costa Mesa because I I'm wondering right now.

Is this message for someone else or is it for you? It is for you. Could you imagine the strategy of Jesus right now if he just took this room and what's outside there, let alone the the other rooms in Costa Mesa that are part of this church and we just got turned on fire and we realized, man, I've been passive with my faith. I've been comfortable with my faith. I'm walking around with my phone being, you know, immersed in this idolatry.

I'm not even aware of the pain around in the relationships that I'm close to. Divorce. I don't even realize the barista I see over and over again struggling with depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation because my world is all about me. That's right. But you've been given in Athens and he's waiting for the world to meet him and he's waiting on you to wake up to one.

What would happen if one person in your life in this year came to faith because of your intentionality of their altar? It would be a move of God And we're just waiting for revival. He's waiting on you to be where you've already been sent. Alright. I'm gonna keep going.

Alright. That was freebie. No. No bummer. So what happens, I I see the green right now with the countdown clock but I'm just waiting till red.

Red means I'm on fire. Right? It doesn't mean It's like, oh, I just wanna speak the truth in love. That's just your permission to be mean. We should speak truth.

But have we earned the right to speak truth because we've been in relationship and loved? No. We've been passive and distracted and now we're just gonna say because we disagree with their political view. Come on. We gotta do better.

And the online world has to do better. That's another conversation for another day. I love this. Paul quotes Aratus, we are his offspring. And he uses that as a launching pad to talk about Genesis.

But he doesn't quote He doesn't say this is from Genesis. He just uses the truth of Genesis from their poet to talk about what that looks like. He's saying Because he's he's basically saying, look, all truth is God's truth. All truth is God's truth. I was at a parent teacher thing and the math teacher explained how math is God's language and he explained and he used a as an apologetic for God.

And I was like, that's yes. Like, he talked about how far can you go into the positive? One, two, three, for in for eternal, eternity. How can you go negative? He's like, the language of math is eternal.

Who else is eternal? I was like, why? You're blowing my mind, guy. I wanna go back to seventh grade. I should.

I don't know seventh grade math. But math points to Jesus, physics points to God, the Grand Canyon points to God, that's what he does. And then, it gets into the next thing and this is so important for us today. Part three about contextualization. He tells the truth to both errors without humiliating either.

So, to the stoics, you're right. Divinity is close. In him, we live and move and have our being. But, God isn't the world. He doesn't live in temples built by human hands.

If you were standing there, you could see five temples in the skyline. He says, he doesn't live in temples built by human hands. Can I just say something? This is so profound. That line is not original to Paul.

The first time Paul heard that was when Stephen preached the Sanhedrin. And Paul was responsible for the stoning of that man's death. And now, twenty years later in Athens, he borrows his notes. Oh, to preach to the stoics. Isn't that incredible?

Just heaven keeps his receipts. So we we have Paul. He says, God doesn't live in temples built by hands, human hands. You cannot cold plunge your way to him. This is for somebody.

You cannot discipline yourself to heaven. That's a false gospel. You can only receive it because Jesus died in your place and you receive grace because he died instead of you on the cross for your sins, for for your salvation and anything that you try to do to earn it is a false gospel. Now, God's grace is not opposed to effort. It's opposed to earning.

It's a Dallas Willard line. And then he speaks to the Epicureans. He says, you're right. God isn't the world but you're wrong about the distance. He made every nation mark their times so that they would seek him and he's not far away from any of us.

History isn't blind chance, it's architecture for search. And it says this line and from one man then it goes off. Now, is so important. This was a grenade to the the Athenians and to the Greek world view. Because the Athens, the Athenians boasted, they sprung from their own soil as a people and everyone else was barbarian.

So, Paul flattens this old racial racism and vanity in Greece in six words and he says, one creator, one ancestor, one humanity. This would have been so controversial to the Greeks who had built into their their philosophy, their history, their world view, That they were elite because of their mythical stories of where they came from. And he's like, he flattens it. No. We all come from one man.

He doesn't say Adam. He's he's just building his case. And he uses his word in 27 verse 27 where it says, God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and that word reaching out is the same image of a blind man feeling his way around a wall. All other human religions are flattened in one verb. Sincerity for reaching out but unable to help them find the one true God.

Contextualization moves the doorway closer but it never moves the house. I just wanna make this clear that when you compare what Paul preaches in the gospel in different contexts, you see that he he doesn't change the message of the gospel. He changes how he communicates the gospel. Gospel. But modern Christianity hasn't contextualized the gospel.

It replaced the gospel. Contextualization translates the message. Compromise compromise trades the message. So, kept blessed and dropped repentance. We kept Christmas and dropped the cross.

We kept Jesus who affirms everything and demands nothing and Jesus had become a life coach with a beard. And what that has been called by scholars is moralistic therapeutic deism, which is a deity who wants you to be nice, happy, and who's on call and on demand for any of your desires. That is the forgery of Christianity today. And I want you to hear it. It is not contextualization.

It is the compromise of the gospel. It is a false gospel. So everything that makes it comfortable and convenient. Everything that makes Jesus an addition to your life is a false gospel. He cannot be an addition.

He reconstructs your life. He is your life. No. Paul says, you are in him according to Colossians. And your life is hidden in Christ.

And, so whatever version makes him like all the other world religions out there is a false version of Christianity. It's not contextualization. It's a compromised gospel. And, then he goes off and I just finished with this. Verse 30.

He says or verse 30. In the past, God overlooked such ignorance. So, today, you've been a part of consumer Christianity that wants to make Jesus a mascot for your politics. That wants to make Jesus a blessing machine for your life that's already busy. Maybe it's just been he wants to bless you with finances and that's it.

You have the wrong gospel. In the past, he's been What does it say? He overlooked that ignorance. But now, he commands all people everywhere to repent. This is not add Jesus onto your belief systems.

This is this is a change of directions to your life. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he appointed. He has given proof, physical evidence of this reality to everyone by raising him from the dead. And when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, this is where it gets crazy. Some of them sneered but others said, we wanna hear more, we wanna hear episode two of the podcast.

At that at that, Paul left the council and some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Domarus and a number of others. So Luke names the followers. Names these significant followers. Dionysius is a member of the council.

Joe Rogan becomes Christian. That's I mean, this is a significant Luke is saying, this influential intellectual thinker was swayed by Paul's belief that he's following. Some say, that person is a bishop, the first bishop of Athens, some historians. The first bishop that we have in Athens. And then, I just wanna highlight Damaris because this is included in Luke's Luke's translation and I think we need to honor that because Luke will regularly include women, prominent women.

And and it's so countercultural to the first century, but this is a woman who's in the Agora and the Areopagus, who's listening where only men were allowed to do philosophy. She's there and named as a prominent woman and follows Paul. Isn't that awesome? So it's not failure, it's the beginning of the movement that's gonna take place in Athens. Now, let me just close a couple of thoughts.

I'm right on time. Great. Gospel contextualization, you learning the altars of the places and the people that you know is how Jesus did it as well. I just want you to see Paul did this, Jesus did this. When Paul When Jesus speaks to a Samaritan, a Samaritan woman who's hauling water in the heat of the day, he says to her, I am the living water.

When the crowd is chasing free bread, he says, I am the bread of life. To Martha at her brother's tomb as she grieves the loss of her brother as he's dead and buried. He says, I am the resurrection and the life. To the law, to the proud rich young ruler, he preaches law to the proud, rich, young ruler and he preaches grace to tax collectors and prostitutes. It's one gospel perfectly translated to every heart he met.

We have one gospel message and it's Jesus and we have to learn to translate it to every person we meet to. Contextualization isn't communication strategy. It is the shape of the gospel. That's why John writes, the word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood, to use Eugene Peterson's. God didn't shout truth down at us from on high.

He learned our language, he wore our sins, he took our death and he said, follow me. So, to end this, I wanna pray for us. I'm gonna do some ministry time. But I wanna do a couple of things. I just wanna close with a couple Number one, I think Garden Church, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, we have to repent.

I want you to search your heart and find the ways you follow the casual Jesus, the comfortable Jesus. The Jesus that looks like every other friend and peer in the school drop off line or in your business that you should look differently because of the Jesus that you're hearing preached today. It's enough for this one sermon to change your life if you let the Holy Spirit in. If you recognize his word is true and your way is not the only way, his way is the way we wanna follow. The first thing that we have to get to is to humbly come before God and say, got it wrong.

I missed the mark. Now, thank you for the realignment. I changed directions. I changed my mind. I thought my life was the most important thing.

Now, I see it's your life and I wanna give glory to your life through my life. Church, I think we need to humble ourselves and get back to the basics of confession and repentance. And, it's so interesting because I say that and I love it. We're gonna respond and we're gonna pray and we're gonna worship, but as soon as you leave, it's just this. And you know it.

And you're gonna be inundated with a thousand other voices in thirty minutes because you wanna scroll and text and email and news rather than sit with truth and let it do something in you. We just go on to the next content, the next moment. But church, we can't live like that. We're not made to receive all of that content. And only one really brings life.

So, let's get some filters on for a moment and lock in and return, repent, change our minds, get back to first love in Jesus. Is that okay? So, campus you're at, Costa Mesa, Huntington, it's time to to get back to Jesus. To confess and bring your love towards him. Second is, I want you to right now, name your Athens.

Listen. I don't want you to be vague. I want you to go, I'm leaving here going to Los Alamitos High School and I'm gonna be like Paul in Athens. I'm gonna look for the altars and I'm gonna bring life or I'm gonna go to that that mom group with the three moms who are really struggling and I'm gonna be a person of joy or I'm gonna go, there's a person right now, someone's highlighted in your heart and mind and you're gonna write them in the back of your bible and you're gonna start praying for God to give you opportunities to bring them to Jesus, to bring Jesus to them. Does that make sense?

Name your Athens and then ask the Lord to help you name the altar of your Athens. Do you know you have a loving God who's always speaking to you? Why don't you ask him for the strategy? Lord, how do I reach Sarah? How do I reach Los Alamitos High School?

How do I reach that mom's group with Chris and whoever her name is and all? How do I let Lord reveal to me through your divine orchestration wisdom and strategy and love and generosity and words of knowledge and words of wisdom, and all the tools you have in your holy spirit, golf bag and tool belt, that I may bring them to you. Okay. And from there, would you just let love decide the method of your strategy. Okay?

Can we all stand together?

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