The Problem of Idolatry - Life of Paul Part 47

Let's take a Bible and open it to Acts chapter 17.

We're going to be continuing in our study of the life of the great man, the Apostle Paul. And you know, when Moses walked down from Mount Sinai carrying, of course, the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets, I don't know exactly how much those stone tablets weighed, but I don't think it was 5,300 pounds. The reason I mention that is there is a copy of the Ten Commandments that's in the center of the news today that does weigh 5,300 pounds. It's located in the rotunda of the Judiciary Building in Montgomery, Alabama.

Let me show you a picture of it. And this copy of the Ten Commandments was placed there by Chief Judge Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court. It was set up on July 31st of 2001, and just this week the U.S. District Court commanded him to get it out, to remove it. He has 30 days to do that because, in the opinion of the U.S. District Court, this copy of the Ten Commandments is a case of the government promoting religion, which is just not something, as you know, that's allowed here in the United States of America. Now, we're going to see today the Apostle Paul arrive at the city of Athens, and we're going to find out that there is no court anywhere in Athens that would have ever demanded a copy of any religious symbol to be removed from that city. As a matter of fact, that city not only promoted religion, but that city was overrun with religious symbols and artifacts. And we're going to see how all of that plays into the reaction of the Apostle Paul. And then, of course, we're going to answer the most important question, which is, what difference does that make to you and me?

So let's look together, a little bit of background. Remember, the Apostle Paul is on his second missionary journey. He, along with his three friends, Silas, Timothy, and Dr. Luke, have crossed over, let's show you a map, from northwestern Turkey, and have gone across the Aegean Sea to the town of Philippi. Here in Philippi, the Apostle Paul established a church. He left Dr. Luke and Timothy, here in Philippi, to work with that fledgling church.

He and Silas walked down the Ignatian Way, the famous Roman road, to the town of Thessalonica, 100 miles away. He spent six months in Thessalonica preaching, establishing a community of believers, and the Jewish people in that town, who were not believers, developed this hatred for Paul that was unbelievable. And they eventually succeeded in putting a mob together and running him out of town.

And so then he and Silas continued on, 45 miles, to the town of Berea. And that's where we left Paul last week. So let's pick up here in Acts chapter 17 and see what happened. Verse 13, And when the unbelieving Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word in Berea, they went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up.

Now you get the picture here, right? These unbelieving Jewish people in Thessalonica hated Paul so much, that it wasn't good enough just to run him out of Thessalonica. They wanted to run him out everywhere. So they followed him, the 45 miles to Berea, caused trouble there and ran him out of town there as well. Verse 14, And the brothers at Berea immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. You say, Lon, I thought you said that Timothy had stayed at Philippi. Well, he had, but it's obvious from the Bible that Timothy has now rejoined Paul. So Paul leaves Silas and Timothy here in town to work with the fledgling group of believers there, and he is driven out. Where did he go? Verse 15, The men who escorted Paul brought him to Athens, and then they left, they went back home to Berea with instructions from Paul for Silas and Timothy to join Paul as soon as possible.

Let's show you a map, let you see what happened. Here from Berea, the Apostle Paul goes straight south to the town of Athens. And what do we know about the town of Athens that the Apostle Paul arrived at? Well, I think most of us here realize that Athens, along with Sparta, these were the two key city states in Greece for 600 years before the Apostle Paul ever got there.

However, the Athens that the Apostle Paul arrived in was not the Athens of 600 years before. That Athens, of course, was the home of pure democracy under leaders, political leaders like Pericles. It was the intellectual capital of the world, being the home to people like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and all these other Greek philosophers.

But when Paul got there, the city had been devastated after many wars with Rome. It was poverty-stricken, it was no longer a political capital of anything, it was no longer a commercial center. Actually, it still was looked at as the intellectual capital of the world. All of the different schools of philosophy, like the Stoics, the Epicureans, they all had their centers in Athens. But Athens was really a very minor city in the Roman Empire by the time the Apostle Paul got there.

It was living off the fumes of its reputation, not off any reality of being a great city anymore. But historians tell us there was also one other thing that Athens was the center of when it came to the Roman world, and that was religion. If you had a new god, a new goddess, or a new religion that you wanted to promote, historians tell us you didn't take that new god or goddess to Rome, you took them to Athens.

You see, today what Paris is for fashion, what Cannes is for film, what Nashville is for country music, back then Athens was for religion. And the Athenians were very politically correct in that they never weighed between one god and goddess or the other. They never said, well, some new god is better than some old god we've had, so the old god goes and the new god stays. They didn't do that. What they did is they just took them all.

They didn't care. And so if you brought a new god to town or a new goddess to town, they just had a big old ball of religion chewing gum in town, and they'd lick it and just stick your religion right on the ball of chewing gum. They'd stick your new god right on the ball of chewing gum. And the result of this was that the Roman poet Livy actually wrote, and I quote, there are more gods in Athens than people, end of quote. Now this is the Athens that Paul arrived in.

What happened? Verse 16. While Paul was waiting for them, that is Silas and Timothy, in Athens to arrive from Berea, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. Now when we think of Athens, we think of a building, all of us. What building do we think of? The Parthenon, let's show it to you.

And we say, wow, you know, we think of this building and so many others like it that are unbelievable works of architecture. But friends, remember in the days of the Apostle Paul, people didn't look at these buildings as works of architecture. This building and all the others like it were temples to pagan deities, to gods and goddesses. As a matter of fact, the Parthenon was a temple to Athena, the patron goddess of the city of Athens. And historians tell us there was an enormous statue of the goddess made out of white marble and gold that stood in the middle of this temple that was so enormous it could be seen from the sea as you were arriving by boat. And so as Paul walked around this city, my point is, as he was sightseeing, what impressed him most about the Athenians was not their artistic prowess.

It was not their architectural achievements. What impressed Paul the most was their slavery, their slavery to idols. And Paul just couldn't contain himself. The Bible says he was greatly distressed.

This word literally is the word in Greek that we get our word paroxysm from in English. And what the word means is Paul was irritated. He was exasperated. He was fed up. He had a paroxysm right there in the middle of the city. Paul did backflips down through the main street of the city emotionally and said, you know what, I have had it up to here with all of these idols.

And what did he do? Verse 17, so Paul reasoned in the synagogue with the Jewish people and the God-fearing Gentiles who were there. And he also reasoned in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Paul's motto was, when confronted with error, confront it with truth.

And that's what he did. He went into the Jewish synagogue and he preached the truth about Jesus Christ, the one and true living God. He went into the agora. Let's show you a picture of the ancient agora here in Roman times. Have we got that picture? We're coming.

There it is. These are the remains of the agora. And you know the agora was like the marketplace. It was like the meeting place.

It was like Times Square for the city of Athens. And the Bible says that every day the apostle Paul went right here and stood in this agora. And no matter what you came to town looking for, what you found in the agora was the apostle Paul in your face telling you about the one true and living God.

He turned the agora into a Billy Graham crusade, so to speak. Now this is where we want to stop today. We're going to pick up and go on in the next message because there's a lot more going to happen in Athens.

But here's where we stop with the apostle Paul out in the city every single day preaching Jesus Christ. But it's time for us to ask our most important question. And you are aware of what that question is.

I know you are. So everybody ready? Here we go. All right. Come on now.

One, two, three. So what? Yeah, right. You say, Lon, so what? Say, that's wonderful.

You know, I love the parthenon and I really always want to see the agora. And thank you for all of that. What difference does any of this make to me?

Well, let's try to make that connection together, shall we? Friends, what was it that caused the apostle Paul to have a paroxysm here in Athens? What was it that just sent him off going crazy? Well, it was all the idols that he saw in this city. And the reason they bothered him so much is because the apostle Paul knew the Ten Commandments. He knew commandment number one. I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.

He knew commandment number two. You shall not make for yourselves an idol of any kind. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Now, historians and anthropologists tell us that idolatry has been an issue for the human race ever since the human race began.

And I want to take a minute and make sure we understand why. You see, friends, God created human beings, every man, woman and child alive, to worship. Anthropologists tell us that they have never found a race of people, civilized or uncivilized, that didn't worship something.

When archaeologists dig up any civilization, they always find gods and goddesses of some kind. The reason for that is that God has put a worship pacemaker inside the heart of every human being. We are built to worship something, and it's a pacemaker we cannot turn off. Now, how does this turn into idolatry, you ask?

Well, it's very simple. The Bible tells us, Ephesians chapter 2, verse 1, that every human being born is born into our world dead in their relationship to God. They are born separated from God, alienated from God, disconnected from God.

And so, therefore, a person outside of Jesus Christ cannot worship the true and the living God. They don't know Him. They're disconnected from Him. They're separated from Him. But remember, people have to worship something.

That's the way we're made. And so secular man does the only thing secular man can do, and that is they go find something else to worship. They find something they can see, they can touch, they can feel. Or they go find something they can relate to, to give their devotion to, to give their loyalty to. It is this dynamic that has caused every culture, every people, every race, every nation to become idolatrous. Now, I'll bet you if you walked up to the average American on the street and said, You know, we live in an idolatrous country, and you are an idolater, I'll bet you you'd get a reaction.

I'll bet you they would bristle and say, What are you, crazy? Me, an idolater? Hey, I don't have a little stone statue in my backyard with horns on it. Hey, I don't have some golden calf in my family room that we light candles and dance around to at night. No, I don't have some altar in my living room that we sacrifice gerbils on or something like that. What do you mean I'm an idolater?

Have you lost your mind? Well, friends, listen, you don't have to have little statues in your backyard or sacrifice gerbils to be an idolater. Listen to what this one commentator said, and I quote, he said, There can be idolatry without physical idols. Whatever sets up a rival interest in our souls, absorbing the love and the service which belongs to God alone, this is another God and an idol.

End of quote. Friend, if you're here today and you've never trusted Jesus in a real and personal way, I got good news and bad news for you. The bad news is that you're an idolater.

So was I 32 years ago. Now, the living God wasn't the number one priority in my life. As a matter of fact, God wasn't any priority in my life 32 years ago. And that's all it means to be an idolater.

You don't need to kill chickens or dance around the candlelight. All it means is that the that the living God's not number one in your life. And, you know, as idolaters, God tells us in the Bible that we are under the judgment of God.

Now, that's the bad news. But the good news is that we can change that whenever we want. The good news is that by giving our lives to Jesus Christ and embracing him as our personal savior, we can we can know we can reach the point where God no longer sees us as idolaters. Listen to what the Bible says.

First Corinthians six. Don't you know that idolaters shall not inherit the kingdom of God? And this is what you were.

This is what I was 32 years ago. But now you have been washed clean of all of that by your faith in Jesus Christ. Friend, if you're here and you've never trusted Christ, we want to help you make the change from being an idolater into being a follower of Jesus Christ. And it's really a simple change to make. We can help you with this. You say, Well, Lon, how would I go about finding more information? Well, you sign up for Christianity 101.

We'll be having new sign ups in a couple of weeks. You take a six week course an hour, either on a Sunday or a Monday night, and we'll give you the information you need to help you change from being an idolater into being a follower of Jesus Christ. Now, for those of us here who are followers of Christ, if you don't mind, in the little bit of time I got left, I'd like to go from preaching to meddling, if I could, because you see, even as a follower of Christ, even though it's true that you and I will never be judged by God as idolaters, friends, it is true that we can practice idolatry as followers of Christ. That's why John wrote in his letter, 1 John 5 21, Little children, keep yourselves from idols. As followers of Jesus Christ, friends, anything that displaces God from being the number one priority in our life is an idol. And we can be we can be people who practice idolatry as followers of Christ.

Now it can be it can be all sorts of things. It can be the Lord God money that does this and displaces God from number one in our life. It can be the Lord God power, the Lord God prestige, the Lord God human achievement, the Lord God career success, the Lord God ministry success. It can be the Lord God golf. It can be the Lord God tennis. It can be the Lord God sailing. It can be the Lord God your lawn and your garden. It can be the Lord God, my girlfriend, my boyfriend, my husband, my wife or my children.

Friends, listen, idols don't have to be bad. Idols most of the time for us are good things, but they are good things who have taken over a place that God says in our heart belongs to Him and Him alone. This is what commandment number one is all about. I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me, ahead of me or in front of me. And what is God asking from us here as followers of Christ? He's asking that we make Him the number one object of our love, the number one object of our loyalty and our devotion, that we don't allow anything, even a good thing to be above Him in our hearts. And how important does God consider this?

Well, pretty important. You remember in Matthew 22 there was this young man who came to him, an expert in the law, and he said, Jesus, he said, you're a teacher. Tell me, what is the greatest commandment in the Bible? Now the rabbis, you should know, had boiled the Old Testament down to 613 commandments. You say that's boiling down.

Well, yeah, they did. And so this guy says, now which one of these 613 commandments, Jesus, would you say is the greatest commandment? Watch what Jesus said. He said, and I quote, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the greatest commandment. Jesus said, of all the commandments in there, the thing I want more than anything else is I want to be first place in your life.

I want to be first in your heart. And why is this so important to God? Well, remember what 10 Commandment Number 2 said.

It said, because I am a jealous God. You know, I had this couple in my office several years ago now, and the reason they were there is because the wife was mad at the husband. That's often the reason I get people in my office, very seldom the other way around. But anyway, I had them in my office, and let me tell you what she was mad about.

This guy would travel. He would travel a lot, and whenever he would travel in the cities he would regularly go to, he tended to have a woman in those cities that he had built a friendship with whom he would have dinner with and maybe go to a show with and maybe just spend the evening talking to, and his wife was really mad about this. And he said to me, when we were sitting there as part of his defense, he said, well, Lon, they're just friends. I mean, it's not like I have sex or anything with them. Well, the wife said, you know, you just don't get it.

Even if I believed you that you weren't having sex with them, which I don't, but even if I did, the point is still the same. When I married you, I had the right to expect that I would be number one in your life, number one in your heart, and even if all you do is have dinner with them and go to the movies with them, whatever, the point is you've got some other woman in your life, and because we're married, I'm supposed to be number one and the only woman. Now, ladies, you understand that, don't you? I'm not sure the guys always get that, but you understand that, don't you? Because the marriage relationship has an expectation that you're going to be number one in your partner's heart. Now, friends, the relationship between Jesus Christ and His followers is the very same way.

God has the expectation that He's going to be number one in our heart, and this is really important to Him. Not long ago, as you know, a month or so ago, we did a tour over in Turkey, and we had the privilege of going to Ephesus. We're going to talk more about Ephesus in Acts chapter 19.

Unbelievable city, unbelievable archaeological dig there, but I want to show you a picture of the theater in Ephesus where the great riot happened. This is me. I'm kind of dressed down. I don't wear a suit on the tour, and this is the theater that Acts chapter 19 was talking about. We went into this theater, and I had the privilege of reading from Revelation 2 because you know in the book of Revelation, Jesus writes a letter to this church, and the subject is exactly what we're talking about. Listen, verse 2, I know your deeds, Jesus says to this church. Your hard work and your perseverance. You have endured hardships for my name, and you have not grown weary.

Jesus starts off by saying, you know what? I really appreciate a lot of things about you guys. I appreciate the fact that you've worked hard for me, that you've endured for me, that you've persevered for me.

I appreciate the fact that you've been willing to suffer for me. However, Jesus said, I still got something against you guys because these are not the most important things to me. Verse 4, yet I have this against you. You have lost your first love, me, Jesus. You've lost me as your first love, so repent, Jesus says.

Have a change of heart and mind. Make a U-turn in your heart and do the things you did at first when you were young believers, when you first came to Christ, when you were brand new in the faith. You remember how you felt about me? Jesus said, well, I want you to get back to feeling that way about me. Now, I don't know about you guys, but as a follower of Christ, I can relate to this. Man, I remember when I first came to Christ. I mean, I was so passionate about Jesus Christ and my love for Him. I mean, nothing was even a threat.

Nothing was even close to being a threat. But then, you know, as time goes on, slowly things start to creep in, and I mean, other things begin to compete with Him for first place. I mean, as a girlfriend or a boyfriend, as I said, these can be good things.

A husband, a wife, my children, the ministry here. And if we're not careful, slow erosion can start to happen. It happens imperceptibly. We don't really see it coming. I mean, we don't go apostate or anything. We don't deny the faith. We don't forsake the Lord. We do all the right things on the outside that we're supposed to do, like these Ephesians.

They were doing all the right things on the outside. They were working hard and enduring and suffering for God. We do too. We go to church. We go to small group. We do our Bible study. We say grace before meals.

We have our quiet time. But you know what? On the inside, that passion for Jesus is not the same as it used to be. That love for Jesus is not where it once was in our life. There's that erosion that takes place, and you know, we become like Easter eggs. You know, these pretty things, they're gorgeous on the outside, but the inside's been all sucked empty. I mean, they're hollow on the inside.

There's no life on the inside. And it reminds me of a verse of Scripture, 2 Timothy 3.5, which says, having a form of godliness, but missing its power. And friends, you know what I've learned in 32 years of walking with Christ? That it's easy to have a form of godliness on the outside, to go to church, read my Bible, pray before meals, do everything I'm supposed to do on the outside.

But on the inside, I'm dried up like a shriveled old prune, and there's no power there, there's no life there, there's no vibrancy there. Because friends, the power and the life and the vibrancy of the Christian experience does not come from doing all these outward things. It comes from being utterly passionately and totally in love with Jesus Christ.

That's where the power comes from. That's where the vitality in the Christian experience comes from. And so the message that Jesus sent to this church here in Ephesus, the message that the first and second commandments send to the human race, the message that Jesus gave to this teacher of the law as he came up in asking this question, is the same message Jesus sends to you and me today, and that is, if we've lost our first love, we need to repent. If we've lost our first love, we need to make a U-turn and get back, what did Jesus say, get back to the way things were at first. Now you say, well, Lon, you know there's an old hymn that comes to my mind when you talk about this, and it has a line in it that goes like this, Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. That's right, wonderful old hymn called Come Thou Fount. And you know what, friends, this is true of every human heart.

I don't care whether you're a follower of Christ or not. It's true of my heart. You know, I'm prone to wander. I'm prone to go the way these Athenians went. I'm prone to turn around and suddenly my whole life is filled up with idols that have threatened the place that God should have in my life. Maybe you're like I am.

I suspect you are. Well, let me just say the good news is that God loves us in a way that His love doesn't shift. It doesn't move. Jeremiah 31 says, I have loved you with an everlasting love, an unconditional love. The wonderful thing is no matter where we are all over the map with our commitment to Christ, the one thing that I love is that Jesus' love never changes for us, and that's wonderful. You say, but, Lon, you know, I don't like this thing about my heart that it's so evil, like I'm just an idolatrous person in my heart.

I'm always letting other stuff get in the way. Well, I love what John Newton said, the guy who wrote Amazing Grace. He said the purpose of God in showing us the evil of our own hearts is to make us prize more highly the unconditional love of God. Now, friends, it's a wonderful thing to know that no matter where we go, the love of Jesus stays the same.

And this Thanksgiving season, that's a wonderful thing to celebrate. But could I close by saying this is good to celebrate, but we should not presume on the love of God? We should not use the love of God as an excuse to say, well, it's okay for us to wander all over the map in terms of our love for Him because He's going to love us just the same.

Yes, He's going to love us just the same, but we should not presume on that. We ought to keep the bar high. We ought to make it our goal, as Jesus said, to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, that He stays first place in our life. And this is a constant challenge. It's not something you do once and then you never worry about it again. It's got to be a recalibration that we worry about every single day in our life. And you know, the wonderful thing about repenting is you can do it every single day.

That's the cool part about it. Now, I want to close today by giving us a moment to really ask God to show us where we are. I mean, is Jesus Christ really number one in our life, or have we let something, even something good, our children, our ministry, our spouse, creep in and take over that role? So here's what I want us to do. Let's bow our heads together. Let's close our eyes.

And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, if you're a follower of Jesus today, I just want you to ask God one question. The question is, Lord, show me honestly who's really first in my life. Is it you or is it something else? And if He shows you that something else is in that role, then friends, right here as you sit, repent.

Change it. Let's take a moment and pray. Lord Jesus, it's indeed true of us. We're prone to wander. We feel it. We're prone to leave the God we love. Lord, forgive us for that. I mean, that's just who we are. That's just how we're wired. Thanks for reminding us today that what you want from us more than anything else is not some outward act of service or some outward act of loyalty.

The Ephesians had that. What you want is for us to keep you as our first love. And so it's good for us to stop and examine our hearts and say, is that really the way it is with me? We don't want to be Easter eggs, God, with all this pretty stuff on the outside and we're hollow and empty on the inside.

We want to be vibrant and alive in our relationship with you. For those of us who, when we asked the question, found that some other Lord God was first in our life, some hobby, some career achievement we're going for, somebody in our family. Lord, allow us to repent this morning and to re-enthrone you as our first love. Thanks for reminding us today the real power comes from being passionately in love with Jesus.

Lord, remind us every day to check it out because slippage happens every day and make sure we're going through this process daily. And thank you for loving us the same no matter where we are. We appreciate that, Lord, but help us not presume on it. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.