More Than a Monument

And what will fix the ill of our church that ultimately penetrates the ill of our society? It won't be a list of pietistic all exercises, longer praying, longer fasting.

The solution to the ill is a fresh understanding of the nature and character of God.

That's why I'm thrilled to be at this particular juncture in our study through the Book of Acts, because we come to a rich passage of Scripture where Paul describes to his Athenian audience, this is to God is.

When the apostle Paul first arrived in Athens, that city was the philosophical center of the world. It was the birthplace of the democratic system of government.

The citizens of Athens considered themselves wise, and they believe that they had discovered many truths. The problem was that they had not discovered the ultimate source of truth. God himself, the apostle Paul, changed that when he introduced them to the one true God.

And we're going to explore that account today here on Wisdom for the Heart.

Our Bible teacher, Stephen Davey, is working through a series from the Book of Acts, and he's calling The Lesson You're About to hear more than a monument.

I was struck by a message. We were in a store shopping with all the other hundreds of people and a woman, a middle aged woman to walk past me and she's wearing a sweat shirt.

And she had written across her sweat shirt and big, bold words. I want it all.

I could only hope that she discovers before it's too late that even if she had it all, it wouldn't be enough.

I want to take you to a city this morning that had it all and had long since discovered that all of it wasn't enough.

I want us to go to Athens, Greece, and you would know if you're a student of history, that Athens, Greece played a pivotal role in Western civilization. Athens was the cradle of democracy. They're the ones that came up with the ideas of parliament and individual freedom.

Athens had roaming its streets and teaching in its classrooms. Teachers like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, they had discovered so many truths.

But they had never discovered the truth. By the time the apostle Paul visits the city of Athens, they are surrounded by opulence and a fluence. They have had the greatest thinkers in the last thousand years. They have discovered everything from the rules of hydro static's to biology.

They had it all and had discovered it was enough, as we'll soon see. I couldn't help as I realized the city that did not know who God was. It's so much like our city and our world. I shared a story with this congregation a couple of years ago. They came back to my mind and I want to repeat it again. It's the story of the wedding between Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburg, which occurred in nineteen. Forty seven people came from all around the world. They converged on London to see this magnificent wedding. And it had all of the tradition and pomp of a royal wedding.

And among the crowd of people who had traveled to be part of this was a 12 year old king named King Feisal. The second he was the monarch of Iraq and he arrived and he certainly wasn't interested in the wedding. He was more interested in the horses that were pulling the carriages down the boulevard toward the cathedral. Viewed as any other 12 year old, he pushed his way through the crowds so that he could get a better look. And he was roughly treated by the officers. It was only until after they discovered who he was that for the next set of days, the London Times carried articles along with the headline King Feisal. We're sorry we didn't know who you were.

And I think in our culture, and especially during this season, we would have to say that that message is echoing throughout not only from Athens, but all the way to America. We don't know who God is. I'm afraid that the message of not knowing this God is not only a cultural message or misunderstanding or lack of understanding, but it is seeped its way into the church. The last thing you'd ever think of studying is doctrine or theology proper. The attributes and the nature and the character of God.

And what will fix the ill of our church that ultimately penetrates the ill of our society will not be a series of church meetings. It won't be a list of pietistic or exercises. Longer praying, longer fasting.

The solution to the ill is a fresh understanding of the nature and character of God.

That's why I'm thrilled to be at this particular juncture in our study through the Book of Acts, because we come to a rich passage of Scripture where Paul describes his Athenian audience. This is who God is. So if you have your Bibles, I want you to take them and turn to the Book of Acts if you haven't already.

And Chapter 17, we've already seen the truth rejected at Destil and I. Now we're going to see the truth ridiculed at Athens. Let's return to Paul's second missionary adventure and pick it up at verse 16. Now, while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was beholding the city full of vitals.

There are two interesting words in this. Chosen by the spirit of God to tell us a little bit about the man who is about to introduce God to this city. And I want to highlight them. You can take your pencil or pen and circle the first words.

Behold. Being at work gives us our English word, Theodor. He didn't just come into town and casually stroll around. You understand he's waiting now for Timothy and Silas to come. Paul has just recently escaped from Berea and now he's waiting for his companions to join him.

And while he's there, he has some idle time. And you know, what you do with your idle time shows you a lot about you, doesn't it? Well, he has this idle time. And in the process of being idle or I should say waiting, he walks around the city and he takes it all in like you would take in a show every nuance. See. He saw the buildings. He took long walks, long walks.

He watched people notice, circled the word, provoked.

It's earlier in the versus spirit was being provoked within him. That second word could be translated, deeply moved. They could also be rendered angry or angered.

There was a mixture of being moved by what he saw and being angry at what he saw. He was deeply troubled. Imagine what was so deeply troubled.

The Apostle, one Grecian author who visited Athens 50 years after Paul had come, would write that it was easier to walk down the street of Athens and be confronted with a God than it was to be confronted by a man. There were thirty thousand plus statues to the gods and goddesses of the Greek pantheon. They were cut into reliefs.

They were the town council met. They had this huge statue of Apollo dedicated to where they kept their town records. That building was dedicated to the mother of all gods. He was surrounded by idolatry and he was angry because they were following a lie. And he was at the same time deeply moved because every idol, every statue was a declaration that they were searching and had not found the truth.

I couldn't help but compare Athens to America.

The first word that came to my mind as I sort of sat back and thought, as I studied and researched some words came to mind that we're similar. The word the first one was pluralistic.

Athens couldn't have enough gods. It couldn't follow enough paths.

We have moved from that pluralistic stage to now even our own culture where we're now syncretic stick. We now take a little bit from this God and a little bit from that religion. And we sort of mix it all together and come up with something that makes us feel good. A poll was released to indicate this among the rank and file of our American culture. Twenty four months ago that was released and ninety six percent believed in the existence of God.

That really sounds good, doesn't it? We must really be making an impact. And yet of that ninety six percent, 28 percent of them also believed in reincarnation. Forty five percent of them thought that Jesus probably had sinned. And nearly two out of three did not believe in absolute truth.

What's true for you is your truth. I have my truth, but I believe in God. Which one?

We have stamped on our currency. In God we trust.

The trouble is, we collectively no longer know which one we're talking about and who that is. Secondly, the word that came to my mind was intolerance. Now, I'm not talking about persecution because we certainly are not persecuted in America. You might be irritated, but we're not persecuted. I found it interesting that Luke slips in this little commentary and verse 21 look there on the Athenians.

He said, now, all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new. Now, that sounds and that sounds very tolerant, doesn't it? That sounds extremely open minded. And we want to hear new things. But let somebody like Paul come along and declare the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he is called an idol babbler, a seed picker.

That word referred to a bird that would go along picking up scraps here and there and then and then disseminating those. He's just picked up a few scraps. He is an idol babbler. What made the difference between wanting to hear something new and Paul, who had something dramatically new to tell them?

Now become an idol babbler? Well, you can present something new to our American society and it can be bizarre and it will be accepted. Just do not say it is appointed on. The man wants to die. And after that, the what?

Now you're babbling.

I heard a few days ago that it took a great deal of pressure and wrangling just to have. The principal of one of our town's schools and the staff allow a nativity scene, a small nativity scene to be placed on a table that had already had placed upon it. Different symbols of other religions around the world and what they did during Christmas time.

Only after a tremendous amount of pressure did the nativity scene get the chance to be placed with other symbols of what other religions did around the world.

What is Christmas? Anybody look it up in the Encyclopedia Britannica?

I brought mine with me. Where is it? Here we go. Let me. Let me tell you what it says. This is going to be a shock.

Christmas Desh is the Christian holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ.

Just don't remind anybody.

It is becoming more and more apparent that America is open minded so long as you are closed mouthed. A third word that came to our mind before we dig into this text is the word uncertain.

So there was a deep, abiding uneasiness in that Athenian crowd. They had idle after I'd left her idol after Idol. They had dedicated their lives, as it were, to honoring the gods, and that they were uneasy. Why? Because they felt they might have missed the true one. And so, as we'll see in a moment, they erected a monument to the what to the unknown God.

Just in case, you know, I've talked to so many people, it seems so solid and so sure about their beliefs. And eventually we get through the layers and I'm able to ask them the question, are you dead?

Sure. Are you really sure that you've got this thing together that if you were to die today, you know for sure, 100 percent you'd go to heaven?

And more times than not, the answer comes back. I'm not really that sure.

And Paul was moved, as we'll see by the side of this monument, because he knew he had the answer. One more word is the word empty. Empty. Athens had heard it all. They had it all. They were saturated with philosophies and and speculations.

They were surrounded by spiritualities. And they had come up bankrupt. They were empty. They had it all and discovered that all of it wasn't enough.

Would you have been moved by that? Ladies and gentlemen, had you been Paul, would that have so bothered you?

Did you. You became moved over that city. Have you ever been moved by your city?

Like Jesus Christ himself, who wept over the city of Jerusalem, Moody wept over the city of Chicago, Spurgeon, over the city of London.

Paul is moved over the city of Athens. Who will cry for Kerry? Who will be moved for Rawleigh?

You many Christians get moved, but never get moving. Notice what Paul does next, verse 17.

So in other words, because of the way then move, because of all he had seen and heard. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God fearing Gentiles. This is the first of three categories of people that Paul will impact with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We could call them the worshipers. They knew about the Old Testament God. They were adherents to monotheism. They did not know of the son of God. The second crowd, we could call them the shoppers because it tells us in the marketplace that is the outdoor mall every day with those who happen to be present verse 18. Here's the third group and also some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers were conversing with him and some were saying, what, with this idle babble or wish to say others.

He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. They had confused his reference of the resurrection, the Jesus. They tended the DFI, everything. So they felt he believed in two deities, Jesus, he, ACIS and Anastasiya, which is the Greek word for resurrection.

He was. And he ends up with these philosophers. I learned more from my research this week about Epicurean ism and stoicism than you'd ever wish to hear this morning. So let me just give you two words to write in the margin of your Bibles by the word epicurean or in your notes, wherever. One word, right. The word indulgence or indulgence.

The Epicureans believe that the highest end and chief goal of man is to attain pleasure and avoid pain.

So a wonderful philosophy of life.

They believe that you should get all you can get and live it up. And the familiar themes of our own culture just ring in my mind as I study this individual school of thought. They they believe you ought to go after everything and get all you can. They hadn't discovered that even if you had it, all wouldn't be enough.

They were indulgent. While the Epicureans were indulgent, the Stoics were indifferent.

The pursuit of man to them was to feel neither pleasure nor pain, to be above emotions, to be above circumstances. We get the word stoic, a person who was unmoved.

They believed that you had self mastery and by having self mastery over your world, you had attained. And so you were not moved by anything. And so you have these two extremes on the philosophical spectrum. And they're totally different. And yet they unite in that. They both now don't like Paul Notis first 19, and they took him and brought him to the area off. I guess this is a level called an outdoor court. There were 30 raised seats where the 30 judges of Athens set the Supreme Court. He is not on trial, but they're there to listen to his explanation. May we know what this new teaching is, which you are proclaiming? Twenty four. You are bringing some strange things to our ears. And we want to know, therefore, what these things mean.

Now, all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time and nothing other than telling you're hearing something new. And pullovers twenty two stood in the midst of the area up against and said Men of Athens. I observe that you are very religious in all respect.

Stop. We can learn a lot from his tactful approach.

Gentlemen, I see that you are very religious. He doesn't say, gentlemen, I observe that you are really carried away with idols. You are. You are one idolaters bunch of men I cannot shake. You know, I didn't say that. He says, I observe you're very religious. Now, if you have a translation that says you are too superstitious and unfortunately involves more interpretation than translation, the compound word could literally be rendered. I see that you have a high respect for the supernatural.

What a wonderful way to start with this pluralistic crowd, gentlemen. I've been around your city and I see that you have a high respect for the supernatural. And I imagine after that opening statement, they probably thought, you know, sidel babblers, OK. We'll listen to him.

And we'll get to the rest of his sermon as we go through a couple of weeks of study. But at any rate, for now, understand this. And then he adds to that another very tactful kind of thing. Verse twenty three four. While I was passing through and examining the objects of your foolishness. No, the objects of your what? I also found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. What are you. Therefore you worship in ignorance, literally. Therefore, you worship without knowing all the facts. I want to proclaim the facts to you.

I want to introduce to you the unknown God. Now, let's stop a second. Let me give you about two more minutes of history here as we set the stage for several weeks of study. Six hundred years before Paul stood in the area, Ophiuchus, and gave this testimony. The city of Athens had been stricken with a terrible plague, an epidemic, a matter of fact. And hundreds of people had died and hundreds more were dying. The city of Athens didn't know what to do. They couldn't find a cure. And they were panic stricken. Finally, a famous poet from Crete named at the Menotti's came up with a plan that the city liked. It fit with their worship of many gods. Under the assumption that they had violated the feelings or they had wronged some of their gods, he presented or proposed the plan that he would arrive at the area Ophiuchus. And from there he would release a flock of sheep. It was the belief that the angry gods would lure those sheep to their temple. And so he released them that day and all the citizens came out to watch as those sheep began to wander about. The order was given that wherever a sheep would lie down or lay down, they would be sacrificed there to the God of the nearest temple. Hopefully satiating the anger of someone of some God that they worship.

The only problem was many sheep laid down in places where there was no temple nearby. They were then confused until someone came up with the idea that they had somehow missed a God. And so they erected this monument and they inscribed upon it the words to the UN known God, and they sacrifice those sheep there. The apostle Paul arrives on the scene and he says, I am here to tell you the name of that angry God whose wrath must be vindicated.

And he will end his sermon with the statement of the impending coming judgment.

But he said, I'm here, in effect, to introduce to you the name of the unknown God.

Verse 24, the God who made the world at all things in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.

Paul is saying, my God is more than a monument. He is alive.

He is the one and only living sovereign. And I want to tell you about him. I want to close by saying how ironic I thought it was, if not planned, and certainly it was in the mind of God. For those of us who study together, as we've done this morning, facts of history and scripture, something very interesting emerged from this, from the very place that ate amenities, released those sacrificial lambs. The Ophiuchus is now the very place where the apostle Paul stands and delivers the name of the lamb who voluntarily wandered into the wrath of an angry God and paid the price so that we could be freed from the epidemic, the plague of sin and everlasting death. He introduces to them from that very spot the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And he says, in effect, I want to tell you the name of that lamb who came back to life.

He is the Lord of Heaven. He is the Lord of Earth.

The culture you and I live in needs to hear the exact same message. I hope this time, in God's word has encouraged and challenged you to be the salt and light among the people with whom you rub shoulders today. Thanks for joining us. You've tuned in to Wisdom for the Heart. The Bible Teaching Ministry of Stephen Davie. Stephen Pastors a church in Kerry, North Carolina. He first taught this series to that church back in the 1990s. But we pulled it out of our archives to broadcast it now because the truth is just as relevant today as it was then. If you'd like to learn more about the Ministry of Wisdom for the heart. Visit our Web site, which you'll find at Wisdom Online, dawg. That site is filled with resources, including the complete archive of Stevens teaching ministry. You'll also find our online store that contains all of Stevens books, Bible study guides and other resources. In addition, you can interact with our ministry and even support us if the Lord leads you to do that. We are a listener supported ministry, and it's your gifts that make it possible for us to produce these lessons each day. We have a thank you gift that we send to all of our wisdom partners. It's a monthly magazine entitled Heart to Heart. Each issue of Heart to Heart magazine has articles to help you grow in your Christian faith and be encouraged from God's word. There's also a daily devotional guide to keep you grounded in God's word each day. Again, heart to heart is a resource that we send as a gift to all our partners. But if you'd like to receive the next three issues, we'd be thrilled to send them to you. All you need to do is call and ask. You can call us right now at eight six six forty eight Bible or eight six six four eight two four two five three. We have a staff and volunteer team who answer the phones and they'd be happy to talk with you today. Call and ask how you can receive Heart to Heart magazine if you prefer. You can request your copy at our Web site. There's a form that you can fill out and we'll take it from there. I also want to make you aware of the wisdom international app for your smartphone when you install that app to your iPhone or Android device. You can take this Bible teaching ministry wherever you go. Install that app today. We'd love to hear from you and learn how God's using these lessons to equip and encourage you in your walk with Christ. You can write to us at Wisdom for the Heart, P.O. Box three seven two nine seven. Raleigh, North Carolina, two seven six two seven. Once again, that's wisdom for the heart. P.O. Box three seven two nine seven. Raleigh, North Carolina, two seven six two seven. I hope we hear from you today.

I would really encourage us if you prefer to correspond electronically. Our email address is info at Wisdom Online dot org. I'm Scott Wiley. And for Stephen and all of us here, thank you for joining us today. We'll be back tomorrow. So listen, at this same time, right here on Wisdom for the Heart.