Stumbling over Elephants

Writing angry letters to newspaper editors focuses our time and our money and our energy on the symptom. If removing the expression of evil was the solution, and here the expression of evil is what? Idolatry.

If removing that expression was the solution, then rather than proclaim the gospel to the Athenians, Paul simply could have just slipped out at night with a sledgehammer and smashed all those idols in town, and then the next morning he could have announced, I've solved the problem of Athens. There are no more idols. The human heart is drawn to the creation of idols. An idol is anything we have in our life that takes the place where God belongs.

But the idols in your life are symptoms of a problem, and as Stephen was just describing, taking care of the symptoms doesn't take care of the real issue. So, what is the real issue, and how do we deal with it? That's what we're going to explore today. Welcome to Wisdom for the Heart. We're returning to our vintage wisdom series from the book of Acts. Stephen's calling this message stumbling over elephants.

Let's get started. In a recent editorial, Joseph Stoll, the president of Moody Bible Institute, wrote these provocative words. If God were to visibly show up today, many of us think we'd run up to him and high-five him for the good things he's done, ask him for an answer to that nagging theological question. Others might even demand that he tell us why that tragedy in our lives was permitted to rob us of our happiness and comfort.

The truth is, we would do none of these things. We would instead all fall trembling at his feet as his awesome, mighty, and fearful glory filled the room. Our evangelical culture tends to take the awesome reality of God and downsize him so he can fit into our buddy system. The way we talk about him, the way we pray, and more strikingly, the way we live, shows that we have somehow lost our sense of being awestruck in the presence of a holy and all-powerful God. Does that phrase, we have downsized God, startle you as it did me? Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, idolatry, a sin that I'm sure all of us would believe we've never committed, is nothing less than turning God into something he is not.

It doesn't have to be an idol of wood or stone or bronze. It can be the belief in the human heart that God is whoever and whatever I want him to be. For some, today, God has been downsized to a divine genie. You rub the lamp of prayer and you get your three wishes. And for this person, this kind of God fits well into his system until he doesn't get his three wishes.

Then there's a problem. One psychologist recently wrote, People walk into my office and say they are Christians, but I see absolutely no difference between their lives and the lives of non-Christians, except they also want to be happy, but they expect God to make it so. For others, God has been downsized into becoming sort of a doting grandfather.

He would never think that his kids did anything really that bad. For others, there is the more popular, in fact, the ever-growing sense that God has been downsized to sort of a corporate position as cosmic CEO, that he is somehow intrigued with Wall Street and he follows the stocks and bonds with interest. Worse yet, that somehow corporate America has automatically the will and knowledge of God so that if your corporation says you are to be moved or transferred, you are to be promoted, you are to be compromised, surely, since God and business sense never disagree, then God must be speaking through them. You study the characters of the New Testament and Old Testament and you discover that God tends to have people demoted who follow him rather than promoted. And we've been studying the life of one who was the heir apparent to Gamaliel, the brilliant theologian Pharisee who would have had a secure place in Israel's Supreme Court, the apostle Paul who gave it all up and is now making tents and eking out an existence as an itinerant preacher. It's time to be reintroduced to an all-powerful sovereign God who has been downsized and trivialized and redefined. Voltaire, that cynical agnostic, I think, said it well when he said that God created man in his own image and man returned the favor. So the apostle Paul stands here in chapter 17 of Acts in the capital city of idolatry, Athens, Greece, with its thousands of gods and goddesses all around him, and he is deeply troubled with this one particular monument that gives credence to the unknown God. And so in Acts 17, we've been following him as he moves from the streets of this city into the Areopagus, that open courtroom where the 30 elevated seats of the Athenian Supreme Court members sat, and the philosophers and the intelligentsia of that day, and he declares to them, my God is more than a monument. My God made it all.

I'm here to introduce to you the name, Iasis and his Anastasia, his resurrection, so that he is unknown no longer. Furthermore, he is the creator God who made everything there is, and we spend time studying that. And then last Lord's Day, we started his next point that basically says, my God is the almighty mover and shaker of all there is.

That's where we had to stop. So now in our fourth attempt to expound this paragraph, let's begin with verse 26. And he made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.

Stop here. Paul, in one sweeping statement, one sweeping sentence says several things about God. First of all, that this almighty, all-powerful mover and shaker of all that there is, is the God of anthropology. He made from one, that is Adam and his wife Eve, every nation.

Anthropology is that study of the physical and social and material and cultural aspects and developments of mankind. Who is responsible for those things? Almighty God, did all of these differences that we see represented by all of the nationalities happen by chance? Who came up with distinctive cultural differences? God did. Who came up with those cultural distinctives that have developed in music and appetite? And God did.

He's God of anthropology. You consider the additional fact that even in the midst of each national distinction, there are no people exactly alike. There are physical differences. There is no one in this room that looks exactly like you or on planet Earth. Even twins, what we call identical twins, have distinctive features. There are people in here with gray hair and brown hair and black hair and red hair.

Some people are praying for hair. Nobody looks exactly alike. Who made billions of originals? God did. The God of anthropology.

The mover and shaker of planet Earth. The God who made it all. You see, Paul is in the midst here of confronting the Greek belief that they are a special race. That they were created by the pantheon of deities from Greek soil.

They are the master race. And he is saying, in effect, which one of you came up with that dumb idea? You were made out of the same stuff that every other person and nation was made of. You are all made created by the Lord, the ruler of nations, the God of anthropology. To you, the unknown God.

To me, Christ Jesus. They believed they were a superior race. He said, you're not. Germans are not superior to Jews. Japanese are not superior to Chinese.

Europeans are not superior to Africans. In fact, in light of the implication of this scripture, if you have a hidden belief that you're somehow superior to somebody else because of your nationality, it isn't so much that you don't understand nationalities, it is that you do not know God. You need to understand also that Paul is subtly getting across the message that he's not introducing to them some local Jewish God. This God is the God of the Jews. He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He is the God of every nation.

Sovereign ruler. He's the God of anthropology. Second of all, he is the God of history. Notice verse 26 again, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation. So that tells us that God not only exercises his power in creating the nations, but he exercises his sovereignty in ruling the nations. So everything that happens comes about because he is either directly causing it or consciously allowing it.

That is, nothing enters into human history without the complete control of God over the events of history. Tony Evans recently wrote, he told the story of the cowboy who applied for health insurance. The agent asked him, have you ever had any accidents? Cowboy replied, no, never had any accidents. I was bitten by a rattlesnake once and a horse kicked me in the ribs.

That laid me up for a while, but I haven't had any accidents. The agent said, wait a second, I'm confused. A rattlesnake bit you and a horse kicked you, weren't those accidents? Cowboy replied, no, they did that on purpose.

Evans went on to say, the cowboy had the right idea. Things don't just happen. Everything that occurs, occurs under the hand of a sovereign God.

There's no such thing in reality as accidents. God is ruling even when it doesn't look like he's ruling, he's ruling. Even when the world seems filled with chaos, God is ruling the chaos according to his divine purpose. Even when things are falling apart, God is ruling the falling apart of those things to fulfill his divine will.

It'll take heaven to explain most of it. The reason we don't think that way is because we have downsized God. Listen to the voice of scripture properly defining this almighty mover and shaker of planet earth. Job wrote, what God desires, God does. I know that thou canst do all things and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted. David wrote, but our God is in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases. Whatever the Lord pleases, he does in heaven and in earth and the seas and in all deep. Solomon wrote, the Lord has made everything for its own purpose, even the wicked for the day of evil. Isaiah wrote, God is the one forming light and creating darkness, causing wellbeing and creating calamity.

I am the Lord who does all these. You go to the end of this holy book and you read Revelation 19, 6 saying, for the Lord God, the almighty reigns. The church, I believe, is in desperate need of this theological truth.

It seems panic stricken today over the latest decision out of Washington or the latest perversion on prime time. What's even more troubling to me is that for the last 20 years or so, the church has spent millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of man hours attempting to win some cultural war. As if getting homosexuality out of Disney and off the television and getting prayer back into schools and getting some kind of conservative majority into Washington would give God the victory. Ladies and gentlemen, God already has the victory. He is not sovereign ruler over this little nation.

Whenever there is a Republican majority in Washington, he is sovereign ruler because he is almighty God. The church seems to be focused today on the symptoms of sin, the expressions of evil, and at great expense is attempting to restrict the expressions of sinful men and women. One of the things that really has grabbed the focus of attention over the last couple of decades has been prayer in school. The problem is not that prayer is not in school. The problem is that prayer is not in the home.

And if you prayed with your kids, whether or not your kid's school allowed some 30 seconds of meaningless, innocuous prayer that is so inoffensive that it is prayed to whatever and any deity, that would not seem to be such a great victory to you. The mission of the church in this and any generation remains constant. It is not to remove the outward expressions of sin in a society, no matter how perverted they may be, no matter how frustrating and angering they may be, no matter how anti-God, anti-family, anti-value they may be, sinful society will act how? Sinfully. Evil men will do what? Evil wicked things until they become so anti-God that eventually they fall in love and worship and follow the anti-Christ. You just apply the logic of the contemporary evangelical church today and the spending of its millions and man-hours to this paragraph.

If removing the expression of evil was the solution, and here the expression of evil is what? Idolatry. And it troubled Paul. It burdened Paul. It angered the apostle. If removing that expression was the solution, then rather than proclaim the gospel to the Athenians, Paul simply could have just slipped out at night with a sledgehammer and smashed, crushed all those idols in town, and then the next morning he could have announced, I've solved the problem of Athens. There are no more idols. I've fixed their idolatry.

Oh, he wouldn't have because the city is still filled with who? Idolaters. Our mission, like Paul's here, is to shine with the truth of the gospel and assume that God has called us to shine because our society is dark and evil.

Otherwise, why shine? I'm not suggesting now that it's wrong for a Christian to be in the political scene. I'm not suggesting it's wrong to vote, to pray for our nation that, as one author recently wrote, is slouching toward Gomorrah. But picketing evil, boycotting perversion, writing angry letters to newspaper editors, and getting on the radio and raising a force that jams the phones in Washington focuses our time and our money and our energy on the symptom, not the solution. You expect the darkness to produce what?

Darkness. You expect evil men to display evil. And I have not found in the New Testament strategy of the New Testament church any right that I have to not be exposed to evil. In fact, the Bible predicts that men will grow worse and worse until finally God will wash earth with fire. The mission of the church that has been diverted, I believe, in my generation like none other is to influence the hearts of people. It is then that you change the expressions of people's lifestyles. It is then that you change your world. Has it ever occurred to you that a lighthouse never once got rid of a storm?

The very reason it was built was because there would be storms. Let me read to you what one church did, I think, with the proper perspective in wanting to make a difference. There's a gentleman who I read about who was once a leader in the Democratic Party. He'd been a ward leader for the Democratic Party in Texas before he moved to California. As ward leader, the article says his job was to have a block captain for every block of his wards that when election day came, his block captains could get out the vote. Then he became a Christian, eventually a pastor, and began to serve in Los Angeles. He said to himself, quote, if I could organize a city to get out the vote for the Democrats, why can't I organize a city to get out the gospel of Jesus Christ? So he took the same strategy that he'd used for politics and began to establish Christian block captains for every block.

Los Angeles has 9,000 blocks. He counted. So far, his church has established 1,900 block captains for the gospel of Christ.

That is focusing on the solution, not the symptom. Notice verse 27, that they should seek God if perhaps they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his offspring.

Now, Paul here is doing something really interesting. He's quoting pagan poetry. You ought to know that one of the poets he quotes from was the same poet who 500 years earlier had released the flock of sheep from the Areopagus, as we talked about the plague he was trying to circumvent. What Paul applies to God was a quote from Epimenides, who said, first part of verse 28, in him we live and move and exist. Epimenides said that of Zeus.

He believed that Zeus was the giver of life, the source of life. Paul quotes him and says, no, that's true of my God. What Paul does here is use the Greek poets to prove the belief hidden away in every human heart that he has a connection to some other being, some divine, some supernatural being. Paul said to them, in effect, the hidden belief is given to you, verse 27, so that you might perhaps seek for God or grope after him. Now, Paul is speaking in a way in the original language that expects a negative response. In other words, he's saying God did all of this. He rules over everything. He's given you a sense that there's more than meets the human eye, so that you might grope after him, but you'll never find him.

You could add that phrase. You'll never come to the truth of him. You'll only grope about in darkness. What's very clever is that Paul now uses a word, grope, here that was used by Athens, one of Athens' most famous men, citizens. His name was Homer, and he made that word famous in his work, the Odyssey. You may remember the Odyssey, Odysseus is the warrior who's returning from the Trojan Wars. It takes him 10 years to get back home, and this chronicles all of his adventures and his challenges. One particular point, he and his men are captured by the one-eyed monster Cyclops.

Is he coming back to you now? And they're put into a cave, and Odysseus is able to surprise Cyclops, and he spears him in that one eye and blinds him. The only trouble is they've got to get out of this cave, and now Cyclops is making it difficult because he is, same Greek word, groping in his blindness for them. So Paul now uses that word to speak of the Athenians who sit before him in all of their wisdom, and he says, you are groping about for some supernatural, and all you can come up with in effect is 30,000 gods and goddesses, but you're searching, you're groping, but I want you to know you won't find them. Ephesians 4 tells us why the unbelievers walk and the futility of their mind being darkened in their understanding because of the blindness of their heart. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 4, verse 4, that God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelieving, so they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. Matthew 15 talks of Jesus says that the Pharisees of his day were blind men leading a blind nation.

The problem was then and is today that without the spiritual awakening or eyesight brought about by salvation through Jesus Christ, a person might be able to gather a little bit of truth of God, a little bit of truth of the supernatural, a little bit of an idea that there's something out there, but never be able to come to the truth without the gospel of Jesus Christ. I think it's illustrated well in this old classic poem. It was six men of Indostan, to learning much inclined, who went to see the elephant, though all of them were blind, that each by observation might satisfy his mind. The first approached the elephant, and happening to fall against his broad and sturdy side, it once began to bawl, God bless me, but the elephant is very like a wall.

The second feeling of the tusk cried, ho, what have we here, so round and smooth and sharp. To me, it is mighty clear this wonder of an elephant is very like a spear. The third approached the animal, and happening to take the squirming trunk within his hands, thus boldly up in spake, I see, quoth he, the elephant is very like a snake. The fourth reached out his eager hand and felt about the knee, oh, what most this wondrous beast is like his mighty plane, quoth he, to his clear enough the elephant instead is like a tree. The fifth, who chanced to touch his ear, said, well, even the blindest man can tell what this resembles most. Deny the fact who can this marvel of an elephant is very like a fan.

The sixth no sooner had begun about the beast to grope than seizing on the swinging tail that fell within his scope. Oh, I see, quoth he, the elephant is very like a rope. And so these men of Indostan disputed loud and long, each in his own opinion exceeding stiff and strong, though each was partly in the right, yet all were in the what? You know this poem.

Though each had a little bit of the right, all of them were wrong. The Bible says that the unbeliever's spiritual eyes are blind. The spiritual understanding of his heart is blind. The understanding of his mind is blind. Blinded eyes, blinded hearts, blinded eyes. So what does spiritually blind people do? They think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. What is that? God created man in his own image and man did what?

Return the favor. He is the one who determined, according to this passage, the times of this nation and the boundaries of this nation's habitation. But I also know and deeply believe that the only hope for this nation is for the Church of Jesus Christ to return its finances, its resources, its manpower, its prayer power back to the primary task of winning people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. In 20 years, the Church has weighed in more heavily than ever in the political scene.

And after 20 years, our society is worse, yes? And at the same time, we have abandoned the protection of what we are supposed to be the pillar and ground of and that is the truth. And so today, our society not only is more evil than ever, it is now more confused than ever as to what is divine truth.

We have the answer. Your world and your arena is salt and light. With every opportunity you have, you declare to this world that this unknown God is more than a monument. He is transcendent.

He is imminent. He is the divine resource. He is the divine ruler. And you entrust to Him the times of this nation and the boundaries of its habitation as you introduce people to this one, the Lord who is the Lord of heaven. He is the Lord of Earth.

That's our mission, isn't it? To introduce the people we encounter to the God who created them and the God who offers them eternal life. This is Wisdom for the Heart, the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. Over the last several weeks, we've been working our way through a series from our Vintage Wisdom Library out of the Book of Acts. This is a series Stephen taught to his church in the 1990s. But we brought it out to broadcast now because we knew it would be helpful and encouraging during this day.

We have one more lesson to go in this series, and that'll be next time. Between now and then, there are several ways that you can interact with us. I encourage you to explore our website, which is wisdomonline.org. The archive of Stephen's teaching is on that site, as well as information regarding all of his books, Bible study guides, and much more. If you ever miss one of these broadcasts, you can go back and listen on our website so that you can stay caught up with our daily Bible teaching. There's also an opportunity for you to sign up to receive our monthly devotional magazine entitled Heart to Heart. Heart to Heart features articles written by Stephen, as well as a daily devotional guide written by Stephen's son, Seth. This resource will encourage you in your faith and equip you to walk daily with God. We want to introduce you to it, so call today at 866-48-BIBLE. Then join us next time for more Wisdom for the Heart. .