Acts 17, passage we're going to be looking at tonight is where Paul preaches among the intellectual elite in Athens. This is one of the classic examples of New Testament gospel preaching. Here you see the apostolic evangelistic strategy in action. And it is an especially helpful example of how to confront false religion, philosophy and elitism in an evangelistic setting. And it takes place in a highbrow academic environment. It's one of the best-known portions of the book of Acts, but it's also one of the most abused sections of Scripture. And especially these days, it's become kind of a favorite passage for people today who are convinced that the best way to reach lost sinners in the twenty-first century is to adapt the gospel and to reinvent the church to make Christianity more compatible with whatever culture we're trying to penetrate. Contextualization is the name for the strategy and all of a sudden you can say or do the most crass, worldly and even profane things, these days even from the pulpit, and justify it all by saying you're just being missional. You can wear all the badges and speak all the vulgar language of secular culture's dark side and you can vindicate all of that profanity by insisting that all you are doing is contextualizing the message for subcultures who act and speak that way as a way of life. The goal, we're told, is to make Christianity seem more familiar and more comfortable and less counter-cultural. to the people we're trying to reach. Contextualization, that's a word that...and a concept that first began to gain traction among evangelicals in the realm of Bible translation. And it makes sense on a certain level. Obviously, if you take the Word of God to a culture like, say, Eskimos, where they have no clue what sheep are, you need to find a way to explain all the pastoral references in terms that Eskimos can understand, or at least explain sheep and shepherding to Eskimos. Something like Psalm 100 verse 3, we are His people and the sheep of His pasture is, let's face it, harder for an Eskimo to relate to than it is for a New Zealander. So in one instance, this actually happened, a group of Bible translators making a Bible for a unique Eskimo language translated the word sheep everywhere it is in Scripture, instead they used the word sea lions. I can't imagine what that does to the 23rd Psalm. And I also can't imagine why it wouldn't be a whole lot easier simply to teach Eskimos what sheep are, but there you have it. That's an example of contextualization in the sense Bible translators normally use the term. And I suppose you can see it as a kind of dynamic equivalence run amok. And so, if you want a formal definition, contextualization is the practice of altering either the terminology or the content of our message in order to employ the language, the cultural tokens, the styles, the values, or the preoccupations of the culture or subculture we're trying to reach. Obviously there is a legitimate sense in which it's absolutely essential to translate the gospel into whatever language of the people group we are trying to reach. The Apostle Paul himself said, and we heard it read in the Scripture reading tonight, he said, to the Jews I became as a Jew that I might win the Jews. To those who are without Law, as without Law, but...he added...not being without Law toward God. To the weak, he said, I became as weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some." First Corinthians 9, we heard it tonight. Paul was talking about not merely speaking the language but also observing the formal customs of differing cultures in order to keep from making himself a bigger stumbling block than the gospel already is. Obviously you wouldn't find it very easy to evangelize Hasidic Jews if your strategy is to have them over to your home and serve ham casseroles, right? We wouldn't do that. There's an obvious sense in which it is right and good and necessary to avoid the cultural taboos of whatever people group you are trying to minister to. But when you hear people today who are enthralled with the idea of contextualization, they often take that principle and turn it on its head. rather than avoiding cultural taboos in order not to obscure the gospel unnecessarily, they actually sometimes purposely try to flout as many taboos as possible. Unlike Paul who wanted to avoid anything that was considered impolite or uncouth so that the gospel could be heard without unnecessary distractions, lots of people today want to maximize the shock and awe effect. thinking that's going to gain them a better hearing with the South Park generation. And they also often go far beyond adapting the language and the social conventions of polite culture. you know, things like bowing and showing deference in the proper places. And instead they try to adapt the content of the gospel message as much as possible to the world view of whatever subculture they see as their target audience. Not only do sea lions become acceptable substitutes for sheep, post-modern tolerance becomes an acceptable replacement for Christian charity. And they're not the same thing. One advocate of contextualization defines the term this way. He says it means temporarily adopting whatever worldview is held by the people we are trying to reach so that we can speak to them as one of them and not as outsiders and aliens. That's his view. Now that is not a biblical view. That's not the strategy Paul used and I want to show you that tonight. But in the last decade or so, this passion for contextualizing everything has shown no restraint whatsoever. I know you've seen it. I know you've seen examples of it. That is why you read so many newspaper articles nowadays about churches that meet in bars and men's ministries that feature poker games and churches where the main place for the corporate gathering is outfitted with comfy sofas where people can sit and talk to one another instead of pews where they can sit and listen to a preacher open the Word of God. One website promoting contextualization actually quotes Ernest Hemingway. He says, bait the hook according to what the fish likes, not according to what the fisherman likes. And that web page goes on to say this, that the key to all effective missional ministry is this, you have to be what people are looking for. People often try to justify that kind of strategy by singling out this famous account of how Paul ministered among the elite philosophers of Athens. You hear this passage taught this way nowadays, they'll say, well he blends into the culture here. He contextualized his message by speaking in the language and the style of his hearers. He observed their religion. He listened to their beliefs. He learned from them before he tried to teach them. He didn't step on their toes by refuting what they believed. And instead, he took their idea of the unknown God and he embraced that, and he used that as the starting point for his message about Christ. And right there, you have all the major elements of post-modern missional ministry, culture, contextualization, conversation and charitableness. And I think you're going to see as we look at this passage carefully that Paul actually used none of those strategies, at least not in the way they've been defined and packaged by most of today's post-modern emergent and missional church leaders. In reality, as we read this, you'll see, Paul was bold and plain spoken. He was counter-cultural. He was confrontive. He was confident and by Athenian standards, much less today's standards, he was closed-minded. He offended a significant number of Athens' intellectual elite and he walked away from this encounter without winning the admiration of society at large, but with just a small group of converts who followed him. That is the biblical approach to ministry. You don't measure success or failure by how pleased the crowd is at the end of the meeting. Our first concern is the clarity and the power with which the message is delivered. And the right question to ask is not how many people received the message warmly, it's nice if they do, but that's usually not the majority response. The right question to ask is whether the signs of conviction are seen in those who have heard. And sometimes a forceful negative reaction is the result of the gospel's convicting aspects. In fact, when unbelievers walk away without repenting of their sin, without embracing Christ... Actually an overtly hostile reaction is a much better indication that the message was delivered clearly and accurately than if you get a round of applause and an outpouring of good feeling from a crowd of appreciative worldlings who are left totally unimpacted by the message. And we need to remember that. We are tempted to think that when people reject the gospel, it's because we've done a poor job of presenting it. And sometimes that may be true, but it's not necessarily true. The proper focus for us is to be as clear and as accurate as possible and not to be ourselves a stumbling block that keeps people from hearing the gospel. But the gospel itself is a stumbling block for unbelievers and so people will stumble, some will even get angry when they are presented with the truth of the gospel. And we have no right to try to reshape the gospel so that it's no longer a stumbling block. You can't proclaim the gospel faithfully if your goal is for no one ever to be offended or upset by it. We could learn a lot from what Jesus did in John 6. John 6, that chapter begins with this, verse 2, then a great multitude followed Him because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased. He did all these healings and they loved it when He did miracles, but they didn't like His message. He did miracles. And then He preached to them, they loved the miracles, but by the end of the sermon, John writes this, verse 66 of John 6, from that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more. And then while the crowd was diminishing to almost nothing, verse 67, John says, Jesus turned to the Twelve and said to them, do you also want to go away? And verse 70, did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil? So in the face of this mass exodus of His disciples, notice, Jesus was not concerned about doing what He could to seem more likable. He presented the message and pressed it with more clarity and more candor than ever. And that is exactly what Paul does here in Acts 17. Paul's strategy is about as far from the post-modernized approach that drives so much of the contemporary evangelical churches outreach efforts as it's possible to be. So let's start with this simple list of post-modern terms. These again are the tools that supposedly are essential for missional outreach today, culture, contextualization, conversation and charitableness. And let's look at those four words and use them as an outline to work through a survey of Paul's sermons. And if you didn't get all four down, don't worry, I'll repeat them as we move from point to point. The first is culture. Culture. Now, I'd love to give you more context here, but we really have to cut this short because time is short tonight. But let's start at Acts 17, 22, and here's the scenario. Paul is cut off from his missionary team. He's had to flee because of opposition. And so they sent him to Athens, two days away from where he was ministering, in order to save his life. He's gone to Athens alone for his own safety. And he sends word back to Timothy and Silas to join him in Athens. And he probably has about a two-week wait before they could join him there. So he spends that time alone in Athens investigating the city and its culture. But he simultaneously launches his public ministry in Athens, notice, both at the synagogue there and in the public square, verses 16 through 18. Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. And then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him and some said, what does this babbler want to say? Others said, he seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. Now what's crucial to notice, first of all here, is Paul's relationship to the culture. He does not try to assimilate. He doesn't embrace the culture and look for ways to shape the gospel to suit it. He is repulsed by it. Look at verse 16 again. His spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. And the English doesn't really do full justice to the meaning of the expression. The Greek word for provoked is paroxuno which is a very intense word, meaning it was exasperated or agitated. It conveys the idea of outrage and indignation. Now Paul, of course, was well-educated and he was fully aware of the history and the details of Greek mythology and the religion of Athens. I'm sure he studied it in high school just like you and I did. He had even memorized passages from Greek poets and writers, we're going to see that. But this was his first time to actually be in Athens and see all the temples and watch all the omnipresent idolatry with his own eyes. Wherever he looked, he saw the signs of all of it, sophisticated, intellectual, completely unspiritual religion that was utterly without any reference to the true God and that was the defining mark of that culture. and it grieved Paul deeply. And so he began immediately confronting the idolatry by proclaiming Christ. Notice when Luke says in verse 17 that he reasoned with people in these public places, he is not suggesting that Paul had cream tea and quiet conversation with them. It means he stood somewhere in the open air where people could not possibly miss him and he began to preach and to proclaim like a herald and then he would interact with hecklers and critics and honest inquirers alike. Luke uses the word dialogami, it's from which, of course, our English word dialogue is derived, but the Greek expression is a very strong one and it conveys the idea of a debate a verbal disputation. It can also speak of a sermon or a philosophical or polemical argument. And I think Paul did all of that. He took on all comers, that's what you have to do in open air ministry. And in fact, in the King James Version it says he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with whoever met with him. which is not to say that he was belligerent or pugnacious, disputing with people. But what he did was he proclaimed the truth about Christ and then he responded to whatever questions or arguments or objections people raised. In other words, he confronted their false beliefs. He did not try to accommodate them. Paul was deliberately and intentionally counter-cultural. He didn't say, oh, you know what, these people think the idea of bodily resurrection is foolish, so I'd better low-key that part of the message. Not at all. He did exactly the opposite. He studied the culture with an eye to confronting people with the very truths they were most prone to reject. And he wasn't winning any admiration from the intellectual elite for his cultural sensitivity either. Notice verse 18, certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And as we're going to see, they were not impressed. They called him a seed picker and they more or less made sport of him. The Epicureans and the Stoics, two very influential and competing brands of Greek philosophy. The Stoics were the secular determinists who believed the height of human enlightenment was achieved by indifference to either pleasure or pain. When I say they were determinists, I mean they believed that everything is predestined, unchangeably, not by God but by random chance. And therefore, nothing really matters in the ultimate sense. It's not supposed to make sense, but it's predetermined so you can't alter the future, you can't alter the reality, you can't make any difference in what happens. All you can do is make yourself as much as possible impervious to either the pain or the pleasure of it. They were fatalistic to the extreme. Think of them as secular hyper-Calvinists with a dose of Greek mythology that defined the theistic elements of their religion. Their goal was self-mastery through the overcoming of the emotions. And so they lived their lives as austere, simple, just simple people. enjoying as few pleasures as possible. The Stoic sect was founded by Zeno around 300 B.C. So the system was three and a half centuries old and it was a mainstay of Greek philosophy when Paul encountered these guys. This wasn't some new fad that had come along. The Epicureans were the other group. They were at the opposite end of the philosophical spectrum. Unlike the Stoics who believed you needed to be impervious to pleasure or pain, the Epicureans believed the chief end of man was to enjoy pleasure and avoid pain. And so they indulged in all the finest things and all the richest pleasures this life had to offer. We still use the Epicurean, the word Epicurean to describe someone who lives that way. Epicureanism was likewise 350 years old and one of its central ideas was that God is not to be feared. They didn't believe in life after death. And so their one goal was earthly happiness. This is practically the polar opposite system from the Stoics. So the Stoics and the Epicureans, remember they were poles apart on the philosophical spectrum and obviously they were adversarial in many ways to one another and there's no doubt that some of the most interesting debates between competing Greek philosophies pitted the Stoics against the Epicureans and vice versa. But they also shared some of their most fundamental beliefs in common. And those common beliefs were the defining elements of Greek thought and culture. Both of these philosophies were materialistic and man-centered and therefore they were united in their resistance to all biblical truth. Now there was a third major strain of Greek philosophy that is not named here by Luke, but you've heard of them, the Cynics. And even though cynicism isn't specifically named in this chapter, it is almost certain that there were cynics in the audience. You can tell that from the response Paul received. The cynics believed that virtue is defined by nature and that true happiness is achieved by freeing oneself from unnatural values like wealth and fame and power and by living in harmony with nature. They were the original hippies, known for their neglect of things like personal hygiene and accountability and family responsibilities and all sorts of things like that. They were totally irresponsible. And believe it or not, cynicism was the oldest of all these strains of philosophy. It dated back to 400 years before Christ. So cynicism was already an ancient system, 450 years old by the time Paul stood here in the Areopagus. And cynicism was still a robust philosophy in Athens and the cynics had a peculiar knack for irritating the other philosophers. So they kept all those debates very interesting. Now remember, Paul was grieved by Athenian culture. It would be foolish to suggest that Paul embraced any of the defining elements of a culture like that. His message was counterculture and disturbing to the ears of Stoics, Epicureans and Cynics alike. In fact, it's almost as if Paul homes in on every idea that these three groups might have shared in common and that's what he attacks. But some of these high-powered philosophers heard him disputing in the marketplace and they thought, hey, this guy would be interesting in a discussion with the elite minds of Athens. They surely could tell that Paul was an educated man, not just some random crackpot. And yet his ideas seemed so utterly bizarre to their way of thinking that they couldn't find a way to categorize him very neatly in their systems. He was obviously neither stoic, nor Epicurean, nor cynic. He stood in opposition to all of them. And that was obvious because of what he preached, Jesus and the resurrection. And their attitude towards Him is obvious in what they said. Some say...some said, what does this babbler want to say? And they used a word here, the Greek word means seed picker. And I think they're deliberately comparing Him to a chicken or a bird that picks up a seed here and there as if to say, you know what, listen to Him, He has a cogent idea now and then, but it's so mixed in with these strange notions about resurrection and the resurrection of the human body that we wonder where He picked up the knowledge He does have. Like a seed-picking bird, pecking and swallowing here and there, but not really very sophisticated. You know, a chicken philosopher. That was the idea. Paul was clearly out of step with every major system of human wisdom known at the time, counter-cultural. And that's what they meant by a proclaimer of foreign gods. They thought he was a prophet of some new and unconventional counter-cultural religion. And you know what? That interested them because a couple of things, Paul was articulate enough to catch their attention. And at least he was a novelty and that, according to verse 21, was something they loved. Look at verse 21, for all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Very much like our own culture, isn't it? Athens was like the place to surf the ancient web and see what's new, you know? And Paul was like the latest viral YouTube video. And so, verse 19, they took him and brought him down to Areopagus saying, may we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak for you are bringing some strange things to our ears, therefore we want to know what these things mean. Now that finally gets us into the actual passage we want to survey, and it's Paul's sermon. He is brought to the Areopagus, or Mars Hill in the King James Version. It's named for the place where these philosophers had started meeting centuries before this. Here was Paul surrounded by the most high-powered minds of the most intellectual city in the world and he has an opportunity to speak to them. And this is what he said, verse 22, then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious, for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown God, therefore the one whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you. Now there's where many people today would say Paul adapted and embraced their culture rather than being confrontive or antagonistic to their culture because, notice, he begins with a reference to their beliefs and especially the religious culture of the city and he makes that his point of contact. But now, remember, we have to read this in light of its context. And verse 16 says, this was the very aspect of Athenian culture that most grieved Paul. He's not embracing it here. In other words, notice, he actually homes in on the one point of culture that most disturbed him. And he began there because that is what he most wanted to challenge. That was the main lie he wanted to answer with the truth. And he made a beeline for it. He says, you are very religious, I can see it everywhere. Now that's sarcasm, really. The truth is they weren't religious at all. They had all the trappings of religion with temples and idols everywhere. But their ancient religions were nothing but superstition run amok. And all of that had long ago morphed into a simple love of human religion. That is what they worshiped. First Corinthians 122, the Greeks seek after wisdom. The philosophy was the only God they really served, despite all the temples and stuff. The temples were monuments to the past even then. And the Epicureans didn't even believe in an afterlife. The Stoics were materialists whose God was an amorphous and utterly impersonal notion of nature. The Cynics had also deified nature. In other words, all the major strains of Greek philosophy were fundamentally materialistic. They weren't spiritual at all, they fashioned a kind of quasi-spirituality that in fact was not spiritual. None of them believed in a personal God. None of them had any higher value than human wisdom. Their ethics were naturalistic and materialistic. They were practical atheists, in many ways a mirror of our society today. It's really striking how the worldly wisdom of that day is not vastly different from what supposedly enlightened people still believe today. They weren't religious at all. Paul was clearly using sanctified sarcasm when he started out by observing how religious they were. Now again, their culture, just like ours, had all the trappings of religion and they were omnipresent. You had temples on every corner, idols, priests, priestesses, lots of superstitions and deeply ingrained traditions. But these were almost entirely devoid of any kind of true faith. That stuff just saturated all of their society. It had the very same significance as all the cathedrals in Europe today, or frankly all the church buildings you'll see if you just drive through this valley. It didn't mean much. But in the tradition of their polytheistic mythology, they had deified everything. There was a god of war, Ares. Hermes, the messenger god, the sun god, Apollo. Hades, lord of the underworld. Poseidon, god of the sea, you know, Zeus who was king of the gods and then those were just the Olympian gods, they had others, they had layers of gods. They also had primordial gods, including Aether, the god of the atmosphere, Kronos, the god of time, Eros, the god of love, Erebus, the god of shadow and many, many more. And then there were the Titans and the nymphs and the giants, the river god and hundreds of lesser gods and, of course, no educated person in Athens really believed any of those gods were real, but they were part of the culture's mythology. And when they ran out of things to deify, someone decided to erect a monument to whatever god there might be who was overlooked by the Greek system. just so that no deity would inadvertently be slighted. And they had this altar to the unknown God, sort of like our tomb of the unknown soldier, just in case they had overlooked giving honor to a hidden deity somewhere, they had an altar that covered all the bases. And Paul had seen that altar and so he seized on that for the opening of his message. You have to understand, this was by no means an affirmation of their culture. Just the opposite, this was Paul's way of homing in on what was spiritually most odious about that culture. In this quasi-religious, deeply superstitious, man-centered intellectual culture, here was an altar to something unknown. The irony was rich because what they really worshiped was human wisdom and knowledge. But here was an altar to something they were admittedly ignorant about. And Paul more or less rubs salt in that wound. He places the accent on their ignorance of the one thing that matters the most, this God whom you are utterly ignorant about, that's the God whose name I want to declare to you. Don't miss what Paul was doing here. He wasn't shoehorning God into some open niche in Greek mythology. Far from it. He was not affirming their beliefs or seizing on this one supremely important point where they admitted their ignorance and using that as a...as a foot in the door where he could affirm them. But he was using it as a different kind of foot in the door where he could proclaim to them the gospel. As far as the religious aspect of their culture was concerned, he stood against it. And this opening statement made that fact absolutely clear to them, he could not possibly have been more counter-cultural. It was as if...in fact, let me give you a comparison. It would be like if somebody got in the midst of a bunch of academic post-modernists today and stood up and just simply declared that the Bible is true. Just imagine an auditorium full of postmodernist college professors, right, wringing their hands about epistemological humility and the dangers of overconfidence and all the uncertainty of human knowledge and the subjectivity of all our opinions and the whole dose of postmodern angst about being too sure about everything. And then suppose you stood up in front of that group with a Bible and declared, here's something we can be rock solid certain about because God Himself has revealed it as absolute truth. Can you imagine that scenario? That's what this was like. It couldn't have been more counter-cultural. And so Paul does not use culture as a kind of pragmatic or ecumenical evangelistic tool in order to get himself into their inner circle and become one of them, to be part of their group in order to win them. He stands in their midst as an alien, as an alien to their culture and their belief system and their world view and in Paul's own words he proclaimed the truth about God to them. So that's the first tool of post-modern ministry, culture. Here's another one, conversation. Notice again, Paul is simply declaring the truth here, he is not sponsoring a colloquium about it. He had already provoked discussions and debates about the gospel in the synagogue and in the marketplace, but now that he had an audience with the Areopagus, he does not say, hey, let's talk about this, I'm interested in learning more about your approach to the spiritual disciplines and I want to hear your ideas about ethics and tell me what you guys think about the God of Abraham and maybe we can learn from one another. He doesn't do anything like that. He homes in on the very heart of what he wants them to know. He's preaching here, not inviting a conversation. Verse 24, God who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything since He gives life, He gives to all life and breath and all things and He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth. And He has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not very far from any one of us." Now, what I want you to notice here is that this is a simple declaration of the truth. This is not an offer to exchange ideas. He starts with the basic principles of theology proper. He declares that God is Creator, God made the world and everything in it. That is the essential starting place of all biblical truth. And then he affirms the authority of God. He is Lord of heaven and earth. He affirms the spirituality of God to these totally materialistic philosophers. He does not dwell in temples made with hands. Now in this city surrounded with temples made with hands, you could hardly say anything more provocative than that. And he affirms the sufficiency of God, His sovereignty, His transcendence, His eminence, His power as the giver and sustainer of all life. This is a remarkable course in theology proper in a brief economy of words and all of it, every word of it was flatly contradictory to what these philosophers believed. But there is no give and take exchange of positions. Paul doesn't invite that. He doesn't act deferential in the presence of these great minds. He doesn't assume a false humility and pretend he's just a truth seeker on his own spiritual journey looking for companions along the way and maybe they can learn from one another. He declares the truth of God to them with authority and with conviction. He doesn't use the conversational style and the subdued demeanor most people today think you have to use so that you don't sound arrogant. He preaches to them. Now Paul wasn't arrogant because he was declaring infallible truth that God revealed. It would be arrogant for him just to give his own opinion as if that were infallible truth. But he is...it's not merely floating an opinion of his own for these philosophers to kick around. He's giving them the Word of God and he used an appropriate method, a sermon, not a conversation. So culture, conversation, here's that favorite tool of post-modern evangelism, contextualization. It may surprise you to hear me say this, but Paul didn't use that tactic either, contextualization, at least not in the sense that most people today want to employ that word. Now again, and I said this at the beginning, I'll reaffirm it, there is an obvious and legitimate need to speak a language people understand if you want to reach them. That's self-evident. Paul didn't go into Athens and speak Hebrew to the Areopagites, he spoke Greek. There's nothing the least bit remarkable about that. What Paul did not do, though, was adapt his message in any way to the basic values and belief systems of that culture. He doesn't adopt their worldview in order to reach them. And that's what I mean when I say he shunned the tactic of postmodern contextualization. Let's look at what he did do. Every dyed-in-the-wool contextualizer will point out that he quoted the philosopher's favorite poets. Write back to them, verse 28, for in Him we live and move and have our being as also some of your own poets have said, for we are also His offspring. Now, historical facts, Paul is quoting two well-known poets there, Epimenides who was a poet from the island of Crete in the sixth century B.C. wrote the line, in him we live and move and have our being. That's a quote from his poem. And Eratos, who was a Macedonian poet from the third century B.C., wrote, we are also his offspring. So Paul does quote two lines from poets who, think about it, they were already ancient in Paul's lifetime. The most recent of them was already 350 years in the grave. Paul was not embracing aspects of the first century Greek worldview or culture. He was not affirming what was fashionable in the Greek academy in his own day. Quite the opposite, he was quoting from their ancient literature to express his own worldview and to show them that at least in a common grace sense, these were truths that had been revealed to them also. And they were there in black and white in their own ancient writings. And he was using those quotations from the literature, the poetry of their forefathers to confront the more contemporary and popular worldview of that generation. And as a matter of fact, Paul was doing his utmost to demolish their worldview, the Areopagites, and so he systematically goes through a list of ideas they held in error and he confronts them with true ideas instead. So picture this, there he stands in Athens amid countless temples and idols talking to the culture's most enlightened minds, all of whom held world views that were for all practical purposes atheistic, materialistic and superstitious all at once. which if you think about it is irrational, but there they were. Half of them believed in an afterlife, but it was a disembodied spiritual notion of the afterlife. The other half were such hardened materialists that they believed when the body died and the molecules went back to dust, that was it. There was no such thing as a human soul and thus no conscious existence after death. This was very much like our secularized atheistic culture today and so Paul is surrounded by these massive stone temples that were relics of a mostly discarded belief system when he says what he's about to say, verse 29. Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising. Truly these times of ignorance God overlooked." He's pointing to the old out of style temples when He says, these days of ignorance, what these temples stood for, God overlooked. But now He commands all men everywhere to repent. because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained, he has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead." Wow! You know, Paul could hardly have said anything more counter-cultural, more in conflict with the prevailing world view and less contextualized for Athens philosophers. This was not at all what they believed and nor was it what they wanted to hear. Without trying to exegete Paul's whole speech, let me just point out a handful of the major points in this short message, at least six points here in the span of six verses that would have been deeply offensive. to the Athenian philosophers. And Paul knew enough about their beliefs to know that he was challenging their most precious presuppositions. He was taking on the building blocks of that entire world view and culture. For one thing, in verses 24 and 25 when he says, the God who made the world and everything in it being Lord of heaven and earth does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. Paul was summarily dismissing all the fundamentals of Greek style religion. Paul certainly knew what Greek mythology taught. And the Athenian philosophers were not naive about world religions either. It wasn't as if these guys were clueless about Judaism or the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Paul was not introducing them to a God they'd never heard of. Instead, he was telling them as plainly as possible that their beliefs were wrong. He was declaring the truth about God and not in the philosophical style they were accustomed to, as if to make himself seem enlightened and wise. But Paul was preaching authoritative truth from God Himself. And furthermore, he stressed that the God of Scripture is not just another character who belongs in the Greek pantheon. Notice Paul insists that God is Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in temples made by men, nor is He served by human hands. But he portrays God as self-sufficient and sovereign over all. It was tantamount to a bold and wholesale dismissal of every aspect of Greek religion. And you can bet those Athenian philosophers got the point. And furthermore, when he said in verse 26 that God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, he was attacking one of the common assumptions of the Athenian elite because they were convinced that the Greek race was superior to every other strain of humanity. When Paul says God has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, he was emphatically affirming the sovereignty of the one true God to this bunch of materialistic determinists who believed in the sovereignty of blind mechanistic chance. And in verse 27 when Paul says, God is not far from each one of us, and then he emphasizes that truth again in verse 28, Paul is declaring the imminence of God, an idea that was considered utterly ludicrous by Athenian intellectuals. And when in verse 29 he ridicules the idea that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something that could be shaped by art and men's devising. And then in verse 30 he describes that whole idea and all of their superstitions as the defining mark of these times of ignorance. You have to remember that he is talking to the one crowd in the entire world who were the least likely to admit that anything they believed could properly be labeled ignorant. And it begins to look like Paul was deliberately trying to provoke them. And in a true sense, he was. He caps the sermon in verse 30 with a demand for their repentance. And believe me, that was no less offensive on the Areopagus in the first century than it would be in the U.N. General Council today. Paul could hardly have packed more truth and more counter-cultural commentary into such few words. Every sentence Paul said had something in it that would be offensive to these philosophers. And he knew what he was saying and so did they. Now it should be obvious that in the sense post-modern evangelicals often use these terms, Paul did not employ either culture, conversation or contextualization as the primary tools for his strategy in reaching Athens. What about the final item in the post-modernist toolbox? Charitableness...charitableness. Paul didn't do that either. Now let me be clear, when I speak of charitableness here, I'm not talking about the true biblical virtue of charity which is defined for us in 1 Corinthians 13. And instead what I have in mind is that post-modern notion of charitableness. which is a sort of broad-minded, altruistic, overly tolerant attitude towards every opposing belief or non-Christian religion where you refuse to take dogmatic positions on anything. It's the attitude that has Brian McLaren celebrating Ramadan along with his Islamic brethren, in his words. Charitableness, that's what he calls it. But by this post-modern notion of charitableness, you always have to leave open the possibility that someone else's beliefs might be better than yours. Somebody else's truth might be more true than yours. You can't be dogmatic. You never write off anyone else's beliefs completely. But you always seek to be conciliatory, full of goodwill for the other person's world view. Bottom line, you take the position that nothing we believe is really ultimately anything more than a personal opinion. That's the common...that is the view that dominates our culture. That kind of charitableness also uses appeasement rather than confrontation to try to win other people's admiration. Now look at this, did Paul do that here? It seems pretty silly even to raise the question, doesn't it? You know he didn't do that. He simply proclaimed the message Christ had given him to preach, not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power, as he says in 1 Corinthians 2 And notice, once again, he heads straight for the one truth he knows very well will sound like utter foolishness to them, the resurrection of the dead. Now remember, these guys were all materialists, even the ones who believed in a kind of afterlife, thought the idea of heaven and hell as actual places. where people had glorified physical bodies, to them that sounded so utterly foolish and unthinkable that when Paul got to that point in his message, that's what brought the house down. End of sermon. Verse 32, and when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked while others said, we will hear you again on this matter. And so Paul departed from them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them." Notice here, there are three reactions and I think it's safe to assume Luke lists them in declining order from the majority response to the minority. Some mocked. That's what you would expect someone steeped in Greek philosophy to do. Greeks seek after wisdom, Paul says, but we preach Christ crucified which to the Greeks is foolishness, 1 Corinthians 1.23. Paul's world view and his belief system, the gospel he proclaimed was so utterly and completely in contrast with the Athenian culture and belief system that most of these guys simply turned away. Now understand, that doesn't mean Paul failed. Listen, even if every last person in the philosopher's circle had turned away angry, that would not have mean Paul's ministry strategy was wrong. His only task as an ambassador for Christ is to deliver the message clearly and accurately and Paul did that. If they had picked up stones to kill him, the way the crowd did at Lystra in Acts 14, God would still have judged Paul faithful. But if Paul had compromised the message in order to win people's appreciation rather than their repentance, that would not have been faithful. That's what a lot of people today want to do. It's not the right approach. And in this case, notice, there were three responses. Some turned away and mocked. I suppose most did. But others said, we will hear you again on this matter. Paul's straightforwardness evidently gained their interest in what he had to say. So he had an open door now to preach the gospel again to people. And for a handful of people, including Dionysius the Areopagite, that would be one of the philosophers The Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, we have no clue who she was, but others with them, for them this was the moment of conversion. They believed. They became disciples. That is what faithful ministry looks like. It doesn't cower before the opposition. It isn't intimidated by human wisdom. It isn't shaken by rejection. It doesn't waver from the truth. It doesn't shift and change its content to suit the preferences or the tastes of an audience, or to try to reach them with their felt needs. But true ministry has one theme and that is Christ in His death and resurrection. And true ministry has one strategy, that is to unpack the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection and to proclaim the Atonement with clarity. Because that is the very substance, the only substance of the gospel message we've been commissioned to proclaim. And it confronts every world view, every false religion, every skeptical opinion. It rises above all of those things and speaks with authority because it is the truth of God. Lord, You have commissioned us to be Your ambassadors. You've given us a simple message. You've instructed us to proclaim it boldly and with clarity. Give us grace and power to do that faithfully. And may our confidence be in Your Word and Your power and not in the foolish and novel strategies of every succeeding generation. And may we be used by You for the glory of Christ and the growth of His Kingdom, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. For more information about the ministry of The Grace Life Pulpit, visit www.thegracelifepulpit.com. Please note, law prohibits the unauthorized copying or distributing of this audio file. Requests for permission to copy or distribute are made in writing to The Grace Life Pulpit. Copyright by Phil Johnson. All rights reserved.