Welcome to this podcast from Harvest Community Church of Huntersville, North Carolina, where our vision is to make disciples who make disciples. I'm your host, Liz Stefanini. We're continuing today in Acts chapter 17, we're teaching through at Harvest the book of Acts, the New Testament book of Acts. Let me ask you a question. What do people who live within a five mile radius of Harvest believe? Recently we were given the privilege of being a part of a survey or the results of a survey that happens every five years on the religious beliefs and preferences of people. And it's not just people in general, but they actually took harvest and did a five mile radius around our church campus and conducted the survey that had tons of demographic information. many many many different questions they asked but as they were doing this Some of the questions related specifically to what do you believe about the Bible and about God? And I've put three of them on the screen there These are basic fundamental beliefs of Christianity Jesus actually rose from the dead as the Bible teaches and Secondly, Jesus is the only way for human salvation from sin. And then third, Jesus rules now as Lord of heaven and earth. And so within a five mile radius of our church, this most recent survey showed that the first one, Jesus rose from the dead, actually, it's about 50%. 53% of people agree with that. 20% disagree and 27% have no opinion. The second one, Jesus is the only way for human salvation from sin. A little bit less, it was 47% agreeing, 28% disagreeing and 25% without an opinion. And Jesus ruling now as Lord of heaven and earth, very similar, 49% agreed with that, 22% disagreed with it and 29% had no opinion. So right here in the so-called Bible belt, there are at least 50% of the people who do not accept the basic tenets of the Bible, some very basic fundamental truths, at least 50%. And these are people who answered on that survey. Now, we have a vision at Harvest. It's given to us by God, and that vision is to make disciples who make disciples. We want to be used by God to help people who aren't following Christ at all to come, first of all, to live. We want them to live in Christ. We want them to know what it means to not just be religious, but to have true life in Christ. That's the first step. That's the first part of our strategy, to help them live. And once they live, we want them to grow, and we want to help them develop as a Christian, and then we want them to go make disciples. The very first part of that is live. And that is the part in which we're trying to engage with people who aren't Christians yet. Well, as we do that, we are called to do that at a very specific point in history and a place and a culture, and that is America in 2021. Today, as we're going to look at Acts chapter 17, the Apostle Paul was called to do that in first century Greco-Roman society. More than 2,000 years ago, it was the Greco-Roman world. Greek language and culture and influence, Roman government, Roman civil government. And I had the thought this week, as I was thinking about what is going to happen in Acts chapter 17, is our environment today in America in 2021, is it more like Paul's environment in the first century, or is it more like America was in say 1950? Now think about it, that's only 50 or 60 years ago. versus a couple of thousand years ago. But my opinion on this, I don't know that I can prove it, but my opinion is that our environment that we face today is more similar to first century Greco-Roman society than what we dealt with 50, 60 years ago in America. And the reason why, as we walk through this, we will see, we will find out Paul was dealing with people that had very little or no knowledge of the God of the Bible. And more and more and more in America, this is what we're dealing with. We cannot assume. I think maybe in America back 50, 60 years ago, it could be assumed that people, whether they were following God or not, they had a basic understanding of some biblical truths. They had a basic respect for God, but I don't think we can assume that anymore. Do you know what I mean? Well, As we walk through this, let me set the stage. We're gonna look at Acts 17. What is the context of Acts 17? What has happened so far? As we're walking through this part of Acts, we're introduced to a man named Paul, who's an apostle, and he was a leader of a missionary team. And after being used by God to establish the church in a place called Philippi, which was Acts chapter 16, which we covered last week, Paul and his team encounter mixed results in other Macedonia cities They were in this region called Macedonia and Philippi was the very first city in Macedonia But then they go to some other cities and they get mixed results. Well after doing that The opposition that they faced led them to send Paul to Athens Greece And that became the setting for a very powerful gospel presentation. Let me put this map on so you can see what I'm talking about. There on your screen, of course, is part of this is what is the second missionary journey of Paul. He was at Philippi. And we're going to see this today. He goes first to Thessalonica, that city, and then he goes to a city called Berea. And then because of all of the opposition, they send him to Athens to wait for them. How many of you like to ride roller coasters? Let me see any roller coaster enthusiasts. Yeah a few out there Well, this was kind of like a roller coaster for Paul the results He was preaching the gospel in all these places and there were some ups there were some highs and then there were some lows and Thessalonica for instance look at this high in verse 4 some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women Wow, that's a high but it wasn't all rosy in Thessalonica because Other Jews verse 5 were jealous. So they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace Formed a mob and started a riot in the city That's what happened in Thessalonica. Well, what about Berea? So they go from there to Berea and once again, we get a very similar dual experience. The high, verse 12, as a result, many of them believed as also did a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men. But on the other hand, verse 13, when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. Think about that. So here you're in Thessalonica, and you're preaching, and you go down to Berea, and people are being saved, and it's not people within Berea themselves that are opposing, it's the people in Thessalonica. It's like, oh, he's down there. And so they go stir the crowd up down there. When that happens, verse 14 of Acts 17, the believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible. So now we're at Athens. And now let's ask, what's going to happen in Athens? Is this going to be a roller coaster experience too? Are there going to be highs and lows there? Well, in Athens, which was the intellectual center of the world of that day, Paul encountered and confronted the secular mind. We're going to see him deal with a group of people in Athens that were purely secular. They didn't have a God mindset. They didn't have a God basis. They didn't have a God worldview in their life. And Paul speaks to them. And if today, you fit in one or two categories. Either you are a Christ follower, and if so, you are called, along with all of us, like Paul, to go help others understand who Christ is. And so hopefully this will be helpful to you as you see it. And maybe you're not yet a Christ follower, and hopefully you will see today in Paul's message that there is hope, there is truth, and I too want to follow Christ. So I'm putting the outline this way. How to relate the gospel to the secular mind. I think there are three steps here that Paul takes that are very helpful for all of us who want to relate the gospel to the secular mind. Number one, see and own the need. See and own the need. Verse 16. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. Now Athens represented the highest level of culture in classical antiquity. It was famous for its sculpture, its literature, its oratory, its philosophy, right? You know some of the philosophers that came out of Athens. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, all of these were pre-New Testament times. In fact, Athens probably reached its zenith maybe 400 or 500 years before the time of Paul. So it wasn't at its very height at that point, but it was still considered to be a hub of intellectualism and architecture and philosophy, and it was a very unique place in the first century world. It was home to Hippocrates, who was the father of modern medicine. All of you medical people who take the Hippocratic oath, that comes from him. Athens was a special place in many ways. It was known, though, for its elaborate temples to pagan gods. And rather than Paul, Coming to Athens. Remember, this wasn't part of his original plan. He was in Berea and they're like, Oh, Paul, to protect you, we need to get you somewhere else. So they sent him down to Athens rather than rather than Paul going, wow, what an amazing place. Look at all these buildings. Look at all this architecture. What does it say? He was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. That word greatly distressed in the original is the same word that deals with strong emotion like being provoked at something. It's not that he was angry at the people. It's just that he looked around and he saw a city that was just overrun with idols. It just stirred him up. In fact, it's interesting. It's the same word. You know, the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek. So here this Greek word in the New Testament is the same word that was used in the Old Testament When god was provoked at idolatry the old testament was written in hebrew It got translated into greek also and that very same word is the word that's used here for paul He was greatly distressed. He was bothered. He saw the need And he owned it He didn't ignore it He didn't say oh, that's the way it is You know, it is easy. It is tempting for us as believers to look around at our world at times and go, oh, wow, things are bad. And to say, oh, can you believe how bad this is? And can you believe how bad that is? And how bad that, Paul didn't just say things were bad. We're gonna find out that he owned it. He did something about it. Now, the city was full of idols. We don't know how many actual idols that were there, but here's what we know. The Roman historian Pliny said about another city called Rhodes that Rhodes had 73,000 statues in it. And he said Athens had quote, no fewer. So Pliny believed that there were at least 73,000 idols in this one city. Paul, rather than focusing on a little R&R, like, oh man, I've been running, I've been attacked, I need to just rest a little bit, rather than focusing on the touristy type things in Athens, he's stirred. He's moved in his spirit. He's provoked because he knows that there's only one true God. It's not an arrogant thing like, well, my God is better than yours. He knew that when people leave the one true God to chase these false gods and idols, that they're missing out. He knew that there's a lot of room for diversity on minor issues, but not so on this most fundamental one. There is one God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ to us. And let me ask you this question. Are there any idols in your neighborhood? When you leave here this morning, you go to your apartment complex, you go to your neighborhood, are you going to run across any statues? Are you going to see any? I remember vividly been privileged to go to Thailand a couple of times. Our missionaries, Don and Sai Hill, are there. And it's really striking when you go out to their village to see all of the idols. I ask them, what are those statues there? What's that? What's that? And they're And just everywhere you go are idols and statues to, quote, keep away the evil spirits from these people's houses. Now, you probably aren't going to see things like that as you drive home today. But again, I ask, are we going to see idols? in America, remember, an idol is anything that takes the place of God in your life. The time and energy and adoration that you are designed and I'm designed to give to God, anything that takes that place is an idol. It may not be this tall, but it's an idol. It could be a car, a job, success, controlling your own life, the approval of peers, sex, recreation, comfort, pursuing education. It could be a relationship with another person that you have or that you want. It could be good things like family. Anything that takes the place of God. And I think we will all, if we really are honest, we look around, we probably have more idols than Athens in America. Because there's a vast number of things that people give more allegiance to than to God. So, that's the first step. If we're going to be effective in reaching people that live in this secular mindset, if we're going to be effective in reaching people without Christ, step one is to see the need to really see it. Like Paul saw what was happening there and to own it, to feel it, to be willing to do something about it. Step number two is to engage people on their turf. Engage people on their turf, verse 17. So what did Paul do in light of this? He reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. He's on their turf. He goes where they are. Paul doesn't wait for people to come find him. Hey, there's a missionary in town. Maybe if we go to his house, he'll tell us the truth. No, he's like, first of all, I'm going to the synagogue. That was his pattern. There's a Jewish synagogue. I'm going to go there. But he didn't only go there every day. Look where he went. He went to the marketplace. He went to the marketplace, which was the central plaza in Athens. And if he looks south out of that marketplace, he would see many, many temples to false gods like Zeus and Aphrodite and Ares, Apollo, and to the emperor Augustus, and to many more. He would see them all. And that's where he was. He was on their turf. He was engaging with them. He was talking to them. And that led, of course, to him going to the third place, which we'll come to in a minute, verse 18. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began debate with him, and some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say? Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign gods. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Now who were the Epicureans and who were the Stoics? The Epicureans believed that pleasure was the main goal in life. They didn't deny the existence of gods, and I say gods because that was what the world of that day believed in, many gods. They didn't deny the existence of gods, but they held that basically they were so far removed from the world that they weren't relevant. They didn't matter. Does this sound familiar to those of us who live in America? that God may be, oh yeah, there may be a God, oh yeah, I believe in God, there may be a God, but for many, many people, God, it seems to be so far removed that he's not really relevant. It used to be that people attacked God directly, and some still do, but maybe a more insidious form of attack is to ignore him or to marginalize him. I think that he is not relevant. And if that's the case, then just live for pleasure. That was the Epicureans. The Stoics were more similar to new age people. They were pantheistic. You know, God is everything and everything is God. And they believe everything in the world was determined by fate. And so you're, you're to live life without passion, you know, kind of the Stoic stiff upper lip, so to speak. And these people called Paul, if you notice there, in verse 18, a babbler. They called Paul the babbler. Interesting word. Literally, it's one who picks up seeds. And so their view of Paul was that philosophically and intellectually, Paul was just like a bird that would go around and pick up a seed here and pick up a thought there. The thoughts wouldn't be organized, they wouldn't be relevant, but he would pick up here and here and he would spread it. In other words, they were insulting his intellectual approach. So what That's what some of them thought, but others thought maybe he was introducing, oh, this is a foreign God. This is some God from somewhere else. And so verse 19, they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus where they said to him, may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears And we'd like to know what they mean. And then there's a parenthesis. Luke doesn't, the writer of Acts doesn't often do this, but he, he kind of explains all the Athenians and the foreigners who live there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Now the court of the Areopagus traditionally met southwest of the Acropolis on the hill of Ares, and that's why it's called the Areopagus. Ares was the Greek god of war. And this was a meeting that took place. They had jurisdiction over matters of religion and morality. And sometimes it was, it could be a formal trial. And some people think, Oh, they're putting Paul on trial here. They're going to take him up here to speak before the council and they're going to either approve or disapprove. But It often wasn't a formal council, it was just a place where people went to debate ideas. In fact, Luke tells us this was the marketplace where people would come and go and talk about these things. So we see a model for Paul, what Paul is doing. He's going to their turf, right? He goes to the synagogue, he goes to the marketplace, he goes to the Aeropagus. Paul didn't wait for people to come with him. I encourage you, if you're a follower of Jesus, to do the same. Not to wait for people just to show up at your door. Sometimes that happens, but almost never. I'm not sure I ever remember somebody coming up to me and saying, can you tell me what I need to do to be a Christian? Let's be like Paul. Let's, with hobbies, with associations, with everything that we can do in our relationships. Let's build relationships and let's, let's get on people's turf. That's what Paul did. And then finally, there's one more thing that he did. He, he saw the need and he owned it and then he got on their turf. And then what did he do? He contextualized the gospel message. The gospel message never changes. It's the same. It's about Jesus living and dying and being buried and rising again and doing all of that to forgive us of our sins That is the gospel message, but you contextualize it if you're on a university campus Or you're in the say the mountains of North Carolina in a rural environment. You will preach the same gospel message but you will probably contextualize it differently. You'll you'll speak to this audience in ways that they understand and can relate to and You'll speak to this audience in ways that they can relate to as well. That's what Paul did. There are three points. I put the three words in the outline there. Contact. You establish a point of contact. Then you share truth about God and then you call people to the gospel. So look at how Paul did that. Verse 22, he established contact. Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and he said, people of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. I like that Paul did that, that he didn't walk in and say, let me tell you how you're wrong. He said, yeah, there's something in you that is looking for God, essentially. I can see that you're very religious, for as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship. And this is what I am going to proclaim to you. I can see that you're interested in God. I can see that you have all these objects. In fact, you've even identified there's an unknown God out there. Good news. Let me tell you who that unknown God is. I think Paul is, remember they accused him for bringing some new teaching? Well, it's new certainly in one sense, but Paul is saying, you already are recognizing a little bit about it. I think Jesus did that, didn't he, as he walked and lived? I mean, he had the same message, but he dealt with the Samaritan woman one way, and he dealt with Nicodemus a different way. He dealt with the rich young ruler another way. He called them all to follow, but he established contact with them. After you establish the contact, notice what's next. This is what Paul did. You just tell truth about God. And this is so important in our culture because in our culture, there's not much truth about God. In fact, there's a lot of misunderstanding about who God is. And there's a lot of error out there. Paul says in verse 24, the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temple built by human hands. That's the truth that God is creator. This is Paul's way, I think, of putting distance between God and the world to address maybe the Stoics. Verse 25, he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. God is the sustainer of life. From one man, he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God is ruler of the nations. See what he's doing? He's just infusing truth about God. Verse 27, God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not very far from any one of us. I think Paul probably has the Epicureans in his sight here at verse 27, because remember, they viewed God as detached and unknowable, and Paul says God is knowable. And then in verse 28, for in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. God is the father of humanity. He is the father of humanity. So there's the point of contact, they're sharing truth about God, and then notice how Paul wraps it up with a third thing. He makes a gospel call. He makes a gospel call in verse 29 to 31. Therefore, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image made by human design and skill. In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, for he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. These verses prove that God is not only the creator of all, He is the judge of all, and there's going to be a day that he's going to judge, and he's proven it by sending his son, Jesus, who lived, who died, who was buried, who rose again. He talks about the resurrection of Christ, and now he calls them to repent. That means change your mind about sin. You're walking in this direction in life. You have a certain view of sin and a certain view of God, and when you realize, wait a minute, I'm walking the wrong direction, I turn, that's what repentance is, it's a change of mind that results in a change of life and I turn and I open my heart and receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. And again, this is a summary. These speeches at the Areopagus typically took two or three hours. So Luke has given us a summary of what Paul was talking about. What happened? How did they respond? I think the way they responded to Paul is probably going to be the same way they're going to respond to you and me when we share the gospel. There are three different responses. First of all, there was rejection. Sorry, I'm just telling the truth today. I wish I could say that we'd never be rejected or people would say, oh, every single person would say, that's what I've been waiting for. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered. When we share the good news of Jesus, there are going to be people who reject. Secondly, there are going to be people who say, I want to think about that more. I want to give it further consideration. Others said, we want to hear you again on this subject. And so Paul left the council. Some will reject. Some will say, I'll think about it more. But thank God that there will be people who believe. There will be a group of people. Like those in verse 34, some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus. Also, a woman named Damaris and a number of others. So here's Paul. See what Paul's doing in Athens? Yeah, it's a little bit of roller coaster, right? Some reject. Some are in the middle. They say, we'll think about it more. And some believe, but what Paul's doing is he's trying to make disciples. He's trying to help people live in Christ. And the title of this sermon is from Athens to Charlotte, because I just want to say today, let's do the same thing in Charlotte. Let's do the same thing that Paul did in Athens. Let's do it in Charlotte, because when God builds his church, It has a passion for making Christ known. When God builds his church, it has a passion for making Christ known. Paul could have, like I said, I need some downtime. While he's alone, he's waiting for Silas and Timothy to come, he sees it and he has a passion for Christ. That's why the idols provoked him, because he knew that they were not reflective of the one true God. He knew Christ had changed his life, and he knew that was the answer for people. And he had to share it. He had to share it. I don't know if you'll remember, many, many years ago, I don't know how many years ago, I just remember it was a long time ago, Mercedes-Benz had a commercial. With a crash in it and they're there they would show their car colliding into a cement wall Because in their technology they had developed a patent on energy absorption that was designed to help people not die in car crashes and so their commercial showed their car crashing into the cement wall and And what happened is they didn't enforce the patent. Other car companies came along and copied the patent and put it in their cars as well. And somebody asked one of the Mercedes Benz executives, why are you not enforcing the patent? And he, he said, because some things are too important not to share. Some things are too important not to share church. I would submit to us that the gospel of Jesus Christ is one of those things. In fact, the main thing it's too important. Not to share, go share it, go share it. Let's buy our heads together, please. When God builds His church, it has a passion for making Christ known. Thanks again for joining us today from Harvest Community Church. 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