It's a very great privilege for me to be back here tonight, standing here to bring to you God's Word and to preach a message from the passage that we will now read, which is in the Book of Acts and the 17th chapter and reading from the 13th verse. Now, I don't actually have the page number because I got this from another edition of the ESV. Acts chapter 17, and we are reading about the arrival of the Apostle Paul in the city of Athens. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the Word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Berea also, they came there too, agitating and stirring up the crowds. Then the brothers immediately sent Paul off on his way to the sea, but Silas and Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving a command, for Silas and Timothy to come to him as soon as possible, they departed. Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day, with those who happen to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, that's the court of the city fathers, saying, May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, To the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 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. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way towards Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for, quote, in Him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your own poets have said, and quoting again, for we are indeed his offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed. And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Now, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. Soon after the First World War, an English author by the name of H. V. Morton became famous as a writer of travel books. Now, you'll find plenty of travel books in contemporary bookshops, but not very many were being written. That was 70 or 80 years ago. Morton had returned to journalism after war service. He was actually the first, it was an amazing scoop, the first to report on the finding of Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt. He turned his attention to travel writing and wrote a series of titles. First of all, In Search of England, following with similar titles describing Scotland, Wales and Ireland. He then moved to the Eastern Mediterranean and spent a year or two there and wrote three books, In the Steps of the Master, referring of course to Jesus, Through the Lands of the Bible, and then In the Steps of St. Paul. Perhaps you might have a look at your grandparents' bookcases and you might find one of these titles there. Now the Apostle Paul was undoubtedly one of the great travellers of the ancient world. a travel company today was to offer you a tour of the places, all the places that he visited in the course of his missionary journeys. To stop at every point that's recorded in the Book of Acts, it would probably cost you four or five thousand dollars, maybe more. But look The physician, physician-cum-historian, who wrote this book of the Acts, did not set out to write a travelogue, rather to set down a historical record. First, of the leadership of Peter among the disciples in Jerusalem, and then in the second part of his book, the missionary exploits of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. It seems that on reaching Athens, Paul sought to relax for a while. He struck fierce opposition from the Jewish communities in Macedonia and having been persuaded to move on from there for his own safety, his intention was clearly then to concentrate his efforts in the city of Corinth, a major city in the Roman Empire. However, while waiting in Athens for his companions Silas and Timothy to catch up with him, it seems that he became a bit of a tourist as he moved around the famous, the fabulous temples and buildings of that cultural capital of the ancient world. But not for long because we read that as he moved around his spirit was soon stirred to great indignation at the multiplicities of idols that decorated the streets of that city. Athens, as I'm sure you know, was the jewel of the ancient classical world, a world center of art and architecture, of literature, philosophy and religion. But Athens was no longer what she once had been. By this time the sceptical philosophers of Athens had largely discounted the mythical gods and goddesses of the ancient Greek pantheon, the gods of Mount Olympus. They reckoned that they were not worthy of men's worship, because when you read about their doings in the Greek mythology, their lives tended to resemble the lives of present-day Hollywood stars. And they are, generally speaking, certainly not role models. However, the traditional religion still prevailed among the populace. And Paul, in fact, describes the Athenians as being very religious, paying great attention to the divinities whom they worshipped. But it seems that in the Athens of Paul's day, a mood of scepticism and world-weary pessimism prevailed among the philosophical community. Now, it was Paul's custom when he came to a new city to preach in the local synagogue, for Jews were to be found everywhere through the ancient empire of Rome. But soon he encountered these philosophers who were in the habit of presenting their teachings publicly in the agora, the marketplace of the city, where all sorts of new ideas were continually being peddled. we read of the Epicureans and the Stoics. And it's interesting to consider the teachings of these two major schools of thought in ancient times, because there are very many parallels in their thinking to the thinking of our own age. The Epicureans took their name from Epicurus, a philosopher who taught in Athens three hundred years before this time, theirs was a philosophy of materialism, as is the basic outlook of our own time. For them, the pursuit of pleasure was their chief aim. While for some of his followers this may have meant a headlong rush into hedonism, eight drink and be merry, for you are a long time dead. Epicurus taught that a tranquil life was to be desired, free from pain and from anything that would disturb your spirit, anger, undue ambition or passion. Did Epicurus have a theology? Well, he did allow that there were gods. But one need not fear the displeasure of the gods, for such gods as might exist were so distant and remote from this world, and were entirely and sublimely disinterested in the affairs of men. So, one need not fear the displeasure of the gods. For him, Also, there was no point in being afraid of death, because death was simply the end. Human life was determined by blind chance, so while in this world you just made the best of things. Now we can see immediately that this outlook very closely resembles the thinking of so many in our own age. People desire a life that avoids extremes. They seek a comfortable material existence. They see death as nothing more than the final blowing out of the candle, and where there is no divine being who will call us to account. So different from the Christian gospel, which sees all mankind as accountable to their Creator, and which maintains that the forgiveness of sins is the greatest need of the human soul. So much then for the Epicureans. What about the Stoics? And of course we are familiar with that word, Stoic. Stoicism. Their founder Zeno had also taught in Athens three and a half centuries before this time. And their system became widespread not only in the Greek but throughout the Roman world. And indeed, there were many individuals in the Roman world who exhibited a certain nobility and dignity of spirit. They emphasized self-sufficiency in contrast with the Christian view that man is utterly dependent on the God who created him and from whose demands he falls short as a sinner. Now, the Stoic's aim was to live in conformity to nature. And by nature, the Stoic meant that principle of reason which he believed underlay everything in this world. That principle can be equated with God, not as a personal being, but as a world soul in which everything in nature, including ourselves, is an expression. The Stoic was therefore what today we would call a pantheist. That is, one who sees everything as an expression of a universal ground of being, mystical but not in any sense personal. It is sometimes referred to as the philosophy of monism, that is the absolute unity of everything. Now this is again very different from the Christian belief that God is a personal being who has created this material world of which we ourselves are a part. And our belief is that while God is at work within this world, and indeed within us, as the Creator, he remains absolutely distinct from his creation. Now immediately we recognize that there are many things in Stoicism that find their parallel in the outlook of people today, particularly in this tendency towards what we call pantheism. We see it in the widespread interest in Buddhism and in the emergence of New Age philosophies in all their bewildering variety. You just need to go into our bookshops and you see this huge array of New Age philosophies of all different types. And look for Christian books and you'll probably find a short metre or so of them somewhere in a corner. Now many of these philosophies of today borrow ideas from the Eastern religions But the one thing that generally they have in common is that they are pantheistic. That is, you find truth within yourself. If there is any truth to be found in the universe, and of course the tendency today is to say, well, there's no absolute truth. The only absolute is that nothing is absolute, and therefore you just choose what you want for yourself to believe. Whatever you may mean by the term God, God is to be found within yourself, just as God is to be found in nature around us. A universal spirit or world soul, you are an expression of God. These trees out there are an expression of God. The clouds in the sky, the light of the setting sun, everything in the world, an expression of God. So religion, and people don't tend to use that term today, they use the term spirituality. It involves meditation, the process of being absorbed into the great unity of all things. And death is either the final stage in this process or moving on to a reincarnation. But the ultimate aim is really to lose your own identity in it all. You cease to be an individual, to be a person. Now for the ancient Stoic, to live in harmony with reason was the great virtue, the only good. Life with all its uncertainties, its pleasures and its pains, its blessings and tragedies, even death itself, all these are matters of indifference to the Stoic who will survive them all with unbending endurance. You see how we use that word Stoical or Stoicism today. To live in this way he had to suppress the emotional and emphasize the rational aspects of his being. The Stoic was a proud man, often of rather a cold disposition. And just as for the Epicurean, for the Stoic, death was the end. There is no immortality other than perhaps absorption into an impersonal world soul. Now this is just so different, isn't it, from what Christians believe. From a faith which presents a personal God, a God who cares for His creatures, who understands His creatures, a God who sent His Son, Jesus, to enter human life with all its trials and uncertainties and sufferings, the Son of God who not only endured these things with us, but who, because of our sin, took our load upon Himself to set us free, who gave us the glorious hope of immortality and of the world to come. the modern equivalent of the stoic. Who is he? The self-made man. The free-thinking man of this world, the liberal humanist who believes that everything is possible to the free-venturing spirit. The one who is supremely self-sufficient, who presses on relentlessly against all obstacles in life to achieve his goals while his weaker friends fall behind whose pride gains the approbation of his fellows. Such a man, such a woman, I'm speaking in inclusive terms, such a person does not hope for immortality. And all that such people can hope for is that the memory of their successes will somehow live on into posterity. the self-made man, the successful woman. Don't we see people like that who are the idols of our society today? And those who cannot reach such heights themselves struggle to such an achievement. or at least they worshipped the people who reached their goals. So there's not that much difference really, is there, between the ancient world of Paul's time and our own time. Popular thinking today varies between the two poles of crass materialism of hedonism on the one hand and the mystical pantheism of the New Agers on the other. so similar to ancient Athens. But before we go on to consider how the Apostle confronted these people, I want you to notice two things about their systems of thought. First of all, there was no accountability. The Stoic, because he believed in living according to reason, did recognize certain moral principles, but ultimately he was the master of his fate, the captain of his soul, answerable to no one but himself. And of course, Epicureans likewise believed they were only answerable to themselves. Your own pleasure was the ultimate goal. The second thing to notice is that there was no transcendence, nothing beyond this present existence of this present universe. And vast and mysterious though it is, the scientists tell us that one day this universe must die. No transcendence. We'll think about these things when we look in closer detail at Paul's sermon, and I'm about to do that now. God's answer to a world which ignores him. Now Paul's publicly expressed views in the Agora caused quite a stir. He was summoned to appear before the court of the Areopagus, the court that in the ancient days in Athens met on Mars Hill, a little outcrop on the side of the famous Acropolis, But by this time in history, of course, it met down in the city itself. He had to appear before the city elders who were concerned about the best interests of the populace. They kept an eye on what was happening because subversive ideas might appear among all these peddlers of new philosophies. So Luke summarizes for us Paul's amazing address. The first extensive record in the scriptures of the gospel being presented to an entirely new, entirely heathen company. There was that brief incident previously in Lycaonia, but there we have only a very brief outline of Paul's facing up to a heathen audience. Now it's abundantly clear that the Apostle, who was himself a Jew and who had been brought up in a heathen city and had studied in a heathen city, that he was thoroughly familiar with the culture and the thought patterns of his own day. And in addressing this audience, he begins on a very different tack from the previous sermon recorded by Luke that Paul preached to an audience mainly of Jews in the city of Antioch in Pisidia in what is now modern Turkey. Paul's approach would suggest then that we all need to understand why it is that people think as they do. Why they have come to hold the particular views of life that they have. And we need then to understand the times that we live in. And that will then help us to share the gospel more effectively. Now I'm going to look in detail at Paul's sermon. And like so many sermons, it falls into three parts. Part one. Paul charges his pagan audience with ignorance. What a bold claim before the intellectuals of Athens. Their hackles would start to rise right away. He acknowledges the Athenians keen interest in religion and he notes his discovery of that altar inscribed to an unknown god. Whether it was the same altar that Terence was telling us about that referring to an age two or three hundred years beforehand. No, it was more than that, I think, about the fourth century B.C. That doesn't really matter. He found this altar as if they were a little bit afraid of overlooking some God who should be honored. The altar to an unknown God. and he makes the point that its very existence was a confession of ignorance. And that was something he now intended to correct. Some of their own philosophers had already concluded that this supreme being could not be confined to human temples and was not in any way dependent on mankind. The old Gods of Greek mythology, as we've noted, have been discredited. The Epicureans and Stoics would have nothing to do with them, although people still worshipped them. So Paul's challenge was that they were all in almost total ignorance of the true God, and that they had little or no inclination to seek after him. We move on to the second part of the sermon. It's clear that in the book of Acts we have only the briefest sketch of what Paul actually said as he stood before the court of the Areopagus. But with deft strokes, Luke, the historian, brilliantly sketches Paul's exposition of the truth about the God who is not just the mere product of human imagination or speculation, but a God who has definitively revealed Himself unmistakably to mankind in history. We've got to remember that Paul was addressing a pagan audience, people who were in almost total ignorance of the teachings of the Jewish Scriptures. And there is no indication, as Paul preached, that he actually quoted the Scriptures. But in verses 24 to 28, and perhaps you might just like to look at these verses again, we find that brilliant summary you might say, of the teaching of the Old Testament. The God, Paul said, 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, and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way towards Him, and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us. Well, it's a brilliant summary. God is the creator, no way independent upon man, his creature. The human race derived from one man. God has settled mankind of the earth. He has controlled human history and directing human affairs. And in all this, his purpose was that men should seek him and find him. And this is a message that Paul declares with his accustomed apostolic authority, for he was a man sent from God. And he concludes this part of his argument by reasserting the inadequacy and the folly of idolatrous worship. But before he does so, he makes two quotations from Helan poets, the Greek poets with whom they were familiar. Just very brief quotations. And if you want to know the particular poets in question, you'll probably find the footnote in your Bible that tells you who they were. The first was, in Him we live and move and have our being. We are by no means independent of God. We cannot draw a single breath without being dependent on the Creator who put us here. And again, he says, as even some of your own poets have said, the second quotation, for we are indeed His offspring. We are not in any physical sense, but in virtue of the fact we have a Creator, we are the children of our Creator. Now, some have argued that these quotations from the Greek poets demonstrate that Paul recognized that the best of the pagans had actually found their way to God independently of biblical revelation. And they would quote verse 28 that we've just read to make their point. Now Paul certainly would not deny that these men had come at least to a true recognition of the existence and the general character of God. Our Old Testament reading was from the 19th Psalm. And that wonderful psalm speaks of the universal testimony of nature to the existence of a Creator. Intelligent design, we might call it. And in the 27th verse of Acts, Paul speaks of God's purpose that men should perhaps reach out for Him and find Him. The language is that of blind men groping in the dark. Now to understand more of what Paul really means in speaking of these things, we have to look to the more detailed teachings elsewhere in his letters. And you might find it helpful to look up just two references here. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and the 21st verse. Here Paul writes, Since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through its wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. And a longer quotation from the book of Romans in the first chapter. Verses 19-21, For what can be known about God is plain to them. He's speaking of all mankind. It's plain to all mankind because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made, the things that have been created. So they are without excuse, for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened." In other words, the Apostle is saying that when people look around at the wonderful world of nature, they recognize that there is a God. But they do not go any further. They prefer instead to worship idols. Or, and this is more likely in our modern time, They prefer to adopt merely man-made concepts of God. Therefore, says Paul, they are without excuse, and this is true even of the atheist, in his denial, for ultimately he will be driven to recognize God. Now I come to the third part of the sermon. In view of the pagans' failure, even the best of them, to find God, what does Paul have to say? Does he present a somewhat different gospel to the intelligentsia of Athens? A gospel different from the gospel that he acknowledged when he conferred with the apostles in Jerusalem, not long after his conversion? The gospel which he had previously preached in Syria, and is here minor, the other side of the Aegean Sea? Was he not aware of the scepticism of the Athenians? And fearing their rejection, he tried to accommodate his message to make it more acceptable to their way of thinking. Not in the least. In merely two verses, Luke sums up the conclusion of Paul's message, verses 30 and 31. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He has fixed the day on which He will judge the world by a man whom He has appointed And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." In merely these two verses, Luke sums up this conclusion. There is no doubt that if we had a fuller account we would find the full-orbed gospel message such as is preached in every age. And as Paul went on to preach in the city of Corinth. Ruin by the fall. Redemption through the blood of Jesus and regeneration by His Spirit. But here's the summary of Paul's argument. In the mystery of His purposes and with great forbearance, God overlooked this former and deliberate ignorance of the generality of mankind. It is a great mystery that God waited so long to send His Son into the world. We cannot understand why, but that was His purpose. Now a new age has dawned. God has sent a man, Jesus, the man from heaven. Now, you might wonder why Paul speaks of Jesus the man, but the problem was, you see, that the Greeks believed that their gods in the past had frequently come down from the heavens to mingle among mankind, but merely with the appearance of men. They were not really people. There are difficulty was to believe that a heavenly being could become a true man. Today, the difficulty people have is the opposite, to believe that a man could actually be God come in the flesh. Paul refers to Jesus as the man to emphasize that Jesus, having come down from heaven, was a man, not just in appearance, but reality. He really was a man. He was human flesh. And Jesus preached the good news and healed the sick and called all men to repent. This call, Paul says, came ultimately from the God of heaven. And it's particularly urgent, he says, because God has appointed a day when this Jesus will be our judge. The standard by which Jesus will judge us is His own righteous life. The perfection of the only man who has ever lived a perfect life. But Jesus' role as universal judge is not just a human, but a divine role. And this is proved by the fact that God raised Him from the dead to the glory of heaven to await the final coming of that awesome day. And just how awesome is the thought that one day you and I must appear before Jesus, the man, that he will look us in the eye and pronounce his final evaluation. Accountability. We are inescapably accountable. What hope can we possibly have in the day when the Lord sorts out the sheep from the goats. Only if we have turned to Him in repentance for our sin, seeking His mercy as the one who has risen from the dead, having first paid the penalty due to us through His death on the cross. What about transcendence? Paul preached to a world that was without ultimate hope. About him as he stood there in Athens was the abundant evidence of an ancient culture that is still admired today, but like our amazing modern age of technological marvels that would have seemed incredible to the ancients, it bore, as our culture does, All the signs of being a broken and fallen world. A world that is ultimately without hope. A world where there is no transcendence. No certain hope of life beyond the grave. No transcendent renewal of this fallen creation. No transcendent God. No transcendent heaven. No transcendent justice. No transcendent defeat of evil and the destruction of evildoers in hell. Today there are many, and I say it at this point, they would just shake their heads. They think they can outsmart God. You can keep your boring old heaven, they say. There ain't nothing beyond this world. So I don't need to worry about hell. I can live just as I like. What sort of a trade-off is that? Anyone who thinks he can do such a deal is bargaining with the devil himself. And the devil is no one's friend. Because his aim is to drag everyone else down to the same dark destiny to which God will ultimately consign him. We need a transcendent Christ. Not just the Jesus of Galilee, but the Saviour of Calvary and the triumphant Lord who conquered the tomb who ascended to the glory of heaven and who is the coming judge and the Saviour of all who know Him. So tonight I just simply ask you the question, have you found this Christ? Have you confessed your sins to Him? Have you trusted Him with your very soul? Can you look with confidence to that day when you must finally appear before him. That awesome day. Well, Paul ended his sermon and left the court of the Areopagus. The New Testament doesn't include a letter to the Athenians. There was not exactly an ill response. There was mockery. There was prevarication. Many said, well, we'll think about it. But that was all. Only a few believers could be found in Athens. In this, our modern time of sophistication and the widespread dissemination of knowledge, let us not lose faith in the power of the old gospel to meet the deepest needs of our own generation. though they might put on airs of sophistication just as people did in Athens. Because this gospel eventually did transform the ancient world, bringing untold blessing to multitudes. And we have entered into that inheritance and we look forward to a greater inheritance in the world to come. Jesus commanded that it be preached to all nations. So let us believe the Gospel. Let us live by it. And commend it to those around us. And if we have been groping in the dark, and maybe someone here tonight, you are still groping in the dark. It's time to seek the Lord. It's time to come into the light of Christ. Let's pray for just a moment. Eternal God, help us not to trifle with our soul in this day of opportunity. If we have not found the Savior, help us to lay hold of him and to him find life eternal. Amen.