our passage here this morning in just a moment. I had everything ready to go this week and everything was set and then something happened late this week that was significant enough to me that I took some time on Friday afternoon, I had to wait for a car inspection, and I decided to write out a little remembrance that I wanted to read to you today because I think it has impact upon our congregation and certainly impact upon my own life. And so let me read this to you. I wanted to take a moment to remember someone God used in my life in a very special and a unique way. This past Friday, Pastor Tim Keller passed away. He was 72 years old. I understand that most of you are not familiar with him, apart from perhaps recognizing his name, something I've quoted or a book that I've recommended. Tim was primarily known for his books and for pastoring in New York City for many years. I thought that it would be helpful to give a little bit of the background of why Tim Keller's ministry was so impacting to me. In many ways, he and I are very unlike each other. We're from a different denomination. Our church traditions are different and many other things. Here's my connection. Several years ago, our church was going through a particularly difficult time, as can sometimes be the case in the messiness of church conflict. Some of the aggressiveness of personal attack turns toward the one who is most visible, which is the pastor. As our family faced wave after wave of this, I determined that I wasn't going to give in. I'm not a quitter. I value courage and commitment. And most of all, I feel that my God-given responsibility is to be a shepherd, and so shepherd cannot abandon sheep, even in dark times. These commitments and determinations, though, did not silence something that was going on inside of me and smoldering in my heart. I realize that what I'm going to say is perhaps silly sounding to you, and I probably might get that if I had not had the experience that I'm going to describe. But at that time, I could not get away from a heavy, an unrelenting, very palpable and felt sense of the thought that I was a complete failure of a human being. The thoughts that I was bombarded with are simply too dark to write down and to read. I really mean that. I'm not talking about thoughts I had toward other people. I'm talking about thoughts I had about myself. Where did that come from? What was happening? I couldn't put them back in the box again. All I know is that I could not escape from the church conflict or from the personal heart demons that seemed to be unleashed inside of me. What I know now, and am in the process of seeking to repair and have talked about before, is that that church conflict awakened inside of me an inferno of unprocessed abusive behavior from my upbringing, my home that I grew up in. To put it more concisely, abusive treatment, even years later, can awaken trauma in the heart like a bear awakened early from hibernation. It was during that time that I can see now God was throwing me a lifeline. Sometimes lifelines feel like you're drowning and they hit on your shoulder like a small rope. One of the lifelines that God brought to me during that time was the little book, and I very distinctly remember this, the book The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller. This was the first thing that I read in that book, the very first chapter. What are the marks of a heart that's been radically changed by the grace of God? Remember, my heart was in huge turbulence at that time. I wanted a heart that had been changed by grace, and so that was a question that drew me in. If we trust in Christ, this is what Keller writes, what should our hearts be like? It's not simply a matter of morally virtuous behavior. That's what I was trying to be as a pastor. It is quite possible to do all sorts of morally virtuous things when our hearts are filled with fear, pride, with a desire for power. We are talking about hearts that have been changed at the root by the grace of God and what that looks like in real life. That particular time in reading that, in that book, drew me in because Keller talked about hearts and he talked about grace, and I feel like I needed conversation about both of those. Now, to be sure, and I want to be very clear about this, simply reading a book does not fix trauma. Tim's writing was not about fixing, it never was. It was about turning our gaze gently toward Christ and then finding that gaze looking back at us, back at me, was not angry with me for needing help. Jesus' gaze was both tearful and hopeful. It was from the ministry of Tim Keller that was emblazoned this phrase upon my mind that I have quoted many, many times. You may not have even known where it came from. That in Jesus, we are more horribly sinful than we could have ever imagined, but we are more wonderfully loved than we could have ever hoped for. I know we need to be careful about putting a lot of trust in what can be considered celebrity pastors, and he was one of those, even though he didn't like that fame and that place. I have taken in a lot of Tim Keller's ministry. I differ with him on some points of theology and practice, for sure, but what I came to love through him was the gospel in all of the Bible. It's almost like to me, and I really mean this, like I was meeting Jesus all over again. I have used Tim's books in helping me to shepherd my family and even some of you, books like Counterfeit Gods and Prodigal God. We would read some of his stuff on and off in his devotional on Proverbs at our family devotions as the kids grew up. I've used his stuff on marriage, some of the best material on marriage to help shepherd couples who are getting married, some of you sitting here right now. You may not have ever heard Tim Keller's name and you may never read one of his books, although if you were to read one, I would say Counterfeit Gods is a great one. But I know this, even if you don't come in contact with his ministry, you have felt his influence. You have felt his influence in my life. He used his life to draw our attention to the most loving gaze of the universe, the face of Christ. I never met him. I never even heard him speak in person, although I had hoped to do that at some point. But he helped me to see that Jesus was willing to descend to me in my trauma because Jesus had faced the worst nightmares of all piled together at the cross. He helped me to see that my worth was not in who I am or what I had done or what I would ever do, but my value is in Jesus and that he set his gaze upon me and was willing to call me a son. In Jesus, I am infinitely loved and held fast by a grace that will not let me go." I don't know who needs to hear this today. In part, I shared what I did about myself because some of you need to hear that there is a road to true healing, soul healing, emotional healing, relational wholeness. No, that work will not be accomplished fully in this life. Some of you think you're good, everything's good. But what you've simply done is kind of what I did, is you learned to adapt with a pattern of coping strategies that undoubtedly the people around you feel they're just not sure exactly what's wrong. I used to think this was one example. I used to think that my sarcastic humor was just part of how I did humor. But I've come to understand that for me, for me, there's a way that I could shield myself from the hurt that could be inflicted by others and keep people at arm's distance. What will it take for you to be awakened to a healing pathway? To do a deeper work that is below the surface of the iceberg of your life. You realize that we are only seeing, when we see each other here, the tip of the iceberg. There's a whole lot below the surface in all of our lives. What will it take for you to do the deeper work? For me, what began for me was this little book, this little Tim Keller book. I do know that in this way I desire to be like Tim Keller. I want to point your gaze toward the one who knows who you are, loves you more than you can imagine. I'm thankful for how God has used this man in my life. Let's pray. We all have differing ways that you have thrown lifelines to us. And perhaps even in just this little remembrance, there's a lifeline that's sort of stirred something up in a person's heart here. And I pray that today as we look into your word about reaching others with the gospel, that we will not see this as methodology, but as the person of Jesus. The same Jesus that I needed then is the same Jesus I need today. It may feel to me like I needed him more then, but I'm only keenly aware that I'm probably in more need of you today. And so are these people before me. So I pray that you would take this servant who is now charged with taking the Bible and explaining the Bible and point us to Christ. Help us to have hope in Christ. So thank you so much for the work that you do in our lives through various Christian servants around the world. And may you do that work now because the gospel is the same now and is as powerful in this pulpit as it was in Tim Keller's pulpit. Help us to be ready to hear and quick to do what you say. In Jesus' precious name, amen. I'm going to ask you to turn to Acts 17. If you don't have a Bible, it's page 871 in the Pew Bible in front of you. Acts 17. Today we're continuing and really on the final rule. We had 12 rules. And today's the final rule. Next week will be a concluding sermon in the series that's lasted us the last three months. And today we're talking about the maturing phase. We started with getting planted and rooted and growing and maturing and now multiplying. And so we're going to look today at this multiplying piece. Did you know when God saved you, He intended for you to multiply what's going on in your life and the lives of others? And maybe you, before this time, have seen, well, that's a preacher's job, or that's a Tim Keller's job, or that's some effective servant's job. And what I want to say is that that's the job of a Christian. That's what a Christian is, is that your influence goes into the lives of others. This is so basic, I feel like I'm talking down by even saying it, but you know that banana trees produce bananas. Apple trees produce apples. It's hard-baked, folks, into the very core of the universe that things produce after their kind. And so Christians reproduce. One of the last things that we did when we were in Colorado in our ministry is the pastoral staff, we all went down to Colorado Springs with our pastoral staff and we toured Glen Eyrie there and just a lot of fun things, did hiking. And I remember my pastor bought for me a small little book, I have it in my office, that was down at Glen Eyrie. about Dawson Trotman, who was the guy at Billy Graham Crusades who was charged with discipling people and putting together a discipleship program. And the little book my pastor gave me is called Born to Reproduce. And that's what a Christian is. You're born again to reproduce after your own kind. And so we're going to talk about that today. Do you remember these little seeds? Did you have these seeds growing up? These helicopter seeds? Remember as a kid loving these things, going around and collecting them? You throw them up and they kind of spin and go into other parts. We're going to talk about how God has placed into you, made you like a helicopter seed. That your influence is going to go through different parts of the world and God is going to use you to be fruitful and multiply. That's what it says in the book of Genesis. That you would be fruitful and multiply. God has equipped you like a helicopter seed to share your faith. And we want to talk about that today, and we want to do so in a way that's going to give some practicality to this, although I don't want it to be seen as a method. I don't want us to be hard-locked into a method. I don't know if you've noticed, but sometimes it can be difficult to share the gospel with people. Sometimes when you talk about Jesus, some people move away. They go further away. It's kind of like the opposite of magnets. They go further away. Some people point out hypocrisies. They're going to engage But they're going to point out hypocrisies about Christianity. By the way, whenever somebody gives me an argument like that, says, well, the church is full of hypocrites, I do not ever respond back and say, no, it's not. I don't ever say that. Don't ever say that, OK? Because sometimes when people share that, it's based upon real observations, right? And so you have to engage with that. You can't just simply say, no, that's not true. I think to a certain extent that's true of a lot of us. We intend to be better people than we actually are. I know what they mean. They mean maybe far worse than that. Some people just want to poke holes in what we believe. And there are those out there like that. No wonder it's easy to kind of hear a message like this and to kind of throw our hands up and say, I just don't think this is possible. We live in such a hard place. I don't think that's actually the case because the gospel is still powerful. I want to say, just right at the very beginning, when we talk about multiplying, what we're talking about, some of you have a picture in your mind, maybe older people, of like a Billy Graham crusade, right? You're just like, well, I can't do it like that. Well, God's not holding you up to that. That was His job. I mean, our job's different. So multiplying is impacting someone who impacts someone. That's what it is. It's impacting someone with Christ who impacts someone with Christ. And that may not be a ton of people, but you are impacting. So in your handout today, page 167, you've got some notes and various things like that. And we want to talk about sharing the gospel because this is the world's only hope. This is the world's only hope. We're going to look at Acts 17. Now, we're going to look at seven key principles of multiplication from this passage, and I want you to think about them like helicopter seats. When we come to this passage, I want you to notice not just what is happening in the passage, but how it's happening. I want you to do one more thing before we get into the passage, okay? This is pastorally-sanctioned daydreaming that I'm asking you to do right now, okay? Some of you are like, well, I was already doing that without your permission. No, I'm telling you to daydream about this. I want you to put somebody's face in your mind that you would like to reach with the gospel. I want you to put somebody's face in your mind. that you would like to reach with the gospel. What I'm asking you to do is not look at this generally. I want you to look at specifically about how you're gonna personalize this in your own life. Now, the context of Acts 17 is that Paul is on a missionary journey and he is a wicked long way from home. All right, so to us, Being a long distance from home, like from here to California, I mean, it's just like, what, a four or five hour plane flight. In ancient times, to actually sail or to be on a horse or a camel or something like that could take weeks and months. You may not even see your loved one ever again if they go on a long journey. So Paul, who is from Jerusalem, is all the way over in Athens. And this is where this takes place. What Paul is doing in this passage, here's a word, is contextualizing the gospel. So we have the gospel. What is the gospel? The gospel is that Jesus died, he was buried, he rose again for the sins of mankind, and if you place your trust in him and him alone, you can become a Christian. This is the hope of the gospel. The gospel, though, is taken to different cultures around the world and is contextualized. It's put within that culture in the cultural setting that they have without adjusting the core message. Paul is contextualizing the gospel here. It is one of the most brilliant and well-known passages in the Bible of a person taking the gospel to a completely non-believing pagan culture. I'll give you a couple thoughts about Athens. Athens in that day was the intellectual capital of the world. It was like all of the Ivy League schools, Harvard, Princeton, and so forth, put together was right there in Athens. It was the epicenter of culture. It is within this context that Paul is going to do ministry and missions work. He is going to engage with the ivory tower philosophers. Now, you may think to yourself, well, I'm just a simple person. I could never do this. And yet these passages are given so that we can do this. And we're going to see how Paul does this. I want you, as I've already mentioned, to look carefully at what he did, but also how he did it. Because these are very, very valuable lessons in how to share our faith. Look at verse 16. of Acts 17. Verse 16 says, now, while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he had a missionary team that was coming with him, but he was by himself. It says, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. Now, stop right there. It's interesting that in many passages of Scripture, we're not sure how the person feels who's actually doing the ministry work. We just don't know that sometimes. Here we have this word about how he feels. His spirit was provoked. He was agitated. And he was agitated because, we're going to see a picture in a moment, there were idols all over the city. Now what was making Paul agitated? Here is the core of that agitation. That worship that he saw going to those idols was not going towards God. It was not going towards God and it bothered him that these people didn't even know about God. He wasn't angry with the people. He was bothered that God was not getting the worship that he deserved. And so this city full of idols is where Paul finds himself. Now, there was an idol literally for everything they could think of in Athens. Some of the more well-known idols are these. Artemis, the goddess of prosperity. If you wanted prosperity, then you would bring a temple offering to the goddess of prosperity. Athena, the goddess of politics. If you wanted to have wisdom and lead you in politics, you would bring an offering to Athena. Nike, the goddess of victory, worshipped by athletes and warriors. If you wanted to run faster or perform better, you would bring an offering to this idol. Aphrodite, the goddess of sexuality, beauty, fertility. It was said, you probably heard this before, it's a very common quote, that it was easier to meet a god in Athens than it was a person. So many gods. Now every culture has idols. That's foreign to us. I mean we don't go around and see that in our day. But every culture has idols. This does not go away even though we live in our country here. Idols are those things that the culture lifts up and that the culture values. These are things that we place our trust in that become more important than they should. These are the things that we dedicate our lives to and that we sacrifice for. These are cultural idols. These are things we find our happiness in and our satisfaction in. These are things that ultimately, over time, replace worship of the one true God. Every culture has them. Look at verse 17. Here's what Paul did. It said, so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews. and devout persons. And in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there. So, what did Paul do? The very first thing he did, goes into a city, nobody's asking about God, nobody knows who Jesus is, there's no advertisement for a Jesus Revolution movie, there's no shirts about God, none of that. So what does he do? The very first thing he does is he goes into a place, a synagogue, where the Jews who had been scattered over the region at that time are talking about the ancient scriptures. So he goes to the place people are already talking about God. So maybe here's a point in your own mind you may want to think about is that when you're struck with a conversation where people are talking spiritually, it may not be accurately about God, but they're talking spiritually, maybe that's a place that you would want to enter into that space and begin to listen because people are already talking about God. Now, the word marketplace here, it says he went into the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. This is not like going to the mall. It's not like going to the Q Mart. There's more to this particular marketplace. This is the place you would go to get your news. This is the place you would get any kind of collaboration of what was going on in the known world at the time. This is the place where art was performed, where philosophical trends were discussed. They came out of this area. Here is principle number one in reaching others with the gospel from this text. We should make social contact with non-Christian people. We should make social contact with non-Christian people. This is what Paul is doing. He's making social contact with non-Christian people. Now I say this and it may seem like well Rob I could have figured this out on my own. We're seeing it because it's in the text but I also want to say that some of us have come from church backgrounds where we are told or it's implied that we should keep a safe distance from non-Christian people altogether. This would be dangerous to us and so we should keep a distance. I think there's a lot of value in Christian fellowship. I love church. I love our fellowships. I love our community groups. I love all of that stuff. But Paul exposed himself to places where he was making social contact with non-Christian people. I should put just a small aside to this because some of you are going to process this this way with our jobs, okay. I should say your jobs. I mean my job's really very different. I'm very insulated in my job here. I don't know that we can just easily take these principles and say, well, I'm just going to share my faith at my workplace. I think that has to be done with care and with wisdom and with consideration that you are under the authority of someone there. And you may say, well, I'm under God's authority. You are under God's authority, but you do not, we do not steal work time, even though it's to do Christian things, thus having a bad testimony that allows people again to say there are hypocrites down at the church, all right? So we have to be careful about that. So we need to make social contact. You need to make social contact with non-Christian people, and that may mean outside of your workplace. Let me point out that Paul and even Jesus did the exact opposite of keeping away from non-Christian people. This is a very powerful passage in Mark chapter 2. Jesus, it says, reclined at table in his house. This is Matthew's house. Many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. Now, Mark is writing this. I love how Mark puts it. It's just kind of a general category. It's like you got the tax collectors, and then the rest of them, they're just sinners, man. I mean, they're bad. These are bad people. They're just sinners. So a bunch of sinners were around Jesus, and it says he reclined. It says twice in the passage. He reclined, they reclined. We only think about reclining to watch a football game, but they were in their setting reclining on the floor. I mean, we understand, perhaps if you've seen a picture of an ancient table, they didn't have a lot of woodworking and chairs and that kind of thing. So having a low table and being on the floor and leaning on your side and reclining, I mean, a meal was not microwaved. I mean, you may be there for several hours and the text is giving us indication that Jesus wasn't going in, handing out tracts on papyrus and then leaving. He was actually there for several hours. And it says at the end of verse 15, many followed him. There were people, the scribes and Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors said to the disciples, why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners? So this is not an easy thing. So let me just stop here and ask a question. Have you structured your life in such a way to be making social contacts with non-Christian people? Have you structured your life in a way to do that? Jesus did that. Now, please don't argue back and say, well, Jesus didn't have a job. I got a job. I got a family. I got a broken car. I don't have time. We can't do that, folks. God didn't give us these things in Scripture so that we could just say, I can't do them. We may have more things that we have to juggle and arrange, but we should do them. We know that our message is powerful. Nobody in this room doubts the message. We know that. But we are oftentimes, this is what it feels like, we're stuck in the huddle. Sorry for a football analogy. It's not even football season. I'm sorry for this. But we're stuck in the huddle and we're all huddled up. We're all constantly calling the plays. This is how we should do it. This is how we should win people. This is how we should witness. But we're stuck and we can't get out of the huddle to actually run the plays and actually put any points on the board. And I'm not saying that converts are points. I'm simply using an analogy to say that we're stuck in the huddle a lot of times. How do we get unstuck? We get unstuck by getting plugged in, in making social contact in our community. Now, I've got, I think, six more of these leaves to go. But if you don't get anything out of this sermon, get this one thing and apply this one thing. Make it a prayerful point in your life that you are going to find a place, that you are going to open your eyes to some place in our community, outside of these walls, outside of sitting at sporting events here, outside of here. where you can make social contact on a regular basis with people. Paul, it says, did this in the text. It says that he did this every day. I don't know that we need to make a hard application that every day we need to do this, but we should be aware every day and we should be ready every day. Verse 17, he was reasoning, it says, in the synagogue. The Greek word for reasoning, let's talk about that for just a moment. The Greek word for reasoning is where we get our word dialogue. He was dialoguing. It's a back and forth. It's a Socratic method of dialoguing. He wasn't preaching at them like I'm doing. It's not a monologue like I'm doing right now. He was dialoguing with them. Now this is where it can get a little scary because it means there's give and take. It means you talk, it means they talk. It means it's back and forth. And so there are questions that come up. There are thoughts that come up. Look at verse 18. It says, some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers conversed, or in the NIV it says they debated with him. Some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Babbler. Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Now there's two groups here. Let's talk about them. You had the Stoics and you had the Epicureans. The Stoics, these are the white knucklers. No emotion. Power through. You just live your life. You don't feel feelings. You just do it, man. That's the Stoic. On this side, the Epicureans, totally on the opposite side. These are the people that want you to feel everything. These are the eat, drink, be merry people. These are the hedonistic people. So you have the non-emotional and you have the very emotional. You've got everything in between. in this conversation with Paul about the gospel. And it says they debated. Now that sounds scary. It sounds very frightening. And I think that we need to park on this for just a moment. It was not contentious. Now, they might have had some contention in their back and forth, but it wasn't primarily a debate in Athens wasn't set up to be contentious. It was an exchange of ideas. It was a question and answer time, and what we're seeing here is he was able to do that. He was able to go back and forth. So, here is the second principle on the leaves that we're looking at here is do your homework. Do your homework. The gospel has what it takes to take on the cultures that we are involved with. That's what it's showing us in the text. I mean, Paul's stepping in a completely pagan culture, and the gospel is able to take on whatever that culture throws at him. But we have to do some homework. Now, I know the word homework is bad. I know we're at the end of the school year, and I know that. And some of us are glad to be out of school. Some of us can't even remember what it was like to do actual real homework. Some of you didn't do homework when you were in school. So I understand there's a broad spectrum on the issue of homework. I know there's some teachers right now saying, will you please talk about the value of homework? That's not this message, all right? That's Scott Berge's job in the school, and he can handle that. But we need to do our homework. Do you know what you believe? Let me ask you, do you know what the culture believes? Yeah, I was watching TV. No, no, no, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about do we really know what's underneath of what people believe. Are we willing to investigate that? We're going to see later in this whole discussion, Paul quotes their poets and their philosophers. Let me just contextualize that. If Paul were alive today, he would be quoting Ubano of U2 and some TikTok influencer because that's the world we live in. And so Paul is quoting their philosophers and he's quoting their poets. Are we able to engage with people or even to hear what their ideas are? Now, some will not do this. I'm just telling you, some will not do this because it takes work. It really takes work, and the reason I'm pointing this out, and I don't mean to be kind of in your face, but I think that this is what can happen if we don't do this work. It is easier, folks, to belittle people's ideas and to somehow do what we talked about a few weeks ago, to caricature them, than to actually engage with them. Paul did not do that. He didn't sit with people who believed complete malarkey and say, this is just a bunch of baloney. I mean, do you believe, are you telling me that you believe that? That's just hocus pocus. He didn't do that. He actually engaged with them respectfully, which is what Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason, the hope that is in you, and to do it with gentleness and respect. gentleness and respect. Why gentleness and respect? Why does Peter choose those words? Peter was actually kind of a harsh, abrasive person. Maybe he needed to learn that, but he also saw that that's how Jesus interacted with people. Why do we need to do it that way? I think we need to realize that when we take the Christian worldview, bring that into another person's life who doesn't have that view, that their lives are being undone in a foundation that they thought was the truth. And it's not. And we can't just chalk that up as a victory for Jesus. We have to recognize that this can be a very, very difficult thing for people to actually absorb. And we need to do this with gentleness and respect. Now look at verse 19. It says, They took him, they brought him to the Areopagus, and they said, May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange thing to our ears. We wish to know, therefore, what these things mean." And here are Paul's first words in verse 22. So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, says, "'Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.'" Here is principle number three, find common ground. Find common ground. That's exactly what he did. I mean, these are incredibly devout religious people, so why not acknowledge that and find common ground? Are you able to do that? Are you able to find common ground with someone and to think about those things? Sometimes there's a disconnect that's challenging to communicate. So it's like they brought this up, I brought this up, there's this real huge gap here and it's so hard to communicate. Can we find common ground with someone? Many, many people are very passionate. If you can't find any common ground, if you're just like, I cannot find any common ground and they're just really, really into what they believe, then just acknowledge their passion. It seems like you're really, really passionate about what you believe. I think we're probably alike in that. I'm passionate about what I believe, too. There's some common ground there. Now, I'm going to show you a picture in just a moment that some of you are going to have no attachment to, but I want you to see it. Do you know what this is? Have you seen one of these before? Now this is not like an old conservative fundamentalist question that if you're like saying, yeah, I've seen it, it's like, gotcha, you went there. All right, that's not what I'm doing. It's just a simple question, all right, just a simple question. I wonder how many people under the age of 20 have ever seen this, and don't say I saw it when I watched Stranger Things, okay? What would people actually go there to do? What was the point of this? Well, that's where people would go to rent movies that they wanted to watch. And you'd exchange, you'd get a VHS tape. I should have brought one. We've got a bunch of them in our basement. Not from Blockbuster, not from Blockbuster. I didn't steal them from Blockbuster, but ones that we had. But you get a VHS tape and turn back. I bring this up to say, I wonder if sometimes there's a disconnect in how we communicate Christianity to other people. just like a generation that may be referring to Blockbuster and renting a VHS tape to another generation. It's kind of like, well, didn't you stream movies? No, we didn't stream movies at all. We didn't know what that was except for water stream. We didn't know what streaming was. Communicating the gospel needs to be done in a contextualized way and not simply, I believe these principles and you should believe them too. And they're kind of like, what? We're just like, well, that's the hardness of the human heart. Well, sometimes that is the hardness of the human heart. Sometimes they just flat out don't understand how we're communicating this. We need to find common ground. Those of you who will be meeting today in community groups or this week on page 172 in your book, there's a whole thing on contextualizations. You'll have time to talk about that a little bit. But I want you to look at verse 23 here of Acts 17. So Paul goes on in his sermon slash defense here and he says, I passed along and observed the objects of your worship. So he's already said, you're religious, I saw the objects of your worship, and I found an altar that said, to the unknown God, what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. Now he's got their attention at this point, because they had gods of everything, and they had one God to collect that they may have missed. So if a god showed up one day and it's kind of like, hey, I'm the god of so-and-so, they could say, oh, we've got a place for you. It's right here to the unknown god right here. That's what they had. And Paul observed that. It's kind of like a just-in-case sort of god. So in verse 23 he says, again, to the unknown God, what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. He seizes the open door and here's the fourth principle. He's about ready to expose inconsistencies. Before we present the truth of our worldview There's going to come a time, and this is maybe the hardest part of exposing inconsistencies in someone else's worldview. And I don't know that I have this in any of my notes, but I think we understand we're not looking to win an argument. This is not what this is. It's not jamming an argument at people. This is having a conversation in which the Holy Spirit is guiding, but it's going to mean pointing out some inconsistencies. Francis Schaeffer, a Christian writer, thinker of the past, said, too many unbelievers have not had the courage or the consistency to follow their thoughts all the way home. We need to have the gentleness and the respect in presenting Jesus to people to expose the weakness of their worldview. But it's not just exposing weakness. It's not just trying to prove them wrong. Look at verse 24. Paul says then, 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 every one from every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and boundaries of their dwelling place. Here's principle number five. It's talk about the one true God. Talk about the one true God. Did you catch what Paul was saying to them? What he's saying to them, in essence, is the place you're working in is because God put you there. The neighborhood you're in is because God put you there. The conversation we're having is because God allowed this to happen. That God is over all things and He is sovereign. God made you for a purpose. God ordained this for a purpose. I've had conversations like this with people and, you know, because I'm a pastor, sometimes that'll come out in the conversation. And sometimes they'll say something like, you know, it was amazing that I had this thought in my head and then I run into a pastor. And it gives me the opportunity to say, I don't think that was a coincidence at all. I think it was God. And Paul talks about the one true God. Verse 27 says that they should seek God and perhaps feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us. for in him we live and move and have our being even as some of your own poets have said for we are indeed his offspring." Now here's where Paul is skillfully quoting Epimenides and Eratus. They were heroes of the Athenian people and he gives that to them. Because those people recognized something that was true about the universe that now Paul says here's why it's true it's because God did it that way. He's bringing light to them. C.S. Lewis writer of the past said. An impersonal God? Well and good. A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness inside our own head? Better still. A formless life force surging through everyone? A vast power we can all tap? Best of all. But a living God? Pulling at the other end of the cord? Approaching at infinite speed? The hunter? The covenant Lord? The husband? That is quite another matter. There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion suddenly draw back, supposing you really found Him. Or worse still, suppose he found you. What he's saying there is that there are people who are searching for things in their life, but supposing that the thing that they're searching for is actually God, and He was looking for you. Supposing that's true, and of course we believe it is true. Now, Paul talks about turning from their gods to the one true God, but he does something else, which is very important in verse 29. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone. Because you understand, folks, when he said, oh, here's this God, they're like, great, we got another God. But he doesn't stop there. Verse 30, 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 appointed, and this He has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Principle number six, make Jesus Christ the central issue. Make Jesus Christ the central issue. By all means, talk about God. but make Jesus Christ the central issue. Jesus made Jesus the core issue. Matthew 16, 15 says, Who do men say that I am? This is a core issue. Verse 32 says, Now when they heard the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, We will hear you again about this. There were differing responses. Some mocked, some wanted to hear more. Here's the seventh principle. Be prepared for mixed response. Be prepared for mixed response. Verse 34 says, But some men joined him and believed, among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. Some mocked, some wanted more, and some believed. They repent, and they turn to Jesus. He talked about repenting. It wasn't just adding this god to their collection of gods. They had to repent of what they believed and turn to the one true God. By the way, if you're here and you're not sure if you're a Christian, this offer is open to you. You can repent. This doesn't mean you confess all of the sins of your entire life that you can remember. This means that you're going to take your sins, you're going to put them on Jesus and understand that He paid for those sins. You're not trying to work your way to heaven. Jesus did that for you. He did the work for you, and you can trust Him. That's what Paul is telling these people. So here it is. Number one, make social context. Number two, do the homework. Number three, find common ground. Number four, expose inconsistencies. Number five, talk about the true God. Number six, make Jesus the issue. And number seven, expect a mixed response. So folks, let's live and preach the gospel every day. It is the world's only hope. This is the only hope. and God's gonna use us to get the gospel out. I'm gonna pray, we're gonna sing, we're gonna have a short break, and then we have a brief members meeting. You're welcome to join us for here in just a few moments. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the time we've had together today. Help us to make those contacts, loving people where they are, being able to share the only hope the world has, which is Jesus. We thank you for this time. In Jesus' precious name we pray, amen.