O worship the King, all glorious
above, and gratefully sing his power and his love. Our shield and defender, the
Ancient of Days, pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise. O tell of his might, O sing of
his grace, Whose robe is the light, whose canopy space, His
chariots of wrath, the deep thundered clouds form, And dark is his
path on the weight of the storm. Thy bountiful care, what tongue
can recite? It breathes in the air, it shines
in the light. It streams from the hills, it
descends to the plain, And sweetly distills in the dew and the rain. Frail children of dust, and feeble
as frail, in thee do we trust. Please be seated. Good morning. It's good to be home. We had
good services last weekend in North Carolina. And Rupert had
to have surgery Monday, or no, Wednesday. Wednesday, I'm sorry.
of this week after I left, and he is home recovering from that.
But pray for the brethren there. Spring Lake, North Carolina,
just outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina. Rupert is not able to preach anymore, and they're
hungry. Actually, Dennis is going to
be there the next seven weeks preaching for them before he
goes back to school, Dennis Fitzden. So that'll be a blessing. We're going to be in Acts chapter
17 this morning, if you'd like to turn with me there in your
Bibles. Acts chapter 17. I assume most of you all know
Cyril and Lenore Reynolds. They have been coming off and
on here for several years now. They just bought a house down
in Touristown somewhere, down in the Kissimmee, Disney area,
and they're going to be snowbirds. So, they'll only be here today,
and they'll go back to Pennsylvania, but then they'll come back and
be here with us in the winter. So, we're looking forward to
that. For seven months, they'll be
with us during the winter. So, welcome. We're glad you all are here.
Let's pray together, ask the Lord's blessings on His Word.
Our Heavenly Father, we're thankful that You once again blessed us
with the opportunity to come to this place. We thank you especially
that you've promised your presence and the power of your spirit
where two or three are gathered together in thy name. Lord, we pray that for Christ's
sake, you would be pleased now to bless your word to our hearts,
to reveal to us his glory and to enable us to rest in his finished
work. Lord, we come to you as sinners,
thanking you that there's a throne of grace and that we have an
advocate, Jesus Christ, the righteous one, whoever lives to make intercession
for us. We thank you for the hope of
life that we have in him. And we pray, Lord, for those
who remain strangers to your grace. We pray for our young
people, for our children. For the strangers, Lord, that
would come and be among us, we ask that you would show your
mercy and your grace in the light of the gospel in their hearts
to the salvation of their souls. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. In Acts chapter 17, the Apostle
Paul goes to Athens. And everything that is said in
this passage of Scripture applies to Apopka, Florida. It applies
to Tullis. Is that the name of the
place in Pennsylvania where you all live? It starts with a T,
I know. I can't think of the name of the town. But it applies
to everywhere. Solomon said there is nothing
new under the sun. The situation that the Apostle
Paul finds in Athens is the same as the situation that we have
here in our city and in our communities. Men are lost and in their lost
condition they are desperately seeking to find some meaning
to life. They're looking for happiness. They're looking for hope. They're
looking for purpose. They're looking for meaning.
And they're looking in all the wrong places. And the gospel
of God's free grace in the glorious person and finished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ is the only message of hope that there is
for man. And Paul goes to Athens and his
spirit is stirred within him. And my hope and prayer is that
God would stir up our spirits. That we would see the idolatry
that is all around us. and that we would be burdened,
first and foremost, for the fact that man is robbing God of his
glory by his idolatrous behavior. And second of all, because he's
lost. He's lost. He's on his way to
a devil's hell, and if God doesn't do a work of grace in his heart
through the preaching of the gospel, he'll be without hope. He'll be absolutely without hope. When Paul goes to Athens, he
says, we'll begin in verse 16, now while Paul waited for them
in Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly,
completely, totally given over to idolatry. Have you ever been
an idolater? You ever been an idolater? If
your answer to that question is, no, I've never been guilty
of idolatry, if that's your answer, then I'm afraid I have to tell
you that you're an idolater right now and you don't know it. Because
the truth is that every single one of us were born into this
world as idolaters. And it doesn't take long before
the idle factory starts working. And in our darkened imagination,
we fashion a God that looks like ourselves. At the end of the
day, all men put themselves on the throne of God and make themselves
to be God. That's idolatry. And it's just
natural to us. The truth of who God is has to
be made known by divine revelation. And that only happens through
the preaching of the gospel. And so until we hear the gospel
of God's free grace, we just do what comes natural. We are
idolaters. Even children that are born in
a home where the gospel is believed, who come every Sunday and sit
under the sound of the gospel. I just stand amazed. And I fear
for myself that how much a person can sit and listen and not hear. And until the Lord is pleased
to make them willing, until the Lord is pleased to open the eyes
of their understanding, they're bound to be idolaters and wholly
given over to it. And his spirit was stirred within
him. And our spirits won't be stirred over this issue of idolatry. We'll pass the temple of Pentecostalism
or the temple of Methodism or the temple of Presbyterianism. They're all around us. They're
all around us. And they each have a little different
statue of God that they bow to. And we'll pass those things and
think nothing of them. We won't be burdened for the
people that go there. We won't even be convicted that
they're preaching a false gospel and that they're fashioning an
idol that robs our God of His glory. Our spirits won't be stirred
within us. We'll just think, well, you know,
we're all the same, we're all worshiping the same God, and
we all believe the same thing, and, you know, we just have a
little different perspective on things. This isn't a matter
of perspective. This isn't a matter of emphasis.
It's not a matter of tweaking doctrine or theology in order
to get a little bit more accurate. There is the worship of the living
God, and then there's idolatry, and there's no in between. And
you can't mix the two. It's one way or the other. We
live in a city of idolaters. And every single one of us, but
for the grace of God, would still be idolaters. And so our spirits
are stirred within us, thinking, Lord, if you left me to myself,
I'd be right there. I'd be bowing to a God who doesn't
exist. I'd be imagining, I'd be worshiping
the figment of my imagination. That's what idolatry is. That
God doesn't exist. He absolutely does not exist.
And yet man is so perverted and so darkened in his sin and in
his imagination that he will fashion himself a little God.
A God, in the end, who is subservient to him. That's why I said, man,
because he has no love of the truth, 2 Thessalonians chapter
2, God has given him a lie. He's believed
a lie to the destruction of his soul and he sets himself up on
the throne of God. So, Lord, give us love for the
truth. Give us a love for the Christ
who is and deliver us from idolatry. Paul's in Athens, his spirit
stirred within him. Verse 17, therefore disputed
he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons
and in the market daily with them that met with him. Now that
word disputed doesn't mean argued, it means he dialogued with them.
He reasoned with them. He went to those first who had
the Word of God. That's who he went to first,
the Jews, who had the Scriptures. And he dialogues with them and
reasons with them in the Scriptures and tells them what the Scriptures
mean. Because like all men who've been
given the Word of God, if they don't know Christ, they're going
to twist the Scriptures to the destruction of their own souls.
And that's what the Jews had done. They had turned the Word
of God into nothing more than a rule book, a rule book of do's
and don'ts, rules and regulations, laws, and thought that, well,
if we'll just keep these laws, we can earn favor with God. And
he goes with them first to those who have the Word of God to tell
them, no, that's not what the scriptures mean. These are they
which testify of me. All these scriptures that you've
been studying are a revelation of Christ. He's the only source
of hope. He's the only source of life.
Herein is life eternal. Life eternal, he didn't say eternal
life, herein is life, and this life is eternal. The Lord Jesus
Christ said, I came that they might have life and have it more
abundantly. Herein is life, eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom
Thou hast sent. So all these pursuits of men,
whether it be in religion or whether it be in philosophy,
are in vain. They're man's attempt to find
happiness, to find meaning, to find purpose to life. And they're a futile search apart
from knowing Christ. Look what Paul says. His spirit
stirred within him. He goes to the devout persons
and he reasons with them. He dialogues with them. He tells them what the Scriptures
mean. Now, have you ever thought, why
did the Holy Spirit put Epicureanism and Stoicism in the Word of God? After Paul reasons with those
who have the scriptures, then he goes to the Areopagus, Mars
Hill, and he reasons with the philosophers. And God tells us
that there's two schools of philosophy there on Mars Hill. It's Stoicism
and Epicureanism. And that's the only two schools
of philosophy that exist. Everything fits under one of
those two categories. Stoicism, in short, is looking
for meaning to life within oneself. If I can get more educated, passivism,
reflection, discipline, That's how I'm going to find the meaning
to life. It's navel-gazing. You know,
it's just looking within in order to try to discover some hope
and some purpose for my life. That's Stoicism. And it's practiced
in religion, it's practiced in our college campuses. And the
other is looking for meaning to life outside oneself. That's Epicureanism. You're hoping
that the accumulation of material things is somehow going to scratch
your itch. Somehow the accumulation of things
that are in the world, outside of myself, that's Epicureanism.
Now you can read a lot of more defined definitions of these
two schools of philosophy, but what I'm telling you is that
God put it in His Word because these are the only two schools
of philosophy that there are in the world and everything fits
under them. Either man's looking within himself for purpose, for
life, for hope, for happiness, for peace, or he's looking outside
of himself. When Thomas Jefferson wrote in
the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness, He wrote that as a professing Epicurean. Our founding
fathers were not Christians, they were deists who had an Epicurean
philosophy. And so the American dream that's
been going on now for over 200 years is an Epicurean philosophy. Oh, if I can just get more, more
stuff, more things, if I can just accumulate more wealth,
then I'll be happy. It's a mirage. It's a lie. You're not going to find happiness
inside yourself and you're not going to find happiness outside
yourself in this world. It's not to be had. Matter of fact, I would say to
you if you're looking for happiness, you're probably going to be frustrated
the rest of your life. I'm always concerned when someone
comes to me and says, you know, I'm just not happy. Generally,
that's a justification for saying, you know, I found somebody else
and I'll leave my spouse for them. I just know that's coming. I know that's coming. I'm not
happy. Men are looking for happiness
in all the wrong places. And if the Lord doesn't teach
us the gospel, we'll do it too. He goes to the Epicureans and
the Stoics. What will this babbler say? Now,
the word babbler literally translated means seed picker. And you think
about 2,000 years ago, no television, no books, no source of entertainment,
and generally 90 plus percent of the people would be born and
live and die in the same city. You wouldn't travel. There was
no means of traveling. There was no way to know what's
going on in the rest of the world. So the few people that did travel,
they would pick up seeds of stories along the way. And they would
come and set up a public forum and begin to tell their stories.
And you would be very intrigued to find out what's going on in
other parts of the world. And that's what a babbler was,
a storyteller. And you just expected that that
babbler would accentuate the details of the story. He would,
what's the word I'm looking for, embellish the story. You would
just expect that, that he would embellish the story. But that
was all part of it. Because you're hearing about things in other
parts of the world that you never knew existed. And so they said,
let's bring this babbler in. Let's see what he has to say.
And the end of the story is that when Paul got to the resurrection,
They were hanging with him in his telling the story about Christ
until he got to the resurrection, and then they threw up their
hands and said, you know, you've just embellished the story beyond
believability. A resurrection? One who died
on a Roman cross and was put into a grave and stayed there
for three days and then came back to life? We can't. We can't
swallow that. And they walked away. But some
believed. Some believed. We'll stick with
our Epicureanism. We'll stick with our Stoicism.
We'll stick with our religion. Because we know that that story
that you're telling us is too far-fetched for us to risk our
souls and our life and our happiness and our joy based on that story. Nothing's changed. Now, when
we're talking about the resurrection, we're not talking about a historical
event. Everybody, you know, most Americans who call themselves
Christians would say, well, I believe in the resurrection. And they
think that the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ. And if you just give assent to those events that they
took place, that that means you're a Christian. No. No. The resurrection, look at Look at verse 31. Here's the
conclusion of Paul's message to these Epicureans and Stoics.
Because he, God the Father, hath appointed a day in which he will
judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained. So what Paul's saying is that
this man, Jesus Christ, is going to be the standard of righteousness
by which he's going to judge everything. And if you don't
measure up to that standard of righteousness, you're going to
be judged guilty by God and sent to the devil's hell. That's what
Paul's saying. You've got to be as perfect as
this man. You've got to be as righteous
as him. He's the standard of righteousness. What did the Lord
say? Unless your righteousness exceeds
the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall
not enter into the kingdom of God. You've got to be perfect
in the sight of God. Jesus Christ, the man that Paul's
preaching, is the standard by which God's going to judge all
of us. He's not going to judge us based
on how disciplined we were in our views of... By the way, most
people vacillate all their lives between Stoicism and Epicureanism. They go back and forth and back
and forth. Very few people. Or like, you
might look at somebody like Gandhi and say, well, that was a true
Stoic and he spent his whole life as a Stoic. Very few people
are like that. Or very few people are, you know,
let's just hold up Donald Trump as a Epicurean, you know. Very
few people live there. Most people go back and forth.
In other words, they indulge themselves in the things of this
world until they come to realize there's no happiness there. And
so then they look within. Until they get so depressed that
they go back to the world. And they spend their whole lives
going back and forth, back and forth. Like a pendulum between
Stoicism and Epicureanism. Isn't that true? Isn't that your
experience? That's my experience. That's
my flesh. I'm so thankful that God's given
me a new spirit. He's given me eyes to see the
truth of the gospel. Because my flesh, in its pursuit,
for happiness goes back and forth between Stoicism and Epicureanism. There's nothing there in either
place. So Christ now is the standard
of righteousness by which God's going to judge the world and
the one whom God hath ordained. Look at the last part of verse
31, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he raised
him from the dead. Believing in the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ is not believing what happened, but
it's believing why it happened. Everybody believes in the Resurrection.
You know, how many people you know that celebrate Easter? The
Resurrection of Christ. He's risen. They have no idea
why he rose from the dead. God rose him from the dead as
the assurance. There it is right there. He is
our assurance. as the assurance that God Almighty
is satisfied with what the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished. He
would not allow His Holy One to see corruption. He would not
leave Him in the grave. He raised Him from the dead as
the positive proof that what He did was successful. and God's
pleased and satisfied with the sacrifice that the Lord Jesus
Christ made on Calvary's cross. And that's the resurrection.
A wicked and perverse generation seeketh after a sign. No sign
will be given to it except for the sign of Jonah. That's the
sign, the resurrection of Christ, who went three days and three
nights into the belly of the whale and was brought forth as
God's testimony to us. This is the only sign that God's
given us. that God is pleased with the accomplished work of
the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's cross. His death on Calvary's
cross was not an offer of salvation to be made effectual by something
we do. His work on Calvary's cross was
a successful work and that's what the resurrection is about. He died for an elect people.
Not one drop of his blood was wasted. He succeeded in putting
away all the sins of all God's elect once and for all by the
sacrifice of himself. He satisfied justice. And God
was justified. And God was pleased. That's what the resurrection
is about. and men today who would say, I'm a Christian, I believe
in the historicity of the resurrection, when they're told what the resurrection
really means, they will do exactly what these men of Athens did.
turn up their nose and say that's a strange doctrine. God loves
everybody. Christ died for everybody. God
wants everybody to be saved. And what Jesus did was an offer
for anybody and everybody, whosoever will. What you're saying is not true.
It's a strange doctrine. Let's go back to verse 20. Verse 18, certain philosophers
of the Epicureans and the Stoics encountered him, and some said,
what will this babbler say? And others some, he seemeth to
be setting forth a strange gods, because he preached unto them
Jesus and the resurrection. No difference. You talk to your
religious friends who say they're Christians. You reason with them
about the truth of the gospel. You know what the first thing
out of their mouth is going to be? My God's not like that. What you're
preaching is a strange God. And they took him and brought
him into the Areopagus, which is Mars Hill, saying, May we
know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is. You talk to
your... When we talk about free will
and how contrary that is to the gospel, talk to your Calvinistic
friends about sanctification. That's a strange doctrine, what
you're teaching. That'll lead men into lasciviousness. If what you're saying is true
about Christ being our sanctification, And he that is sanctified and
they that are sanctified are all as one, and I'm made holy
in him. And sanctification is not progressive,
and it does not take me back to the law to measure my growth. Oh, that's a strange doctrine.
You can't have that. That'll lead to lawlessness.
No, it won't. No, it won't. It'll lead to Christ. It'll lead to Christ. Grace always
leads to Christ. Grace doesn't lead to lawlessness. Lawmongering will lead to lawlessness. The strength of sin is the law.
How are you going to measure your sanctification if you believe
that you're progressively being sanctified? How are you going
to measure it without comparing yourself to yourself? Or comparing
yourself to someone else? Or comparing yourself to the
law? And as soon as you do that, you've lost sight of Christ.
We're looking unto Jesus who's the author and the finisher of
our faith. who for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross. He's my sanctification. We grow in grace and in the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We delight in that. And as we
grow in grace, we see more and more of our sin, don't we? More
and more of our need for grace. So that the more you grow in
grace, the less critical and judgmental you can be of other
people until God brings you to the place of saying, I am the
chief of all sinners. But it's a strange doctrine.
The gospel of God's pure and free grace is a strange doctrine
to the religious world, to the whole world. Nothing's changed. This message that we preach,
this Christ that we've rested our souls in, is just as strange
to the world today as he was to the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers
on Mars Hill 2,000 years ago. Just as strange. Verse 20, for thou bringest certain
strange things to our ears. We would know therefore what
these things mean. For all the Apopkins and strangers which
were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell
or to hear some new thing. Has anything changed? Men are discontent. They're dissatisfied. They're not happy. They have
no real purpose. They're indulging themselves
in things outside themselves, and then when they get tired
of that, they turn within, and then when they get tired of that,
they turn back without, and they live their whole lives in desperation
for truth and for life and for hope and for meaning and for
purpose. And so they're always wanting
to hear something new. Maybe a new twist will be the
key that will unlock the door. Maybe a new story, a new doctrine,
a new message, that'll be it. That'll be it. That will solve
the problem that I've got. And so they spend their whole
lives listening for something new. The message of the gospel is
eternally old. There's nothing new about it. There's nothing new about it.
It goes all the way back from before time. The Lord Jesus Christ
is the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the world,
the covenant of grace that God established when he chose a particular
people and ordained his son to sacrifice himself for their sins. was purposed of God before Adam
was created. There's nothing new about it.
It's the oldest thing there is. And yet men won't be satisfied
with that. They want to hear something new. Something new. Oh, tell me the old, old story.
Tell it to me again and again and again. Then Paul stood in the midst
of Mars Hill and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in
all things you are too superstitious. Epicureanism, Stoicism, Judaism,
Presbyterianism, what works gospel, free will gospel, it's all based
on superstition. Superstition. Men, by nature,
are just superstitious in their idolatrous ways. For as I pass by and beheld your
devotions, those are statues. They're statues all up and down
the streets of Athens. Some of the remains. You go to
Athens today. Mars Hill's still there. Pantheon, is it the Pantheon
right next to Mars Hill and the Acropolis? All that's still there.
Parts of the statues are still there, but you can imagine what
it would have been like with all these statues, glistening
white, freshly carved, beautiful city. The ruins are there now,
but, and Paul's walking down seeing, you know, looking at
all these different statues. Drive four blocks in any direction
from right here, and I promise you, you'll pass some statues. Nothing's changed. They've changed
Zeus' name to Jesus, but it's still the same. You understand
that the whole struggle of Greek mythology was for man to try
to reconcile in his mind how it is that there could be a God
and man could have free will at the same time. You just, you
look at Greek mythology, that's what it's all about. It's the
struggle of the gods controlling man in his free will. And it's
a never-ending conflict. It's a never-ending struggle.
And you go listen to the false gospel and that's exactly what
it is. It's a conflict between God and man to see who's going
to win. And if you listen careful enough,
you'll find out that in the end, man always comes out on top.
He is the final deciding factor. Not God. Nothing's changed, has it? Apopka
is Athens. Oh, would to God that he would
stir our spirits for the glory of God and for the salvation
of men's souls. People are dying believing this
stuff. People are going to hell believing
this stuff. There's no hope. And on top of
all that, they're living their whole lives here in this world
in desperation for something that they can't get. The only peace and hope that
there is, is found in Christ. And the only hope of eternal
life is found in Christ. And that's what Paul's going
to go on to say to them now. For I passed by, and I beheld your
devotions, and I found an altar with this inscription." Now,
the Greeks, they didn't want to miss a god. And they thought,
you know, perhaps there's another god up there, besides all the
ones that we've made statues for, that we don't know about.
And so it would be kind of like the tomb to the unknown soldier.
We'll make a statue to the unknown god. And rather than putting
his name on it, we'll just say we don't know him. And Paul sees that statue and
he says, you see that God right there? That's the one I'm going
to preach to you. Because there is another God.
Matter of fact, there's only one God. And you don't know him. Let me tell you about him. God,
that made the worlds and all things therein, seeing that He
is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made
with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though He
needed anything. Our God doesn't need anything
from you, He doesn't need anything from me. He reigns supreme and
sovereign over all His creatures. We're the ones that are dependent,
not Him. We need him as though he needed anything, seeing that
he giveth to all life and breath and all things, physical life,
spiritual life, your next breath. How presumptuous we are about
God. We make plans for tomorrow and
we forget to say if the Lord wills. We think our plans and
our purposes and our wills are so strong and we forget that
the very next breath that we draw is dependent upon Him. You won't suck in another breath
of air if He doesn't allow you to. If He doesn't enable you
to. How does a God like that need
anything from me? and he hath made of one blood
all nations of men for to dwell upon the face of the earth."
You say, well, you know, those people lived in a pagan culture
2,000 years ago. That's different from... No,
it's... Or people live in this culture, they speak that language.
What the Lord's saying here is that this gospel doesn't change
whether you're rich, whether you're poor, whether you're male,
whether you're female, whether you're Jew, whether you're Greek.
Whether you're black or white or speak whatever language, it
doesn't change. It's the same exact message. Why? Because He doesn't change.
And we're all the same. He is made from one blood. All
nations. You know, we live our lives thinking
that we're unique, don't we? And I guess in a sense we are.
And that each one of us are different. But not when it comes to our
basic needs. Not when it comes to our need
for truth, and God, and salvation, and grace, and meaning, and hope,
and purpose, and happiness, and eternal life. We're all the same.
All the same. We're bound in this idolatry
that we were born in. And unless God delivers us, we
won't know Him. Somebody comes and preaches to
us, this God, this Jesus, God's going to judge the world by Him.
He's the standard of righteousness. And the proof that God has given
you that God Almighty is pleased with Him is the resurrection.
And some mocked. Resurrection? Babbler. You accentuated the story way
beyond believability, embellished the story. No, God
raised him from the dead, and he's seated at the right hand
of God. The only hope that you and I have to have access to
God, to have hope in this life, and to have the hope of eternal
life is in him. It's not found in you. It's not
found in me. It's found in Christ. And some
believed. You see that? Look at verse 34. How be it certain men claimed
unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius, and
the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. What about you? What about you? All your hope on Christ. I mean,
all of it. You look into him. You still
thinking, well, I can find, I can find meaning and purpose and
happiness. In myself or in things or in
religion. Not there, is it? It's not there. All right, let's take a break. Thank you.