Good morning. It's good to be
home. Thank you all for your prayers.
I truly, truly felt them. And I was thinking of you all
and sent your greetings to the Brethren in Kentucky. And they
asked me to express their love to you. So they're continuing
to meet this morning in Danville. and then the other churches. So we want to remember to pray
for them. Let's ask the Lord to bless our
time together. Our Holy Father, we come before
your throne of grace thanking thee that we have an advocate,
we have a mediator, We have one who has presented himself on
our behalf, in whom we have our acceptance before thee. We ask,
Father, that you would send your Holy Spirit in power, enable
us to look to Christ, to gaze upon him, to put our hope and
trust and faith in him, and to rest in him. We pray for all
the places where your gospel is being preached today. We pray
especially for the conference in Danville and for the believers
that are gathered there. We ask, Lord, that you would
give your word power and that you would bless it to the hearts
of your children. We pray it in Christ's name.
Amen. Would you turn with me in your
Bibles to Acts chapter 17? Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse
16 we find the Apostle Paul walking around the city of Athens. Now Athens, Greece 2,000 years
ago was not much different from Orlando, Florida today. or any other city that men gather
themselves in. The scripture tells us here that
it was wholly given over to idolatry. We come into this world as idolaters. And if the Lord is not pleased
to make himself known, we will continue that lifestyle of idolatry. And so the Apostle Paul, in observing
their idols, he noticed that they had one idol that had an
inscription on it, the unknown God. the unknown God. It was kind of the catch-all.
It was sort of the, in case we missed any of the gods, let's
make sure that we give this one that we don't know about a place
in our religious worship. And so Paul, in observing that
statue to the unknown God, says to them, that's the God I'm going
to preach to you. That's the God I'm gonna preach
to you, the one that you don't know. And he does. But we begin in verse 16, and
I do want to preach to you the God that men by nature don't
know, the God that can only be known by divine revelation, the
only God that there is. The God who is able to save sinners. I want to preach that God to
you. But also I want us to see in this passage the burden that
the Lord has put on the hearts of his people to have the glory
of God upheld and to have the souls of men to hear the truth. Notice in verse 16, now while
Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him
when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. I pray the Lord
will stir our spirits within us. Now what reason was Paul's
spirit stirred within him when he observed the idolatry of the
people of Athens? What reason, why was his spirit
stirred within him? And the answer to that question
is twofold. First, he was grieved by the fact that the glory of
God was being so dishonored by their idolatry. And so it is
with every child of God. We ought to be grieved when we
see the idolatry of men because the God who is, is being denied
his glory. Secondly, the reason that his
heart was stirred within him is because he was grieved to
see the lost condition of men. And if those two things, if we
have a proper understanding of things as they are, If we look
at this city in which we live, if we look at our friends and
our children and our family members and we see that it is an idolatrous
place. One of the preachers in Danville
was talking about how they used to sacrifice children
unto their gods in these idolaters places and said, you know, there's
really no difference. There's no difference in what
parents do today when they take their children to church with
them to sit under a false preacher and a false gospel. There is
absolutely no difference. You might as well take your child
and throw them into the fire. You're sacrificing your children
to a false God. And that grieved Paul's spirit
when he saw they were wholly given to idolatry. In verse 17, well, Jeremiah,
let me say this about Jeremiah, verse 20. of Jeremiah chapter
20 verse 9, Jeremiah became so tired in preaching the gospel,
you know, Isaiah asked the question, who has believed our report?
Now, we continue to preach this gospel, Lord, nobody believes
it. And then in another place, when the Lord told him what to
preach, he said, oh, Lord, how long? How long do I have to preach
that? until the cities be wasted without
inhabitants until the land be utterly desolate you continue
to preach the gospel whether men believe it or not but when
they don't believe it it's very discouraging very discouraging
and Jeremiah became discouraged and he said I will not make mention
of him or speak of him anymore but His word was in my heart
as a burning fire shut up in my bones and I was weary with
the forbearing of it and I could not stay. I could not be quiet. I had to speak. Now that's what
Paul's saying here. His word was in my bones as a
burning fire, and I saw how shamed his glory was by the idolatry
of men, and I saw the lost condition of their souls, and I saw the
end of their lives, and I couldn't help but to tell them. I could
not help but to declare this gospel. I pray the Lord to keep
us faithful to do that. And that that will be our motivation. That will be our motivation,
the glory of God and the lost condition of men. And if he does,
then we'll be faithful to look at verse 17, to dispute with
men. Now this word disputing doesn't
mean that, it doesn't mean arguing, it means to show the error of
their religion. Literally translated, that's
what this word dispute means. It means to show, he showed the
error of their religion. He showed how foolish and unprofitable
and how soul damning and untrue was all of their idolatry. But notice where he began. He
didn't begin with the Greeks or with the philosophers. He
began in the synagogue with the Jews. He began with those who
had the scriptures, they had the law, and he reasoned with
them first to show them the idolatry of their religion. how they had
turned grace into a works religion. And so he disputes with them
in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and
in the market daily with them that would meet with him. No
way, he didn't go around forcing men to listen to him. He didn't
call our people on the street corner and shove the gospel down
their throat. Those who would listen, those
who would meet with him, those who had an interest, he was there
ready to speak and ready to tell them about this unknown God. Look at verse 18. Then certain
philosophers. Oh, philosophers. The word means a lover of wisdom. But in the world, it's really
nothing more than foolishness. They are always looking for a
new form of philosophy. They have knowledge but without
the truth. But these philosophers, Athens was very well known for
its philosophers and they met and massaged one another's egos
and their dispensing of what they thought was deep truths.
It's interesting to me that the Lord gave to us in his word these
two schools of philosophy, the Epicureans and the Stoics. And as I understand it, these
two schools of philosophy really sort of, they represent all the schools
of philosophy that there are in the world. Epicureanism believes that man
is in control, that there is no first cause to anything, that
happiness comes through pleasure, and pleasure is derived from
things. That's Epicureanism. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were both professing
Epicureans. And when Thomas Jefferson wrote
in the Declaration of Independence, we are endowed by our creator
with certain inalienable rights, amongst which are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. He wrote that as an Epicurean. And really, American capitalism,
as much as I'm committed to it as the best system of government
and economics, I guess, that there is in the world today,
apart from a benevolent monarchy, which we've never been able to
achieve, is an Epicurean philosophy. You know, let's just get more
things and that will give us contentment and happiness. And so men are pursuing happiness. They're in their pursuit of happiness,
thinking that I'm going to control my circumstances. I'm going to
gather around me more comforts, more worldly pleasures, and that'll
make me happy. That'll make me happy. That's
what everybody's looking for, right? And then the other opposite
extreme would be the Stoics. And the Stoics would say, oh
no, jettison all material things, move out in the woods, discipline
your mind and your spirit, become spiritual, and then you'll achieve
happiness. And if you think about it, every
school of philosophy, everything that man considers or pursues
in an attempt to become happy, is to one degree or another one
of those positions. And men vacillate back and forth
between those. They try one until they realize
that doesn't make them happy, so they go to the other extreme,
and then they go back and forth. What the Lord's saying here is
that these things don't bring happiness. They don't bring happiness. Happiness has nothing to do with
how much you have or how much you don't have. Happiness has
nothing to do with with what you do or what you don't do happiness
is the byproduct it's the result of knowing God of knowing God
so right here in our text when he's talking about the unknown
God he disputes with them he exposes the error of their philosophy
by saying to them that you're looking for happiness in all
the wrong places in all the wrong places. You're not going to be
happy if you don't know God. If you know God, you have peace
with God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. You've got
your sins put away for all eternity. You have a Savior. You have an advocate before God.
You've got God Almighty speaking to you and making Himself known
to you. Then and only then will you know
anything about the peace of God, which is what men are trying
to achieve. And everybody's doing it. Everybody's doing it. Certain philosophers, none of these philosophies bring
happiness. discipline your mind and your
spirit all you want and or or accumulate all the material things
you want you're not going to be happy but they encountered Paul and
look at that look at verse 18 and some said what will this
babbler say now a babbler they didn't have TV they didn't have
theaters they didn't have you know, like we have. They didn't
have radios and entertainment. So a large portion of the entertainment
would be street storytellers that had traveled from other
places of the world and had had experiences that these people,
I mean, they never left the place where they lived. Most people
never traveled. So if a traveler came to town,
he would bring with him stories from where he had been. And he
would stand on the street corner and, of course, he would embellish
those stories and exaggerate those stories to make it more
entertaining. And so when the Apostle Paul
began to tell these stories about things that happened in Jerusalem,
they thought, well, here's a babbler. We'll listen to him. And they
were following along pretty well with his story until he mentioned
the resurrection. And then they said, oh man, I
mean, we've heard of stories exaggerated before. We've heard people embellish
things before, but this is just ridiculous. And they mocked him.
They stayed with him. They listened to his story, what
they thought was nothing more than just an embellished story,
until he mentioned the resurrection. And when he mentioned the resurrection,
they just threw up their hands and walked away. So this guy,
what's he think, we're fools? You think we're going to believe
that? What will this babbler say? Another some say, he seemeth
to set forth a strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection. Nothing's changed. Nothing's
changed. When the gospel is preached with
clarity, with simplicity, it's still a strange doctrine and
it's a strange God to men. You mean to tell me that you
all worship a God who sovereignly chose, according to his own goodwill
and purpose, only a select group of people and that they're the
only ones that are going to be saved? That's a strange God to
me. That's not my God. That's not
my God. You mean to tell me that when
Jesus of Nazareth died on Calvary's cross that he only died for those
that God chose in the covenant of grace before the world began? That's a strange God to me. You
mean to tell me that the Bible is not a rule book for Christian
living? You mean to tell me that men don't have a free will? The
most universally believed lie that there is in the world is
that all men have a free will. Am I not a free moral agent?
I've got the power to choose and to have God if I want Him
and to reject Him if I want Him? You mean to tell... Faith is
not the cause of my salvation? You're telling me that faith
is the result of my salvation and not the cause. These are
strange things. Nothing's changed, has it? Nothing's
changed. Men are still pursuing happiness
in vain philosophy, and the gods that they worship are idols. They're idols. When we preach
the gospel, They say exactly the same thing that these Athenians
said 2,000 years ago. And what do they say? Well, they're
just babblers. They've embellished the story. They're exaggerating the truth. In fact, we've simplified the
truth, haven't we? And it was the resurrection that
brought the biggest conflict, and so it is today. When we preach
the resurrection, we're not just preaching the fact that Christ
did raise from the dead. Everybody seems to believe that.
You know, that's kind of okay. But that why he raised from the
dead, The children of Israel, they all knew the acts of God,
but Moses knew the ways of God. What was the purpose of the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus Christ? What was the purpose of it? God
was proving that he was completely satisfied with what the Lord
Jesus Christ had accomplished, and he raised him from the dead
as the positive proof to that end. That's the purpose of the
resurrection, is to confirm to us. They said, show us a sign,
and the Lord said, a wicked and perverse generation seeketh after
a sign, but no sign will be given to you except the sign of Jonah,
who spent three days and three nights in the belly of the whale.
And then what? Then he declared, salvation is
of the Lord, and boom, he came forth. That's the resurrection, salvations
of the Lord. And the Lord Jesus Christ was
raised from the dead as the sign that God gives to us to prove
to us, to confirm to our hearts that he's pleased and satisfied
with the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. That it wasn't an offer of salvation,
it wasn't an attempt to save, it was an accomplished salvation
and his resurrection gives proof of that. Men still mock at that. They still mock at it as they
did then. What will this babbler say? Another
said, he seems to set forth strange gods because he preached unto
them Jesus. You shall call his name Jesus.
Why? Why? Because he shall save his
people. Everybody talks about Jesus today,
but when they speak of him, if you listen to what they say,
they're talking about a Jesus with a little J, not a capital
J. They're still, they've just changed
the name of, now these Athenians would have worshipped Zeus and
all modern day idolators have done is change the name of Zeus
to Jesus. But there's still an idol. And they took him and brought
him into the Areopagus saying, may we know what this new doctrine
wherever thou speakest is. Now the Areopagus was the highest
court in Athens and so they bring him before the law, the court
of the law. Now we're going to try you and
test you and see if what you're saying is true. For thou bringest
certain strange things to our ears and we would know therefore
what these things mean. Oh, that the Lord would cause
men to say that with sincerity. These are strange things to our
ears. We want to hear more. We want
to know what they mean. Now, we're going to see at the
end of the story, some believed, some mocked, and others said,
come back tomorrow. We'll listen to you again. For all the Athenians and strangers
which were there spent their time in nothing else but either
to tell or to hear some new thing." Nothing's changed. Men are still
running to and fro. They're still looking for something
new. They're still trying to find out something that everybody
else doesn't know, some new philosophy, some new twist of truth. desperately seeking after a new
thing. Now the contrast to that, the
contrast to that is that if you hear the gospel, if the Lord's
pleased to make himself known to you, you're not interested
in something new. You're saying with that hymn
that we sing, tell me the old, old story. I don't want to know
something new. If it's new and novel, then it's
not true. The things that are true, the
things that are soul-saving, the things that I can rely upon
are those things that are anchored in eternity. They're as old as
eternity. That's where the truth is. The truth is in the gospel of
God's grace that's established in that covenant that was formed
by God before time began. That's what I want to know about.
Don't tell me about something new. Verse 22, 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. Nothing's changed. Men are still too superstitious. And that's all religion is. It's
just a superstition, isn't it? It's just the opinions of men
and the fanciful thoughts of men that somehow they're going
to be able to make a contribution to their salvation and earn favor
with God. It's just one superstition or
another. And so Paul makes no apologies
for telling them, you're all just superstitious. And that's
what man-made religion is. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotions, your idols, your little statues, I found an altar
with this inscription, to the unknown God." So it was just
an altar. It wasn't inappropriate that
it would be an altar. We have an altar, the writer
of Hebrews tells us. We don't make an altar here.
Why? Because we have an altar in heaven.
We have one who spilt his blood on the mercy seat. God said,
here I will meet with you. We have one that the Shekinah
glory of God has come down and shined upon and shines in our
hearts, in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all because
of that altar. That altar that was established
by God, that altar that was fulfilled on Calvary's cross, the altar
that's in heaven right now. They inscribed this altar to
the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, him declare
I unto you. You don't know him. You know,
the hope is that you've admitted that there perhaps is a God that
you don't know. That's a good start, isn't it?
That's a good start. If a man says, maybe there is
a God that I don't know, that's a whole lot better than those
who think, well, I know God, when they don't. The unknown God. He's the one
that made the worlds and all things therein, seeing that he
is Lord of heaven and earth, and he dwells not in temples
made with hands." Oh, where's the house that you're going to
build for me, is what the Lord asked the Israelites. How are
you going to build me a house? How are you going to make a place
for me to inhabit? I inhabit the earth. I'm omnipresent. I'm infinite and eternal. How
are you going to shut me up into one place? It's not going to
be. What the Lord's declaring here
is His awesome presence and power and sovereignty and all things. And He begins with creation.
Nothing that was made was made without Him. He's the cause. He's the first cause. Now remember,
these Epicureans didn't believe in a first cause. They didn't
believe that there was a sovereign creator that causes all things. And they certainly didn't believe
that he controlled the circumstances of daily life. But now the Lord
is, Paul is declaring that God has made the worlds and all things
therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth. He dwells
not in temples, Made with hands. Talked to a man the other day,
he said, he said, yeah, I was going to this particular church,
but he said, after I was there for a while, I noticed there
was not a cross in the church. And I brought it up to the preacher,
and he didn't seem to be too concerned about it, so we went
to another place where they had crosses. This honest conversation
I had two weeks ago with a man. He said, but after we were there
for a while, they didn't have the programs that I needed for
my daughter. So we left there and now we're
at a place that have crosses and programs and we're happy. I said, well, you probably wouldn't
be happy at our church. We don't have crosses or programs. Men think that they can somehow
bring God into a form and worship Him, and that's where the Lord
begins here with the declaration of this unknown God. He's too
big for you to do that. The Lord doesn't reveal Himself
through those things. He reveals Himself through His
Word. In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God. The Word was
made flesh. He dwelt among us. We beheld
His glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father.
He's the one that's full of grace and full of truth. God, who at
sundry times and in divers manners spake to our fathers in times
past by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us
by His very Son, who is the express image of His person. He's the fullness of the Godhead
bodily. And I love the rest of that verse.
And you are complete in Him. complete in Him. Now that's the
God that men don't know. That's the unknown God. Verse 25, neither is worshipped
with men's hands as though he needeth anything. What are you
going to give God? You mean to tell me that I'm
not getting brownie points with what I'm doing for God? Yep, that's what I mean to tell
you. Nothing you do for God is going
to earn you any favor with God. The only hope of you standing
right before God is to be hid in Christ. The only one that
God is pleased with, the only one he's satisfied with, the
only one that did the work that God required was his dear son. He said, this is my beloved son
in whom I'm well pleased. Hear ye him, hear ye him. Even Peter and John, James, they
thought, well, let's build an altar here. Let's build an altar
for Elijah and for Moses. And then when they looked up,
the scripture says they only saw Jesus. Only saw Him. He gives to all life and breath
and all things. He gives spiritual life and physical
life. You didn't ask to be born physically.
and you have no more to do with your spiritual birth than you
had to do with your physical birth. He gives it. It's a gift from God. And all
things, all things that we have in this life come from God. and he hath made one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth and
he had determined the times before appointed and bounds of their
habitation notice one blood one blood there's no there's no place among
believers for a shred of prejudice because of the the the The color
of one's skin, or their background, or anything else about them.
We are all of one blood. We're all in this thing together.
There's no difference between us. No difference. Verse 27. He sets the bounds of their habitation. Oh, in every way, He sets the
bounds of your habitation and my habitation as well, doesn't
He? This is the God that men don't know, that they should
seek the Lord, seek Him, if happily they might feel after Him and
find Him, though He be not far from every one of us. Don't you love what Paul says
in Romans chapter 10? Turn with me there. We'll close. Verse six, the righteousness,
men are ignorant of God's righteousness. They're just like these Athenians.
It's a strange doctrine, they're ignorant of the things of God,
they don't know the Lord. But the righteousness which is
of faith speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart, who shall
ascend into the heaven, that is to bring Christ down from
above. What can I do to make The work of Christ worked for
me. That's what man-made religion is all about. What can I do to
bring him down and convince him to save me? What work can I perform? Who shall descend into the deep
that is to bring Christ up again from the dead? What can I do
to make the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ work for me?
He was offered up for our offenses and raised again because of our
justification. When Christ was raised from the
dead, all those that He lived and died for were raised with
Him. We are resurrected together with
the Lord Jesus Christ. His resurrection is our resurrection.
Now what can I do to make His resurrection work for me? If
it was for you, then you'll find yourself doing what the next
verse says. But what saith it? The word is
nigh thee, even in thine heart, that is, the word of faith which
we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man
believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession
is made unto salvation. The Lord will cause you to cry
out. To cry out. The first sign of
a broken heart is to say with Job, Behold, I am vile. Behold, I am vile. Lord, I repent
in dust and ashes. Lord, have mercy upon my soul.
Lord, my only hope, my only hope is the accomplished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And if He doesn't save me, I
have no hope of being saved. The God that's not known, may
He stir in our hearts a desire for Him. May He stir in our hearts
a desire for His glory. May He stir in our hearts a desire
for others to know Him. And might He give us opportunity
to tell the world about the God who's unknown. He's unknown.
Nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. All right,
let's take a break.