Some mocked, and others said,
We will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed from
among them. He left Mars Hill. Howbeit, certain
men claimed unto him, and believed, among the which was Dionysius
the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them."
Notice here at the end of the chapter, these philosophers,
they were very content to listen to Paul's logical discourse. about in the reasoning about
God as creator and how he must be different from that which
you imagine. And yet here when he begins again
to set forth Jesus and the resurrection, we see how men react. For you
see, therein is the gospel that men hate. Men love darkness rather
than light, the scripture tells us. And this doctrine of the
resurrection here, It was denied by every sect of these philosophers. You know, the doctrine, when
we say the doctrine of the resurrection, we're not just speaking of the
fact that one who was dead was made alive. No, it's much like
Paul had said earlier in the chapter, back in Thessalonians
chapter, I think up around verse 3, when he said, he reasoned
with them out of the Scriptures how Christ's must needs have
suffered. and risen again. In other words,
it's to see the necessity of the resurrection. And when we
see the necessity of the resurrection, we'll only see that when we understand
Christ aright, when we understand His work aright, and thereby
come to know that God as we imagined Him to be is altogether different.
And so we see here that requires a revelation beyond what we can
see. by our natural reasoning, by
nature itself, by creation. It requires the light of the
gospel revealed to our hearts by God's Spirit. And so what
happened here was some mocked. Others, apparently not convinced
yet, but perhaps unable to deny it, said they would wait and
willing to consider it at some other time. And then, thankfully,
and finally, as verse 34 tells us, Some of them believed, and
they clave unto Paul. And that's interesting to me.
You know, they clave unto him. I believe that means we have
the makings of the church here in Athens, right there. So right
here in the middle of all this idolatry, God had a people. His Word really does not return
void. And that includes the specific
Word of the Gospel. As we studied back when we looked
at his, back earlier in the chapter at Berea, when it says he preached
the word unto them and then they looked in the scriptures to see
whether that very specific word, that word of the gospel was so
or not. And so as we saw in Philippi and in Thessalonica and Berea
and now here in Athens, God has a people and he had some in each
one of these places. People whom he gave to Christ,
whom he chose to eternal life and salvation in him. People
for whom Christ lived and died and purchased for them all spiritual
blessings, including the blessings of spiritual life. The eyes to
see, the ears to hear, the heart and mind to understand and embrace
and see the necessity of what Christ accomplished in his death
as testified by his resurrection. And so the gospel was brought
near to these in Paul's preaching. He mentions specifically here
a fellow named Dionysius, and he says he was called in the
Areopagus. That is, those were the judges
who sat in that council or court of justice there in Areopagus
or Mars Hill. So here was a notable guy, and
then he named a lady named Damaris, some say might have been the
wife of Dionysius, but that's not very conclusive from what
I read, so I'm not sure. But there was some there, and
it says, and there were others. So we're going to spend now most
of our time today in verses 30 and 31. And keeping in mind now
that up until verse 30, his reasoning on Mars Hill had been from that
perspective of the light of nature. But beginning in verse 30, he
sets forth, he begins to set forth the light of the gospel.
light of the gospel. As we read in 2 Corinthians,
God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, the creator
that he's been talking about here to these philosophers now
on Mars Hill, God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness
has shined in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, that is, in
his person and work. So here you have all these idols
all over Athens You have all the religions of the world for
that matter. And there's something unique about this message that
Christ brought, the message he described to the Corinthians
when he said, I determined not to know anything among you save
anything but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Well, Paul sets
forth this light of the gospel. The gospel message which is distinguished,
as we often consider Romans 1, 16 and 17, when it says it's
the power of God unto salvation, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. This very righteousness that
we're going to be looking at, which is the standard of judgment.
I'm going to do just a brief review for those of you who weren't
with us last week, but I think it's useful just to keep his
message now in verses 30 and 31 in the context of what he's
already told them. He began back in verse 23 and
he said, For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, that is,
your gods, I found an altar with this inscription, To the unknown
God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. Paul's telling them here that
they worshiped in ignorance. And we saw last week that's characteristic
of everyone in every generation. when they get an interest in
religion prior to God-given faith and repentance, prior to God-given
spiritual life and the senses that accompany that life. Blind
men don't see. Dead men can't hear. A God-see
that we know not by nature must be revealed unto us. That is,
God's Spirit has to bring us to see God in a way that distinguishes
Him from that which seems right to me, the idols of our imagination,
so that we behold Him and we find out how God is different
based solely on the person and work of Jesus Christ. In verse
24 and 25, then Paul goes on and he describes the folly of
their erroneous, idolatrous thoughts about God, who He is, and how
He blesses men. And I think embodied in that
description, as we reviewed last week, You find the common thread. This is how Paul could address
all of their idols, all those gods out there in Athens. And
we find the thread that's true of all, except the one true and
living God, and that is the religion of works. The religion that's
pervasive in every generation, including our own. The religion
that in our own generation And most of Christendom is called
grace. But in actuality, it matters
not what you call it. It's just a cleverly disguised
system of works. If it teaches that some work
of man makes the difference, something done by and or through
you. And that's the error we all begin
with. We saw that in the first part of this series. Remember
at Philippi, when that jailer says he got interested in religion,
God had stirred him up. It brought an earthquake. God
providentially brought this man to an entrance. And he says,
what must I do to be saved? The presumption being we can
do something. And that's the error we all naturally start
with. If we're interested, we want
to know, tell me what I've got to do to go to heaven. What I've
got to do, though. You see, there's always that underlying, natural,
sinful assumption. And so Paul declares in verse
24, God that made the world 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. Seeing He giveth to all life
and breath and all things. So there's the issue. Is your
concept of God and how He blessings are to be derived from this concept
of deity that you may have? Is it based upon an assumption
that He needs something? That He requires something? Some
work of your hand? I like the way Mark put it a
few weeks back. Is it a response? Is it a response
to an offer that you presume God to have made? In other words,
He needs your acceptance. He needs your receiving. And that's what really completes
the deal. Well, that's the work of your hands. And this Creator,
He's not needy. There's all perfection in Him. He doesn't need you to
act, you see. He needs you to meet no condition
or requirement. Conversely, No, the blessings
of God are all based upon the work of God, with no contribution
from you or me, the sinners. And that God, this is the God
now who's the source. This is what Paul was setting
forth here. He's the source of all life. In Him we move and
breathe. And we dare to think He needs
something from us, fallen sinners. So with that backdrop, now Paul
launches into this conclusion that we're looking at today.
And herein, he sets forth clearly the standard by which all men
are ultimately judged. He begins in verse 30 and says,
the times of this ignorance God winked at. The word wink there
means to overlook. Now, if you think back to the
record of the Old Testament throughout, in particular, the books of Moses,
But really the whole history of the nation Israel under the
Old Covenant, we see that those outside, heathen, Gentile nations,
that God didn't overlook their idolatry. Instead, we see testimony
He hated it. He hated their idolatry. He hated
their willful ignorance and disregard to that which even He tells these
here on Mars Hill that they ought to know better by the light of
nature. And as evidence of his contempt for that, what he overlooked
was the people. He overlooked the times. You
see, for that period of time, he overlooked the people. These
people who Paul is now speaking to on Mars Hill, the Gentiles.
He overlooked them. That's what it means when it
says he winked at. Think of how he overlooked them.
Only the nation Israel, God's chosen people under the old covenant. National Israel. I'm not speaking
of spiritual Israel now, but national Israel. They were uniquely
given the Mosaic Law. They uniquely had the picture
of salvation by Christ alone in the ceremonial law, all the
blood sacrifices. Gentile nations did not have
that. God did not put prophets in the Gentile nations to speak
to and teach them. No. He overlooked them, and you
think about it. He's basically just and he is
always just in doing so. God would be just if he overlooked
any and all. And yet he can't overlook any
whom he loved with an everlasting love and put in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And here what we see is in that God is truly an unknown
God to all of those who only have the light of nature. to
any to whom God doesn't come along and intervene. And none
of us will come, you see, to see with our natural eyes and
our natural minds how God's salvation. We may see the folly of some
of our foolish notions as we try to fashion God like us, knowing
he's the creator. We should be able to see that. But we won't see and cannot see
that he requires a perfect righteousness. He tells us about here in verse
31. Actually, God's pleased to save folks by the foolishness
of preaching, that is, to bring them to a knowledge of who He
is. And it's a preaching of this very specific message of the
gospel. They have to be put under the sound of it, and even then
we know the natural man will not receive it. They have to
be given life. There has to be a revelation,
you see. We have to be taught of that
need for a righteousness, and we have to God, His Spirit, has
to convince us under the sound of that message of that perfect
righteousness, that holiness that is God that would expose
to us our sinfulness as sinners, the sin that deceives us all,
what the Bible calls the deceivableness of unrighteousness, of imagining
anything other than or in addition to that righteousness. And so
that's what happens to God's people in each generation when
that word is applied to the sinner by God's regenerating power,
the Holy Spirit, and we come to see and value it. As Bill
quoted in the 10 o'clock hour from John 6, verse 44, Christ
said, No man can come to me except the Father which hath sent me
drawing. So God, we see, had justly left
them to their own deserts. That's what they wanted. The
gods they chose to worship, the heathen Gentile nations. But
he continues and he says, but now, here's Paul now, the missionary
to the Gentiles. He says, but now God commandeth
all men everywhere to repent. And I believe that command is
as relevant to us today as it is to each and every generation.
Now, think of this. It's a command. God's commanding
us to repent. But simply because it's a command
does not at all suggest to us that it's within our power to
do so. Dead men can't act. And the Bible
says that's what we are when we come in this world. We're
spiritually dead. So, think about this. The Mosaic Law, while it
pictured the mercy to be found in Christ, by all of those blood
sacrifices, pointing men to Christ. The law was our schoolmaster
to teach us of Christ, as the scriptures tell us. Christ himself
said, Moses wrote of me. We know that was true, yet in
that law, it only required perfect continual compliance. There was
no provision that said, but if you'll do your part and repent,
for example, then I'll just pretend like justice is served. I'll
just do away with that. And that's the notion that many
have, I think, of repentance. They think it's just, I'm sorry. Tell God you're sorry and recognize
you're not all you ought to be. And as if that possesses some
merit now, he'll just do away with his strict holiness and
justice and accept the lesser standard. That's contrary, certainly,
to our passage today and the whole of Scripture as well. The
law only demanded strict, continual compliance. Cursed is every man
that continueth not in all things which are written in the book
of the law to do them. That's one of those senior moments.
So we see that repentance, then, while it's a necessary grace,
that always accompanies true God-given faith. possesses no
merit in and of itself. You know, we think of commands
as something that would be unfair if we're not able to comply,
but we know in life that's not true. I remember in my short
high school football career, playing cornerback and having
outside responsibility against an all-state quarterback who
was three years older than me and ten times the athlete. And
when he would come around my end on a play, on a bootleg,
it was my job to tackle him. Nine times out of ten, I couldn't.
But I was responsible, and I knew I was responsible. You see, life's
not like that. When it comes to this thing about
our salvation, don't tell me. that God's going to require something
that I'm unable to do. You see, if you draw that conclusion
that He does require, then you need mercy. Men talk about love
and mercy, but, you know, we really want to control our own
destiny, don't we? We don't want to have to fall
down like that public and say, God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
And yet that's exactly what we need. We need that perfect satisfaction
that Christ alone made. We tend to think of commands,
you know, sometimes as burdensome obligations. But think about
this. If and when God gives a sinner
spiritual life, he really doesn't have any problem heeding the
command to repent, to turn away from everything that he wants
to imagine. You see, because he really can't
do any other. He's been convinced of the evil of it, of the folly
of it, of daring to imagine that something that came from him,
a sinner, could rival that which it took, nothing but the blood
and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it is unsettling
now. It is a gospel message. It turns
your world upside down. It's very upsetting when we first
find out how tragically mistaken we've been, how we've led others
down a wrong path, how we've supported ministries that we
discover to be worshiping an idol. But that is truly a blessing. As upsetting as it is, there's
no blessing to be compared with it. For if not, the alternative
is to be left in your ignorance. And that's to be found at the
judgment without this righteousness by which men are to be judged.
It testifies of that. You see, God in his providence
has brought each of us, even today, under the sound of this
great message. Isn't that something? So not
everybody even hears how God can be just and justify a sinner
based exclusively on what Christ accomplished at the cross, his
righteousness. Christ in him crucified. And then, oh, for
God's people, he makes it unto them the savor of life unto life. You see, they have to have it.
So there's no problem in repenting. You don't have any choice. While
it may be upsetting, where am I going to go? As the disciples
said unto Christ. There's life there. He came up
out of that grave. And that's where I'm going to
find life. And that's my only hope. And I can do no other. And that's what happens when
God convinces someone under the sound of the gospel of the truth
of how salvation is totally conditioned on Him. And so we repent. There is repentance for never
presuming that anything else would render what is due to God's
justice anything other than what Christ accomplished in his life
and death. The idea that it would possess
some merit. Well, consider that God-given
faith always involves then believing something contrary. That means
opposed to what we previously believed in as spiritually dead
sinners. So it involves a radical change
of mind. We turn away from the way that
would seem right to us naturally, but the way the writer of Proverbs
says is a way that ends in death. And we turn to God's way. So
when you turn to God in faith, if it's true God-given faith,
It's accompanied by repentance because it's a turning away from
something else. You're beholding something you
didn't behold before. You're coming to know God as
He is in contrast to the God you worshipped, an unknown God. So we change our minds as God
convinces us of our sin, sins that we wouldn't recognize by
nature. Oh, we recognize a lot of sin,
a lot of evil, all about us. Men are born with a conscience.
But we don't even know that our religion, how we approach God,
might be considered sinful. And so we see the impossibility
of salvation based on some character quality I have. You know, some
imagine God looked down through time and said, well, I'm going
to I'm going to send Christ to die for you because I know you're
going to be one that will receive it as if he saw something good
in me. And so, therefore, he chose me. Now, it can't be that not if
he requires perfect righteousness. Not in the center. of whom the
scripture says there is none righteous, no, not one, that
we've all by nature gone out of the way. We all start out
on a road that leads to destruction, that broad road. And so we're
confronted with our own idolatry. And that's right, it's idolatry.
We repent as we discover God's altogether different. And that's
what he commands us to repent of, is this that which we all
initially imagine with regards to God and how he saves sinners.
Well, in verse 31, Paul explains why God commands all men everywhere
to repent, why it's imperative. He says, it's because God has
appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness. Now, how righteous do we have
to be? These two verses are really easy to preach. They're just plain. And just
about read them over and over and you've got the message. He
says, "...by that man whom he hath ordained." So how righteous
do we have to be? We must be as righteous. That
is, when we consider righteousness as the requirement here for God
to be accepted by God, a holy God, Then the requirement that
we imagine we might meet, if that be the case, is we've got
to be as righteous as that one whom he hath ordained and raised
from the dead, the Lord Jesus Christ. You've got to have righteousness
that equals his. So the great issue that determines
what will be declared at the judgment, it's appointed unto
men once to die and after this, the judgment. Now, there's going
to be a judgment to face, but it'll just be declarative. It'll
just declare what is. There won't be any determination
being made at that time. But here will be the standard
by which that judgment is made. Do you have a righteousness that
answers the demands of God's holy law and justice? Now, that's
important. What could be more important
than to know how God is going to judge men The scriptures teach
us that most are sentenced to hell. That is, they are banished
from the presence of God forever and ever. And yet, it also tells
us that there are objects of his mercy and grace, who shall
enjoy the untold riches of heaven and eternal life. Can you imagine
that? The glory of the riches that
the infinitely valuable blood of the Lord Jesus Christ purchased?
My, my. And now we see the gravity of
the issue. We're talking about eternity.
And here the determination, the standard for the determination
is right before our eyes. I always loved an open book quiz
when I was in school. And this is an open book quiz.
You just got to read it. And so we have it here again.
Do you have a righteousness? that answers the demands of God's
law and justice. So that's what he says you're
going to be judged by, none other than the righteousness that the
Lord of glory himself worked out in his life and death. Well,
it's impossible for any of us to have that. We know that if
we're honest, based on our character, based on our conduct, based upon
anything we do, based upon anything done in us that we might even
give credit with God for doing to any degree. And so if anyone
is to be found meeting that standard, then we know it can only be by
somehow what he did being put to my credit. And that's called
imputation. God's accounting of the merit
of what Christ accomplished to another. Now, we know that imputation
is scriptural. And not only is it scriptural,
this accounting or reckoning that God does, But we actually
have in history, we see the results of the reality of imputation.
For Jesus Christ died a real death. It's an indisputable historical
truth that Christ died on the cross. Jesus Christ. His blood was shed. And if we
believe this Bible, we know it was by one who offered himself
up without spot, the impeccable sinless. He who knew no sin died
for sins that he had no part in producing. So how were they
his? They were made his, legally accounted
to be his. They were the demerit of all
the sins of all those he represented. They were laid upon him, accounted
to him. And the good news is that's just
how real the imputation of his righteousness is for all those
whose sins he bore. This passage, by the way, has
been fun to study. First of all, it's real clear.
It's not real complicated. And there's great assurance in
this, in this message of Christ and the resurrection, as we'll
see as we go forward here. And so as a result of all that
Christ merited, for his people. In time, God providentially brings
his message this way. And he puts us under the sound
of it. And he gives us a heart and a mind and life that we might
receive it. Not just receive it, that we
might embrace it. That we must have it. And so, therefore, we
repent from our folly of having ever imagined he could bless
me in any other way. Faith, you see, and that inseparable
grace of repentance is the gift of God. It's not of works, lest
any man should boast. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. And thankfully,
God here is given in full proof and evidence that any who so
embrace that message, and I'm talking about a love for the
truth, not just an intellectual assent, but who are brought to
see that's what I must have. Any who are born of God, see,
in Christ, we can see by this passage, they can know that they
will spend an eternity in heaven, that they too shall be raised.
And where is that proof? He said in verse 31, he says,
whereof he hath given assurance unto all men. And that is speaking
to the world. I believe here. Every man without
exception. They don't have assurance they're
safe. They have assurance that this is the standard by which
God is going to judge the world and that he raised him from the
dead. As sin reigns unto death, even so might grace reign unto
righteousness. How? By Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 5.21, or paraphrase thereof,
Christ paid their debt. He represents his sheep, and
he lived and he died on their behalf, and they're made holy
and righteous and unreprovable and unblameable sinners based
on their oneness with him and what he accomplished at the cross.
And then they're declared at the judgment to be so, not based
on any righteousness he put to them, but a righteousness that
resides right now at the right hand of the Father, the one produced
by their substitute. And so they possess that merit.
having it imputed, judicially accounted to them, just as their
sins were judicially accounted or imputed to Christ, that he
could bear them away so that God could say, not guilty, not
guilty. You see, we need a perfection,
this righteousness. But that righteousness also speaks
of that debt being extracted, a debt that we owe because he
did it as a substitute for sinners. So God couldn't just pretend
they didn't sin. No, he's holy. And something of infinite value
had to put it away. And that was none other than
the blood of Christ. So we see no greater proof of
the certainty of salvation of any sinner who trusts and pleads
in his righteousness alone than the fact that God raised Christ
from the dead. God was satisfied, see, with
what he did. As the prophet Isaiah put it,
he shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. We've spoken before the value
of, as a memory tool, which obviously I could use it sometimes, word
associations. And if you want a word to associate
with resurrection, that's it, satisfaction. That's what we
see by virtue of Christ's resurrection. He was completely satisfied with
what was accomplished. That righteousness demanded his
life. And he's likewise then equally satisfied with everyone
for whom he accomplished it. Because you see, he's not looking
to that righteousness being given to you and then painted by your
sinful self. He's still looking to that same
perfect righteousness. That's the one that's made mine.
And any who God is so pleased to reveal this gospel to and
cause them to love it and embrace it, all for whom He lived and
died. Now, that's great news, isn't
it? Boy, hmm. So it's an urgent message for
sinners. God is going to judge you by Christ. You see, it doesn't
matter how you and I compare with everybody else. You can
look around in the world. I've got to tell you, I've got
some buddies They don't know a thing about this righteousness.
But I have some of them whose virtues I admire among men. If we're going to do a comparison
among men, some of them are kinder than I am, more considerate than
I am. I really wouldn't want to have to be stacked up. Some
of them, but I've got to tell you, there's a bunch of people I wouldn't
mind being stacked up against. There's a lot of evil out there
in this world, and there's a lot of bad people. But what consolation
is there if I'm going to be judged based on a perfect righteousness?
any of them. I'm going, I must possess a righteousness
that equals that of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the only way
that's going to happen is I've got to possess his, not mine. Does your righteousness equal
that of Christ? No, you know it doesn't, so you're
commanded to trust in him. That's what he told that flipping
jailer. Paul and Silas says, oh no, there's nothing you can
do. You've got to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You've
got to look to what He accomplished in His life and death. Righteousness.
And so we plead that and forsake our own. And thereby, if you
truly do that with the heart, you can know you're among them
because guess what? Scripture's clear. None can.
None can do that. We're not able to. In fact, those
of us who God has been so pleased to reveal Himself to, we know
that. And so we dare not even, we actually repent of thinking
that our religious effort, activity, act of faith, repentance, perseverance,
you name it. Oh no, don't judge me on any
of that either. It's not our standard of judgment.
It plays no causal role. It's a fruit and effect of that
righteousness being established for me. Well, so you know you're
saved. How? Because of your act of faith? No, that would be faith in faith,
wouldn't it? Not faith in Christ. Faith in
Him repents of that kind of thinking. God-given faith, listen, doesn't
even presume to play a part in procuring that which we may view
was accomplished at the cross of Calvary. You see, if we think
that we do the procuring, rather than seeing that it's a gift,
as Mark put it in his message, a miracle of God's grace, just
as he gave that blind man sight to see. You see, then we've done
nothing but add another condition to what we call righteousness,
and that's just another righteousness. No, it was procured for us. As
a writer of Hebrews said in chapter 12, we're to look unto Jesus
as the author and the finisher of our faith. As we heard this
morning, that's where his love is perfected. It's finished. So the consequence then of the
resurrection is that we have irrefutable proof that righteousness
is going to be the standard by which any will be judged unto
eternal life. There it is. And that's why that
command in verse 30 to repent is so urgent and so applicable
to all of us. Where righteousness is found,
you see, there's going to be life. He had to come up out of
that grave. And where there's life, where
there's spiritual life as a product of that in a center, it's going
to be evidenced by this grace of faith and repentance. And
so we're going to conclude now this series with Paul's setting
forth that which distinguishes the gospel message. from all
those idols, from all the counterfeits, in our day from all the thousands
of religions and denominations and sects that would suggest
anything to the contrary, this message that when applied to
a sinner's heart by the Holy Spirit really does turn your
world upside down. And so you do repent. You change
God. And as we've seen today, that
distinctiveness is revealed by this standard of judgment. That
perfect satisfaction, God's justice that was rendered by Christ in
his life and death. As we quoted again and again,
if I sound like a broken record, I really am not sorry. Romans
1, 16 and 17 there, it is the power of God and salvation. For
therein is a standard of judgment, the righteousness of God revealed. And by that standard, we're going
to stand or fall. before the bar of his eternal
judgment. And so I pray and I trust that God has done such a work
in you. And for any who may hear this,
to whom this is new or that not be the case, then I pray God
will turn your world upside down also.