We're today going to hear the
fourth message of a five-part series that I'm bringing to you.
A series that you'll recall I titled, The Message That Turns the World
Upside Down. It's a series we're bringing
from Acts chapter 16 and chapter 17 where Paul brings the gospel
to Macedonia, what is currently known as Greece predominantly,
on this his second missionary journey. And so today's message,
this fourth sermon I've titled, Declaring the Unknown God, because
that's the inscription that Paul saw as he walked there in Athens,
among all the altars. Athens was said at that time
to be just perhaps one of the most idol-filled or altar-filled
places in the world. Everywhere you went, he saw idolatry,
and we'll see that in today's text. And he saw this inscription
on one of the altars, one of the many ones, and said, to the
unknown God, And based upon that, he used
that as a segue or a springboard to go ahead and then deliver
the gospel to the Athenians in his famous discourse there on
Mars Hill. So we're going to examine that,
that sermon on Mars Hill today, wherein Paul reasoned with them
all concerning their religious notions, no less their idolatry. And specifically we'll look at
verses 14 through 29. and then plan to address the conclusion
of Paul's sermon in the fifth message of this series in more
depth. So today in verses 14 through
29, our emphasis will be on a consideration of God's description of this
idolatry that was so rampant in Athens. And my objective,
which I hope you to enter in with me on, is that therein,
in this description, we'll see how it applies to all of us by
nature. That is, prior to God giving
faith and repentance. So we know that God, you see,
for him to be made known, the unknown God, to be made known
unto us, we have to have the faculties of spiritual life.
That is, the new birth, a spiritual birth. To see something that
we never see apart from the grace of God, he must be revealed. And his ordained method of revealing
himself is through the preaching of the very specific message
that Paul brings here, the message of the gospel that makes him
known unto everyone for whom Christ lived and died. For you
see, for them Christ purchased all spiritual blessings, including
the new birth. the life-giving power of the
Holy Spirit, wherein they could behold something that was totally
foreign to them by nature. And he does so by his Spirit
in each successive generation. And that's why the Scriptures
teach that except for those to whom God grants this repentance,
there's eternal death. As Christ said himself in Luke
13, he said, Except ye repent, ye shall likewise all likewise
perish." So today we want to consider how God was unknown
to you and how he was unknown to me just as he is initially
unknown to everyone without exception. Because we all enter the world
in darkness, the scripture teaches us, and thereby whether we should
try to determine today whether the God that Paul declares the
God which the Spirit reveals under this very specific message
of the gospel. This gospel will turn one's world
upside down. Has that God been made known
to you? As our Lord prayed in John 17
3, He said, And this is life eternal. Now that ought to get
our attention. This is life eternal. That they
might what? Know thee, not just any God,
but the only true God. and Jesus Christ whom thou hast
sent. We don't know the Father except
we know him based upon the person and work of the Son. So we honestly
cannot conclude we know God unless it can be said of us as God said
of the Thessalonians in Paul's letter to them when he said how
they had turned to God from idols to serve the living and true
God, the one whom to know is life eternal. Now you'll recall
that we began this series with Paul and Silas in jail in Philippi. And then in Acts 16, then we
moved to Acts 17, they moved on to Thessalonica when they
were released. And there they left under cover of night to
Berea. And so today we're going to pick up with Paul's departure
from Berea, where the enemies of the gospel had moved again
against him. So he was again ushered out of town, and we'll
be looking at his arrival now in this famous city of Athens.
Athens, which was a place known for its great university, a place
of learning where all the philosophers of the world attended together,
gathered together, So we're going to look at verses 14 through
21 first. I'll just make a few comments
on these as I read through them, so just follow with me beginning
in verse 14. It says, And then immediately the brethren sent
away Paul to go, as it were, to the sea. But Silas and Timotheus
abode there still. And they that conducted Paul
brought him unto Athens. And receiving a commandment unto
Silas and Timotheus for to come to him with all speed, they departed. Now while Paul waited for them
at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly
given to idolatry. 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. That word, therefore,
disputed. I think in our day has perhaps
a little more edge to it, as in kind of an angry, argumentative
style. But the word itself here, the
original, actually is in keeping with Paul's approach in Macedonia. It means to set forth reasonable
arguments. It does mean to set forth arguments,
but it has the connotation of preaching and, more importantly,
reasoning, as we saw back in Thessalonica, how he reasoned
with them out of the Scriptures. And you'll see that, I believe,
in Paul's discourse here on Mars Hill. And then in verse 18 we
read, Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the
Stoics encountered him. And some said, What will this
babbler say? Other some, he seemeth to be
a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them
Jesus and the resurrection." The Epicureans were named after
this guy, Epicurus, who, I think he was born some 350 years or
so before Christ, and he was a philosopher who taught in Athens.
And the Epicureans came to believe that God was really not worthy
much of their notice or attention. They believed there was a God.
They did not believe He was Creator. They thought the world came to
be by a collision of atoms that was happenstance, perhaps like
the Big Bang Theory of today. But not only did they think it
took place by some collision of atoms, but that God had nothing
to do with it. In other words, He was not at
all the Creator. And so they came to believe that
pleasure was to be the source of their inner comfort and peace.
It gave them the assurance that they were okay. And as you might
imagine, that evolved to, in some sects of that group, to
be sensual pleasure, or kind of an eat, drink and be merry
attitude, as long as you didn't hurt anyone else, for tomorrow
you die. But the more pure sect of that,
from what I read, they believe that the peace that came from
their inward pleasure was more derived from their morality. from their feeling good about
themselves about what they did. And if you think of that, there's
such a contrast with how religious men and women think today. We
look around and we live in an evil world. There's lots of bad
things that go on. And so if we're basically pretty
good people, we get a sense that we must be okay. And that seemed
to be the focus of the Epicureans. And then the Stoics, they were
named So named after the Greek word Stoa which was a porch or
portico or a piazza like a plaza and this guy Supposedly named
Zeno was the author of that sect and he used to walk Along the
plaza or under the porticos there in Rome teaching his philosophy
just real quickly. They were basically fatalists
and The Stoics believed that there was a God and that he was
creator, that he created the world. But they didn't believe
that there was any interaction. between man and this God, and
so therefore they were fatalistic. They believed whatever will happen
will happen, and so they kind of took the position, I suspect
this is where the word someone with a stoical type demeanor,
for example, came from. They said, you know, let's not
show any emotion or grief or joy or anything. And so, here
you had these different philosophies of man present, and they called
him a babbler, we just saw, which was a derogatory term. It means
seed picker, literally. There was a bird by that name,
actually, but it was a worthless type of bird. And then they go
on and they said he set forth strange gods. That is, they were
strange in that they were unlike all these others, see, that they
worshiped there in Athens. And notice the reason that they
considered it strange. It says it was that he preached
unto them Jesus and the resurrection. And I don't think that's insignificant,
that small accounting of what Paul's message was there, preaching
Jesus and the resurrection. If we consider again that Paul's
one message, was that he dare not deviate from Christ and him
crucified as he wrote to the Corinthians, for I determine
not to know anything among you save that is anything but Jesus
Christ and him crucified. We saw that earlier in Thessalonica
in the early part of chapter 17 when it says he talked about
how Christ's must needs have suffered and must needs have
risen. So we know then, as we set forth
in that previous message, that this very message, this specific
message, set forth the very righteousness which Christ established in His
life and death. That is, the very perfect satisfaction
that He had to make to God's law and justice. Perfect obedience. God's holy. He cannot commune
with sin. So the law had to be satisfied
in precept. There had to be a perfect obedience
rendered. And yet the penalty had to be extracted, too, because
he was doing it as a substitute for a people. He was made under
the law to redeem them that were under the law. And those people
were sinners. And it took a price, a penalty,
worthy of the travesty against the holy God's justice of sin,
no less than the blood of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross.
Well, in the conclusion of this sermon delivered on Mars here,
which, again, we'll look at in more detail later, he makes it
clear that you must possess a righteousness. You, a sinner, you have to possess
a righteousness that equals that of the impeccable Lord Jesus
Christ and his humanity when he walked on this earth. So we
better consider how that might be so. The rest of today, I want
to spend most of our time contrasting these idols that Paul talks about
to the true and living God, who is uniquely revealed, uniquely,
in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when it
says there he preached Jesus and the resurrection, you see,
his very resurrection was what declared that that got the job
done. You see, for that perfect satisfaction
to justice demanded life, that righteousness. Just as sin demanded
death. So here's the Lord Jesus Christ,
the sinless Son of God, who was put to death for sins He didn't
produce, but that were imputed or accounted to Him. And likewise,
as 2 Corinthians 5.21 teaches us, there's a people, a bunch
of sinners, who by definition have no righteousness. As the
scripture says, there is none righteousness, not one. They
end up possessing a righteousness based upon God's judicial imputing
or accounting of it to them that they had no part in producing,
but that the Lord Jesus Christ alone produced. That's good news. In verses 19, beginning in verse
19, we pick up again, it says, They took him and brought him
unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine whereof
thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange
things to our ears. We would know, therefore, what
these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers
which were there, they spent their time in nothing else. But
either to tell or to hear some new thing. Areopagus and Mars
are essentially referring to the same area. The word Areopagus
comes from Aries, which is the same word from Mars. And in any
event, what took place here is they brought Paul to this court
or house of judgment. Now, they had brought no legal
charges against Paul, and they didn't bring him there to try
him in a legal way, but rather they just brought him there,
as we see, from the passage to satisfy their natural curiosity. And consider that this doctrine,
as is mentioned in verse 19, when they said, saying, may we
know what this new doctrine That that, again, is that same Word,
the Word, just as Paul had spoke to the Bereans as we saw in the
previous message. That Word of the Gospel wherein
the righteousness that all of us need, by which all of us must
be judged by, is revealed. And that's what was strange to
their ears. And I suggest to you, I declare
to you, that's the case to everyone who first considers the issue
of how can God be just and holy and still save a sinner? Just
and justifier. You see, I know in my own case
for years I walked around on this earth and was taught, went
to church and was very religious. And I was taught that Jesus died
for all men without exception. And someone came along Or I was
put under the sound of someone who came along and said, yeah,
but how could God be just? How can He be who He is, what
He's like, and still save you, a sinner, if He punished sins
in Christ? Because I'd use phrases like
most do that said, you know, Jesus died to take away my sins. They said, well, if they were
really taken away, how could He be just and then still punish
most of those for whom He lived and died? Send them to hell anyway. Where is there any justice in
that? And so that was strange to my ears when I first heard
it. And I want to suggest to you that any time we first hear
the gospel of grace, even if we were brought up under the
teaching of it, when we first give serious consideration to
it, it's strange to our ears. It's contrary to our natural
notions. So like the Philippian jailer,
what do we do? We get interested. And we go, sirs, tell me what
must I do to be saved? Surely we just embodied in that
is the assumption, there's something I can do. And so we think we
can save ourselves and somebody comes along and says, oh no,
that won't do. You must believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. And it's not your believing,
it's you got to rely on His doing and His dying. And oh, that's
foreign to our natural mind, so it's strange to our ears.
And we see here that these philosophers, now they weren't eager to know
the truth of what Paul had to say, necessarily, and to test
it with the Scripture like the God-given nobility of the Bereans
that we had studied earlier. It tells us there in verse 21
that their open-mindedness was simply a product of an interest
in hearing anything that's new, anything that's different. And
so, as we look at verse 22, I tell you what let's do, let's just
go on, I'll read all the way down through verse 29 and then
come back and comment on these verses. In verse 22 we read,
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and he said, Ye
men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld
your devotions, that's your gods or idols, I found an altar with
this inscription, to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship. Him declare I unto you, 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, and
hath made of one blood," speaking of Adam there, all nations of
men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation,
that they should seek the Lord." If happily they might feel after
him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of
us. For in him we live, and move,
and have our being. As certain also of your own poets
have said, for we are also his offspring. That's speaking of
his offspring by creation. For as much then as we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is
likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's
device." Back in verse 22 there, Paul said, I perceive you too
superstitious. That word superstitious there
has the connotation, I perceive you're too religious. It's a reflection of what Paul
first observed when he got to Athens. He said, the city is
wholly given over to idolatry. But the fact that that word has
that connotation of being too religious reminds us that that's
what idolatry is really about. We often hear people say, well,
money was his idol, or it's his god, or fame, or the pleasures
of this world. And it is true that men look
to money and look to the pleasures of this world and look to fame
or whatever their particular appetite is, and they say, and
they look to that and some imagine that that's a sign that God has
blessed them. And it may be a distraction so
that they never, ever even seek the true and living God. It may be a real detriment to
them. But I don't know anyone that
thinks they're getting into heaven because of their money. are getting
into heaven because of that. No, the idolatry we're talking
about is a religious idolatry here. And that's what Paul is
voicing, I think. And then in verse 23 there, he
starts, and I think very wisely, right where they are. By commenting
on one of their own altars that he had walked by that had that
inscription, to the unknown God. And he indicated they worshipped
this God, but he said they did so in ignorance. And I think
that's when you think about him saying, I'm going to declare
to you this unknown God, but you worship him, but you worship
in ignorance. I think that just reflects what
we see. And I know it's probably true
in every day, but certainly in ours. And that is that many worship
a God that resembles in many ways that many they understand
many truths about the true and living God truths that we can
understand by nature. just by a consideration of a
supreme being and what essential deity must be like. Like the
Stoics, for example, they believed that God was a creator. And nature
screams that out to us. And that's only reasonable. And
yet, as Paul said in writing to the Romans in chapter 10,
verses 1 through 4, he said, my prayer for Israel is that
they might be saved, indicating they were lost. He says, for
I bear them record, they have a zeal of God, they were religious,
but not according to knowledge. And he goes on to say what knowledge
they did not, were unaware of, what was unknown to them. He
said, for they being ignorant of and not submitted to the righteousness
of God, that satisfaction see that Christ made, they're going
about, he said, to establish a righteousness of their own.
And that's what we all do by nature. In other words, we imagine
that meeting that condition of righteousness involves me being
able to deliver on some condition or some requirement, perhaps
even imagining that God enables me to do it, but no less, it's
right here. The crowning event, the determining
factor of whether I'll go to heaven or hell, we imagine to
be our own. And so what we see is many like
these here. who do not know God as He's truly
revealed in the person and work of Christ, yet they do worship
a God that they consider to be the Creator. They consider Him
to be omniscient. They consider Him to be omnipresent,
all-powerful, omnipotent. And yet, when it comes to where
their hope of being blessed by this God is derived from, then
what we see is what they're truly relying upon to save them by
implication, stands in contradiction to even the things that all of
us should know by nature about God. In other words, if you're
like me, I've wandered around here thinking for many years
that Jesus Christ died for all men. Well, listen, if God is
all-powerful and if His love is a perfect love, how could
He love me and yet let me perish in hell? Well, either he wasn't
powerful enough to save me, he really wasn't omnipotent, even
though I thought I considered him omnipotent, or he wasn't
omniscient. He wasn't all-knowing so that
he could foresee all the circumstances that would get in the way in
my life, or his love just really wasn't worth anything, for he
would just let one of his creatures perish whom he loved, even though
he was powerful enough? You see the contradictions that
exist whenever we ascribe to God this idea that we might be
accepted based upon something that comes from us? Well, that's
what I believe Paul is communicating in part of these verses here.
So what happens? This unknown God is in reality
one that men and women just contrive in their minds. It's an idol
of their imaginations. I know here it speaks of of idols
made of stone and graven. But whether there's a physical
bodily manifestation of that idea of what God is like, I think
it's also referring here clearly to the idols of our imagination.
Do you remember the passage where it says, the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mining through God to the pulling down of strongholds,
casting down imaginations? You see, that's the idol that
exists in our mind. That was the idol that resulted
in these Graven images and things carved out of wood and so with
God-given wisdom here Paul begins where they are in their admitted
worship of an unknown God. Can you imagine that? I know
years ago Susan. I visited Rome and we went to
the Pantheon and it's a marvelous structure, you know, beautiful
architecture big round building and pan all Theon, God, that's
what it was. They worshipped, they had illustrations
and frescoes and statues of all the gods they could come up with,
so they were covering all their bases in that place. And I think
that's what this altar must have been about. They said there were
altars all over Athens, and here there was one. They said, let's
just be sure we've got this base covered. It's to the unknown
God. But that unknown God is really,
when He's unknown, He's really altogether different. But with
God's wisdom, I believe, Paul just begins where they are. And
you know, many today are much like that, if you consider it.
They imagine that we all worship the same God. I mean, it goes
to some real extremes. There are men today that you'll
hear, even men who are so-called of the faith, of some faith,
And they'll talk about trying to reconcile with Islamic fascists
that want to kill anyone whose name is even Christian. And if
they really understood what most of Christendom really believed,
they would probably find out that They've really got a lot
more in common with them because most believe that it's still
the religion that works, it's salvation's condition on them.
It may not be on them strapping some bombs around them and blowing
up what they call infidels, but it's still just a work of their
hand that gets them some blessing from their God. And yet we hear
people saying, they just call Him Allah and we just call Him
God. And my friend, it's even worse that many who do call Him
God, most who do call Him God, to them He's still an unknown
God. And that's only, if you think about it, that shouldn't
surprise us, because we all start out, remember, that way. We come
into this world not knowing God and who He is. As Christ told
the woman at the well in John 4, ye worship, ye know not what. What I want you to do now, if
you would, is turn to Isaiah 45. And keep your hand in Acts
17. I believe this is a good contrasting
passage, and we're going to flip back and forth here just for
a moment. So hold both places, Isaiah 45 and Acts 17. Back in Acts 17, in verse 24,
I think we see the teaching that God cannot be bound by man. He begins there, he says he doesn't
dwell within the bounds of man-made temples. This God that made the
world, and think about that. Now he's saying that right in
front of these Epicureans who didn't believe that God created
the world. This God, he can't be bound by man. He's saying
it by definition, just who God is. He can't be limited to dwell
in temples or in any constructions of our minds, see? But we do
know that God dwells in the temple. of the God-man, because in Colossians
2.9 he tells us, "...in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead
bodily." That's where we see who God is, in Christ. And the
Scripture also tells us that those to whom the Holy Spirit
makes known this hitherto unknown God, that these are said, their
bodies are said to be the temples of the Holy Spirit. And that
coincides with what we learn that apart from His indwelling,
abiding presence, His power and influence over our hearts and
minds, you see, Christ and thereby the Godhead, God, He remains
unknown to us. And so here I think Paul is expressing
in verse 24 something of the infinity and the immensity of
God. This God who is omnipresent,
who is Spirit, who you can't confine or limit Even in the
imaginations of your mind. Look there in Isaiah 45 and verse
20. God here is speaking through
the prophet Isaiah and he says, Assemble yourselves and come
draw near together ye that are escaped of the nations. They
have no knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image. And look at this description.
And pray unto a God that cannot save. Now that describes the
popular God of religion in each and every day, including our
own day. A God who cannot save, you see,
who is limited, who is bound by man, for they say, God wants
to save you. Now, He's knocking at your heart's
door if you'll just open it and let Him come in. This God can't
save you, is what they're saying, unless you do your part and let
Him. Unless you invite Him into your
heart, unless you pray some prayer, unless you just in the quietness
of your own home, think, I want to be saved. And so they bind
God up, see, to imagine that He needs them. He needs their
acceptance. He needs their buy-in to complete
the deal that Christ, when He hung on the cross at Calvary,
said it is finished. And so we thereby possess merit,
see, of which we might boast. Whether we boast in it or not,
let's just face it, with that kind of religion, the real crowning
event is whether you make your decision for Jesus or not. And
that's in direct opposition to God's design in salvation to
glorify himself, for it's in opposition to his glory. The
glory that we see only in the face, as 2 Corinthians 4 teaches,
the face, the person and work of Jesus Christ. So what we're
doing unknowingly, unwittingly, because we're dead, blind sinners,
that's what the scripture says we are when we come in this world,
what do we do? We dare to place in rivalry with
the blood of Jesus Christ, that which He alone accomplished at
Calvary. Look at verse 25 again there
in Acts 17. He said, neither is he worshipped
with men's hands as though he needed anything. And I think
this is how Paul could address... How is Paul going to address
this rampant idolatry in Athens? Why, they had so many different
gods. You'd think it'd take years to discuss them all. No, it's
because they all got one thing in common. You see, it's the
religion of works versus the religion of grace. They all imagine,
listen, the Muslim and the Catholic and the Baptist and the Methodist,
most who call themselves Christian, name a religion, and if it's
not the religion of pure, sovereign grace, most of them believe that
there is something God needs back from you, the sinner. And
see, even by the light of nature, We should look at the fact that
He's the Supreme Being, that He's God. How could He need anything
from us? So what we see here is He's showing
that in worshiping God, we don't give anything back to God that's
of any use or of any service. For He's all-sufficient, see?
If He's God, by definition, there's a perfection therein. A perfection
that doesn't need anything. He doesn't need you to let Him
in His hearts. door, your heart's door. The
name of God is El Shaddai, which means all-sufficient. God all-sufficient. And if He
needed anything from you, He lacks sufficiency. He's not all-sufficient
within Himself. And so therefore, there's a lacking.
There's not a perfection within. Something else needs to be made
up there, see? I hope you can see that even
here, you know, at this stage of the sermon, Paul hasn't really
declared the Gospel. We'll see that in the next message
down verse 30. Now we know he had declared it
in the passage here as he preached Jesus and the resurrection. But
he's just showing these folks by the light of nature. You ought
to know that God doesn't need anything from you. How ludicrous
that the one who created you, the one who made you, the one
who does bind you up, that he needs anything from your hand.
So Paul is setting forth here the two religions of the world.
Grace, salvation conditioned solely on Jesus Christ having
met every condition or requirement or works. The imagination that
we all start off on when we don't know God, when we think that
there's some requirement, some condition that we, the sinner,
can meet. to close the deal, so to speak.
Something that truly achieves our salvation, while imagining
that Jesus Christ just simply made it possible. Verse 26, he
goes on and he says, they're all made of one blood. We are
all made of one blood. That is of Adam. He's saying,
you wise philosophers, you theologians, you learned men, you have nothing
to offer God over anyone else. Yeah, they need a noble-mindedness
like the Bereans had, one that was given by God. An understanding
of something hitherto unknown to you. That's why Paul chose
that unknown God to declare unto him. Because you see, that's
what all men need to know. They need to know a God that
is initially unknown. And so Paul here, I think he
was being wise as serpents and harmless as doves. When he makes
this statement, you see, for embodied in the statement is
an acknowledgment. He didn't say you all. He said
we. We're all made of one blood. I'm cut from the same mold. And,
you know, I think that's the way a gospel preacher should
present the gospel, not to Not to cause Paul to say, now look
how my logic, you philosophers, is superior to your logic. Don't
look as if if you were where I am at, maybe you would have
something to offer. Oh no, we're all of one blood.
I'm just as much in need, you see, of something from God's
hand than you are. And so he's not directing men
to himself. He needed the work of God just
as much as they did. And then there in the middle
of it, he says in verse 26, that he determined the times before
appointing. Turn back to Isaiah 45 now. In verse 21, he continues
there, and he says, "...tell ye, and bring them near. Yea,
let them take counsel together." In other words, test your God
against this. Who hath told it from, excuse
me, who hath declared this from ancient time? Who hath told it
from that time? Have not I the Lord? Look over
at chapter 46, verse 9. Remember the former things of
old, for I am God, and there is none else. There's just one
God. I am God, and there is none like
me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times
the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand,
and I will do all my pleasure. He's determined all things, see?
He is indeed sovereign. He even determined the fullness
of time when the sun would come. It says in the Scriptures that
in the fullness of time, Christ was made under the law. He had
to take into union with deity, humanity, that he could be our
substitute. He could be under the jurisdiction
that we're under. He was made under the law to
redeem them that were under the law. And in the day, the Scripture
tells us that God in the day of His power, you see, He draws
a son to Him. As we heard during the 10 o'clock
hour, you know, God knows when God's ready. There's a time and
a season for everything. Christ said as He approached
the cross, you remember, He'd say, Oh no, my hour's not yet
come when things look threatening. And then when He was in the Garden
of Gethsemane, He said, Now my hour has come. Put your sword
down, Peter. You see, he's determined the time, the day of his power
when he draws sinners in. Each successive generation, he's
determined the time of that conversion of individuals, of when he will
give them life and place them under the sound of the gospel,
that they might show the effects and the fruits of what Christ
purchased for them at Calvary. He created time. He providentially
controls time. And I believe Paul is saying
here, if he doesn't, he's just not God. And then in the latter part of
verse 26, I think he's teaching us, just as God can't be bound
by man, man is bound by God. He's determined the boundaries
of our life, of your lifespan on this earth. It's appointed
unto men once to die, and after that, the judgment. We're finite,
bound creatures, you see, but that's not the case with God.
The bounds of their habitation, he says, he controls. Where they'll
live, how long they'll live, where they would be born. Did
you have anything to do with deciding who your parents would
be, where you would be born, when you would be born, or listen,
If you think about it, providentially of being put under the sound
of something that you didn't know anything about, as in this
gospel. You see, we have no more to do
with our spiritual birth than we do with our natural birth.
It's God. I mean, this is the God who controls
all things. And so what we see here is just
from what you can know from natural reasoning and looking at nature. What you can know is that we
had all the reasons in the world not to hold the false notions
that we all hold of a man-centered religion because we're talking
about the Creator. The Creator, it says in verse
28, in Him we live and move and have our being. You're here and
you're only breathing because He determined that you'd be here.
How dare we imagine that He needed something back from us? So Paul's
just talking to them from the light of nature up until he gets
to verse 30. And so what he says in verse
27, he says, so knowing all that, we're responsible to seek God
as He's revealed. He's showing that you have cause
to. It just reminds me of Paul's discourse in Romans 1, you know,
where he shows how by just the light of nature, we're all responsible.
He's saying He's given you physical life. You wouldn't be breathing
now. If God hadn't determined it,
you wouldn't be sitting right here under the very message that
he's pleased to reveal himself. Oh boy, isn't it something? When
you imagine, when you think back about the providence of God,
of how he got you under the sound of the gospel. Susan and I moved
to Albany, Georgia in 1977, and we thought we'd stay here a year
or two at best before I transfer. Eight years later, A gospel preacher
comes to town. There wasn't one here when we
moved here. And he providentially arranges events that makes... He draws me to him. It makes
me open to hear something that I knew nothing about. Now, each
and every one of you who know the gospel, I've heard you. You've
all got similar stories. Like, isn't it amazing how the
gospel came my way? It's something. Anyway, I'm roaming
around here a little bit. Note there in verse 27, Paul
adds, if happily, they might feel after him and find him,
though he be not far from every one of us. I think he's communicating
here that, look, even you most wise philosophers, if you can
enter into the logic of my argument, you still can't see him apart
from grace. You have nothing to offer. I've
already shown you learning's flawed, which you trust in. And
so we see then that it's impossible for men by just a mere contemplation
of the perfections of God and the visible works of creation,
and even the visible works of providence, of seeing how He
keeps His Son, this earth, in its proper rotation and preserves
your life each and every day that you live. But what we can
see by the light of those things, you say, is that we should know
there is a God. We can see by nature that there's
only one God who made all things, and so we should see the folly
of some of our thinking in contrast to this one Creator. And so we're
responsible. We're responsible to seek God
as He is. We have reason, you see, by that,
even to see the wickedness and the weakness of our thinking
in terms of our own idolatry. You see, that's what idolatry
is, when we imagine God was altogether different than he really is.
And we see how that false assumption that the Philippian jailer first
brought, even as God was drawing him to the gospel, and he said,
just tell me what I can do to be saved, sirs. You see, that's
in contradiction to a God who's all-powerful, to a creator, to
an omniscient God, a supreme being really by any definition.
And we only can see how lucretus, is that the right word? I'm having
a hard time talking this morning, but we can only see how crazy
that is. if God gives us eyes to see something
different. You see, what's suggested here
is how dim, how obscure this light of nature is. Because you
see, we're like he described there. If we don't have anything
else to direct us, we just are like groping in the dark, feeling
there, as he said. And he used the word happily.
That's happenstance. We're feeling around like maybe
I'll just find him. I'm blind. I can't see. But maybe I'll stumble
upon God, but he goes on and he says, but he's really not
far from you if you think about it. Think about the immensity
of a God who controls all these things that we witness by nature
itself. His life-supporting power and
His goodness in daily providence. I mean, to all men. There is
a sense, though, he's not very far, and I think that's the context
here in Acts 17. But I know the scripture talks
elsewhere how God is not far off. Look again back in Isaiah
46. There in verse 12, he says, Hearken unto me, this is God
speaking, ye stout-hearted that are far from righteousness. I
bring near my righteousness, it shall not be far off, and
my salvation shall not tarry." I will place salvation where?
In Zion. That's his church. For Israel. That's his selected, chosen ones,
spiritually speaking, unto eternal salvation. For Israel, my glory.
He's brought near, you see, in the gospel that we're even pleased
to hear today. He's brought near in each generation
to each of the ones for whom Christ lived and died. This gospel
is brought near to them because, you see, this is God ordained
means of revealing Himself when applied by God the Holy Spirit
in the hearts of His people. Verse 28, as I said, says that
we are His offspring by creation. So I think He's saying there,
look, if you rational living creatures, you're not represented
as are equated to dead, powerless statues. And listen, And you
too would resent. I do, and I think all do, would
resent anyone defining you, saying what you're like, contrary to
what you know to be true of yourself. Well, how much more so with the
Creator of man and angels? And so in verse 29, he says,
we ought not to think He can be fashioned by us. Either His
physical idols, as he mentions here, are the idols of our own
imagination that spawn those physical idols. And in closing,
look again now one last time in Isaiah 45. We left off there
in verse 21 in the middle of the verse where we pick up and
it says, And there is no God else beside me, a just God and
a Savior. There's none beside me. Look
unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. For I
am God, and there is none else." What was the distinguishing characteristic
there? A just God and the Savior. Now that's the God who's revealed
by Jesus Christ and the resurrection which testified that that work
of righteousness, see, got the job done. And that that's the
standard by which we all shall ultimately be judged. And so
therefore, based solely upon that righteousness, is God made
known, the true and living God as revealed in the person and
work of Jesus Christ. Now, that's the God that is unknown
to most of this world. But He's also the God that Paul
declared in this one message of the gospel that turns one's
world upside down. It turns one's world so upside
down that they repent. They heed the command of verse
30 when He calls on men everywhere to repent. And they turn from
their idols to serve the living and true God. As God said there
through the prophet Isaiah, look unto him, a just God and a Savior,
and be ye saved. May God grant you the mercy and
the grace and draw you to look unto him as he is uniquely revealed,
see, in Christ's person and work, so that you too can behold him.
This God who is initially unknown to all of us, look to him. a just God and a Savior.