Good morning to each of you.
If you would turn with me this morning to the book of Acts chapter
17. The subject before us is the
sermon that Paul preached on Mars Hill. Chapter 17, let's begin reading
in verse 16. Now while Paul waited for them
at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, and 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. Then certain philosophers
of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him. And some
said, what will this babbler say? And others some, he seemeth
to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto
them Jesus. and the resurrection. And they
took him and brought him into Arrapegus, saying, May we know
what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest
certain strange things to our ears, and we would know therefore
what these things mean. And in verse 21 it says, for
all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their
time in nothing else but either to tell or hear some new thing. Just men constantly with itching
ears, tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, always looking
for something newer, something bigger, something deeper in the
things of God. Listen, you can go no deeper
than the Lord Jesus Christ. He is salvation, and He alone
is salvation. Salvation is in a person. In verse 22, then Paul stood
in the midst of Mars Hill, and he said, You men of Athens, I
perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as
I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription
to the unknown God. whom therefore, notice these
words, ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you." Paul
plainly had told these men at Athens, he said, I perceive that
you're way too superstitious. You're more religious than any
other people that I've met in any other place. They had more
gods. Little G gods. More altars, more
festivals, and they were more diligent and studious in the
worship of the gods. They had a god for everything. And they worshipped ignorantly. And just in case they missed
one, let's see now, have we got them all covered? They made an
inscription, and an inscription to... just in case they'd missed
one now. It wasn't because they had any
interest. They said they made an inscription to the unknown
God. And Paul says, you ignorantly
worship this God. And yet He is the God. He is
the God of the Bible. He is the God of Scriptures.
Now the word superstitious has a few different meanings, but
it basically means a belief or practice resulting from ignorance. And that's just what Paul said,
you ignorantly worship. It means fear of the unknown,
trust in magic or chance. I hear a lot of people preach
today and they talk about luck and chance. Our God's not a God
of luck or chance. He's a God of purpose. He works
all things after the counsel of His own will, and none saith
unto Him, What are ye doing? They ignorantly worship the unknown
God. Superstition means an irrational
attitude of mind toward the supernatural nature or God resulting from
superstition. It's a notion maintained despite
evidence to the contrary. And I think of our Lord's words
in John chapter 4. He told the Lady of Samaria,
He said, the hour is coming and now is. When the true worshippers,
those whom God called before the foundation of the world,
those He set His affection on, called by grace, crossed the
path with the gospel, He said, true worshippers shall worship
the Father in spirit and in truth, not ignorantly. Oh, He's not
an unknown God, He's the Holy God. And for the Father's sake as
such to worship Him. Paul said, you call this God
the unknown God, and He's the one that I trust my soul to.
He's the one that I declare unto you. He is the only God that
saves. Look at verse 24, God that made
the world and all things therein, seeing that he is what? Lord
of heaven and earth, he dwelleth not in temples made with hands,
neither is he worshipped with men's hands as though he needed
anything. I hear men preach all the time
and they preach a God that's in need. God wants to, won't
you let Him? God desires to, but you resist
His will. This is a God of purpose. He's
a sovereign God and none, not one can stay His hand. Not one
can ask Him, what are you doing? He's not worshipped with men's
hands as though He needed anything. Seeing what He giveth to all
life and breath and all things. And what Paul's simply saying
here, that my God is God. You can ascribe a God to the
night, and one to the day, and one to water, and one to dry
land, and you can have a God for this and a God for that.
He said, but my God is God. My God made the worlds and all
things therein. He says, my God, He's the Lord
of heaven and earth. He's Lord, capital L of Lords,
and King, capital K of Kings. My God doesn't dwell in temples
made with hands. My God dwells in heaven, and
whatsoever He desires to do, He does. That's what David said,
My God's in the heavens. My God doesn't need anything
from the hands of men, even worship. My God gives to all life and
breath and all things." And look at verse 26, "...and hath made
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the
earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the
bounds of their habitation." My God's still God, he says.
He who has made of one blood all nations, my God has done
that. Who determines the times appointed
and the bounds of my habitation? God does, and my God does, Paul
said. Is anything too hard for the
Lord? Genesis 18, 4. At the time appointed I will
return unto thee according to the time of life, he told Abraham,
and Sarah shall have a son. But God, she's near a hundred
years old. Is anything too hard for me?
He says. Job one day in the midst of his
heavy trial said, I know that thou canst do everything. and
that no thought can be withholden from thee." He knows our thoughts
before we think them. David, our God's in the heavens.
He's done whatsoever he hath pleased. He said in another place,
whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He. God does what He
pleases, when He pleases, how He pleases. Isaiah 14 24 the Lord of hosts
is sworn saying surely as I have thought so shall it come to pass
Now I have a lot of thoughts and I make a lot of plans But
the truth of the matter is it's about a 50-50 chance on anything. I do if that high If odds are
that high Even so much so that the scripture
says don't say you're gonna go to a new place and start a new
business and do this and do that. Say, if the Lord wills. It's
in His hands, not mine. For the Lord of hosts hath purposed,
and who shall disannul it? Who? Who can stand against God
and disannul His purpose? Not a soul. No one. No one or
no thing can. And look at verse 27, 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. You see,
the God of the Bible, dear friends, is the one who has appointed
our time of life. He determined the day you were
born, Bill, and He knows the day you're going to leave this
world. Well, nothing catch Him by surprise. He's ordained it.
God wrote a story in an eternity past and ordained how I'd be
from the first to the last. He created the characters from
A to Z. Said some will be blind and some
will see. It's God's prerogative. And this
is the God with whom we have to do. And this is the God to
whom we must bow. That they should seek the Lord,
he says. He's determined the bounds of
our habitation for us. Do you know why I'm in New Caney,
Texas instead of Madisonville, Kentucky? Because God ordained
it to be so. He determines the bounds of our
habitation for us. And you would think that this
would engage men to know Him, that they should seek the Lord,
that they might come to see their great need and serve Him and
glorify His name. Paul said, if happily by God's
grace they might feel after Him and find Him. Now this is not
putting the emphasis on God being lost. God's never been lost. I hear people say all the time,
I found Jesus. Sorry He wasn't lost. He wasn't. But it's putting the emphasis
on our blindness. This is putting the emphasis
on our groping in the dark in our blindness. Never get the
impression that God has ever been lost and that we found him.
That's ridiculous. And you know, to find someone
doesn't always imply that that one was lost. I remember one
time very vividly going to Walmart. Any of you ever go to Walmart?
I was going to Walmart and I saw a man I went to church with standing
out front. And I could tell he was a little
frustrated and a little aggravated. And I said to the man, called
him by name, I said, what are you doing? He said, my mom's
lost. I said, she's lost? Yeah. I said,
where's she lost? He said, in Walmart. Now what
he meant was he couldn't find her. Well, I walked on and I
said, if I see her, I'll tell her you're out front waiting.
He said, please do, because I can't find her. She's lost in there
somewhere. I went right in, went down, went out, and I seen her
from a distance. And I said, Betty, I said, Are you lost?"
And she gave me the funniest look. Of course I'm not lost. Why would you say that? I'm here
in the meat aisle at Walmart. And I said, well, your son's
looking for you. She wasn't lost. He just couldn't
find her. And that's the way it is with
our God. Our God's not lost. He who made all things and causes
all things to come to pass has never been lost. And by divine
revelation, dear friends, we see the folly, the wickedness,
and the weakness of worshiping a weak and helpless Savior, which
is no Savior at all. And we, by nature, are like people
in the dark who feel and grope about after God, whom we cannot
see. And that's what the men at Athens
on Mars Hill did. To make sure they were saved,
they became superstitious. They made devotions to every
God that they'd ever heard of. And to make sure that they had
themselves covered, they made an inscription to the unknown
God, just in case they had missed one. And I'll tell you, my friends,
the God which is unknown, even today by the masses, is the God
of the Bible. Unknown to most. If you read,
as we read in verses 16 and all, they said, this is some strange
God. This is some new doctrine we're
hearing. People are foreign to the fact that God is not only
holy but sovereign and just. We've made Him out to be a God
that loves everybody and wants to save you if you just let Him.
Read your Bible. That's not the God of the Bible. Oh, that God may give us eyes
to see, and the God which is unknown
may be known to us this day. But here's the good news to sinners
in verse 27. Though we grope in our darkness,
Paul says, he'd be not far. from every one of us. Now God's
not only close to us by His omnipresence, God's everywhere all the time
at all times, whereby He is everywhere, but He is close to us by His
power and supporting and making all things work together for
our good. See, He's close to us. Though it's true His providential
reign falls on the just and the unjust, however, He's close to
show mercy to His chosen. He's close to show and heal those
that are sick of soul. And He's close to those who have
the unclean plague of sin to speak but a word and make them
whole. He's close by in His goodness
and continually communicating the blessings of His great providence
to us. He's close by showing us that
He's wise in the affairs of our lives and that He sovereignly
knows what is best for us. Verse 28, for in Him, those three
words mean so much to God's people. 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. Now He's the God that
made us. He's the God that preserves us.
He's the God that keeps us in the hollow of His hand. For in
Him we live. Outside of Christ, dear friends,
there's no life. There is no life. This life in
the physical is not much of life without Him. One old fellow once
said, you know, that physical life starts with a spanking and
ends usually in pain and nothing in between but, like he said,
toothaches and hangnails or something like that. That pretty well describes
life without Christ. In Him, we move and we have our
being. Our next breath comes from Him.
You know, when I breathe out, if He don't give the breath for
me to breathe back in, I'll die right that moment. Every single
breath comes from Him. Well, that's taking a little
fire, isn't it? No, sir. That's barely beginning to scratch
the surface as far as God's business in my life. We're supported in
this thing called life by Him and from Him we have all the
comforts and blessings of life. All our motions, whether external
or internal, whether body or mind, are of God and in Christ. None of His people are without
the concourse of His providence. He works all things. for the
good of them that love Him, who are Thee called according to
His purpose." You can take that just as far as your finite mind
will let you. God is God and He sovereignly
rules and controls all things by the counsel of His own will.
Verse 29, for as much then as we are the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or
silver or stone, graven by art and man's device. That's an awesome
thought, isn't it? That we are the offspring of
God. We are indeed the creation of
God, and in our souls we bear the image of God. God made man
in His image, but man fell a great fall. but as many as have the
spirit of adoption." They partake of God's holiness and they imitate
His goodness and are made more like unto Him. Why? Because we're begotten unto a
lively hope by the God with whom we have to do. Peter wrote in
1 Peter 1, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which according to what? His abundant mercy. hath begotten
us again into a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead." We ought not to think that the
Godhead is like unto gold or silver. You see, if we take man
in his natural principles consisting of soul and body, he's not made
of gold and silver. Our soul in which we bear the
image of God cannot be expressed by any graving or painting, much
less God whose image it is. God can't be expressed by a painting
or a carving. I think about that golden calf.
They made that golden calf with their own hands. They all threw
their gold in the pot in there and shaped that golden calf. And after all that God had done
for the people. delivering them out of Egypt.
They'd seen his hand move. Seen all the plagues that God
used to deliver them. Seen Pharaoh's army swallowed
up in the Red Sea. Had a cloud by day and a fire
by night to lead them. Their shoes, 40 years, didn't
wear out. Their clothes didn't dilapidate
and just disintegrate. God! God behind it all. And what do they do? They make
a golden calf and worship it and say, this be the God that
delivered us out of Egypt. Oh, don't think of yourself too
highly, dear sinner. The only reason you have any
interest at all in God is because He gave it to you. Oh, may God continue to show
and reveal Himself to us. You see, it's easy for a man
to worship something he's created. We're all pretty good at that.
And most men today have created a God of their imagination. They've
created a God that they're pretty level with, you know. They can
feel good about themselves when they do good works. But God's
standards are much, much higher than what we could ever perform. He requires perfection. He requires pure holiness. He requires perfect righteousness. And I can't produce any of them.
I can't produce not one thing good. There's none that doeth
good, no, not one. You see, Scriptures clearly teach
that we're His workmanship. He who created us and the one
who formed us receives the glory, and He should. Because we did
nothing, not a thing, to merit or deserve. It wouldn't be grace
or mercy if we had. Hath the potter not power over
the clay? To make out of the same lump
to make one vessel into honor and another into dishonor? What does it say in that verse
that gives us any idea or makes us think that we have anything
to do with being vessels of honor or dishonor? You've got the potter,
you've got the lump, And he fashions and forms. One vessel under honor,
another under dishonor. It's God's doing. It's God's
prerogative. Well, I need to hurry up. Verse
30, And the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth
all men everywhere to repent. God is said to have overlooked
them. He just blinked, overlooked,
as if He had counted them unworthy of His care and His providence.
Therefore, with their ignorance, God winked and did not correct
or instruct them. You see, when men and women are
left to go on in their sin without God's instruction, without God's
correction, it's a sad sign that God has possibly left that man
to himself and that he may not recover from his state and condition
of death. You hear saved men pray often,
Lord, don't leave us to ourselves. Why? I'm bent on destruction.
It's not my will to come to God that I might be saved. God had
to make me willing in the day of His power. We need deliverance
from our own will. Our will is to die in our sin.
But God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Under the judgment of God, we're
so far from having liberty or power or a will of our own to
save a mosquito, much less man and his depravity. If God gives
us eyes to see ourselves as we really are, I guarantee you we'll
repent. If He shows us our desperate
condition, I can't think of many times that he hadn't showed us
the remedy for it. But men don't want to. They want
to think they're alright. I'm as good as the next guy.
No, you're as bad as the next. We're all in the same condition.
We're all like sheep have gone astray. We've gone our own way. Misery and death is what we desire. Naturally speaking, Verse 31, "...because he hath
appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness,"
notice these words, "...by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof
he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he raised him
from the dead." Now the day of judgment, dear friends, is fixed
by God and His eternal purpose, and it's sure and it's certain.
And it will come, though it's not known by men or angels. And the doctrine of repentance
everywhere is published, both the Jews and Gentiles, since
all must come to judgment and stand before God one day. And if you'll judge the world
in righteousness, the whole world will be judged and every individual
in it. good, bad, righteous, or wicked. And this judgment will be a righteous
judgment. It will proceed according to
the strict rules of justice by God's holy law and upon the foot
of the righteousness of Christ." Never, never forget that God
is responsible for a sinner believing. No man can come to me unless
the Father which sent me draw him. No man can come to me except
it were given unto him of my Father." That sounds to me like
salvations of the Lord. But man is always responsible
for the judgment he receives from rejecting the grace of God
and Christ. God is purposed and ordained
According to this, that man, what man? The Lord Jesus Christ. He said, Lo, I come in the volume
of the book that is written of me to do thy will, O Lord. For he hath made him to be sin
for us, he who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. For there is one God and one
Mediator between God and men, the Man, Christ Jesus." Do you
see? Has God shown you who salvation
is in? It's in the God-Man, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Well, I was going to go on through
verses 32, but I think I'm just going to stop right there for
lack of time. But let me show you this. When
all is said and done, and in this passage of Scripture, there's
a warning and a sad truth. In verse 32, when they heard
of the resurrection of the dead, When they heard about God raising
the Lord Jesus Christ, some mocked, and others said, we'll hear thee
again on this matter. Now all men and women since Adam
and Eve have been under the curse of sin, dear friends. The wages
of sin is death. And that's what we receive as
our wages for our deeds, death. And when told that God raised
Christ from the grave, that He might be the firstborn of many
brethren, these men mocked. And they said, we don't have
time to hear this mess. That's pretty much what they
said. And this is the warning. God may not always give you the
gospel to hear. I've seen it many times in my
life. I've seen many times the Lord
just leave a man to himself and move off somewhere never to hear
the gospel again. And that's what happened here.
Look at verse 33. So Paul departed from among them. What a sad state of affairs. Here's the one who has the message
of life. They mocked him. They ridiculed
him. They made fun of his God. And he left with the truth. But
the good news, verse 34, how be it, look at it, I want you
to see it, how be it, certain men and women claimed unto him
and believed. There's always two results in
the hearing of the gospel. That is, they depart from it,
never to hear it again. But certain men and women believe,
don't they? I'm so glad that I'm a certain
man. Amen.