Well I want us to look this morning
at a well-known passage in Acts chapter 17 the account of Paul
at the Oropagus or Mars Hill as it was known in Athens because
it has so much to say to us about the situation that we find ourselves
in today. I've called this message a message
for today because although it was a message that Paul preached
almost 2,000 years ago not far off, must have been about A.D.
45, 50, something like that. It's a message that is so relevant
for today because the audience, those that listened were so like
the society in which we live. Now Paul after Thessalonica and
after Berea and the Jews from Thessalonica had come, you know,
they'd threatened and they'd come chasing them to Berea and
the disciples there had led Paul away and taken him to Athens
because he was the target of the opposition. And while he
was there, he was waiting at Athens for Silas and Timothy
to come to him. And he was looking at this society
which is, as I say, is so like our society. And in this account,
we have messages for us that show us how we should regard
this generation. Where are they? What are their
views? What's their mindset? And therefore, how should we
speak the gospel? What's the message that we should
speak to them? And what should we expect? And
what should we pray for? Because the Word of God sets
patterns, and our prayers should be in accordance with His Word,
the patterns that we see in His Word. And we ask God to do the
same. As you've worked here, Lord,
so work in our situation. So I want to look at these people,
the Athenians, and then at Paul's message, and then at the response. I know it's a familiar pattern
of the messages as we go through Acts, but nevertheless, I think
it's very relevant. Let's look at these Athenians,
these people, where Paul was and where he preached this message
at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. These Athenians, as we know,
they're famed in secular learning, they're famed for their intellectual
powers, for their wisdom, for their philosophy, for their mathematics. I mean, the younger ones perhaps
haven't heard of it, but Many of us can remember being forced
to do Pythagoras and all sorts of things like that. Many of
us can remember the stories of Archimedes shouting Eureka and
running down the street when he discovered how to find out
whether the king's gold was genuine or whether it was fake because
he learned about density and how to measure it. Fantastic,
fantastic learning and absolutely, you know, every time you watch
a ship sailing or a submarine doing its thing, Remember, Archimedes,
all these years ago, from this culture came that learning. They
were free thinkers, they were intellectuals. Is it ringing
true with what we see around us today? Yes, a lot of it, isn't
it? Free thinkers, intellectuals, philosophers, science, maths,
learning. It's the great thing, isn't it?
What did Tony Blair say before he was elected in 1997 about
his three priorities? Education, education, education. Learning is the thing. It's the
great thing to be had. And quite rightly so. Not for
one minute am I knocking or casting any doubt or any aspersions on
the fact that learning is good. So you children, get this. Learning
is good. School is good. Your lessons
are good. Do what your teachers say. Learn what you can. Get
all the learning that you can. It's a good thing. And these
Athenians also had some knowledge, although it was a very idolatrous
society, They had some knowledge of the Jewish scriptures because
there was a synagogue there. Paul went to the synagogue in
Athens. He sought them out. And in verse
17, disputed in the synagogue with the Jews. So there was a
synagogue there and there were Jews and there were those who
were proselytes, those who were converts, non-Jewish converts
to the Jewish religion. So they had some knowledge of
the Jewish scriptures. And how would I summarize the
society of the Athenians? They were tolerant. They were
very tolerant. They were, look what it says
in verse 21 about the Athenians and the strangers which were
there. They spent all their time in nothing else but either to
tell or to hear some new thing. Oh, that's a weird idea. Tell
us that again. How interesting. Now, what was
it that brought you to that conclusion? Oh, that's interesting. Oh, well,
fancy that. That was the attitude. Free thinkers, tolerant, craving
new ideas. Is it not just like the society
in which we live? Exactly like it, craving new
ideas, knowledge. People are interested in any
new idea, so long as it doesn't shut them up in a particular
box. They're happy for the Buddhists
to do their thing, for the Richard Dawkins followers to do their
thing. They're happy for all these things, because it's a
free, liberal society in which we live. And it was characterized
by two groups of philosophers. The Athenians were famous for
their philosophers. There were these two groups,
the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicureans followed the teaching
of a philosopher, Epicurus, who was born 342 years before Christ
was born. 342 years BC. And what they taught
was this. Now see if this rings true. Just
listen. See if this rings true. There is no God. The world wasn't
created by a god. The world all came into being
by chance, just by chance. That's how the world came into
being. And the thing that's good is the pursuit of pleasure. This
is the thing. We've got to pursue pleasure
because pleasure is good. And we'll achieve pleasure either
by moral virtue, by being good, upright people. By moral virtue
we will achieve pleasure, or at the other end of the spectrum,
by sensory indulgence, by satisfying your senses, whatever that means.
And the basic philosophy is what is good is what feels good. That's what's good. That was
the Epicureans. No God. The world came into being
by chance and the pursuit of pleasure is the thing to follow. And you know the scriptures know
all about this because in Ecclesiastes chapter 1 and verse 9 the words
of the preacher The words of Solomon, the wisdom of Solomon
says this, under the sun there is no new thing. And here we
are, 2,300 years after this man spoke these teachings, these
philosophies, and the bulk of our society follows Epicurean
teaching. That's what they believe. There's
no God, things came about by chance, there's nothing new under
the sun. We think we've suddenly become
wise and have put off old superstitions. These are old superstitions.
These are. And then there were the other
ones who were the Stoics, the Stoics. And they were followers
of a philosopher called Zeno. And the reason why they're called
Stoics is this, because Zeno taught in a porch in Greece. Now, you know the porches, you
know, with the colonnades and the arches, and it was a place
where he met and people gathered with him. And the Greek for a
porch is, as I am told, stoa. Hence, they were the ones who
went and got their learning under the porch, which is the stoa.
So they are Stoics. That's where it came from. Now,
what did they teach? They taught that there was a God who had
created things, but that that God wasn't actively involved
in what we do. He'd sort of wound it up and
let it go, and he wasn't really interested, not really involved.
He'd left it to run on its own. And their philosophy was one
of free will, and the power of free will, and the power of determination
of man to set his own situation, the mastery of will, and the
ability to control sensations, so that you had a pain, and that's
where we get our term, you're stoical about it, you don't let
it bother you, you carry on. This is what their philosophy
was. Their ability to control sensations and perception of
pain, and therefore to overcome and control their existence and
the entire world in which they lived. And again, there's so
much of that in our modern day society. So much of that. I mean,
it's a particular feature of South East England, isn't it?
You know the difference between the North of England? I suppose
it's the difference between the South of the United States and
the North. If you ask somebody in Leeds, how is he? And he's got a bit of a headache,
he'll say, I was not feeling too well, I've got a bit of a
headache. He'll tell you. But if you ask somebody in the southeast
of England and they've got a headache, they'll go, oh, I'm absolutely
fine, because that's the way people are. They're more stoical
in the southeast of England than they are in the north of England.
And so this is the philosophy that we see. This Athenian culture
was so much like 21st century Britain. It was godless in the
sense of the knowledge of the true God. It was materialistic
in that the things around us can satisfy all our desires and
make us happy. It had an evolutionary philosophy
which said that everything's come about by chance, which is
just... You hear it. Even the Catholic
Church, even the Pope said not many days ago that evolution
wasn't incompatible with the scriptures. Even the Pope said
that. Amazing. Evolutionary philosophy. And there's this spectrum in
our society from our fate is in our hands entirely, right
the way through to Get whatever you can, irrespective of the
cost to others. And how did Paul sum them up
in verse 22 when they took him and they set him in the midst
at the Areopagus on Mars Hill? He said, Ye men of Athens, I
perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. Or another
way of translating that, too superstitious, is very religious
because at the same time as being godless in terms of knowledge
of the true God their society was a multi-faith society it
was multi-faith just like ours is you know our society boasts
that it is a multi-faith society all faiths are allowed all except
one which is the one true faith which is the one true faith which
is based on the absolute unbending sovereignty of God hence one
of the pieces in the bulletin this morning. They like to back
all possibilities. I put the television on to watch
something the other evening, I can't remember when it was,
a couple of days ago and caught the last two minutes of a series
of programs that has been on called Around the World in 80
Faiths. I don't know if any of you have
seen any of these but as I say I only caught the final two minutes
when the presenter was summing up and this is what he said,
that as he'd gone around the world looking at his 80 faiths,
as he'd gone around the world, this is what he found was good.
Wherever those faiths were tolerant of any idea that came along,
that was a good thing. And where it was terrible, and
where it was bad, and where it was negative and destructive,
was where they had a very narrow view that theirs was the only
right truth. Oh, how true that is, isn't it,
of our society. He actually was an Anglican vicar,
and he finished the program by putting on his Anglican robes
and going into an old church because he was going to take
a service. But that was his philosophy. That the good sort of faith is
the one that's tolerant of absolutely anything and everything. We're
all inclusive. Anybody can think whatever they
want and we're all welcome together. Now, is that not the society
in which we live? It's the society of Nebworth
and all this surrounding area. It's the attitude and the philosophy
of our neighbours. Some of us have got religious
neighbors. We've certainly got religious neighbors. It's their
philosophy. This kind of tolerant, inclusive thing. The colleagues
that we work with. It rejects this. Jesus said,
I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the
Father but by me, through his sovereign grace. It's this. What Peter said. There is none
other name under heaven. Not any name you feel like is
acceptable. There is none other name. under
heaven, given amongst men, whereby we must be saved. Outside of
Him there is no salvation. It's not inclusive. It's exclusive
is the truth of Christ in the gospel of His grace. And why
is the society of Athens and the one that we live in today
like this? It's because of darkness. Spiritual darkness. The people
that walked in darkness. The Gentiles that walked in darkness.
This is what Isaiah says in chapter 60 and verse 2. the darkness
and the spiritual blindness that is in the heart of man, the idolatry
that is all around. Look at it in verse 16. While
Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him
when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. What is idolatry?
It's the worship of false gods. What are false gods? Anything
that we set up in the place of God. Things that we set up in
our minds, things that we own, things that we love, and so on
and so forth. all around us the things that
we put in the place of God it's idolatry and he said that society
was wholly given to idolatry just as the one in which we live
is given to idolatry and in all of that wisdom and that philosophy
here's the sum total of it look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and
verse 21 you see well let's go back to verse 19 where Paul is
writing to the Corinthians, which is the next city along that he
visited in chapter 18, Corinth, and he's writing to them some
years later, and in verse 19 he says, for it is written, God
says this, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, you philosophers,
and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,
those who think they're prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the
scribe? Where is the disputer of this
world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world, the
wisdom, the philosophy of the Athenians and of our society?
For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom,
its wisdom, knew not God. The world tried to know the real
meaning of life and what it is, what we're all about, what this
life means, and in its own wisdom, by its own worldly wisdom, it
didn't know God. That was in the wisdom of God
that that's the case. What is the way to know God?
It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, by the foolishness
of the message preached, by the foolishness to the natural man
of the gospel of sovereign grace to save them that believe. You see, they knew not God despite
all their wisdom. The natural man as we know, I
keep quoting it, 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 14, The natural man
cannot know these things. They're foolishness to him. Neither
can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned. They're
not materially discerned. They're not discerned through
the learning of the world, however good education might be. They're
not discerned in that way. And what is the reason for it?
It's the Fall. It's the Garden of Eden. It's
Adam and Eve. It's the Fall. It's the Fall
from Grace. That's what it is. And it's inflicted
its consequences on the whole of mankind, including our society,
and even on us who profess to believe. Because don't we, in
our flesh, where there is such a battle, the flesh versus the
spirit, that in our flesh its natural tendency is towards an
evil heart of unbelief. And it's only the new man within
that keeps us. The evil heart of unbelief of
the natural man still looks around at the things that the society
around us say. It's the results of the fall.
And it's enmity against the sovereignty of God, because that's the thing
that the natural man objects to more than anything else, the
sovereignty of God. And so he sets up, as Morris
Montgomery says in that article in the Bulletin, he sets up an
idol. And the idol that he calls God is an idol of his own imagination,
for he's a God who doesn't do what he wants to do, because
he can't do what he wants to do, because he's constantly frustrated.
by man who won't let him do what he wants to do but our God and
the God of the Scriptures is a sovereign God he's the one
who says in Isaiah 46 and verse 10 my counsel what I want to
do shall stand and I shall do all my pleasure oh I'm telling
you people of God if you're a child of God you know if you're a child
in dangerous circumstances isn't the greatest comfort to rest
in the care and the arms of parents who love you and look after you
and take care of you and keep you safe and keep you from danger.
Yes? Well, for the child of God, rest
in this. The God whom we worship, the God whom we serve is sovereign. He's the one whose counsel shall
stand and who will do all his pleasure. And is it not true
that the God of all the earth shall do right? This is what
Abraham said. When God was going down to Sodom
and Gomorrah to pour out judgment upon them for their evil ways.
And Abraham was bold enough to argue with God that even if there
are 50, will you destroy it? No, not for 50. And so it goes
on down to a very small number. And no, I won't destroy it even
for that. And he takes them out. He takes Lot and his family out
of that place. And then he destroys that place.
Abraham's conclusion, as they went away to do what they were
going to do, is this, and this should be ours, shall not the
God of all the earth do right? But this is what the natural
man objects to. It's the sovereignty of God.
It's the absolute sovereignty in all things, especially in
the matter of salvation, especially in the matter of sovereign grace.
By definition, sovereign grace is what it says. It's the grace
of God. It's not of him who wills, nor
of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. And oh, to rest
in that, and to know that that's the truth, and to know that it
will all be right, and to know that He will show us, in the
end, His justice, and His truth, and His goodness, and His mercy,
and His grace. So, in that situation, there's
a warning in Scripture. In the chapter earlier than the
one I just quoted, Isaiah 45 and verse 9, God says this, Woe
to him that strives with his Maker. Woe to him that shakes
his fist in the face of his Maker. That's the judgment of God. So
what is Paul's message then to this society? Well we see in
verse 17, sorry in verse 16, that his spirit was stirred. He was wound up. He was agitated. What he saw really wound him
up. Have you ever been in a situation
like that? I remember when I was teaching
thirty-odd years ago and seeing the science department and the
syllabuses that they had to teach concerning evolution and godless
philosophies. And I remember being quite stirred
up by it. This word here, he was stirred
up, stirred up to oppose it, to say something about it, to
do something about it. Well Paul was. He saw the city
wholly given to idolatry. So what did he do? Verse 17,
he disputed in the synagogues with the Jews, and with the devout
persons, and in the market daily, and with them that met with him.
With anybody whose path he crossed, he disputed with them about the
state that he saw, about the godless philosophy that he saw,
and about the truth that he knew and he preached. You see, seeing
the blindness that was all around him, and oh don't we see that
all around us today, in this area, in Nebwith, in this country.
The blindness He knew that there would be some to whom God would
grant sight, spiritual sight. That's always the case. He put
him there, he saw the blindness all around, and he knew that
the promise of God was that there, by the foolishness of the message
preached, he would shine his light, he would give spiritual
sight to some of those there. Paul was effectively like those
fishermen, and he cast his net because he was there. cast your
net, I will make you fishes of men," had said Christ. Go into
all the world and preach the gospel and I will make you fishes
of men. So what was the core of what
he preached? Well it's in verse 18. In opposition
to what the Epicureans and the Stoics were saying, in opposition
to the philosophers, this is what he preached. Verse 18 at
the end of it. He preached unto them Jesus and
the resurrection. Jesus That was his message. He determined to know nothing
other than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. What did he preach? That there'd been a man who existed
who was called Jesus and they crucified him and he rose from
the dead. Isn't that an interesting thing? Oh yes, okay. No, no,
no, no. You know that. Far more than
that. He preached this about Jesus. That he was the God-man-redeemer. That he was God who had become
a man. clothed in human flesh to buy
back, to purchase his people, to redeem them, to buy them back,
to save them from their sins, to be their substitute, to be
their sin-bearer, to stand in their place, to call them to
repentance. And that salvation was accomplished
because he'd raised him from the dead. That salvation was
accomplished. Whereas every other hero that
they could ever point to, they could go to a place and they
could find the bones and the remains of those people. every
other one, but in the case of Jesus Christ, absolutely not. No remains left on this earth
because he rose from the dead with a new body. Payment had
been made in full. This is what he preached. Not
your philosophy, but Jesus and the resurrection. The sin bearing
of a substitute. The redemption that is in a substitute. The righteousness that is in
a substitute. For he made him He would have
preached, who knew no sin, to be made sin for us, that we might
be made the righteousness of God in Him. And this is how you
are right with God. Not on the basis of your all-inclusive,
free-thinking philosophy, but on the basis of the doing and
dying of the substitute, the suffering servant, the promised
one of God. And what did they think of that?
What was their response to it? He seemeth to be a setter forth
of strange gods. What is this babbler saying? What is this base person, this
base fellow? What is this character coming
out with in our free-thinking society? He's seeming to set
forth strange gods. We don't know anything about
this. Unknown to us, we don't know anything about this. This
doesn't fit with our religion. Is that not exactly as it is
today? That although there's so much
religion, and so much of it which calls itself Christianity, Yet
it knows nothing of Jesus and the resurrection, the truth of
that, the power of that, the sin-cleansing power of that message
of Jesus and the resurrection, the acceptance with God that
is in that, the righteousness of God that is in that. It knows
nothing of it. So what did he do? Well, when
they'd heard him, They said, we want to know more about this,
because they were a free-thinking society. And they brought him
to the Areopagus, to the court of intellectual debate. Let's call it that, the court
of intellectual debate. And they brought him there, and
they gave him an opportunity. There it is, the floor's yours.
Tell us what it is that you're really talking about. Come on.
Spell it out in detail, and we'll judge upon it. And we'll have
an opinion on it. Is it acceptable in our society?
this that you're preaching, these strange gods that you're preaching. So notice the approach. Notice
what Paul does. Notice that what he does is not
the same as he does in the synagogue. When he goes to the synagogue
in different places, he immediately knows what the starting point
of the people there is going to be. It's going to be the truth
of the God of the Jews and the Scriptures. And he's going to
show them from that starting point how that's all fulfilled
in Christ and how Christ is the message. But here, at the Areopagus,
in that place which is so like the society in which we live,
they don't start from that point. They had some knowledge of the
scriptures of the Jews, but their starting point was that free
thinking, open philosophy. So let's look at what he says.
Look at verses 22 to 30. Paul stood in the midst of Mars
Hill and said, you men of Athens, I perceive that in all things
you are very religious you're too superstitious for as I passed
by and beheld your devotions because you're into every God
going I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God
in trying to back all possibilities in trying to place your bets
on all possibilities you thought we might have missed one so we'll
have an inscription to the unknown God in case we've missed one
and then he won't be angry with us either Whom, therefore, you
ignorantly worship from where you start from, I'm going to
declare him to you. This is that God. So you see
where he comes from? He starts where they are with
their philosophy and with their multi-faith religion. And he
says, I'm going to declare the true God to you, the one that
you don't know, the one who's made the world, verse 24, and
all things that are in it. Seeing that he is Lord of heaven
and earth, you can't put him in a box, you can't shut him
up in a temple, You can't make something for Him. You can't
make an image of Him. He's bigger than all of those
things. Your thoughts of God are altogether too small and
altogether too human. You need to have a bigger view.
This is the God of the universe that I'm declaring to you. The
one who upholds all things by the word of His power. He may
even have gone on to say that it's by the word of the power
of Christ as was written in the start of the epistle to the Hebrews.
And he says, neither is he worshipped with men's hands. It's not the
things that you do, as though he needed anything. It's not
that he needs us. We need him. He gives life to
all, and breath, and all things. And he's made of one blood, all
nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth. Now
you might think that 2,000 years of inquiry, and the last 150
to 200 years of detailed scientific investigation, might have cast
doubt on that, but it remains as true today as it was when
it was written of what Paul said. God has made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. The
genetic code which has been cracked in the last ten years does nothing
other than confirm that fact. All men of one blood to dwell
on the face of the earth. In fact, it is the one thing
that goes against so much that was wrong that went before in
terms of racial discrimination between races all men irrespective
of color of origin of nationality of language all men of one blood
to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined because he's
sovereign the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation
God has determined all of these things that they should seek
the Lord if happily if by chance they might feel after him and
find him For he's not far, because he's omnipresent, he's not far
from every one of us. For in him, if you're alive and
drawing breath, it's because it's in him and by his permission
we live and move and have our being. And he comes back to where
they are. Even some of your poets have
said the same thing. For we are also his offspring. For as much then, as we are the
offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is
an object of idolatry. like unto gold or silver or stone,
and graven by art and man's device." These ignorant thoughts God has
winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent. He commands all men everywhere
to repent. This was Paul's message. This
is our message to this society. God, the true God, who gives
you your breath, is commanding all men everywhere to repent.
Why? Because he has appointed a day in which He will judge
the world in righteousness. We all live in the jurisdiction
of the true God. This is what Paul is saying.
We all live in the jurisdiction of the true God. We're subject
to His laws. We're subject to His decrees.
We're subject to who He is. He gives us our breath. He gives
us our life. This is our message to this society. You may choose to deny it, but
it remains the truth. We're subject to Him. We live
within His jurisdiction. It's unknown to all by nature. Unknown to all just by nature,
by reason of their intellectual ability. People don't know that,
but it's true. And He's going to judge. He's
going to judge because we live within His jurisdiction. And
this is going to be the judgment. Look what it says in verse 31.
He's appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness
by that man whom He hath ordained. Not only will the judgment be
undertaken by Christ, the Lord of Glory, but the judgment will
be this. Are you in that man, the Lord
of Glory, or not? It will be against his measuring
stick. Are you in that man? That righteousness that's by
that man whom he has ordained. Are you in that man or not? This will be the judgment. You
see, he alone was raised never to die. He alone is the one who
has established the righteousness which God can accept and that
alone. He alone is the one who has paid
the sin debt in full without which each one of us will have
to pay our own sin debt and that can never be paid, never. And
therefore there's assurance in that man. Therefore there's true
righteousness in that man and in him alone. What is this righteousness? Just let me read a few words
to you from Romans chapter 3. You know them, they're familiar.
But nevertheless, verse 20. We know that by the deeds of
the law, the things we do, for this judgment no flesh shall
be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge
of sin. All that the law will do is condemn
us when that judgment comes and show us for what we are. But
now, The righteousness of God without the law is manifested,
made known, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. All
the scriptures speak of it. Even the righteousness of God
which is by faith of Jesus Christ. That's the yardstick against
which we're going to be judged. Are you in that man or not? Do
you have that righteousness upon you which is by faith of Jesus
Christ? His faithfulness in establishing
righteousness, in paying the sin debt, unto all and upon all
them that believe for there is no difference for all have sinned
as we stand we're all equally guilty and come short of the
glory of God but in Christ those who are in him are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption the purchase that
is in Christ Jesus whom God has set forth to be a propitiation
a turning away of anger an appeasing of the anger of God through faith
in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that
are past to declare I say at this time his righteousness that
he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus
this was the message to them and you know there are warnings
we could read in Luke 10 about the warnings where Jesus as he
went about on his ministry he said this I'm not going to delve
into it now for the sake of time but he said this it will be more
tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than it
will for some of the places that he went because he preached such
gracious words of salvation and they rejected it and oh how the
society in which we live needs to heed that warning it will
be better for Sodom and Gomorrah in that day than for some places
that have poured scorn and contempt and neglect on the truth and
the sovereign grace of God in Christ. So what was the response
then of these people? What was the response? Well,
of course, there were all sorts of responses. But they fall into
three categories here. Some mocked. Some mocked. When
they heard, verse 32, of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked. And so it will always be. Some
mocked. This is foolish. You know, to
the Greeks, foolishness. To the Gentiles, foolishness.
To the Jews, to the religious folks, a stumbling block. But
to the Gentiles, the Greeks, foolishness, and so some mocked.
What stupid thinking. It's anti-free thinking. It's
not tolerantly inclusive of everybody's views. It's restrictive. It's
archaic. It's contrary to our free-thinking
philosophy, and so they rejected it. But some said, we will hear
you again on this matter. There's more that we need to
know about this. Perhaps a bit like that man When Jesus said,
Do you believe? He said, Lord, I believe. Help
thou mine unbelief. Help me in my unbelief. Maybe
there are some around us that need our prayers, that God would
help their unbelief and bring them to a knowledge of the truth.
But in verse 34, how be it, certain men clave unto him and believed. Among them was Dionysius the
Aeropagite. Dionysius was the chief judge
at the Areopagus. We think he was the chief judge.
Dionysius, the chief judge, believed. God opened his heart. God opened
his eyes to see the truth of these things, to see the truth
of being right with God in and through Jesus Christ. And there
was Damaris, this woman, and others with them. So you see,
there he was, preaching in that godless, philosophical society,
but nevertheless, even there, there was a catch of fishes,
there was a catch of men. He opened some eyes and they
believed the truth and they came into the light and the joy of
believing the truth because isn't this what we want for the people
that we preach to? We're not doing this just because
we're on some cause that seems quite inexplicable. We want this because These are
the benefits. We read about them right at the
start and this is what I'm going to close with. Those verses in
Psalm 89. Blessed is the people that know
the joyful sound. Yes. Blessed is the people that
know that joyful sound of the Gospel of Grace. They shall walk,
O Lord, in the light of Thy countenance. In Thy name shall they rejoice
all the day, and in Thy righteousness shall they be exalted. For Thou
art the glory of their strength, and in Thy favor our horn shall
be exalted for the Lord is our defense and the Holy One of Israel
is our King. This is our prayer for people
all around us that they would come to that knowledge the joyful
sound and walk in the light of His countenance because that's
how to face the trials of this life and that's how to look forward
towards death and eternity and eternal life beyond it and the
judgment that is definitely to come knowing the joyful sound
in Jesus Christ and the resurrection and all that he has accomplished
through that well number 513 is our closing hymn 513