Five Indisputable Facts Leading to One
Indomitable Motivation for Missions
Acts 17
By Dr. Harry L. Reeder III
Greetings from your sister church. We have the great privilege to do a lot of things together and not just simply through the denomination but in relationships. Your previous pastor was the chairman of my ordination council and a mentor and your present pastor is a dear friend and I cannot tell you what a great counselor he is on so many issues. And also I've had the opportunity to know many and have a lot of friends here. I want to invite you all over. I get to see some of you because some of you have students that go to school over in Birmingham and so I get to see you every once in a while. The rest of you, I invite you over. While you’re there, I’ll show you the permanent sight of the NCAA national championship trophy where we house it. Oh, that's didn't seem to go over too good here! But did you know, by the way, I have to quell a rumor, the pope did not resign because Notre Dame lost to Alabama. There are some that think that's the case but that's not the case. Listen, it's great to be with y’all.
I want to read a text of Scripture for you and then I want to have a word of prayer, but I want to go ahead and get something up front pretty quickly. I have a great desire that you, just like I'm praying it right now for my own congregation because we're in the midst of our three week long Missions Conference and I preached to start it last week, Michael Oh this week, we’ll bring it to culmination next week, and I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you what I'm praying for us — that we will be personally engaged. We’re not going to get the Great Commission done without personal engagement. People have got to go, people have got to send, people need to go on short-term mission trips, people need to be on the world missions team here, people need to be thinking about whether their children or whether they should, in the second half of their live, be a cross-cultural missionary. We need intercessory prayer. We have got to have an unstoppable, relentless commitment to intercessory prayer. So I'm praying, how can you personally engage and prayerfully engage, and of course Faith Promise — “Lord, what do we believe, me and my family, what do we believe that You are going to give to us? And we promise, faith promise, we promise what You give to us, it's going to get through us for world evangelism.”
But I want to go a little bit further than that. There are some of us who have labored, at least I did for years, so maybe you’re not there, I labored for years — “Lord, here's my lifestyle. I want to be faithful with the tithe and I know I haven't given anything just by giving the tithe; that's just being faithful. I want to give beyond the tithe, so how can we sacrifice?” So I would look at our lifestyle and then we would make those decisions. I am praying that you and I might begin, at least begin, to develop a whole different perspective, a whole different set of lenses, a whole different paradigm to this. And that is, instead of saying, “Lord, here is the way I live in this world, now, for the sake of the kingdom, here's what I want to do.” I would like for us to start thinking this way. “Lord, here's the way I'm going to live for the kingdom in this world.” It's not, “I'm going to live by the world's drumbeat and then sacrifice for the kingdom, I'm going to live in light of kingdom values, commitments, commission, calling, opportunity, and then I’ll fit into the world.” It's not, “I'm going to live in light of how the world directs and then fit something in the kingdom, I want to live for the kingdom and then I’ll live in the world but not of it; in it but not of it.”
Look with me in this text of Scripture where a man who lived that kind of life that the Lord used displays in Acts chapter 17. I am going to read this in two sections. Look with me in the first part, verse 16. He arrives in a place called Athens. We had a great opportunity to hear from the missionary that you have supported all these years, Mrs. Baldwin there.
“Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked” — interesting word. It just means he just went into a somewhat of a controlled movement of anger. He was irritated when he saw something. Now what was it that he saw that irritated him?
“His spirit was provoked within him” — when? “as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, ‘What does this babbler wish to say?’ Others said, ‘He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities’ — because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.’ Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”
Join me in prayer.
Father, thank You for these moments in Your Word. Paul arrives at an unbelievably important historic city. Now Father, we need to learn from him today. We need to learn how You moved him, why he moved, what he did, and how he did what he did so that we, at First Pres. Jackson, and Lord, please allow me, even though I'm in their pulpit, to pray for Briarwood, that we would embrace in life the Great Commission, not embrace the world and accommodate the Great Commission, but that we would hear the marching orders of the King to His church to extend His kingdom throughout all the world. And today, help us to understand why this is crucial. Father, the one who preaches is utterly incapable, so would You be so pleased by Your Spirit to bring Your Word through the teacher to these Your people. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Well keep your Bibles open there to Acts chapter 17. Now I know you probably looked at the thing and said, “My goodness, look at the title! Five indisputable facts that you can know about every person you meet and it leads to one indomitable motivation for missions.” And you say, “My goodness, the title's that long, how long is the sermon going to be?” Well here's the good news — the sermon is mostly the title so it's mostly done already. Just let me kind of fill in around it a little bit with you.
But you've got to have the setting. The setting is, the apostle Paul has just arrived. Now there was a church like this church. It was the church of Antioch. When they sent out their missionaries they didn't send out the people they just couldn't find a job for; they sent their two best, Barnabas and Saul. And they went out on the first missionary journey and they planted churches. Then they go out on a second missionary journey and they plant churches and do evangelism and do discipleship and go back and revitalize the churches they had planted on the first missionary journey. And then the apostle Paul kind of gets to this place, “Where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?” And he tries to head south in Asia Minor and the Lord stops him. And then he kind of looks north and the Lord stops him and the Lord is sending him west. And then he gets this Macedonian call so he takes the Gospel from Asia Minor, less than twenty-five years after the ascension of Jesus, begins to turn the world upside down in the continent of Europe. And he goes to Neopolis and he goes to Philippi. In Thessalonica he runs into an extreme persecution that comes against him and they’re trying to kill them and they’re trying to imprison them and then kill them and the Lord intervenes for him. And he moves on from Thessalonia down to Berea and he's favorably received there and the noble-minded Bereans, “they received the word with much eagerness, examining the Scriptures to see if these things be so.” But those at Thessalonica, they were not content with the things that they had done against him to try to run him out there, but the church was continuing in Thessalonia, so the guy who got that church started, they didn't want him to have any more success, so they come after him in Berea.
And eventually, he leaves his team, Timothy and Silas, there at Berea, and he takes a ship and he goes down by the sea and he arrives as the port and he gets off of the ship and he steps into this unbelievable city. The first thing that he's going to see is probably the Acropolis that rises up over the city, the Acropolis — the hill of the city. And it is there, that Acropolis, as he looks to it, he will begin to see the Parthenon, that temple that is erected to the goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom. And he would see Nike — that's Nike not Nike; that's Nike. I remember when my son came to me with the first pair of shoes, athletic shoes, and he said, “Dad, I need me some Nike's.” And I said, “How much are they?” And he said, “Dad” — he told me the price, which, my goodness, we had to come up with something else because we had to keep a kingdom lifestyle here and that wasn't going to work, so I try to get theological. I said, “Son, you’re a Nike, you don't need to buy Nike. You’re a super-Nike. You’re more than a conqueror so you don't need that.”
He saw the conqueror god, Nike. He saw the Aries or Mars. He saw the Hill of Mars. He saw all of those things. In fact, there's one street that has been restored today that he would have walked down and it was just utterly lined with idols all up and down. In fact, there would even be one to an unknown god. And as he looks at all of this — in fact, what I just read, just kind of look. What is Paul's reaction? Here this is the place that sent Alexander out to conquer the world. Here, this is the place where Aristotle and Plato and Socrates had done their work. Now it was the burgeoning philosophy of Epicureanism and Stoicism. In other words, Jerusalem has now come to Athens. Moses and Elijah and David fulfilled in Christ through Paul, has come to Socrates and Aristotle and Plato. And there he sees the grand beauty of paganism. But he doesn't have the eyes of a tourist. He's got a different set of eyes. And when he sees all of this, he is not awed. Paul would be appreciative of beauty but he's not awed. What he sees is at the bottom of it, that underbelly of rebellion against God, that underbelly of idolatria, the worship of idols, he sees all of that underneath it, he sees what it produced, he sees where it's going, and he sees that it stands against the glory and the honor of the Lord God. So when he has that reaction he then goes into action. The missionary comes to Athens.
And so the first thing he sees is this city. He sees Jew and Gentile. “Well, where am I going to reach the Jew? I’ll go to the synagogue.” And he goes to the synagogue and he arrives at the synagogue. And he begins to reason with them concerning Christ and the resurrection and the glories of the fulfillment of all the promises of God in Jesus of Nazareth who is the risen Savior. And then he wants to read Gentiles. “Well, if I can find the Jews at the synagogue, I can find the Gentiles at the mall.” So he goes to the marketplace. He goes to the agora. He goes to the marketplace and he begins to interact with them and he begins to explain to them who they are, what they need, and who Christ is and how He alone is the answer to the issue of sin in their life. And he catches the ear of the culture shapers of the day, the philosophers of the day. So they want to ask him some questions about what he's saying. So the apostle Paul begins to reason with the Epicureans and the Stoics. Well the Athenians, there's Paul, he has a reaction and an action, and the Athenians, they have a reaction. Some are becoming believers — Jew and Gentile. And the philosophers of the day, they begin to wonder about what he's preaching and what he's teaching. This is strange. But we're going to stop here. It is. The Gospel is absolutely unique.
I remember when I was saved and converted and I went to East Carolina. And I was at East Carolina and I went to a comparative religion course and I realized that is absolute intellectual dishonesty to put Christianity in a comparative religion course because it is absolutely unique. Every religion in this world ultimately tells you what you've got to do or give to get to heaven. What you’re got to do or give to get to heaven. Christianity stands absolutely unique. It doesn't tell you what you've got to do or give to get to heaven. It tells you that heaven is given and done what needed to be done take you to heaven. God has given His Son. And they are hearing this unique message and they say, “You know, if this doesn't fit on our idol rogue. This doesn't fit in our temples. So come on up and talk to us.” So they bring them up to the place where the culture is shaped, where they’ll determine, “Are we going to allow this religion to be a part of the Athenian culture or not?” And so he goes up there to defend the faith and what happens?
Well look at the next verse with me where I quit reading. Look with me at verse 22:
So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made them one man from every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for”
You know interestingly, he quotes an Epicurean philosopher and a Stoic philosopher. And you know, some people always say, “Well why would he quote a philosopher since that's profane theology? Philosophers don't have it right.” Well, you know, by God's common grace, people who are unconverted that are thinking about things can get something right every once in a while. And it's just like a clock — I want to assure you your clock is working up here this morning — a clock, a broken clock, I wouldn't trust it, I wouldn't build my life on it, but it's still going to be right twice a day. So he picks where they got something right. And he says, “Even your own philosophers say what?”:
‘In him we live and move and have our being;’ as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed to all by raising him from the dead.’
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this.’ So Paul went out from their midst. Some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius and Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.”
Very interestingly. So you've got Paul's reaction and then his action — evangelism and discipleship, first aiming at the Jew and then to the Gentile. Then the philosophers are listening in on the marketplace so they bring him up to where the culture-shapers of the day would meet. And he arrives there and he then gives this great defense of the faith and the reaction of the Athenians is not only, “Do we want to hear?” some actually believe, some are curious, “We want to hear more,” and some reject. And that's the process. That's what takes place there. In the midst of this, there are five things that become unassailable facts that you can know. When you leave here today, when these missionaries leave here today and go to Greece or go back to Trinity Gardens or wherever you go. Or this week, when you go to your work, when you go to your neighborhood, when you go to your school, when you go to your athletic teams, this text gives you five indisputable facts that you know about every single person that you meet.