Reaching out for a good father |08.09.26| Acts: Mission on the Road pt.7
It's an honor to be up here preaching today and I want you to know here at New Life, we are a Bible-believing church. And so I won't waste your time with a bunch of niceties. I would ask you guys if you would be willing to grab your Bibles. We're gonna be opening up to the book of Acts following along with our series.(...) We're gonna be in Acts chapter 17 starting in verse 16.(...) That'll be on page 105 if you're using the Pew Bible.
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And I would ask that you all rise as you are able for the reading of God's word.
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And while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols.
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And so he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worship God as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there.
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Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, "What is this ignorant show off trying to say?"(...) Others replied, "Well, he seems to be a preacher of foreign deities because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection."
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They took him and brought him to the Areopagus and said, "May we learn about this new teaching you are presenting?(...) Because what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these things mean."
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Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else, but telling or hearing something new.
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Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, "People of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect.(...) For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed to an unknown God. Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He does not live in shrines made by hands, neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.(...) From one man, he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.
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He did this so that they might seek God and perhaps might reach out and find him,(...) though he is not far from each one of us.(...) For in him, we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring."
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Since then, we are God's offspring. We shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.
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Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere repent because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.
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When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, "We'd like to hear from you again about this." So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysus, the Areopagite, a woman named Demaris, and others with them.(...) Beloved, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may have a seat. (Audience Chuckling)
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So Paul is waiting for Timothy and Silas. We're picking up right on the heels of where Pastor Drew left off last week. He has been chased out of Berea.
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So while Paul is waiting, he is deeply distressed when he sees that the city is full of idols.(...) And I wanna make sure at the beginning of this, I clearly define exactly what that means, what that means for Paul. See, these people are breaking the first commandment of God(...) to have no other gods. There is distinction between a capital G God, the God, the true God, Yahweh, and a lowercase G God, which you can insert whatever else you place in that position of worship is a lowercase G God, but it is a false God.
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A God that somebody has created, this is a God is something that someone has created that is other than,
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it's the thing that Luther explains in the Catechism, the thing in which you take refuge in all distress. So to have a God is nothing other than trusting and believing in him with all your heart. It's helpful to say that the confidence and faith of the heart alone makes both God and idol. It's the same thing.
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So if your faith is true and right, then your God is also true.
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But if your faith is wrong, then you have an idol, a false God.
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The purpose, as Luther explains, is he says, it's like saying, "See to it that I alone am your God." This is for God, that I alone am your God. You seek none other.(...) In other words, whatever you lack in goodness and good things, expect it from me.
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Look to me for it. And whenever you suffer misfortune or distress, crawl and cling to me for it.
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Again, the purpose of the first commandment is to require true faith and trust of the heart, which settles only on the true God and clings to him alone.
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So(...) Paul reasons with them in the synagogue and also in the marketplace every day.(...) I want you to remember, Paul has just come from Thessalonica where he is driven out because he's disrupting the power structures. They threaten him with death. And so he leaves and he goes to Berea where some people listen, they wanna hear more, but the(...) leaders from Thessalonica show up and they chase him out too in Berea. And so he leaves there and he goes to Athens. While he's waiting,(...) he goes to the synagogue. He reasons with them in the synagogue, but also in the marketplace to all the others.
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And it's the message, not Paul himself, but it's the message that he is preaching that is getting him persecuted.(...) And the message he's preaching is this, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, crucified for the forgiveness of sins and resurrected to the glory of God.
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And so he shows up in Athens and does it again.(...) Not just when he first gets there, but every single day, he preaches this message.
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And it seems that for Paul,(...) since encountering Christ, every place he goes becomes a pulpit and an opportunity to preach the gospel.(...) So some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, they debated with him and they said, "What does this ignorant show off trying to say?" And the word that's actually used in the Greek means a seed picker. See, Paul decides that he's going to immerse himself in their culture so that he can connect with them better so that he can communicate the gospel. And so he learns some Epicurean philosophy, some Stoic philosophy. He learns about these objects of their worship.
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And he knows that when he shares the gospel,
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it's not gonna end up much different than it did the places he had been past, that people will persecute him.
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We talk about who's your one here at New Life. Who's your one that's close to you, but far from God. We experience what Paul is experiencing here when we think about our one.
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I wanna ask you guys to raise hands, but I'll tell you from my personal experience, I have a one, I have some ones. And sometimes when I ought to share the gospel, boldly live out the gospel boldly, and I'm around my one, I kind of shell up
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because they might think of me differently or they might see the conflicting natures that I have of being in Christ, but also still falling victim to sin. And so I know that if they call me a Epicure, that doesn't feel good. And so I'll just kind of(...) maybe share a little bit. Paul(...) feels temptation too,(...) yet he stands on his convictions. He knows that preaching the resurrection of the dead will get him persecuted.(...) He knows that the Stoics believe that God is this force of nature rather than the creator of nature, and the Epicureans believe that they should just indulge themselves. God is far off anyway and doesn't really partake in the human life, the day-to-day life. So what he's preaching, what we believe, is completely contrary to what they believe.
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So it would be like this today. It would be as if you went to the House of Congress. You got the people on the right, you got the people on the left, you got this opportunity to share the gospel with these people with differing philosophies, differing worldviews, and you know, when you stand up there in front of all of them, you're gonna upset each and every one of them.
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And Paul stands on his convictions, and he does it anyway.
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So(...) he proclaims(...) that God(...) is a real being,(...) he's a real God, not just something you made. He came down to the real earth.
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You're really here too. He really died(...) for you, and he really came back to life, to the glory of God.
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Now,(...) this was crazy for them to hear. And so they decided, we're gonna take them to the Areopagus, this epicenter of human thought. So they take them to the Areopagus and said, "Wait, may we learn about these new teachings "that you are presenting? "Because what you say is strange to us, "and we just wanna know what it means."
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And all the Athenians there, and all the foreigners, they spent their time on nothing else, except telling or hearing something new.
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We live in a culture that is very much the same, where we spend our time searching, seeking for something new. There is no shortage of new information. We're overwhelmed by our Facebook feeds. We have Facebook stories, we can check out Instance, then we can go to Marketplace, and when we're done searching all through Facebook for something new, then we just hop over to Instagram, or TikTok, or YouTube, or what's on the TV. There is no shortage of new information. And that's not all bad.
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All this knowledge,(...) we can seek good advice, and that can be helpful, and it can help us create actionable steps.
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And those steps can help us reach our goals. But the problem is when those goals of ours become idols, when they become our God,(...) we fall into idolatry.
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And when we do that, we are left wanting.(...) That's why you go back to Facebook, and Instagram, and your new shows, because you always want more, because what you have consumed is not enough to satiate. It is not enough to fill the God-sized hole inside of you.
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The book of Ecclesiastes says this well, I've always liked this, it says it's all vanity. It's like chasing the wind.
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Have you ever tried to chase the wind?
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You chase it, you reach out, you grab hold of it, you look in your hands and see what you got, you still have nothing.(...) And so you're left to just go chase something else, chase some more wind, grab hold(...) of nothing.
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And(...) what we need, what these people need, is not more new things. They don't need good advice, they need good news.(...) It's the same for you, you need good news.(...) And Paul demonstrates for us a masterclass on evangelism in this moment.
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So Paul stands in the middle of the Areopagus and said, people of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect.
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He's,(...) he recognizes this. You guys all know that this is true. We(...) talk about it all the time. You're all made in the image and likeness of God.
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But that's also true for people who don't yet believe.
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And those people are worth something, they're worth something to God. And so if they're worth something to God, and you love God, very similar to when you love your friends, you become more like your friends. When you love God, you become more like God. That's the process of sanctification. And when we align our hearts with God, we start to love the people that he loves. Those people are worth our time. They're worth the sacrifice of our efforts.
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Paul says in a later letter, he says, I've become all things to all people so that some might be saved.
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He puts a lot of time and effort into this(...) because people are worth it.
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And(...) he again, later reflects in Galatians chapter six, right after the fruit of the spirit. He says, you who are spiritual ought to correct them with a spirit of gentleness.
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I want you guys to think about the last time that somebody yelled at you,
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belittled you,(...) made fun of you, and then changed your mind. They changed your mind by doing that.(...) That's the same thing that Paul's saying here.
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You're not gonna change someone by(...) poking and prodding and making fun of them. You do it with a spirit of gentleness, a demonstration of who Jesus is.
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And so Paul does that here.
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He says, I was passing through and I was observing these objects of your worship. They're(...) pretty, they're something.(...) I can tell that you put a lot of time, effort, and energy into these things. And when we share Jesus too, we can appreciate what other people put their time, effort, and energy into. We can align ourselves with them,
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but then Paul doesn't leave them there. Again, he knows that there's a better way of life. There's a better way of life for us too.(...) He says, these things that you put your time, energy, and effort into,(...) and then this unknown God that he talks about, like, I know you wanna make sure that everything's safe, everything's gonna be okay, and so you appease all the gods by making sacrifices. And I even see you have one that is an unknown God, just in case you forgot(...) that if he comes back, he won't judge you. Well, this is the God that I wanna tell you about.
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He is the true God. All of these other gods, all of these other things that you sacrifice for, for provision and happiness, and(...) they're all one God.(...) This is one God.
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He says, this is who I proclaim to you.
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His name is Jesus Christ.
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Every other God is false.
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He was there in the beginning.
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He was there before the beginning,
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and he created all things, and all things were created through him and for him.
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This is who the God-man is, who the unknown God is.
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He has made the world and everything in it.
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And,
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he continues,(...) he is not served by human hands,(...) as though he needed anything.
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He says, this God that you're sacrificing to, all these other gods, they demand your time. They demand your efforts, your energy.
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This God, this real God,(...) he gives you his time. He gives you his energy and his efforts. He gives his only son for you.(...) This is who God is.
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So, he goes on to explain, because Paul, Paul typically, when he's pleading with the people in the synagogues, he has his life's experience, his expertise in the scriptures, but these people don't have the scriptures. They don't believe in that God, in that true God. All they understand is the natural world around them. And so, Paul starts here with explaining who God is through nature and our understanding of what it means to be.
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He says, clearly we came from somewhere.
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We hear this argument too. Well, maybe a couple of molecules like rub together and we're energized and all of a sudden life happened.
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I think it's more likely that life came from life. I know that it's more likely that life came from life. It is God who created you, and he created you on purpose for a purpose.
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And we have to remember that scripture is written to a particular group of people at a particular group of time, but it's also authored by the Holy Spirit and it is for you as well. So he's writing to the people of Athens, or Paul is preaching to the people of Athens, but the Spirit is speaking to you as well.
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He says, you are here for a reason. You are in Sterling, Illinois, or Rock Falls or Morrison, or wherever you find home, wherever you work or play or do your things wherever you live life, God has placed you there.(...) It's not an accident.
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Why is this?
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So that they might seek God,
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and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. This is the God who created us. He has created us good. He has created us very good, yet sin has separated us from him.
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But it does not take away the nature in which we were created, the nature in which we ought to reach out and cling to God.
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But without knowing him, we're reaching out and we're grabbing hold of things that do not sustain us. We are grabbing hold of false gods.
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Parents, you(...) get this phase of life that I'm in. I hope you can appreciate it. My daughter, she's wonderful, and she's a little clumsy and maybe a little, probably uncoordinated is the better word for it. She's always reaching out and grabbing. She just learned how to walk last month, so she just kind of like, she walks around like this, you know what I mean? She grabs hold of something and she sees someone she wants to walk to. Well, then she goes and finds something, she picks it up. She's like, "Oh, I bet that tastes good." And she tries to eat it.
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You guys are like, "That's not good." You can't, yeah, no, not good. So the small child is reaching out, grabbing hold of things. She has no idea it's not good for her. She's trying to consume things that could kill her.
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And we do the same thing.
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My mother-in-law, bless her heart, she's a good woman.
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My daughter fell one day(...) and she cries.(...) And my mother-in-law, she scoops her up. She wants to be good grandma. She is a good grandma. She scoops her up and still, Elise cries. And she's still reaching. She's looking for that safety and security. And I reach out and I take her(...) and she clings to me. She clings to her father. She clings to the source of comfort. And(...) dads out here, I want to remind you for a moment, the honor and privilege that you have, the calling on your life that you have to be an image bearer of God,
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to represent to your children the love and the character of God.
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I cannot understate that enough. I can't overstate that enough. I don't wanna understate that. The relationship between a father and his child
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is the closest thing that we get to experience to our relationship with God the Father.
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And we grow up(...) and we would like to think that we leave our dependency on our father behind.
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Like children,(...) we're too proud to admit that we don't know everything. We can't do everything on our own.
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But this God that created us(...) did not do so in order to be an absent father.
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He is a father who wants to give good gifts to his children. He created us to be holy and entirely, completely dependent on him, not the other way around.
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God is about as dependent on me as I am dependent on my one-year-old daughter.
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And when we begin to really understand who our Father in heaven is, we understand what Paul says previously as if he needed anything.
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The very nature of God demonstrates as the creator of all things who is self-sufficient, he does not rely on his creation,
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but rather his character and his abundance of love is poured out over it.
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Parents, again, you get this. You get what it looks like to be full of love and compassion and want to just shower it over your children.
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This is who God is. He is not far off. He is a father who chases around after his children, making sure they're safe, making sure they're secure. He is not far off.
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And since then, we are God's offspring. We shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, and imagine an image imagined or created by human hands. Saying, you guys get this. You're understanding how the world works, but nobody has proclaimed this to you, and so here I am.
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He says you have not created God with your own hands. If that were the case,
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the outcome of your sacrifice at best(...) would be the fruit of your own labor.
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At worst, you're opening yourself up to spirits that only want to steal, kill, and destroy, but God, being a good father, has made us one of his own and adopted us through the waters of baptism.(...) So Paul continues, he says, therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people repent.
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I feel like we get this word mixed up a bit, repent. It sounds like a heaping on of shame. You all know how awful you are when you think about your sin and you're left to sit in your shame, and it makes you want to hold onto it so nobody sees it.
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That's not(...) what repent means, and non-Christians get this messed up. They say Christians are, they have all these rules, but they don't follow them themselves, and so why should I even consider?
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Repentance, though,(...) is what we all need. Yes, we are hypocrites. We try to follow the true God, and we stumble and we fall, and he wants to pick us up and soothe us, and so he offers us repentance. He offers us his mercy through repentance.
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In 2 Corinthians chapter three, it says, for to this day, when people read the word,
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a veil remains over their eyes. It is not lifted unless they are in Christ, and when we are in Christ, we realize(...) that the law is not meant to shame us.
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When we compare ourselves to the laws and the rules of God,
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we realize how utterly dependent we are.(...) It's like we have a ledger that we can compare ourselves to his law and where we fall short, and when we look at that ledger, we also see that it has been paid in full
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by the person and work of Jesus Christ.
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The law points us to Jesus,
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and so we should turn to him. We should repent, we should turn to him and cling to him alone.(...) That is what repentance is, and here's why it is important.
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Because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world.
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He's going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed, that is Jesus, and he has provided proof of this
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by raising him from the dead.
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Jesus is our Lord and our Savior, that is who we proclaim, but you cannot have a Savior unless you need saved.
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And it's just as true today as it was 2,000 years ago when Paul preached it, Jesus is coming back soon.
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And this time when he comes back, he will be a judge.
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But(...) for those that eat of the flesh of Christ and drink his blood, they will be raised up on the last day.
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This is what Paul proclaims to these people, and he starts preaching the resurrection of the dead, and they mock him again, and they ridicule him again.
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But Paul stands on his convictions. He doesn't soften it to make it more palatable.
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Paul knows his mission(...) to proclaim the word of God.
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Now, this is a hard thing that I'm sure he dealt with. I deal with it.
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It is my job to proclaim the word of God,
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but I cannot make anybody receive it.(...) Paul cannot make anybody receive the word of God. And when you proclaim the word of God to your one, when you live out the gospel to your one,(...) it seems like it is such a high calling,(...) but remember that it is Christ alone through the Spirit that transforms hearts. (Audience Murmuring)
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And we read, "Only a few, only a few repented and followed." So there's this whole ordeal in Thessalonica. There's this whole ordeal in Berea. Paul becomes all things to all people so that some might be saved.
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He does this again in Athens.
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For some. (Audience Murmuring) Now,(...) I wanna talk to(...) the sinners in this room that are like me.(...) When Paul says,(...) "I know the things that I should do,
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"and I know the things that I shouldn't do,
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"and yet I do the things that I shouldn't do,(...) "and then I don't do the things that I should do. "I'm just stuck in this sin, "and I can't get away from it no matter how hard I try."
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If that's you,
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I want you to understand what Jesus said. From the words of God himself,
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"There will be more rejoicing in heaven(...) "over one sinner(...) who repents "than over 99 righteous persons."
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Here in a moment, we will continue our service with an opportunity for confession and absolution
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where truly you are absolved. If you repent, you are absolved from your sin.
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I think that a lot of times we try to hold back because we're afraid to put our sin out in the open, but the reality is God sees you.
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You don't have to hide anything.
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He sees the sin, he is not surprised, but he wants to take your shame too.
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And that's why we do it every Sunday. That's why we ought to do it every day, that we should repent every day and cling to him.
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Oh,
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again, I have a one-year-old daughter,(...) and almost one should be one in two weeks.(...) She has been my alarm clock every single day for about the past year. I've got a baby monitor by my bed,
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and since maybe she was six months, she learned to say "da-da." Like,
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just melted me.
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And then she learned how to use "da-da."
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She cries out in the morning, "da-da,(...) da-da."
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And to wake up to that is just a joy. And so I go upstairs,
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and now she's learned to stand, and she's learned how to move, and she puts herself on the edge of the crib, closest to the door, "da-da." See?
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It just melts me.
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And when I walk into her room in the morning, the first thing I see is her face and her arms reaching up.
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"Da-da, da-da."
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And it fills me with such joy.
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And Jackson and Grace, too, when they wake up, the first place they come is to me, and they have their arms open reaching for their dad.
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And I'm a flawed man. I'm not perfect,
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but for me,
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an imperfect father,
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if I can rejoice in my children reaching out and clinging to me,(...) how much more does our Father in heaven rejoice when we reach out and cling to him?
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Let's pray.
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Heavenly Father,(...) thank you for being a good dad.
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Thank you for your presence(...) every day.(...) Thank you for your protection(...) every day.
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And thank you for your provision(...) every day.(...) Lord, you give us what we need,(...) even when we don't know what we need.
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Lord, give us eyes for the lost.
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Give us courage and boldness to share the gospel with them.
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And Lord, give us the peace of knowing that it is you alone who save,
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that you are the one who transforms hearts.
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We pray this all in the name of the crucified and resurrected Christ.
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Amen.