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But the thing that catches his attention, the thing that he really notices is that Athens is full of idols. The author of the book of Acts is Luke. Luke also wrote a Gospel. He was the physician that accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys and he also describes the idolatry of Athens. He uses the word that is unique to the New Testament and is found nowhere else in Greek literature. It is catadolos and different versions translate it, covered in idols, smothered in idols, full of idols, or swamped with idols. Now at the time, Athens was quite a large city but just to give you an idea of the population of the world, it was a city of 10,000 which would now be considered a village, but at the time it was a very large city. And historians have been able to document that there were about 30,000 idols in the city of Athens. That's three for every person. Why? Well, we're naturally idolatrous. John Calvin said our hearts are idol factories. One of the reasons for the idols is people still were afraid of what happened in the flood and they wanted to make sure that their bases were covered, that there wasn't any God that they had left out who might take offense and judge them similarly. So Paul's in Athens, he's waiting for the arrival of Silas in Timothy and Luke says when he observed the idolatry in the city, he was greatly distressed. Other versions say he was provoked. Paul's distress was motivated by the same thing that motivates God's anger, the glory of God. The Bible describes God as a jealous God. Did you know that? Jealous for his own glory, jealous of his own name, the Bible also says that God created man in his own image and the image bearer of God, as an image bearer of God, we should worship him. The Bible also teaches that God loves the nations and it would seem that the nations were in the city of Athens, which is not unlike Halifax. In our church alone we have people worshipping who are from Ukraine, China, Vietnam, Korea, Brazil, and even the United States. So when large numbers of people all living in the city are given over to idolatry, God is provoked. In Exodus 34 he says, my name is jealous. Verse 10, then the Lord said, I'm making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people who you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the Lord, will do for you. Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Parazites, Hivites, and Jebusites. Careful not to make treaty with those who live in the land where you are going or they will be a snare among you. Break down their altars. Smash their sacred stones. Cut down their asherah poles. Do not worship any other God for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God. Finally, in that same passage, the Lord says, do not make any idols. So Paul, like God, is greatly distressed for the same reasons. The honor and the glory of God are being smeared by the idolatry of the city and if we think about it it won't take long to realize that Athens is no different than most large cities in this regard. New York, London, Mexico City, LA, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, or Halifax. So how does Paul respond? How does he respond when he sees a city full of idols? Well his first response is God-ward. He's concerned for the glory and reputation of God first. It's not different than other situations in the Bible. We all remember the story of David when he confronted Goliath. He was sent by his father to bring sustenance to his older brothers who were all camped out opposite of the Philistines and Goliath would come out every day and challenge the Philistines, I'm sorry, the Israelites to send out their warrior, their man, who would fight against Goliath and Goliath would taunt them because they were afraid to send somebody out. But David confronted Goliath and said, you come against me with sword and spear and javelin but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. Isaiah when he was confronted with God in the temple said, I am a man of unclean lips I live among a people of unclean lips. Nehemiah when he saw the condition of the city fasted and prayed. So Nehemiah, Isaiah, David and Paul when confronted with things which are displeasing to God in Paul's case idolatry, his response is the same as God's response. But his second response is toward the people. Now you might think what he would be condemning but he isn't, he's gracious. He doesn't condemn them, he doesn't rail against them but neither does he tell them that their false beliefs in God are just fine. I think that's the mistakes a lot of us can make as Christians in a multicultural secular society we want to be gracious but we also don't want to validate false beliefs about God. So what did he do? He reasoned with them. After all this is the city of the philosophers. In proportion to its size it's very likely the most learned, most civilized, most philosophical, highly educated, artistic, intellectual population on the face of the globe. Kind of like Halifax. But what was it in a religious point of view? The city of Wiseman like Socrates and Plato and Solon and Pericles and Democethenes, the city of Acheles, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, the city of the mind and the intellect and the art and the taste and yet it was full of idolatry. And more than anything else in the city, in this great city with all of its art, with all of its learning, with all of its culture and education, what Paul noticed most was the idolatry. JC Ryle wrote, a mere artist visiting Athens for the first time would doubtless have been absorbed in the beauty of its buildings. A statesman or orator would have called up the memory of Pericles. A literary man would have thought of Sophocles or Plato. A merchant would have gazed upon the perius, its harbor and the sea. But an apostle of Christ had far higher thoughts. One thing above all others swallowed up all of his attention and made everything else look small. But one thing was the spiritual condition of the Athenian people, the state of their souls. The great apostle of the Gentiles was imminently a man of one thing. Like his divine master, he was always thinking about his father's business. He stood in Athens and thought of nothing so much as Athenian souls. Like Moses and Phineas and Elijah, his spirit was stirred within him when he saw the city holy given to idolatry. Now his teaching caught the attention of some of the citizens who had brought him to the Areopagus. The Areopagus was a large forum for discussion and debate. Now you have to remember that at this time there weren't things like the internet. You couldn't have conversations online. You couldn't watch the news on your favorite streaming service. You couldn't watch television. You couldn't even listen to the radio. There weren't even newspapers or journals. So if you wanted the news, if you wanted the latest of what was happening in Athens or Greece or throughout the known world, you had to go to the Areopagus to what's called the marketplace. And marketplace can sort of give the false impression that this was a place where you went to buy things, but it wasn't. It was a place where you went to learn things. And so that's where people went. If they wanted to hear the latest ideas, if they wanted to have a discussion or a debate. But even there he's gracious. And how is he gracious? He enters their story. That's how he reasons with them. Remember he saw an altar that said to the unknown God. And he doesn't say, you foolish Greeks, you have this all wrong. Let me tell you how it is. No, he enters their story. Why do they have a monument to the unknown God? Well, as we talked about before, the flood of Noah was a story told throughout every known civilization. They may not have said Noah, but they knew about a flood. They believed that it was caused by disobedience to God. And so they were fearful. And they wanted to make sure that even though they had 30,000 idols that they could name, they wanted to make sure their bases were covered. They wanted to make sure that there was not a God they were offending. So the unknown God was to any God that might notice us. To any God that would protect us from fear, from flood, from famine, from war, from disease. Now you might think, we're too sophisticated for idols. Why are we talking about this? I mean, nobody has graven images anymore, do they? But the people didn't think they were worshipping the stone or the metal, they were worshipping the God it represented. Every culture looks to something to save it or to rescue it. The Greeks had the idol of beauty, Aphrodite, the idol of reason, Athena, the idol of money, Artemis. See, when you take a good thing, because beauty and reason and money can all be good things, when you take a good thing and you make it an ultimate thing, you create an idol. Well, how do we do that? I'm going to mention three kinds of idols. Personal idols, religious idols, and cultural idols. First, personal idols. Money. The Greeks were so concerned about their economic well-being, they would actually make child sacrifices to the God Artemis. You might think, we would never do that. We would never sacrifice our children, sacrifice our family for money. And yet people do it all the time. They work so many hours that they ignore their spouse, they ignore their children if they have any. Or, they sacrifice their unborn child on the altar of convenience. Which, that's what it is, is child sacrifice. It's saving you from embarrassment, it's saving you from economic responsibility, saving you from physical pain. All of those things are more important to the person who is having an abortion than the baby. It's idolatry. Another personal idol is romance. It's very powerful. For some it might be romance, for some it's just sex. Many young people profess faith in Christ until they find a romantic partner and they're willing to violate God's laws and commands in order to have that person. They might go much of their teenage and early 20s and say, I'm going to make sure that whoever I end up with is a Christian believer, a strong believer, because that's what I want. But then they meet, they don't find the right person, they meet somebody that's not a Christian and they compromise and they fall in love and they're willing to abandon their faith to be with that person. They say they won't abandon their faith, but they almost always do. Their God is romance or companionship. Their idols have no boundaries and they are slave masters and they can do anything they want you to do. Another idol, personal idol, is our children. We have six of them. And believe me, there were times where our children were our idols or what people thought of our children were our idols. I can remember when our son John was a second year student at university, David was the second year or grade 11 student, or was it 12? Grade 12 student in high school. Daniel was grade 10 in high school and this is what was happening. John was on track to graduate a year early. David was on the TV show American Idol and Daniel was hitting 350 foot home runs as a high school baseball player. People looked at our family and they said, wow, you must be doing something right. But John ended up being bipolar and schizophrenic and Dan ended up having problems with drugs. Some of you know the rest of her story. You see so at one point people would have looked at us and said, boy, you are wonderful parents. Look at how your kids are doing so well. Just two or three years later they could have looked at us and said, what did you do? What did you do wrong? We didn't do anything different. And you see if our children are our idols it would be crushing. It would ruin us and it almost did. If your children are your idols and they don't do well or they are injured or worse yet if they are killed then you are crushed completely. That doesn't mean we're not supposed to love our children. We are. That doesn't mean they're not supposed to be so important to us because they are. But they have to be viewed as a gift from God and thanked. The thankfulness goes to the giver. So those are the personal idols. There's more than that obviously but those are the three I'm going to mention. Then religious idols. One religious idol is going to sound strange but it's truth. We believe in salvation of the rightness of our doctrine. The scoffer always thinks he's right and is always disdainful and disrespectful to those who differ with them. Reform people, Presbyterians, can fall into this category. I'm not saying the truth isn't important or a good thing because it is. But Paul had the truth and he was gracious to the people who were living in a city full of idols. When you believe your doctrinal correctness is the ultimate thing you make it into an idol and actually alienate rather than attract. J.C. Ryle again said humility and love are precisely the graces which men of the world can understand if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery and they are within the reach of all classes. The poorest Christians can every day find an occasion for practicing love and humility. Another religious idol are gifts and this is especially dangerous for those in ministry for pastors. Music can be an idol. Some churches are prone to turn their worship music into an idol giving it first place usurping the ministry of the word. This is an ongoing proclivity of mine when somebody is describing a church and they'll say I really didn't care for the teaching but the worship was wonderful. Well you didn't like the worship then because the preaching is part of the worship. What they're saying is they really like the music and they're calling it the worship. But from the call to the worship to the benediction is all worship. The reading of the scripture is worship. Prayer is worship. The sermon is worship. The music is worship. It's not saying music isn't important but it isn't the ultimate thing. Another religious idol is morality. Trusting in our obedience. Our obedience is a good thing. Trusting in our righteousness. Trusting in our personal holiness. Our personal holiness is a great thing. But when you trust in these things for your salvation rather than God you turn them into idols because you believe that God owes you. You turn them into coins that you're putting into a vending machine which is God and he pulled the right lever and he owes you. You see we all have idols. We're no different. We might not have 30,000 of them but we're no different than the Athenians. And there are cultural idols as well. Reason can be an idol. The enlightenment was taking human reason which is a good thing and making it the ultimate thing. H.G. Wells wrote in 1920, as soon as we overcome the superstition of religion and apply science to everything we are going to go from strength to strength. By 1933 he was appalled by the selfishness of nations and the destruction of war and the slowness of progress of the kind he wanted. He said the only hope is for the rational intellectual elites, of course he was one of them, to seize control of all the nation's governments and run a compulsory education program emphasizing peace and justice and equity. And I have to tell you that's not a lot different than Canada or the United States where people think we should listen to the experts about everything. I'm here to tell you experts are overrated. Just because you're an expert in one field doesn't mean you have knowledge in every field. As a matter of fact you probably don't. So by 1945 H.G. Wells said that he was spent. He put all his hope in humanity to save itself through science and education and what happened. He made an idol out of reason and science and the fact that original sin forced itself into a mind that had no grasp of God's grace or power and it came to the end of his tether. We've already mentioned the family can be an idol and the individual can be an idol. My feelings are absolute. We have the idea that you can't say anything to anybody about their beliefs about God because what they feel is my truth they'll say. But Paul is able in our passage to enter into their culture, to enter into their story. Paul was a Pharisee and the Bible tells us that Paul's personal mission before he became a Christian was to wipe out all Christians. Paul changed because God entered into Paul's story and gave it a much better and glorious ending. Paul had the confidence and security in Christ to do the same thing with the Athenians. You see Paul said in Philippians 3, if anyone thinks he has reason to put confidence in the flesh, I far more circumcised than the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews in regard to the law of Pharisees, Pharisee as for zeal persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness faultless. But whatever was to my prophet, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. I consider everything as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God. It is by faith. So Paul enters their story, says what you worship in ignorance. All of their learning could not result in the knowledge of God. What's necessary is revelation. Revelation through what God has made, revelation through the Scriptures themselves, revelation through Jesus, Christ, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So his first response to the people is to be gracious, but it's also truth, truth about the real God. He's the creator, and that's against our idol of pride. The God who made the world and everything in it is the same God who entered the world as one of us, Jesus. He's independent. He doesn't need me. He says he's not made with human hands as if he needed us. He's not honored by my service, but rather is glorified by my need. He made all of us from one man. That's against the idol of ethnicity. He's sovereign, which is against the idol of us being in control. Finally, he wants our worship. He created us in his image for his glory, and he wants our worship. He has proven his love through his son Jesus, who he raised from the dead. Finally, the judgment. The response of the Athenians is to say it's foolishness, or we will hear you again, whether that's for sport or real desire, and some of them believed. But you see, we're not to worry. If we talk to somebody about the gospel, and they say it's foolishness, don't worry about that. Because Paul says in 1 Corinthians that the word of God is foolish to those who are perishing, but it's powerful to us who are being saved. Meaning that if it's not foolish to somebody, it's not powerful for anybody. So don't worry if you talk to somebody about Jesus, which you should. If you talk to somebody about Jesus and they think it's foolish, don't worry about it. That's one of the responses. But another response is we'll hear you again. Okay, fine. I opened the door. My own story is that I became a Christian six months after a conversation I had with somebody. It was, I'd hear him again. Finally, there's belief. You can have a new story, a different and better ending. Jesus wants you to trade your story of sin, failure, and death for His story of righteousness, glory, and life. In essence, this is what Jesus is saying. If you want to be saved, you'll have to become part of my story. Make my story your story, which is an entirely different thing than you wanting Jesus to be part of your story. No. You have to be part of His story. Because no matter how good you think your story is, let's just be honest, it stinks. It's not well written. It doesn't hang together. The hero is conflicted. It constantly digresses. Let me give you an example. Leo Tolstoy is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, novelist in history. He lived in Russia in the 1800s. He had just completed War and Peace in Anacurinina, which are on the top ten list of the greatest novels ever written. He's wealthy and successful and famous and miserable. Because after all his success, he said, why? What was the point? And the answer kept coming back to him that there wasn't one. And that's the truth if you try to write your story apart from Christ. He is the only true story, the only real story, the only one with meaning. And when you make idols, you're trying to write your own story. If your story is to accumulate wealth, who gets it when you die? Who gets it when they die? What if it's stolen? What if the market crashes? What will it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul? If your story is to gain a measure of fame, at some point you will be forgotten and no one will give a wit that you were ever here. I mean, think about it. All the people that are famous today, there were people that were that famous 100 years ago and none of us know their names. Maybe a couple of them. A thousand years ago. Maybe one or two. If your story is to care about your family, what if they die or decide to rebel? Or even if they live and they're successful, what then? How do you become part of his story? The wonderful news is this. No matter how messed up your story is, no matter how uninspiring, sinful or even dreadful, your story is you can trade it for Jesus' story. If your story is to accumulate wealth, now you can be radically generous in the advancement of his story. You see, if you lose your life, your story, for the sake of Christ, the hero of the Gospel. If your story was notoriety, the Son of Man is coming in glory with his angels. If your story is family, he said, truly I say to you, no one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or mother or children or lands for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will not receive a hundredfold now in this time. Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecution in the age to come eternal life. The way to be part of his story is to not nigh yourself by trading in your story for his. Which is the story of the cross. That he lived the life that you were supposed to live and he died the death you deserve to die and he rose again from the dead. And sits at the right hand of God the Father and makes intercession for you even now he's praying for you. Trade your story for his story because yours isn't that good and his is perfect. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for the Gospel. Apply it to our hearts in Jesus name. Amen.