Heavenly Father, we thank You that You are the one who delights to come to our aid when we are called by You to serve You and to serve Your people and to proclaim Your truth. You have sent Your Spirit as the great witness and call us to work alongside Him and by His power and with His wisdom and understanding and with His commitment to work in the hearts and minds of those to whom You send us. Father, we know the tasks which You have called us is completely beyond us without Your help and without Your strength. So, Father, we pray that You will teach us today that You will take Your Word and write it on our hearts and use it to shape our ministries and thank You for Your commitment to help us. We thank You in Jesus' name. Amen. The end of class on Tuesday, we were, I was going very rapidly through the last of those questions. We were asking about 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 in considering the objection that Paul renounced reason. We looked, we looked first at all of the challenge that Paul's message Athens was a failure and a mistake and saw that there's absolutely no evidence for that whatsoever. In fact, it's simply a cavalier way of approaching Scripture which is deeply dishonoring to the word of God. And secondly, we looked at the question of how Luke presents Paul's proclamation of the Gospel. I'll prepare for you a little handout next week on the Greek words that Paul uses. It's a fascinating study or that Paul uses and that Luke uses to present Paul's message, just the variety of language which is very, very interesting. But certainly, one immediate conclusion, one can draw from that is that Luke does not create any sort of attention between direct proclamation or speaking boldly the Gospel, declaring its truths and reasoning about it, seeking to persuade and convince people of its truth. There's no evidence whatsoever that Luke sees these two in tension with each other. And then thirdly, we looked at the question, what is Paul saying in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2? And I made the point very quickly at the end that Paul is challenging the Greeks' dependence on wisdom and we'll come back to that issue later in our class today. And at the very end, that Paul's challenging the way some of the Greeks regarded the use of rhetoric simply as a kind of clever tool to convince anyone of anything whether it was true or not. And I made the point very like some of our lawyers today if you can hire a good enough lawyer if you've got the money, then you can often get a resolution to your case which is denied to those who are poorer. And that's simply a practical reality in the culture in which we live. That you've got somebody clever enough with words in a courtroom that they can often turn aside issues of evidence and truth. And that's exactly the issue of course Paul is addressing. And he says in contrast to that, I have renounced in another context he says I've renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. And by the open statement of the truth, I commend myself to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. That's a challenge to us all in our ministry whatever kind of context we're thinking about whether it's the way we proclaim the gospel, to unbelievers. We don't hide aspects of the truth from them which are unpopular in our culture. Let's say like the judgment of God in our own moment of history, which is certainly not a popular doctrine right now, but we accord to proclaim it clearly and boldly regardless of what people think about that. And it also means in our relationships with one another is Christians we accord to openly state what we are doing rather than seek to get our way by underhanded ways, not saying the purpose of what we want to communicate etc. And you're all aware of these kinds of problems in church politics how easy it is to dispense with open statements of the truth and adopt sort of back room and secret ways to try to get one's own view to predominate. And the scripture challenges us to completely set aside such approaches to our calling. But as we think about parallels to the point Paul is making there in first Corinthians one and two about eloquence and care and wise use of rhetoric to seek to deceive people into responding to something. All sorts of equivalents today if you turn on your television or your radio or go to many churches you will find preachers shamelessly manipulating people by rhetorical skills and seeking to push people into emotional responses with that sufficient declaration of the truth. And of course there should be an emotional response to God's truth when it's properly taught because it touches our hearts it touches every aspect of our humanity. But there's a huge difference between that and shameless emotional manipulation several of you in this room are quite experienced preachers already. And any of us who have preached for any length of time know perfectly well that you can make people laugh you can make them cry you can make them get out of their seats and kneel on the ground if you want to do those things. But that's not our calling to manipulate people to do things we want them to do. But to declare God's truth which of course touches the heart touches the emotions as well as the mind and the will but we need to be very careful that whatever response we seek to get from people as a response to the truth itself. And not to our cleverness and one has to renounce that as a as a preacher that kind of adoption is of basically shameless tricks which come with the trade and Paul is passionately speaking against that. Another kind of equivalent of what Paul is talking about in first Corinthians one and two today is the way it's possible to use the techniques of advertising to trick people into responding to things which they haven't fully understood. And again as Christians we have to absolutely reject such an approach again think of Paul's words by the open statement of the truth having denounced renounced disgraceful underhanded ways. I commend myself to every man's conscience in the sight of God the manner in which we present the truth must conform with the truth itself there must be integrity between the manner in which I communicate the truth and the nature of truth itself there must be integrity and that's really the issue for the preacher. The test of the power of my preaching is not whether people are crying at the end of a message or whatever else. I have to look into my own heart to ask whether there is integrity in the way that I have presented God's message and of course people may cry because the truth is deeply moving. But it mustn't be because of some trick I've used musicians know this very well too that you can make people cry and jump and dance and shout and laugh and sing simply by all sorts of cheap musical tricks. And again if you were a musician you know that that's not what God calls you to if people are moved appropriately by the power of music that's a different thing just the same as it is with preaching. The issue isn't emotion or anything else because God has created us with emotions to laugh and to dance and to cry at the truth but it must be a response to the truth. Not to the tricks of the preacher or the musician. Now that brings us to our sixth principle clarity that is a careful definition of the message. God calls us to clarify the good news as we seek to communicate it. We might express this by saying this that we are called by God's word to tune the message of the gospel itself to the hearers ears and hearts. That is to clear away the particular confusions that an individual or a group of people have and to carefully define the truth that they need to hear. We build bridges that is we find points of contact areas of agreement points to affirm which we can commend but point six here is stressing that we must go a step further. The bridges we build have the purpose of communicating truth that is not yet known not yet understood not yet believed by the hearers. We are to clarify the truth that they need to hear. We build a bridge so that we may cross it with God's truth which needs to be heard. Now if we think again about our message in Acts 13, Paul's words in the synagogue. How does Paul set about clarifying the message of the gospel in the synagogue and we may express it this way? He has built the bridge of his hearers confidence in the Old Testament scriptures. The bridge of their expectation of the Messiah, another bridge I didn't mention before but their honor for King David as their great king. What Paul does then is to tell them that all these Old Testament passages speak of Jesus. The prophecies point to him as the Christ. Every detail of his birth, life, death and resurrection demonstrate that Jesus is indeed the Messiah. So they expect the Messiah, they trust the scriptures, they honor David but Paul tells them that their scriptures speak of Christ. Their prophecies have been fulfilled in him and with regard to David, they believe David's words and honor him as their greatest king and it's fascinating the passage from the Psalms that David quotes. He says, David wrote of not decaying in the grave in one of the Psalms and he quotes that there in Acts 13, verse 35, you will not let your holy one see decay. He's quoting Psalm 16, verse 10. But Paul says, David lies in the grave to this very day. You can see his tomb in Jerusalem. He didn't come out of it but Jesus, the one David was writing about, has come out of the grave and is risen from the dead. Another example of what Paul does here in clarifying the truth, he builds the bridge of their respect for John the Baptist. But then he says, John the Baptist, who respects so highly, was focusing all of his message on the person of Jesus Christ. He did not proclaim himself to the people, rather he turned their attention to Jesus and declared that Jesus was the one they should honor rather than himself. He wasn't worthy to untie Jesus sandals. Now, the way we might summarize what Paul is doing in the synagogue is like this. He says to the Jews and Godfair is there, you long for the Messiah. Good, I have even better news for you. Jesus is the Messiah. You believe the Scriptures. That's great. But the Scriptures speak of Jesus. You want to John the Baptist. That's great. But John the Baptist tells you to honor Christ. What Paul is doing is pushing them a step further. So far so good. But you need to go a step further to the place where you will find Christ and in him life itself. That's Paul clarifying the message of the gospel, building bridges, but pushing people a step further. What about Athens? If we turn to Acts 17, Paul among the pagans. Now here, of course, the challenges are very different in terms of what Paul has to think about when he wants to clarify the truth. And we may express it in this way. Again, Paul pushing them a step further. Number one, where the Athenians have a sense of divinity so that they are prepared to build an altar to an unknown God, Paul declares with confidence that God exists, that he rules heaven and earth. And number two, where even their greatest philosophers struggle to come to a knowledge of God and struggle even more to make God known to others. Plato says something like this, to find the creator, the maker and father of the universe is difficult. But to make him known to the ordinary people, this is almost impossible. Moses, a very loose quote, a summary of some words of Plato, the greatest philosophers of the Greeks struggle to come to some knowledge of God. But Paul says he insists that God has revealed himself clearly in creation through his rule over history. And in particular, through the person of his son, so you have this sort of confused knowledge of God, Paul says that God has in fact made himself clearly known in creation and his rule over history and in his son. Or a third example, where they recognize that human beings are God's offspring, Paul agrees, but then he urges them to see how majestic and glorious God must be, because we in our human and finite glory are simply God's creatures, and he is far, far greater than those he's made. Now, again, one way to express this would be to say this, Paul tells the Athenians that their deepest longings are met in the truth of who God is. Their wisest thinking is fulfilled and surpassed in the revelation that God has given about himself. Their most cherished ideas are transcended and completed in the message of Jesus. Again, you can summarize what Paul does in this way. You can say, he says to them, it's good you have a longing to know God, it's far better to know him as the creator, as the Lord, as the Savior, or he says it's good that you are seeking God to try to find him. But what's even better is that God seeks us and that despite our ignorance and willful twisting of his truth, he has made himself clearly known. Or you might put it this way, he says, it's good that you honor God as the one who gives life, it's better to see him in his true greatness as the Lord and creator of everything in heaven and earth. Who cannot be contained in temples or appropriately honored by a statue, people need to have the gospel made clear to them. That's your challenge whenever you talk to anybody, to see where they're confused, where their understanding is inadequate, to clear away that confusion and to push them a step further. To declare to them whatever aspect of the good news of the gospel that they particularly need to have clarified. So if we think about what the good news is, the good news is one of course that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ promised by God in the Old Testament. The good news is that Jesus is the Son of God who died for our sins and rose again for our justification. But the good news is also that there is a personal God who made heaven and earth and everything in them. I'm thinking about the good news today now. The good news is the message of Christ, but the good news is also the existence of God and who he truly is. The good news is that there is a God whose character is holy and just and righteous and that there is a foundation for the distinction between good and evil. Now that's very good news for our generation which is relativistic for some of you who wrote your letters for someone who's in the New Age movement. That's very good news. Hinduism, pantheism has no foundation for the distinction between good and evil. Christianity does in the character of a holy and righteous God. The good news is today that human beings are made in the image of God that are unique. Have this wonderful dignity and glory that our personality is founded in the personal nature of God. Now that's good news for a culture which she's no basis for human dignity. That's good news. The good news is that there is a resolution to the problem of suffering in a culture like ours which sees no answer to that problem ultimately. It's good news that every tear will be wiped away. The death will be no more. The whole message of Christianity is good news or to put it in another way. You might say every article of the creed is good news. Whether I'm talking about who God the father is is the creator of heaven earth, who God the son is as the one who became incarnate and lived a righteous life and died for our sins and rose from the dead and is coming again or whether we're talking about the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. So every aspect of the gospel is good news and you have to discern and that's what you've been trying to do in your letters and it will be interesting to read them. See what aspect of the good news needed to be clarified for your particular individual for whom you were writing. Now we may express this this way, the gospel fulfills every right longing of the human heart. It really is good news. It fulfills every right longing of the human heart. The gospel answers every honest question of the searching mind. The gospel delights and surpasses every good impulse of the creative imagination. The gospel meets and transcends the ache of need in every soul to come to know the living God. God said eternity in our hearts, Ecclesiastes says, and the gospel meets that longing of the heart and soul and mind and will and imagination. C.S. Lewis, some of you you all are familiar with who he is. C.S. Lewis wrote about his own conversion in two books, Surprised by Joy and the Pilgrims Regress. And this point that I'm making here is exactly the point that Lewis makes in the account of his own conversion. He was surprised by joy when the hopes and longings of his inner being were completely satisfied in the gospel of Christ. Now what's fascinating is if you look at Lewis as an example of this, Lewis's longings were created in him by pagan mythology, by pagan legends. Of the people of Scandinavia, of the North legends and of the Anglo-Saxons and others. They created a longing in his heart for a better world, a better universe, the paradise, you might say, where the deepest needs of the human heart and soul and imagination are met. And he eventually finds his unsit of that in the gospel. He is surprised by joy, the joy which the Christian message offers. Now some of you who were there, when I was talking about Harry Potter on Friday night, I was addressing that issue very briefly then. What Lewis and Tolkien called the mythopoic or the mythoposy, that fairy stories, myths, legends from all over the world actually express faithfully to some degree that longing for eternity that is set in the human heart by God. That there are echoes of the truth there and the gospel fulfills all of those. You may be interested in a wonderful essay, Tolkien wrote about fairy stories. It's published in a little volume called Tree and Leith, in which he talks about the way all fairy stories long for the idea of resurrection. They're filled with that, the hope of resurrection, the hope of eternal life. And he writes in that essay that the gospel is the greatest fairy story ever told. Now he is very careful to say I don't mean that the gospel is simply a fairy story or legend. Of course it's the truth, Christ rose from the dead in history. That's why it's the most wonderful fairy story. Here the longings of all legends and myths and fairy stories across the face of the earth find their fulfillment in the gospel of Christ. The gospel satisfies every true need which is in people's hearts and minds. Now let's turn to just one example from Jesus teaching of this clarifying the truth. If you turn to Matthew chapter 22 in your Bibles and this is a typical example from the gospels you could find many examples of Jesus doing this. What I've called clarifying the truth or pushing people a step further building on what they already know and then urging them to move a step closer to the truth. We could express it this way. If somebody is on a path what we are trying to do is press them towards that gate into the kingdom of God and move them a step further along that road. And that's what I think about my father dying of cancer back in 1972 and I was going to visit him every single day. And what I was trying to do every day and just praying about this all the time because this is of course something we cannot do by ourselves but we need the work of the spirit in people's hearts. But I was trying to push in a step further a step closer towards the gospel by clearing away another area of confusion by showing another area of inadequacy and Marxist thinking because he was a Marxist. By moving him a step closer along that road towards the knowledge of Christ and that's what you find Jesus constantly doing as he interacts with people and this is a very interesting example. And Jesus often does it with very penetrating questions penetrating questions are one of the best ways to move people a step further. To make them realize their present understanding is inadequate. It's okay but that's the point here. And here Jesus asked this question Matthew 22, 41, while the Pharisees were gathered together Jesus asked them what do you think about the Christ whose son is he? Whose descendant? So what the word son means here? Whose descendant? Whose son is he? The son of David they replied. You see they know the Old Testament well and there of course many messianic prophecies which declare that the Messiah is going to be a descendant of David or of Jesse David's father like Isaiah 11 who root the branch from the root of Jesse or Isaiah 9 the descendant of David who's going to reign over his throne and over the whole world forever. So many many prophecies which say this just quite explicitly that the Messiah is the son of David the descendant of David and so they're right. But Jesus says to them how is it then that David speaking by the Spirit calls him that is the Messiah Lord? For he says the Lord said to my Lord sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet if then David calls him Lord how can he be his son? That's a great question. Jesus of course is quoting Psalm 110 another messianic Psalm and he says then you haven't read well enough the Messiah is not only David's son he's also David's Lord just look at what David himself said the Lord said to my Lord sit at my right hand the Messiah is David's Lord he is my Lord and so he's urging them to think more deeply about who the Messiah is and he really blows them away and so he's doing he sends them off to think that Jesus is constantly doing that with people he's pushing them a step further he's seeking to advance their understanding and you can think of Paul simply saying let your conversation be always full of grace season with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. The salt there is the salt of God's truth which needs to season to change to clarify to push people a step further along the road to an understanding of the gospel. So that's Principle number six and finally Principle number seven challenge the need to challenge the heart and the mind and the well. Now this is our final Principle the Principle of challenge whenever the gospel is proclaimed it must come as a challenge to its heroes for people to come together. For people to come to a saving knowledge of Christ they have to repent and believe the gospel they have to turn away from this sin and from what they have believed whatever they have put their trust in whatever they have lived for apart from Christ and without that repentance without that turning without that challenge there will be no salvation so simple as that. Now we're quite aware of this if we recognize that somebody is what we might call an obvious sinner living in flagrant disobedience to God's commandments about truth telling about respect for other people's property or about sexual fidelity like Paul says in Ephesians that the thief no longer steal but let him do his work with on his hands so that he may have to give to those in need. I always remember having a conversation with a guy who was responding to the gospel he was staying with us at the English Lebry this was many years ago and he had lived for years as a thief. He hadn't done an honest day's work probably for five or six years at this point I was having this conversation with him and I turned to that passage in Ephesians and read it to him because he was wanting to be a Christian to believe in Christ and I said well this is the gospel's challenge to you and his response was no way. I'm not prepared to do an honest day's work. I'm quite happy to be a Christian I want to believe in Christ but I'm certainly not going to stop being a thief. It's too good a way of life and we had a discussion about it and I said to him well if you are serious about coming to faith in Christ this is going to have to happen because Christ calls us to God. It calls us to submit to his authority that's what coming to him means acknowledging him as Lord as well as Savior and he didn't like that at all and I said to him well if you're really serious about this I'm going to continue to pray for you certainly but God is going to deal with you about this and he went away and he went away for a couple of years. He was caught by the police and spent the next couple of years in prison. Well there God spoke to him very powerfully, he had to be challenged in that area whatever is the obstacle in the way of the individual coming to faith and repentance has to be dealt with. with. The gospel has to challenge it. Now this is true for everyone, whether they're a thief like that, or whether they're living in the service of some other God, believing some other philosophy or into some other religion, or whether they are living for some kind of personal idol which controls their life. They have got to be challenged. The gospel always must come as a challenge. And if there is no challenge, then the gospel hasn't been faithfully proclaimed. Luther put it this way. You can preach the gospel with the loudest voice and the clearest manner at every point, except where it's under attack, and you haven't preached it at all. If you're not prepared to challenge the idols of an individual's heart and the idols of the culture in which we live, you haven't preached the gospel faithfully. Now let's look at our examples. Again, Paul and the synagogue in Acts 13. There are several areas of challenge in this passage, and they are fascinating, and they would have cut Paul's hearers to the heart. And in fact, that's exactly how it describes the response of some of them at various places in the book of Acts. There are several areas of challenge. Number one, Paul challenges these people in the synagogue about the unjust trial and death of Jesus in Jerusalem. He declares that it is God's people Israel and their rulers, the very ones who have been appointed by the Lord to lead the people in the service of God. It is God's anointed leaders of the people who have put the Messiah to death. That's one of Paul's challenges. That the priests, the leaders of the worship of God and the kings and the teachers of his word, the scribes and Pharisees, those whom God has appointed to proclaim his truth, to lead the people. These are the very ones who are responsible for the death of the Messiah. Now, for people listening to Paul in the synagogue, this must have come as a shocking and an outrageous charge. And of course, it's one of the reasons why some of the Jews present get so angry when Paul preaches the gospel. He doesn't accuse, he simply states this as so sober history. He insists that the trial of Jesus was conducted without adequate evidence of crime deserving the death penalty. That's his charge. For those listening to Paul accepting what he said meant a very radical change in their thinking and in the direction of their lives. The present rulers of the people have led them into the rejection of God's most important messenger. The Messiah was crucified as a common criminal. Now that certainly calls for repentance. That's Paul's first area of challenge. His second comes in what Paul has to say about the law of Moses. Paul, of course, recognizes that the law, of course, was given to the people by God. But Paul argues Paul insists in his message that the law of Moses can never justify the people. It can never make them acceptable to God. That's one of the points he comes to at the climax of his message. Jesus has died to justify you from everything which the law of Moses could not justify you from. He says, then you're right to devote to your lives to obeying God's commandments, but no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to keep the laws requirements in such a way that you will satisfy the demands of God. God's standards. Only Jesus can justify you for through his death. Your sins will be forgiven. Now, again, this message comes as a shocking challenge to the people in the synagogue. The Jews there would have thought of themselves as devoting their whole life to obeying the law. And the Gentiles, who had come to the synagogue, were attracted by the moral standards of Judaism, by the law. And many of these people would have seen their obedience to the law as the guarantee of their salvation, the guarantee of their justification. And Paul's saying, absolutely not. You will never be justified. These words are demanding a complete turning around in their understanding of the law that it could not justify them and their understanding of themselves, that their obedience to the law was completely inadequate to save them. That's a secondary of challenge. A third area of challenge comes at the very end of Paul's message, where he quotes the prophets for a sporty. Take care that what the prophets have said does not happen to you look, you scoffers, wonder and perish, from going to do something in your days that you would never believe, even if someone told you, Paul warns them, but if they don't listen to his words with open hearts, they will be like the scoffers against God against the prophets warned. Here, Paul's challenge is very direct. Are you going to fulfill God's warnings against those with proud and scornful and rebellious hearts? Now, Paul's purpose is this. He is wanting to challenge these people to recognize that they can't just claim to be the people of God. This is one of the great problems of Judaism at this time. We are the children of Abraham. We are God's people. We are the ones who have the temple, who have the law, who have the prophets, who have the scriptures, the promises. We have got a lot, nobody else has it. We are blessed and nobody else is. Of course, the sense in which this is true. They indeed had these blessings, but they took pride in them, not in gratitude to God, but in pride in themselves. Paul is saying, is this a new people? You watch it. The fact that you belong to the chosen people. The chosen nation, and you have all these blessings, does not necessarily mean that you will inherit salvation. So watch it. You proud and rebellious and scornful people. Membership of the nation of Israel is not enough to save you. Now, those three challenges were directed by Paul at the very heart of what these people thought it meant to be a faithful worshiper of God. The hope of the Messiah, as the deliverer of the nation, devotion to the law, ownership of God's word, the conviction of being God's people, these things were the strengths and glories of Judaism at that time. Let me repeat those points. The hope of the Messiah, as the deliverer of the nation, of that Judaism at that time, they are longing for the Messiah to destroy the Romans, give them back their land. Devotion to the law, a righteousness the world had never seen. Ownership of God's word, God gave his word to us. The conviction of being God's people, we are the chosen nation. Those things were the glories of Judaism. Their pride and security, their basis for confidence in a hostile world, their sense of identity. This is what makes us unique. This is what makes us special. We are a superior people. That's how they thought about themselves religiously and morally to everybody else. Paul is really challenging them and saying, that's all not enough. It will never save you. In fact, it's an obstacle all these things between you and God unless you repent and put your faith in Christ alone. He challenges them not to be proud of these things but to humble themselves and become dependent on the mercy of God in Christ. That's Paul's challenge to the Jews. There's a fourth one in their later discussion on the next Sabbath from verse 44 onwards. This is a fascinating one. On the next Sabbath, verse 44, almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord. When the Jews saw the crabs, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul was saying. Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly, we had to speak the word of God to you first. Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles. But this is what the Lord has commanded us. I've made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. They're applying a messianic promise about Christ who is the light for Gentiles to themselves as proclaimers of the gospel. And of course this makes the Jews really mad and they incite a persecution against Paul and Barnabas so they get expelled. But this is another area of challenge. Oh God's word is for the Gentiles too. Not just for you. In fact, you're not even worthy of it. You declare that you're not. God is going to delight to save the Gentiles. And that infuriates them because again it strikes at the heart of their pride. Remember Jesus doing exactly the same thing in the synagogue in Nazareth in his first public message. It's exactly what he does. Remember we talked about this. He talks about occasion, some Israel's history in the ministry of Elijah and Elijah where God saved and cared for Gentiles. Other widows were starving to death but was a Gentile widow who God cared for. Israelites were dying of leprosy and struggling with leprosy. It was a Gentile that God healed and they were so angry they wanted to kill him at his first message. So Jesus really challenging them in this area. And you see Jesus doing this all the way through the gospels. You think you're children of Abraham. God can raise up stones and turn them into children of Abraham. What are you? You're children of the devil. And these issues of their confidence in the law, their confidence in their identity as the chosen people, their confidence in owning the temple and the promises of the Messiah. These are the areas where Jesus is constantly challenging the Jews as he presents the gospel because they are the barrier between them and God. Now what about Paul among the pagans? In Acts 17 the areas of challenge are very different. But again they focus on what is at the heart of the way of life and the worship of the Athenians. Paul's first area of challenge is the idolatry that's everywhere apparent on Mars Hill. You should know better. He says then worshipping at these temples. God's the creator of everything. He doesn't inhabit structures made by people. Of course he doesn't. This is a foolish idea. How can you possibly think it's fitting to worship God under the form of these statues? These idols adorned with gold and silver and precious jewels. They are simply the product of human design. Now this is ignorance and folly. Your worship is ignorance and folly. These temples and these statues. Now it may seem obvious to you that this idolatry of the Athenians should be challenged. But just think about it. The buildings on Mars Hill were some of the most beautiful buildings the world has ever seen. They were absolute marvels of architecture and they still are some of them. People still go from all over the world to see those buildings like the pathana. Greek statuary. The statues of these gods. These were some of the most marvelous statues that have ever been made. They have hardly ever been surpassed in terms of the artistic skill and the beauty and glory of them. Now they were wonders of the ancient world and Paul says you have to repent of this stuff. Now that's pretty challenging. Now this is foolishness and ignorance compared with the true worship of God. You have to turn away from this stuff to worship the true and living God. That's the first area of challenge. The second is closely related to it. He commends the Athenians on their desire to worship. He quotes their righteous with approval. He expresses appreciation for the thinking of the Stoic's and Epicureans. But Paul goes on to tell them that their schools of philosophy, their wisest thinkers do not have sufficient wisdom to lead them to the knowledge of God. To the true and full knowledge of God. Paul tells them that in comparison to the clarity of God's revelation of himself in Jesus Christ, all their wisdom is darkness and ignorance. Now that challenge that the greatest thinking of the Greeks was ignorance and darkness in comparison with the truth made known by God in Jesus, a Jew they had never heard of must have shocked them to the core. Now they treasure their wisdom. It's the point I was making last time about what Paul's saying in First Corinthians 1 and 2. Greeks seek wisdom but I declare Jesus Christ. Now he is the wisdom from God. That's what Paul says in fact exactly that. That's his second challenge. You've done some great thinking but it's darkness and ignorance in comparison. With what God has revealed of his wisdom in Christ. Thirdly Paul challenges them in their sense of superiority. The Athenians believed that they were a superior race, that they were God's gift to humanity. They looked down on other nations and peoples as ignorant children and slaves who needed to learn at the feet of the Athenians. Paul in contrast says the human race is one but you're just like everybody else. That's what he tells them. God has made from one man every nation of the earth. You have a common ancestry, you're no better and true wisdom hasn't come from Greece, it's come from Israel. The real judge of the human race, the one with superiority is this unknown Jew. Jesus he's going to be appointed by God to be the judge of the whole of humanity including Athenians. You're not superior, you're not in the position of judging others. You will be judged and again by an unknown Jew. That's Paul's third challenge. You're not better. His fourth challenge has to do with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Now you remember that this is the issue which had caused some of these guys to say that Paul was a babler, a bird just going around picking up strange ideas, some here and there. That's what the word literally means is. He's a seed pecker. He's a babler, just sifting through the refuse of ideas. That's what they're saying. They're being as rude as they can. And it's the resurrection that causes them to make that response. Now the Greeks all almost all not all because some of them were totally secular in the sense they believed that life is just birth to death. But most of the Greeks believed in an afterlife. They believed in an afterlife but for them the afterlife was purely spiritual. For the Greeks the afterlife was a state when the spirit would be set free from the bondage of the body and the material world. They thought of the body and the material world as inferior. The physical for them was temporary and lower. The spiritual is eternal and far higher. And in your quotations on the areopagus you'll see the following quote in that sheet I handed out last week. In one of the plays of Escalus. Escalus, one of the great tragedians. The Greeks have three of the greatest. Shakespeare is the fourth and the best of all. That's a little advert for my class on Shakespeare next semester. I'm going to write a note for the courier to tell you some plays to read and try to watch during the summer on video and if they performed anywhere. But Escalus, one of the great Greek tragedians, wrote in his play The Humanities. These words and the words are spoken by the God Apollo. Once the dust drinks down a man's blood he is gone. Once for all. No rising back. And the most literal translation of the Greek there is there is no resurrection. No spell sung over the grave can sing him back. Not even father can. That is not even Zeus. The greatest of the gods can bring him back to life. There is no resurrection. Now what's fascinating about that is that these words from this play in the play come on the occasion when the areopagus is first founded when it's first instituted. So this notion is at the heart of the life of these people here they are meeting at the areopagus on Mars Hill and at its very founding there is this statement by one of the gods there is no resurrection. But Paul declares at the end of his message in direct contrast there is resurrection. God has given proof of this truth to all people by raising a man from the dead. This man is Jesus who will be raised up to be the judge of everyone. Paul is challenging the notion of the worthlessness of the body head on. This is one of the most difficult ideas for the Greeks and Paul is just challenging it head on there will indeed be resurrection. There already has been resurrection. You are all going to be raised up and God has given proof of this by raising up Christ. God made us as physical spiritual beings forever. The body is not inferior nor is the material world. Now just as with the Jews Paul has challenged some ideas and beliefs that are at the very heart of what it meant to be Greek to be Athenian. These ideas were their glory and their pride. What Paul is trying to do is to save these most precious convictions. These most precious practices which are the heart of your life are inadequate. They are not enough and he is calling them to question them so that they may be humbled before God and turn away from pride in these things to put their trust in Christ. So that Christ is to be the one who gives them their wisdom, their source of boasting, their sense of identity, their secure anchor for eternity. Now if you reflect on these challenges either in Athens or in the synagogue you should notice this Paul is challenging the most precious things at the heart of these people's culture. He challenges the most precious beliefs and convictions of the Jews and he challenges the most precious convictions and beliefs of the Greeks. Now the reason for this is simply this. At the heart of all sin is pride. This is true. Whoever people are, the heart of all sin is pride. And our pride is almost always put in God's most special gifts to us, whatever they may be. For the Israelites it was God's gift of his word, of his law, of calling his people Israel to be his treasured nation, of promising them the Messiah. These are the most cherished things for the Jews and yet it's those that Paul challenges, precisely those things, their confidence in those things. Not that God hadn't given these gifts but they had turned them into a source of pride. They had become a barrier between them and God. This is true for the Greeks as well. For the Greeks God's most precious gifts to them, for the gifts of general revelation, the gift of their wisdom, of their philosophy, of their poetry, of their drama, of their architecture, of their sculpture, and yet it is these that Paul challenges. Any gift of God, especially his most precious gifts to every culture or every individual, can become an idol, the thing we worship in the place of God. Not because there is something inherently twisted about the gifts that God gives but because of the rebellion and pride in the human heart, we can turn into idols, gods, most beautiful gifts, whether it's his word, wisdom, beautiful buildings, artistic abilities, whatever. Another way to put this would be to say that the bridging points in any culture or to any individual, the points you commend in a firm, are also going to be the points you have to challenge because the bridging points are those areas where people are holding onto God's gifts. But the area they have to be challenged is exactly the same place because we turn God's gifts into idols. Let's finish by looking just very quickly at a couple of the areas where we have to challenge people in our culture today. And if we don't challenge people at these, they're not going to hear the gospel. One is the area of our wealth where the wealthiest nation the world has ever seen. Most of us experience a life which has a kind of comfort that would have been unimaginable for the majority of people just a few years ago. But it's obvious to any of us that our wealth, our material, prosperity, the marvelous physical gifts we have become very easily a source of pride, self-satisfaction and idolatry. Jesus put it very simply, you cannot worship God in money, Matthew 6, 24. There are lots of people who have to be challenged in that area. Your heart needs to be challenged in that area. My heart needs to be challenged in that area. It's one of the idols of our culture and of you and me. And if you don't know that, you don't know yourself very well. Secondly, our culture is understanding of freedom. Freedom is one of the very great gifts of God to this nation. As I said earlier, we have the greatest freedom the world has ever seen. But freedom is an idol of our culture, the desire for autonomous freedom to define for myself what I am free to do. That's the biggest idol of our culture. The third is closely related. That is self-affirmation, the value placed on the individual. Now again, this is a wonderful thing. The unique dignity of the individual, that every individual matters. But you don't have to be a wise person to recognize that love for oneself, love for the individual, is destroying every social institution in this culture, every family, every social institution, suffers at the relentless pursuit of self-satisfaction. This is at the heart of new age religion. It's the heart of most pop psychology. It's what almost every commercial you will ever see on the television is a bat. You've got to live for yourself and nobody else. And you have to challenge that. The fourth idol of our culture is tolerance. It's a wonderful thing to delight in diversity, to rejoice in the cultural and racial diversity there is in this society. But that delight in diversity can very easily become a refusal to value what is true and good and to value it above all other things. Now in such a context, the Christian claim of truth is an offense against the idol of tolerance. There is only one way of salvation, only one name under heaven, the name of Christ by which people can be saved. And that's offensive. It's offensive to talk about money in this culture. People don't want you to preach sermons about money. Christians don't want you to preach sermons about money. Nobody wants you to preach sermons about personal freedom. Nobody wants you to preach sermons about self-affirmation and the pursuit of individual satisfaction. People don't like you preaching sermons about tolerance. If it's done in the right way to really challenge them too and not just people outside. These are not popular areas of preaching. Why? Because they're the idols of our culture. They're the idols of our hearts. But that's where the gospels got to be preached in this society. Otherwise we're not preaching it at all, not in any way which is faithful. You're going to have to give an account to God one day after whether you have challenged the idols of people's hearts, which stand as barriers between them and God, and which alienate them from each other. And you cannot claim as the Apostle Paul does to be clear of the blood of all men. I'm innocent of the blood of all men. He says, you can't make that claim if you don't challenge the idols of the time in which we live. It's no accident that the heresies of our time in the church revolve around these idols. I got sent years ago, one of Robert Schuller's books. He sent one I think to every pastor in the United States and it was a court of theology of self-affirmation. Well what a surprise. That would be one of the heresies of the time in which we live. If you wanted to design a message and a context which perfectly fits the culture in which we live, now go to the crystal cathedral. I very rarely mention people's names, but I will this time. You go to the crystal cathedral. It's a theology and worship and practice which is designed to appeal to this culture, not in a sense of building bridges and properly respecting people, but a theology which is entirely shaped by the culture, and which doesn't challenge the culture, which encourages wealth and glorifies it. Which encourages freedom and which encourages the individual pursuit of self-satisfaction, says these are all blessed by God and just wonderful things and let's just enjoy them. It's the same with the health and wealth and prosperity gospel. If that's doing exactly the same thing, it's baptizing the idols of the culture in which we live. And it's the same with that whole shift in evangelical theology towards such a wideness in God's mercy that people can be saved no matter what they believed as long as they're sincere. Now that's going to become like a great river, like the Mississippi and the full flood flowing through the churches in the generation to come because it cuts at the heart of one of the idols of our time. But God always calls us, and this is true whether you're talking to an individual, a person you've written your letter to, or whether you're talking to a group of people in a culture, God calls us to challenge. Those areas where the heart is captive to the idols of the time, the idols of the culture. It's true for you as an individual, your greatest personal gifts that God has given you, those are the areas where you have to be most aware of temptation, of idolatry, if God made you super intellectual. The wonderful gift that's going to be your idol, if God made you good looking, sexually attractive, that's going to be your idol. You better watch it, you commit adultery, and bring dreadful discredited on the gospel, if God gives you wealth and material comfort, watch it, that's going to be your idol. It's true in any one of these areas, whatever your personal gifts are, if God made you meek and gentle. It's a wonderful thing, but watch it. You will end up becoming flexible, employable, and abandoning the truth in the face of pressure. Your strengths are your weaknesses, and you need to know that. That's what Paul is doing. That's what Jesus is doing. He's attacking the strengths, which become so readily the idols and the great weaknesses.