From first Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, here's Dr. Michael Milton. We need not be intimidated by the other religions of the world, and even the fact that they may be coming to our shores again, we may not like it, it might prefer something else, but this is what is happening. And we don't have to coerce people to believe in Jesus. I believe we don't have to be intimidated, and we can cooperate and say others have got the right to believe what they want to believe, and ask cooperation, but the other part of that is without compromise. We need not fear, but we must not compromise. We preach Jesus in Him crucified.
The Bible declares faith comes from hearing and hearing for the Word of Christ. Welcome to Faith for Living with Dr. Michael Milton, the radio outreach ministry of first Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, a ministry with one great passion and belief that faith comes from proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, as found in God's Word, and that faith in Jesus Christ is faith for living. This week, Dr. Milton brings to us a message entitled, Cooperation Without Compromise. Children in Sunday school sometimes sing the simple chorus, this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Well, every believer has a responsibility to shine forth the light of Jesus Christ in the midst of the darkness of this world, but sadly, our light is often hidden because of spiritual lethargy and compromise with the ways of the world. Do you keep the light of Jesus Christ hidden or do you let it shine? The Bible text for today is from Acts 17, verses 16 through 34. Here again is Dr. Michael Milton with today's message entitled, Cooperation Without Compromise. When I ask you today to turn to Acts chapter 17, Paul had been in Thessalonica and he was on his way to Corinth. He didn't necessarily intend to stop in Athens. It's just where the Lord put him. I was born under the Eisenhower administration. Life was different then. Some of you are calculating, don't worry about that. America was different then. And you know that. You know the Western Civ class that you took in 1950 or 1960 or 70 or even 1980 didn't really prepare you for the world that we have today. I'm on my way to a new heaven and a new earth because Jesus Christ is redeemed to me. I didn't really intend to come to such an unfamiliar place in this 2007 with the people groups of the earth coming to my country with all their religions. That's where God has me and you. How do we take a stand for Jesus Christ in that kind of religious soup? Let's see what God's word has to say in Acts chapter 17, verse 16. And the religious soup of Athens in the first century. This is the inherently infallible word of the Lord. A wild poll was waiting for them at Athens. His spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons. And in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Some of the Epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, what does this babbler wish to say? Others said, he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching Jesus in the resurrection. And they took hold of him and brought him to the Aureopagus saying, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing, except telling or hearing something new. So Paul standing in the midst of the Aureopagus said, many of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship is unknown. This I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor as he served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And it made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God and the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and have our being. As even some of your poets have said, for we are indeed His offspring. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man, the times of ignorance God overlooked. But now He commands all people everywhere to repent, because He is fixed today on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance to all by raising Him from the dead. Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, but others said, we will hear you again about this. So Paul went out from their midst, but some men joined Him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius, in the area opigite, and a woman named Amaris and others with them. This is the word of the Lord. I want to bring you a message, cooperation, without compromise, after we pray. Oh, Heavenly Father, bless your Word and your people. They need to be equipped and strengthened as they go forward into this world, and I do too. So come down, Holy Spirit, and anoint your Word uniquely individually, and as a people in Jesus' name, Amen. I read of an ecumenical conference where it was being discussed how various denominations would respond to a demon possession in this story. So it was suggested that Methodist would sing them out. Pentecostals would shout them out. Catholics and Greek Orthodox would incense them out. Baptist would drown them out. I didn't like this when Presbyterians would freeze them out. You know, come on. Can we get over the frozen chosen thing for once? Well, today I want to talk about ministry in a pluralistic setting. That global suit, that religious suit that we talked about. You know, when I grew up, a pluralistic setting was a Baptist church, a Methodist church, and disgruntled people who had left both to found independent church. That was pluralism, or at least a pluralistic setting, where I grew up. Last year I set foot on the soil of India, and I witnessed that global religious suit within just one city of millions of people, Hindus, and Hindus of various orders, and Islamic groups, various orders of Islamic groups, and various other religions, including cults using the name of Jesus, but who were not Christian. Just atheist mixed in with them, secularist, materialist, all together. If there's anything India is, it is a religious country, religions everywhere. But you know what? That's a snapshot of where we may be going. Because even the community I grew up in is no longer just that. There are Islamic peoples there. There's a growing number of materialist and secularist. Chattanooga is not the same place it was 20 years ago, or in the Eisenhower administration. We have mosque, we have various forms of Judaism, just like we saw in the text. We have secularist, we have atheist, we have materialist, we have variety of Christians, and then we have those who use the name of Christ, but whose core faith is different than yours. How are we going to do ministry? Raise our families, share the gospel, and make disciples in this kind of environment. A couple of thoughts before we go further. There's a difference between pluralistic and pluralism. Pluralistic refers simply to the plurality of religious groups that may exist in one particular community, in one location, as well as their respective cultures. So in a pluralistic setting, you not only have these various faith groups, as they're sometimes called today, but within the faith groups you've got a culture. Their culture is based around that faith group, all mixed in together. Now that's a pluralistic setting. Now pluralism is a postmodern thought that says each of these possesses a truth, or at least a truth to them, and there's some validity in all of them, and in all of their claims. So that we can't arrive at an ultimate truth. John start in talking about pluralism, I thought, but it's so well. He says it is an affirmation of the validity of every religion, and the refusal to choose between them. I'll say that again. Pluralism is an affirmation of the validity of every religion. Now we've had men stand up here who served and some fought to make sure that every religion in the United States has a right to exist. And every person has a right to believe is here she chooses. The pluralism is an affirmation of the validity of every religion. Well, we believe that anyone has the right to believe as they want to, but here's the second part of pluralism. The refusal to choose between them, and here's the third thing Stott says, the rejection of world evangelism by Christians. That's pluralism. Pluralism is an ideology. Pluralistic refers to the reality of simply many religious groups, and this concerns us. And some of us are so concerned that we're ringing our hands, and saying the people groups of the earth are coming to America, and America is not like what it was when I was a little kid, and it's not. And we're missing a lot of the good things that used to be here, and we are. But Leslie Neubig and a messiologist from England who's going to be with the Lord now. Leslie Neubigin says, in a pluralistic setting, Christianity is given the opportunity to really shine. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Not to be fearful of a pluralistic setting, but not to embrace pluralism as an ideology. And that's what I mean by cooperation without compromise. And that's what I believe Paul is doing in Acts chapter 17. He's cooperative. And by that, I mean that Paul doesn't come in in the text, and just body slam every group he doesn't agree with. He recognizes the right that they have to exist. In fact, the Apostle Paul is making his way through there, and just look in the text at the various group in verse 16, the city is full of idols. So there's a plurality of idolatry, a presumably different kind of idols, different kinds of gods with a different culture behind each of those gods, different followers. In the verse 17, there were Jews there, but he distinguishes between Jews and devout persons. People who were open to the Messiah and open to the message of Jesus versus a rabbinical closed Judaism, which was following a religion of man. But they were part of the religious soup of that day. And then he goes in verse 18, and we see that their epicurean and stoic philosophers, they want to talk to him. The epicureans were those who said life is bad, life is hard, so he drink and be married because you're going to die anyway. And the stoics were saying, yes, life is tough, so have a stiff upper lip. And the guy who can withstand it the best, that's the better person. These were mixed in as well, and they were all coexisting. It's interesting that the one who didn't fit too well was the Apostle Paul. He's called a Babler. He is brought to defend this teaching of his which was unique. And the central part of his teaching was the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That message was distinctive, and it separated from the others. Now, again, the thing I want you to see is the cooperation part. We need not be intimidated by the other religions of the world, and even the fact that they may be coming to our shores. Again, we may not like it, it might prefer something else, but this is what is happening. And we don't have to coerce people to believe in Jesus. We all didn't have to do that. One of the problems of the Reformation, we often talk about the good things of the Reformation. One of the problems was the accesses in the Reformation of the radical Reformation, where they stripped the altars and turned the altars over and knocked down the statues of Mary and did these other things. That was not needed, and Calvin and Luther preached against it, as did the other leading reformers. We need to do with that. Why? Because we don't have to do that. Christianity here was entering in the first century with all these different religions. And it was a veritable cafeteria, like a Piccadilly. You go down the line and you say, well, there's, I've got various forms of idolatry, I've got Epicureanism, I've got Stoicism, I've got Judaism and various sects of Judaism present here. And surely they were atheists and agnostics. All of these here, and all of a sudden you've got Christianity here. Christianity is not intimidated by the others. Christianity entered and finally took over Europe and will finally penetrate every nation of this earth, because Christianity is not intimidated by the religions. In fact, Christianity will not coerce physically. Christianity, you know what we've learned over the last 20 years or so? We just went through a political season. We can't change the hearts of people with politics alone, can we? I mean, political involvement, political and expression of Christianity and politics is something that I believe we need to do. All of a Romans 13 and other places, 1st Timothy, chapter 2 and other places, we need to pray for them, be involved and support. But we can't turn the heart of a human being who take it over a political party. We can't coerce them. We can only witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but that's powerful enough. And we'll finally eat up and transform and take over the others, because Jesus said it was so. It started as a mustard seed and it's going to grow like a great tree where the birds there can make their nest there. That's how big glorious Christianity is going to be on the earth, and that's what's happening. So in a place like India where you have a multitude of religions, you've also got missionaries going in the midst of that, and I have every confidence that their gospel will penetrate and finally take over that culture to the degree that many will be present at the marriage supper of the Lamb because of their witness. And you know what else I believe? I believe the same is going to be true here in America, in your families, in our community of Chattanooga. I believe we don't have to be intimidated, and we can cooperate and say others have got the right to believe what they want to believe, and ask cooperation, but the other part of that is without compromise. Paul didn't go around knocking over statues, what did Paul do? He saw an inscription and he grabbed a hold of a piece of truth that was embedded in their culture. He related to them in their humanity, and he simply began to tell the old old story, the story of creation and fall and redemption. And brothers and sisters, I want to tell you something, according to the Word of God, human beings are the same, the world over. You say, why? I don't believe Chattanooga is anything like Bangkok, no. It's a different culture, but human beings are the same. Paul always went for the heart, the life, the commonality, our humanity, and he presumed that they know you've seen the stars, you've seen the world around you, you know this unknown God. I'm here to disclose him, as Leslie Newbygden wrote in one of his books. I'm here to disclose now the open secret, the secret which has been hid from you that you didn't understand I'm here to disclose. And the disclosure is in the person of Jesus Christ. Paul gives a veritable history lesson of what has happened, and then he says it's going somewhere in your responsible and there's going to come a day where you're going to be judged. He didn't compromise any of that. But the way to be saved is through this one who died, was buried, and who rose again from the dead. That's distinctive. That's our message. But as I was reading the scripture and looking at it, I began to see that all these religions were like these boxes all dressed up, you know, and they're sitting side by side, and that's the way it is here in our country. There are all these boxes decorated, different decorations, this religion as this, this religion as this. We can cooperate with all of them and say okay, we'll put our box next to them. And we're not going to kick your boxes, because this is what we know. We know that when you open those boxes, the thing that you really want inside of you, human beings are the same. We've been created by God, we're fallen, and we need redemption, and we need it at every level. Our marriages, our children, our eternity, we want to know where we're going to go, when we die. And Christianity doesn't kick the boxes, but we know the boxes, empty. It's empty. There's only one thing that's going to meet that need in the human heart. One thing that is going to redeem you out of your fallen condition, no matter who you are or where you're from, and that is our savior, Jesus Christ. He is so lovely. He is so attractive to fallen people. He is so beautiful when we present Him as Christ of a cross. We've died for our sins and rose again, who lives, and therefore his resurrection for those who believe in Him, his resurrection is a dynamic power that changes all of life. We know that if we just get our box alongside the others, his message will be victorious, because he made us. We need not fear, but we must not compromise. We preach Jesus in Him crucified, not out of a spirit of a superiority, but out of the open secret that we have received, and that we want to share with you.
Now, Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless and equip the saints for the work of ministry. And I pray this morning, Lord, for the empty boxes it may be in the lives of some of our people, I pray that you will fill them with the simple message, the profound message of Christ, who died for our sins and rose again, that we may live. Not only life, eternal, but abundant life. So Father, let your blessing be upon your people, some for salvation, that they may on that day when they stand before you be covered in the righteousness of Jesus, let the grace flow over the souls of human beings now, as they hear about Jesus Christ, who will forgive them and give them a new life and a new hope. And eternal life, I pray in Jesus name. Amen. In a culture of spiritual compromise and moral decline, we must stand firm in the faith and commit ourselves afresh to live as true followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. For audio copy of today's teaching, be sure to call or write and ask the message entitled Cooperation Without Compromise. Right to Isat, Faith for Living, 554 McCauley Avenue, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 37402, or call 423-648-7914. You can also hear today's teaching on our website at faithforliving.net. Faith for Living with Mike Milton is an outreach ministry of first Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga. Now until next time, on behalf of Mike Milton and first Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, may you grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, with a living faith and a faith for living. I'm Dan Parker and this has been a presentation of first Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga.