Sermon Date 11-09-2014 Areopagus (Chuck Gohn)
How many of you detest waiting in line for anything? I hate waiting in line. I hate waiting in grocery lines. I hate waiting on the telephone. I hate waiting in the doctor’s office. I just don’t like it. I am always thinking about ways I can get around waiting. I usually try to look for the shortest line in the grocery store. My trick for doctor’s appointments is that I say I want to be the first appointment in no matter what day it is. Or when you are on hold and they say can we call you back, you say sure. Even with all the techniques we have to avoid waiting, we just can’t seem to get around it. Fortunately, we have these things called smartphones. We can be very productive in our waiting time. Check your email, text, catch up on TV shows. As good as those things are, it is probably not the best use of a Christian’s time. As we find out in today’s passage that comes out of the book of Acts, like Paul, we need to learn to be productive in our waiting time. We need to practice things like observing people and culture in a way that helps us connect them back to God. That is what we are going to talk about today.
As most of you know, we have been going through the series called The Story: God’s story as told through the people, places, and events of the Bible. We are in the New Testament portion of The Story. Specifically, we have been in the book of Acts. The acts of the apostles or some would say the acts of the Holy Spirit. Before we exit the book of Acts, we are going to talk about the apostle Paul one more time. You may recall that a few weeks ago I talked about Paul and his conversion on the road to Damascus. It was a very powerful experience. Following that particular conversion, Paul became one of the best known missionaries in the New Testament and really someone who was known for his travels. It is believed that Paul had three missionary travels. In this particular passage, we see Paul on his second missionary journey. I put a map up there so you can get an idea of how much he traveled. This is just on his second missionary journey. He started off way over here in Jerusalem. If we were to start talking about Acts 17 at the beginning, we would find Paul in Berea. Some of you know from your adult Sunday school classes that the Berea were a noble bunch. They were Jewish people. When Paul came to preach there, they didn’t just take his word on face value. They sat down and examined the scriptures to see if what he was saying was true. Consequently, a lot of people were converted in Berea. But the people in Thessalonica got wind of this and they weren’t too happy about it. So they sent a group of people down to Berea to stir up trouble. So much so that a group of Paul’s friends ended up putting Paul on a vessel on a boat and shipped him off to Athens where he was told to wait until his friends Timothy and Silas showed up. So that is where we are going to pick up the story today. Starting at Acts 17:16 and we are going to read through a big chunk of scripture. We are going all the way down to about verse 34. (Scripture read here.)
This is a great passage. I always liked this passage because it gives a very good example of how people can engage culture to the point of trying to locate things in culture that they can use to really connect back to God and possibly share the good news of Jesus Christ. But in order to do that we have to become observers of culture. We have to be willing to pay attention and open our eyes. We see Paul doing that in the very first verse where he says “While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.” If you have read anything about Paul and the book of Acts, you see that Paul was definitely a man on a mission and a man of focus. Three missionary journeys. I don’t know how long he was technically considered a Christian but it was probably only about 20 years or so, and he got a lot accomplished because he was a very focus and driven person. If you do a personality test called the DISC Profile, one of the personality types is D and it stands for Driven. I really think that Paul was a driven person and would have the personality type of D. Those people tend to be so focused that they don’t see what is going on around them. It is surprising that God slowed Paul down enough simply to pay attention to the world and people around him. So much so that it opened up all sorts of new doors of opportunity for him. We are people that should learn to slow down a little bit. Just take our time and pay attention to culture. Speaking for myself, many of us are just not that good at it. We don’t slow down. We are so focused on our agenda or our mission so we miss out on opportunities to interact with the culture out there.
I had a class a few years ago in seminary that had to do with learning to discern culture and how the culture tends to affect Christians, tends to affect leaders. It was an eye opener for me. One of the assignments was quite simple. It was just that we were supposed to take a note pad and spend the afternoon walking through a mall and making observations. Walking in and out of shops. Talking to people. Looking at people and just looking around. Specifically we began to notice things like how things like music, smells, product placement, and architecture all send out messages to us on a regular basis. They are constantly bombarding us with these gimmicks that advertisers use to sell their product. I recently read there is a brand of marketing called neuro-marketing. It is basically marketers who do studies and track how people will be affected by various things like odors and music. Then they teach advertisers how to adjust those things to accumulate the most sales. It was an interesting thing. It was an eye opener. The people out there are really trying to get us to buy their product and really, in a sense, what they are trying to do is get us to follow their idols and create new idols. A lot of the things that we see in culture today, if we get preoccupied with them, they become idols. Things like fashion, celebrities, sports, technology, money, sex, power. All those things in culture really are American idols. An idol is just something that takes the place of God in the center of your life. If any of those things do, then you have created an idol.
Paul was in the city of Athens and Athens was known as the city of idols. The name Athens comes from Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. It was packed full of idols. Someone estimated there were 20,000 altars in Athens at that time. A Roman writer at the time wrote something like it was easier to find a god or a goddess in Athens than it was a person. There were so many there. Paul, who was an orthodox Jew and very moral and later became part of this new organization called The Way, soon to be Christianity, he was in the midst of this culture that was contrary to his values, his vision for life, and his morals. As we see from this passage, when he saw those things, he became very distressed. I have seen some translations that instead of saying distressed one passage said it was like eating of your heart away or like a burning in your stomach. It was an emotional grief that he was going through carried with a bit of anger built into it. That is what he was experiencing. In spite of this, he didn’t run from culture. He didn’t sit at the dock while he waited for his friends to show up and say I am not going to go out in that mean world. I am not going to go out in Athens because I don’t want to be corrupted by that world. He got up and just started walking. He began to look for an audience of people that would listen to him. He didn’t care where he found them. He found them all over the place. Fist he found them in the synagogue. That is like our modern-day church only for Jewish people. When they were done listening to him and didn’t want to hear from him anymore, he went out into the marketplace. He would just stand on the street and preach. It is because people at that time, as we saw in the passages, were very interested in hearing about new ideas and different thoughts and different things to learn. Kind of like today. We have people that just love to exchange new ideas or talk about philosophy or whatever it is. The passage goes on to say that it was outside there that “A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, ‘What is this babbler trying to say?’ Others remarked, ‘He seems to be advocating foreign gods.’”
A couple things about this passage is that Athens was known for its gods and goddesses but it was also known for its philosophers. It had a school called Plato’s Academy which was a place where famous philosophers such as Plate and Aristotle and Socrates hung out and talked and exchanged ideas. They were known to be a center for philosophy. There were several different types of philosophers. My understanding of Epicureans was they were primarily a group of people that their goal in life was to seek pleasure and avoid pain in the simplest form. It is more complex than that, but they desired pleasure and to avoid pain at all cost. They weren’t necessarily atheists. They just saw that God was more at a distance and really had no concern for humanity. There are probably people out in the culture today that we find seek pleasure to avoid pain. They know there is a God out there, but they are really not interested in communicating with him. Then you have the Stoics. They were more of a rationale group. They were people that said whatever fate comes to you, good or bad, just deal with it. They were very rational. They were very moral and straight-laced type of people. They believed in a pantheistic god, which basically says god is everywhere. God is in a chair. God is in a rock. God is basically the soul of the universe. That is a short description of these two types of people, but you get an idea of what Paul is running into. So when Paul shows up and starts talking, they think this guy is ready to engage a little bit of philosophy so let’s see how he does. They kind of mocked him. They said who is this babbler? A babbler is not a word we use too much, but we think of it as somebody who talks too much. Back then, a babble would be a seed picker. Like a bird who goes around picking up seeds of knowledge and then taking it in as his own and giving it to others. It is somebody who just walks around and picks up the famous sayings of philosophers of the day and then pawns them off as his own. They are being a little bit sarcastic to him. Others remarked he seems to be advocating foreign gods. I imagine that some of you have come across this passage many times and think he is advocating Jesus. If he is advocating Jesus, why do they pick up the plural form? Why do they say ‘gods’? Apparently, they were thinking that he was indeed advocating at least two gods, Jesus and somebody else because the word resurrection in Greek can be referred to as the resurrection or as a woman. So the resurrection word is Anastasis and the word for woman is Anastasia. If his Greek was not very good, they could have easily confused that and thought it was Jesus and a goddess. That is why they are thinking foreign gods.
Whatever the case, Jesus and the goddess didn’t make the list of the approved god and goddesses of Athens so they send him up to this place called the Areopagus. It goes on to say they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus. This word is made up of two separate words: areo and pagus. Which means basically areo’s rock. Also known as Mars hill. If you want to know what it looked like, I found a picture online. You can see why it is called a rock because that is what it is. It is next to this little city outside of Athens. This would be the cultural center of the time. It would be a place where people would go up and debate things like religion and education. It would be like the theater district. It would be a place where people hung out. It looks like a pretty interesting place to go to. It is someplace that Paul himself really did not expect to find himself. It was also known apparently as the place that they would go to try both civil and criminal trials. We really don’t know if Paul was up there actually because he was on trial or just because he was like the guest speaker of the day. What we do know is Paul probably saw this as some sort of a divine appointment. He saw it as an opportunity to begin to say okay, God, you have given me this audience that I would probably never be in front of. I thought I was going to the Jews and Gentiles and you send me up to this place. This has to be some sort of divine appointment. So like a good Christian, he said I am going to engage this a little bit. He starts a debate. He starts it off kind of cordially. It says “Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: ‘Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.’” If somebody said that to you and said you go to church a lot and seem very religious, would that offend you? Would you take it as a compliment? It is kind of borderline. We really don’t know if it was a compliment or not. Some suspect he was using the opportunity to start off with something positive. He was finding truth in that situation. They were very religious. Not religious in the sense that we think of religious but they were very religious.
As a side note, if you dare to get into a conversation with a non-believer and hopefully lead toward something spiritual, start off with something positive. Start talking about something that is near and dear to their heart or some truth that you see. If you are in their office and see a picture of their family, say that is a pretty good looking family. Tell me about them. Or they are reading a book you read so say I read that book too. I really enjoyed it. Or you hear them talking about a movie or TV show and you say I watched that too and I really enjoyed that. One of the things that I think is a very good door opener to conversation is tattoos. Anybody have tattoos in here? How many of you are so proud of your tattoos you are going to raise your hand? I think some of you are not too proud of your tattoos. The reality is a lot of people have tattoos today. I don’t have a tattoo. I came this close in Hong Kong about 40 years ago but didn’t do it. I don’t need a tattoo because I have a scar. I had heart surgery two months ago and I have a scar from here to here. My son in Nashville says chicks don’t dig tattoos, they dig scars. I would show it to you but Debbie doesn’t let me take my shirt off in public anymore. There are all sorts of opportunities to start discussion.
That is what Paul does. He says something positive but then starts talking about this unknown god. He says “For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.” That seems strange to us, but it was very common during that time to have different altars out there to unknown gods. A lot of people suggested they just wanted to make sure their bases were covered by all the different gods and goddesses. One legend tells of a great plague that happened in Athens a long time ago and the people were dying on the streets. Somebody came up with the idea that they need to take a flock of sheep through the town and wherever the sheep stop we will slaughter the sheep and set up an altar to an unknown god. That is one particular legend. However it happened doesn’t matter. There were a lot of them, so Paul was using something that was very common and very familiar as a way to connect the people back up to God. If we had time, we would go through his reasoning behind God, but I am going to have to paraphrase it. He basically said the god that you say is unknown I am about to tell you a little bit about this God. He went on to say the god that you claim is unknown created the heavens and the universe and the world. He does not live in temples that are created by men. That doesn’t make any sense because he created men and women and the whole human race. Then he placed them in this beautiful world. He set the places where they would domain. He did that so that they would someday be smart enough to seek him and understand that everything around them has been created by God and they would begin to seek him. Unlike your gods, he doesn’t play hide and seek at all. He is available. He is so close that it is in Him that we live, move, and have our very being. He said your own poets are the ones that said we are his offspring, we are his creation. If we are his creation, does it make sense that we could chisel God out of a piece of rock? He says that is pure ignorance. It is stupidity. He goes on to say that basically God allowed ignorance for some time, but he is done. It is time now to repent. It is time now for a radical life change. God is about to come back, and he is going come back and judge both the living and dead. He has already picked the judge and he raised him from the grave. “When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject.’”
As you see from the story, Paul was a master communicator. It wasn’t that difficult. He just was observant. He started with a compliment. He found things that were common and familiar and then he connected it back to God and basically closed with an application. He left those philosophers with basically a choice. You either believe what I am saying or you don’t believe it. There is no middle ground. As we find out, it goes on to say that a few men became followers of Paul and believed. “Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.” We read this and some people think it doesn’t seem very successful considering all the other harvested souls that Paul was able to get throughout the book of Acts. But really we don’t know that. We do know they wanted to hear him again and possibly again. He was able to hang out in Athens and talk to more people and encourage the new believers and make more believers. That is really the story I wanted to share today. What I think is it is an example of what every one of us should be able to do and be willing to do. Some of you I think are thinking that is fine but my name is not Paul and I don’t know anything about philosophy and I don’t know a whole lot about culture. I haven’t been to Athens. Besides that, I really don’t like talking to people. Anybody like that? My hand is up. I really don’t like talking to people in public. You laugh, but I don’t. I can stand here and talk to you guys because you guys are all friendly. In public, I kind of shut down. I just want to be by myself. Don’t bug me. I have that German mentality and I am driven, so I have two things going against me. But God doesn’t allow us to not be stretched. God doesn’t allow us to not be put into these situations or be disobedient when we are in these situations. He will stretch me and take me out of my comfort zone.
As a side story, I have been asked to speak at an education conference in December. Something I would never, ever seek out. It is out of my wheelhouse. As would happen, God orchestrated something that I could not have orchestrated. There is a little girl in church who invited her teacher to come to our Christmas Eve service last year and see her part in the play. She was so impressed with the play and obviously my preaching that she called me up a couple weeks ago and said I came to your Christmas Eve service and I liked what you had to say. I need somebody to do the opening invocation of prayer at this education event next month. Would you be willing to do it? What am I supposed to say? No that is out of my wheelhouse. There are going to be people there that aren’t Christians. There are going to be people there that won’t like me. There are going to be Jews there. There are going to be atheists there. There are going to be these people thinking what does this guy have to say. I would be foolish not to do it. That is what I call a divine appointment. Those things I think happen more than we realize. It is scary for me to think of how many we have missed just because we are afraid of what somebody is going to think about us. Who cares what somebody thinks about us. They are not thinking about you that much anyways. They are thinking about themselves. It doesn’t really matter what you say and what they think about you. And anyway, you are in good company because they didn’t like Jesus. They put him on a cross. I think you will get off a little bit lighter than that. You don’t have to be afraid. You have to take those opportunities that are given to you. Some of you are still saying that is you Chuck. You are a pastor. That is what you are getting paid to do. That is bunk. Everybody is given those opportunities. Just because you think I’m not Paul and I’m not Chuck, there has to be somebody in the service who is comfortable doing this sort of thing. I have gotten to know Trisha over the last five years or so and I got to know her very well when we went on the mission trip to the Dominican Republic last February. I was very impressed with Trisha. She would stand on a street corner and talk to people about Jesus. She would sit on the shuttle bus and talk to people. As she is going to share in the next few minutes, she would share Jesus as she sat on the airplane going toward the Dominican Republic.
(Trisha speaking) I am not Paul. I do not have tattoos or any scars. I am learning Spanish. When I get in front of you, I automatically want to say Buenos Dias, Estudiantes and then my students always say Buenos Dias. First of all, my name is Trisha. We have been attending BCC for about five years. My husband is Andy. I have three energetic children. Caleb is 10. Eli is 7. Lydia is 3. As Chuck said, last February, we went on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. That trip taught me many things. One of the major lessons that I was convicted of was the importance to share Jesus no matter where I was and share Jesus in a very authentic way. Upon my departure, I knew I would have to share my testimony, but I am a type-A personality. I am an overachiever so I was very eager to start to share Jesus and I began to do that before I got there. I had experienced sharing Jesus prior to taking the trip, but I didn’t fully understand the process I went through until I came home and reflected on how I share Jesus with those around me. If I had to break it up into steps, I would say the first thing I do is I observe people and I watch them. I really love to watch people. I would have loved your project at the mall. Then after I watch people, I usually find myself initiating some type of a conversation with them. Once conversation begins, I tune my ears in to what the person is saying. Finally, I try to find the common connection between the person I am talking to and I share God in a most authentic way and how he is working in my life. Sometimes I share how I was saved, how God is transforming me, miracles that have happened in my life, or the peace and comfort God provides me.
We had three flights to the Dominican Republic. On one of my flights, I got on the plane and there was a divine appointment created for me. I went to get on the plane, and there was a lady sitting in my seat. She said you are going to be sitting back there. I want to sit by my son. She really didn’t give me an option. I just went along my way and I knew in my mind there was probably a reason why I had to be sitting where I was sitting. I walked back and found myself sitting by a man who was about the same age as myself. Immediately, I began to notice his hands were shaking, his knees were shaking, and a lot of things started to go through my mind. I knew what I needed to do was find a way to connect to this man. I initiated conversation by asking him if he would like a piece of gum. Gradually, we started to engage in conversation. I learned that he was a veteran. He had three children about the same age as my children. He was born in the Dominican Republic and traveled a lot for his job. I also learned that he had recently developed anxiety issues when flying. I shared my faith with him by making connections to his life and mine. I remember telling him about how I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior and how God had been working in my life over the past several years and the work God had been doing in my life had led me to my trip to the Dominican Republic. Before we got off the plane, I knew my new friend had some seeds planted in his heart. He mentioned that he probably should be attending church more often and be more intentional about getting his boys to church. He also took the time to thank me. He stated that talking to him through the flight caused his anxiety to go away and he had never been so comfortable before on a flight. Did I take my Bible out and preach to that man this day? No. What I did was share Jesus with him through sharing the story God has written for me. I took time to observe, initiate conversation, and make a connection he could relate to. In 19 days, I will be getting on a plane going back to the DR. I can hardly wait for whatever appointment God has for me as I sit on the plane. I look forward to being able to share Jesus in a most authentic way with the person sitting beside me. God bless you and thank you for listening.
(Chuck speaking) As you see, it is really not that difficult. It is just carrying on a conversation. Observing, finding common points of connection, and just letting it go from there. Go where it leads. It doesn’t have to lead to some sort of a formal three-point gospel presentation. It is just a conversation. Hopefully, you have all been Christians long enough that you have seen some benefit from being a Christian. That is something that God has deposited in you that you can give out to somebody else. If you don’t, you are hoarding the gifts and experiences that God has given you. You are hoarding the lessons that God has given you and he wants you to share. God has not limited the form to Athens. His whole world in a sense is the Areopagus. That is what it is. The whole entire world is really our forum to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. There was a very strong Christian who said that is really what culture is. We are in this new Areopagus. That is the place we are in. He goes on to write “Do we not often find ourselves in conversation with people whose vision of God and of life is very different from ours, with people whose lifestyle, values, and vision don’t make sense to us? So here we are in the Areopagus of Athens.” He goes on to say “There are many other forms where the gospel method could be integrated. Christians must actively participate in many sectors of modern life so that the light of the gospel may shine forth.” I imagine that some of you have heard of Pope John Paul II. He is the one who wrote this.
In closing, we have all been given divine appointments. We get them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have to pick up our eyes from our smartphones. We have to begin to be observers of culture and watch what is going on in culture and then begin to look for these common points of contact; places we can connect with people in very real ways. And if the opportunity exists, hopefully be able to lead them into Christ. When we do that, we are participating in this personal Areopagus. We are part of this. More importantly what we are a part of is God’s ongoing mission to draw his children back to him. Let us pray.
