Summary
Pastor Safrit walks through Acts 17:16-34, highlighting Paul's experience in Athens as he encounters a city steeped in idolatry and philosophical pursuits. He emphasizes the importance of seeing beyond the surface to recognize the spiritual emptiness in people's lives and the need for Jesus. The sermon encourages believers to engage with their communities, share the gospel boldly, and respond to the spiritual needs around them, just as Paul did, ultimately leading to transformation and belief in Christ.
Housekeeping and Introduction
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms.
Hey man, if you've got a child that wants to be dismissed to Children's Church, that's available for you at this time. If you have your Bibles, it'll be in Acts chapter 17. Didn't our choir do a good job, despite their leader? They do a great job singing. Again, hey, this is always open.
If anybody wants to step into that role of leading, please let me know. It would help my voice out tremendously.
Acts chapter 17, we're going to be at the last half of this chapter as we continue walking through the book of Acts. And it's just been a blessing for me to walk through this book.
My soul has been stirred from looking through this and taking time just to slow down and look through it a little bit.
And today we're going to be looking at some lessons from Athens. Paul, here in the church in Athens. And so we will be looking through 16 through 34 this morning.
Let's all stand if you have your copy of God's Word, if you're able and willing. And words will be on the screen as well for you. Bible says, I love how Luke writes this.
Others replied, He seems to be a preacher of foreign deities because he was telling the good news about Jesus and a resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him into the Arapagus and said, May we learn about this new teaching that you are presenting?
Verse 20, Because what you said sounds strange to us and we want to know these things and what they mean. Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new.
Paul stood in the middle of the Arapagus and said, People of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observed the objects of your worship, I even felt an altar which was inscribed to the unknown God.
Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.
The God who made the world and everything in it in the Lord of heavens and earth does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is served by human hands as though he needs nothing, since he himself gives everyone life and breath in all things.
From one man he has made everything, nationalities to live over the entire world, and determine their appointed times and their boundaries of where they live. Verse 27, He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they may reach out and find him, though he is not far from each of us.
For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of you, your own poets, have said, for we are also his offspring. Since then, we are God's offspring.
We shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stones and image fashioned by human art or imagination.
Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of all this of everyone by raising him from the dead.
When they heard this, of the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, we'd like to hear you about this again. So Paul left their presence. However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysus from Agarapaga, a woman named Demarius, and others with him.
Lord, we love you. We thank you for the reading of your word. Give me power, strength this morning as we preach. In your name we pray. Amen. You can be seated.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity. Every once in a while, I'll go on field trips with my kids, and I don't like to go on field trips. Field trips are one of the most life-sucking events in my mind.
You go, and you have to go to all the little stations, and you're going around, and you've got 17 kids that you're looking over, and it's just life-draining if you've never been on field trips before. And I had the opportunity when I think Brody was second grade maybe.
It was maybe right before COVID, first grade. And we went to the Billy Graham Museum. And I had never been to the Billy Graham Museum, and I was excited about going.
I know a lot about Billy Graham. Of course, I've listened to his preaching. I've been around him.
As we began to go through this, and we got to there, we walked through the old house where he was born and raised, and then we went through the exhibit.
And Brody had two or three of his little friends that were with me, and they just wanted to run as fast as they could through this museum. Have you all ever been around kids that want to do this?
Okay, I'm a history guy, so I wanted to get in this museum, and I wanted to see all the things. They showed the videos and the crowds and Billy Graham preaching and all the things that were coming. And I'm sitting there, and I'm trying to read what's going on.
And they had the Soviets and the Germans and how Billy Graham was preaching during the wars and all this.
And Brody's like, Dad, we got to go. Like, we can't spend time listening to this. I'm like, no, I want to watch this. I want to see what's going on. And so I'm watching it, and I turn around, and the boys are just running.
So I've got to stop, and I've got to go follow them. And I got to the end, and I was just sort of frustrated because I wanted to experience what was going on there. And I learned a little bit as I was going through there. And we walked out, and Brody goes,
Dad, that was the most boring field trip I've ever been on in my life. I'm like, how is this boring? This was awesome.
This was history. This was the greatest thing ever. Like, this is a preacher. He's from North Carolina. He's from Charlotte. He preached to millions, and millions came to hear him, and hundreds of thousands of people changed their lives and turned their lives over to Jesus because of his preaching and his teaching.
And it inspired me, and they're like, this was the boring field trip. Like, Dad, can we go somewhere else? What are we doing? And so this is sort of what happens here in Acts chapter 17. Thousands of people are coming to Athens.
Athens was known for their philosophy and their stoicness of their teaching, and they had massive monuments, massive arenas where one guy would sit in the middle, and you would come for four, five, six hours.
There was no such thing as TV. There was no such thing as Facebook or YouTube. I know some of our younger kids are thinking, no such thing as YouTube. This is foreign to me.
Their YouTube was a guy standing in the middle of a platform, and for four, five, six, seven hours, he would teach about something that he wanted to teach on, and when he would get done, they would say, can
we hear more? Can you not stop? I know, Pastor James, you only went 30 minutes. Can you go longer? Like, this would be a dream for me. Talk as long as you want to talk. We have no agenda.
Just come and talk. And so Paul is walking through, and he's seeing all these idols, and he's seeing all the corruption and the statues that are set up, and he sees the wisdom, he sees the culture, but he sees something deeper. He sees a city, as the Bible says, wholly given to idolatry.
Their entire mindset, their entire thought process was idolatry. Everyone saw the art. Everyone saw the wonderful things that the Athens had done, but when Paul came in, Paul saw idols. He saw brilliant minds.
He also saw brokenness. He saw hearts that needed Jesus. He saw successful men stand up and teach and proclaim their ideologies, but yet he also saw a spiritual emptiness in this town.
Spiritual Condition of the People
He saw a group of people who had a power and knowledge but lacked all the power and knowledge of Jesus.
Beneath the beauty of the architecture and the philosophy, Paul saw brokenness, he saw idolatry, and ultimately he saw an emptiness of their spirit.
You know, as I began studying through this, as I began studying through this lengthy passage, my mind continued to go to this one simple thought, that this is very similar to our world today. Our world today is impressive on the outside.
They are impressive of their degrees and stature, and they've got all the different letters behind their name because they have all the ideologies in their mind, but yet they are desperate for the truth of Jesus Christ inside of them.
And we have this opportunity to be able to share the gospel with them. Paul's time in Athens teaches us how the world going through this type of life can be receptive to the gospel and how the gospel eyes can engage someone in truth.
And I believe as we walk through this, a couple of things that we can observe from Paul going through Athens, we will see a couple of things. And it brings us to the first lesson that we see in verse 16. As Paul came into this city, as he came into Athens,
he began to see some things. And I believe it challenges us to ask us, what do we see? As I mentioned, Paul walks in and he sees them wholly given to idolatry.
He recognizes where they're at and what they've done, and he begins to see that these people are prided on their wisdom. They're prided on how well they can lift themselves up and think about what they've done and think about what they have lived in their life. This town was built around these wonderful,
huge auditorium outside hippodroms, is what some people would call them, and these argopogalists, these massive seating, massive outdoor debates and talks that they would do.
They would get up and they would bring two people up there and they would say, okay, you believe one way and you believe the other. Here's five hours and just debate what you believe.
And Paul walks in and he sees this, and as he sees this, his heart was so broken. He just said, I've got to tell these people about Jesus. I've got to find a way. How can I get in that stage? How can I get in that place? And he sees their brokenness.
He sees what is wrong in their life. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go to New York City and we took 20 or, sorry, 25 people up to New York for a mission trip. Sorry. I got a little allergies here.
And while we were up there, I had the opportunity for the very first time to go through Times Square.
And man, Times Square was, it was beautiful. All the lights and all the LED screens and all the buildings lit up.
And I remember the very first time we got on the subway and we went to downtown and we came out of the subway and our guide said, we're going to come out of this subway for a reason because
as you get to the top, you're going to see all of Times Square in one shot.
And so we came up and I mean, I'm like this little country guy who's never really been to Charlotte often. And I come out of this and you can just,
it's almost like this movie scene where when you come up, you see the little kids are looking around and they're like, holy cow, these are massive buildings. This is awesome.
Like that was me. I'm looking around and I'm seeing all the lights and I'm seeing everything that's going on.
And as we're walking through Times Square, as we're beginning to go through there,
my mind begins to shift from the lights and the glitz and the glamour to look at the depravity of all these people around. Look at the brokenness of all these people that are walking around that don't know Jesus, that don't know anything.
And there was one story of, there were two ladies that came up and I'm a hugger.
If you don't know, I like to hug people and these two ladies came up and my eyes were looking over here and I turned, they said, can we have a hug? And I turned and in that moment, they were completely naked.
And I went for a hug not realizing they were naked and I'm like, whoa, no. And I turned and all my groups behind me and I'm like, hey, y'all look this way.
Don't look over here. But it was this moment where this world that we see the beauty around us, all of a sudden, there's this emptiness as well.
And when we begin to open our eyes and see the people that are around us and see the brokenness and see the hurt and see the pain that they're in, we begin to be like Paul where he looks and he sees in Athens and he sees that they don't know Jesus.
He begins to talk about this man named Jesus and we get to see their response. But I want to ask us this question.
When we look at our community, when we look at those that are around us, our neighbors, our friends, our family members, do we only see the surface?
Do we just see the lights and the glitz and the glamour of everything? Or do we look to the beneath the surface and say, these people need Jesus.
They need a life transformation that only Jesus can give and we see the spiritual condition that they're in.
We see that they need this life-changing revolution of Jesus and we begin to look and see. We don't just notice the idols or the success or the things that they have, but we begin to notice their spiritual life as well. What do we see?
The second thing we see here is how Paul felt and what we feel. Paul here was provoked by the Spirit.
The Bible says that he was mixed or distressed when he saw and began to feel their lostness here.
There was a mix of holy grief but also righteous anger. All of a sudden, he didn't feel disgust,
but he saw people and he had compassion on them. He said, these people, they're hurting, they're lost, they don't know Jesus and I've got to be the one that there's no one else telling the truth here.
There's no one else telling them what's going on and so I'm going to step up and I feel their hurt, I feel their need and I want to step up and tell them the truth.
It's almost like you have a child who's doing something that's dangerous and they continue to do this dangerous act and they're going to harm themselves and as a parent, you step in with a sense of urgency, with a sense of compassion, with a sense of sorrow because you don't want your child hurt.
Yesterday, I was mowing up and down my house. I've been a couple weeks since I've been able to mow and as I'm mowing, Birdie's running his dirt bike up and down the yard and I get to on the side yard where I'm at and all of a
sudden, now he's like waving her arms and so I don't know what's going on so I hit the blade, I take off toward there.
Birdie's dirt bike, somehow the motor wouldn't turn off and he was screaming because he couldn't get the motorcycle stopped
and Allie's out there and she's trying to figure out what's going on but in that moment where he's hurting and he's in distress, Allie could have looked out the window and said, all right, figure it out son. You got this. If it blows up on you, oh well.
No, what does the mom do? She runs out there and she tries to save and help her son and this is what Paul has.
He's in this feeling of emotion where he sees these people, they're hurting, they're lost, they need Jesus and he runs to them as a father loves a child and he begins to tell them these things because his heart was moved with compassion.
When's the last time we saw someone? We saw them in their action, we saw them in their deeds and our heart was moved with compassion that we ran to them and we said, can I help you?
Can I help you in this spiritual need or this physical need where you began to work in their life?
Or have we just grown numb to the people that are around us? The feelings that we once had toward telling people about Jesus have gone away because we're saved and our family's good and so we've lost this compassion toward others.
We've lost this compassion for our community and Paul walks into this community and he says, I've got to teach, I've got to train, I've got to go in this area and verses 17 and 18, this is where we
see where Paul goes and where we also should go and where we are going as well. Paul was engaged in two different places.
Every account that we have of Paul, he goes to one specific place. He goes to the meeting place of where the Jews are at.
Paul's Approach to Preaching
He goes to the synagogue. He goes to the synagogue, he goes to the Jews and he begins to preach and proclaim and tell them about Jesus, the good news of Jesus. With this story, we see him moving his transition from just the Jews to now into the marketplace.
And this is one of those transitional moments in scripture where Paul goes not only to the Jews, but now he goes to the Gentiles. He goes to us.
And he says, I've got to go and tell the Gentiles, those that are not just Jewish people, about this wonderful man named Jesus.
He meets people where they are at, both religious in the synagogue, but also those that are irreligious, those that are lost and those that are secular that are out in the marketplace. We as well must go and meet people where they're at. People are not always going to come to us.
We must go to where they're at. It's like a doctor who back in the day they used to make house visits and he would go to the hospital, he would have his own practice, but he would also go into the community and he would work with those that couldn't maybe come to him.
And we are the same way. We must be taking the gospel to every area of our life when we go to work, when we go to school, when we go into the marketplace. We've got to be people who are going out and telling others about Jesus where we go.
We have to be willing to take the gospel outside of the church walls. These are wonderful church walls and God has blessed us with wonderful things, but are we just worshiping Jesus here on Sunday or here on Wednesday when we come for a Bible study or are we taking those steps outside
the walls and saying, I see someone hurting over here.
As Cole just shared about Emily, Emma, she saw someone hurting, she saw someone who needed the scripture that couldn't see that and couldn't afford it and she took a step of faith and stepped out and was able to help that person.
Are we willing and able to take those steps of faith to step out and say, how can I go into my schools? How can I go into my workplace and just simply share and have conversations?
You see, Paul wanted just to have a simple conversation with people. He steps into the synagogue and he says, can I share some things with you? Can I have a conversation with you?
It doesn't have to be a debate where we get mad at each other. It's just simply sharing what God has laid on my heart and some things that God is doing in my life.
Or are we so scared to speak the truth of the gospel where we just freeze up and we don't know what we're going to say or we're afraid we're going to get embarrassed and Paul begins to say, you know what, let's lay out some things you can say.
As we've looked recently in times past, Paul will get up and this is one of the first Gentile sermons that we have.
All the other sermons have been Paul preaching to Jewish people and he starts with Abraham and he starts with their forefathers and he walks through the gospel line to Jesus. In this occasion here he's speaking to Gentiles and so if he were to start at Abraham they would be like, who's Abraham?
Who are you talking about? What is this? And so he has a different approach as he begins to see what does he say and what should we say?
God's Nature and Resurrection
Paul's message here was centered around God's nature and Christ's resurrection.
And when we begin to get to this point in our life when we don't know what to say, when we don't know how to respond, when we don't know what to say to other people, not all of us can get up and talk for hours and hours and hours.
Unfortunately, my kids, they can because they have a pastor as a dad and they have a mother as a school teacher and so both of our professions are public teaching and talking all the time. And yesterday, we were, was it yesterday? Friday?
We went to North game on Friday, North versus East and East came with a great win.
North, don't know if they have a full team left anymore after the 42 to 7 victory that East put on them. But we're coming home and it was a 45 minute drive and for 45 minutes, Bertie's iPad was dead and he talked for 45 minutes the entire way home.
I don't think his mouth ever stopped talking. And so we get home, it's like 10 o'clock and he's, I'm like, all right, we got to get in bed and he's like still talking. I'm like, Bertie, just stop talking. Go brush your teeth and get in bed.
Like, not all of us have that ability just to talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. But oftentimes, we get these opportunities where we have an opportunity to talk and we don't really know how to share Jesus, how to begin this conversation with Jesus.
And so, Paul lays out in this message here verses 24 through 31 sort of an outline of how we can share Jesus. He starts with God as the creator.
He begins to say there is this creator out there and he made everything, he made the world, he made everything that's in it and he created creation.
You see, the gospel starts with creation. It doesn't start with man, it starts with creation and how God lays out this creation order and how he created man but there was a creator which means there is someone else that is there and we have to understand who this creator is.
It would be like picking up a book and beginning to read this book of a biography of someone and you're like, I don't even know who this person is or the author, you can't really understand the book until you know the author
and once you begin to know who the author is and you begin to read that novel and you begin to read that book, you get a greater understanding of where that author is coming from, the life skills that he had, his home life as he began to grow up.
The more you know about C.S.
Lewis, the more you begin to read his writings, the more you can relate to that person, that book that he's written and so Paul is saying here, listen, let's start at the creator, God who created everyone and let's start with him
and then he goes on to say not only is there a God that's the creator but we have a God that is the sustainer, the one who gives life, who gives breath,
who gives everything that you can imagine in life. This is the God who steps into eternity and gives us life, breath, and everything.
You see, God, as he looks through this, he sort of makes this statement as he's walking through here and I can imagine him saying this, it's not directly here but as he's walking through and he's seeing these idols, he says, you know, idols, they take everything.
They demand these sacrifices and these other things but God, God is a giver and the more that I study scripture, the more that I live my life in these short 20, 36 years of my life, almost 37 years,
the more that I understand God is not a taker but God is a giver.
God doesn't demand things from us but when we begin to give things back to God, he begins to overflow his blessings back to us and he says, you know, if you decide to give the little bit that you have, I'm gonna overwhelmingly bless you in return
because God is a giver not a taker and he's a sustainer of life and when life gets troublesome,
when life goes through valleys, when we don't understand how to get out of those valleys, he comes in with the Holy Spirit as we've been talking about on Wednesday and wraps his arms around us and says, I'm gonna sustain you, my son. I'm gonna give you the strength that you need
and the world looks at us and they say, how in the world are you able to go through those things?
How can you begin to even have a smile on your face when you're going through the hard times that you're going through and we get to look at them and say, you know, I've got this man named Jesus, this God who sustains me in my darkest times,
who sustains me when I don't know how to get through that.
In my life, when my mother and father split up and had a divorce when I was in high school,
there were some hard times and I had some friends that pointed me back to Jesus that said, listen, God is the sustainer. God is the one that's gonna help you through this time and he was there every step of the way.
When I didn't understand what was going on, when I tried fixing the situation, I'm a fixer. So there was one night where mom and dad came home after they were trying to go through this divorce and I said, mom,
dad, sit down. So they came into the house and I sat down and I opened my Bible and I had all the scriptures talking about divorce and how it's wrong and for like 30 minutes, again, I wasn't called to preach at
this time, but for like 30 minutes, I just went through scripture and I was like, divorce is wrong. You don't need to do this. I don't know why you're doing this.
You're ruining our family and I just went to town on them for like 30 minutes. But in through that time, God just sustained me and gave me strength and gave me power that I didn't even know I had in those moments because God gives, he doesn't just take.
We also see not only what Paul says here as the creator, the sustainer, but he says, there is a ruler out there. Verse 26, as we walk through this, he says, from one man, he made everything, the nationalities and all the earth and he is the ruler of everything.
God's Sovereignty Over Nations
He determines the nations. He determines the times. He determines the boundaries of these nations in these specific times.
Church, we must understand that God has ordained America to be in America at this specific time. Just as he ordained Rome to be in Rome at their specific time when Jesus came into this world.
Just as Rome disappeared and other nations came up and Babylon and you can look through history, God is the one that rules and allows nations to rise and fall.
We must understand that throughout the course of human history, God is the one that is sovereignly in control.
And when we begin to trust in his power, not in our own power, not in our own strength, and we begin to trust in his ruling power, in his human, his God mind that has this supernatural ability to
know everything all at one time, we understand that he is the ruler of all nations at all times.
And human history is under him. Not only is he a ruler, but he's also personal. Verse 27, Paul begins to now walk through his message and get deeper and deeper. And now he gets to this category that oftentimes
as these people were worshiping idols, they were distant, they were stoned, they were made with hands, and they were just out in the nowhere. And Paul begins to say, listen, this God that I serve, he's not distant,
he's not away, he's not where I can't talk to him, he's personal, he's there, and he desires to be known.
He desires to be known so much that he gives us a book to begin to tell us all about who he is. He gave us his son who came into this world that is there for us.
And I can imagine Paul as he's sitting there talking to these people in Athens, he would look over at Mount Olympus and he would say, you see those gods that you serve over on Mount Olympus who is far
away, the Greek gods that are hidden and you never see them? I have a God that draws near to me.
And I can imagine him quoting Psalms where he says, those that draw near to God, God draws near to him and he's there as their comfort, he's there as their provider, as their sustainer, as their creator and it
is this personal relationship that you desire to have with God and he desires to have with you. I can imagine him saying, you know, back in creation,
he created two men, I'm sorry, two men, two people, a man and a woman, Adam and Eve, don't mistake me on that, Adam and Eve and every day,
the Bible says, they met with God and walked with God in the dew of the morning and they walked with God at night and they talked with God and they fellowshiped with God and God had this desire, this
relationship that he wanted to have with them and I can imagine him looking at them and saying, God also desires that same relationship with you. He wants to walk with you in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening.
He wants to draw near to you so that you can draw near to him so that this is a personal God who is there for you and there with you through all of your trials and tribulations.
And as he begins to walk through this, as God the creator, sustainer, ruler, personal, now he gets to the part where he says, there is this God who is the father. In verses 28 through 29,
he says, there is this father, there is this one that has an offspring and it says, in him we live and move and exist because God is our father. We are his offspring and he quotes one of their poets.
He says, as one of your poets says that we are like an offspring of his, he begins to show that, listen, you guys have heard this story.
You guys have heard these things and they're off in the distance and I'm here to tell you specifically, we have a father and we are dependent on him.
Just as a child is dependent on their mother and father as they're young and as they're growing up, we also are dependent on our heavenly father.
No one in their right mind would give an eight-year-old a debit card and a phone and say, here, go figure out life and there's only a little bit of money on this debit card and your phone's gonna expire at the end of the month and just go figure it out.
No one in their right mind would do that and so he says, just like God the Father wouldn't send us and abandon us, he also cares about us intimately.
The Importance of Repentance
He cares about you and he cares about me and he cares about us so much that he sent his son to die for us so that we could have a relationship with him. In verse 30, he begins to walk through now
what the importance of this is and he says, God not only is a father but he's a judge and God as the judge steps down from eternity and sent his son to die for us so that we would have no excuse but repentance.
We would have no excuse of ignorance of not knowing that this man named Jesus stepped out of eternity and stepped into this present time and stepped into this time where they were at and began to live his life.
Repentance is now required and he says, in your life, you have done wrong and you have done things that were unimaginable but God has,
through his mercy, provided a way of escape for you. He's provided a way that you can now step out of this guilt that you have in your life and step into the forgiveness that God has given you. You see, oftentimes when you begin to drive your life around and you go to the,
every five years or ten years, you have to go to the DMV and update your license. They make you take a vision test.
I hate the vision test because I've got a lazy eye and I've got to take my glasses off and sometimes I can't see it right even though I've got 20-20 vision but they make you take this test
because when you are driving and you go over the speed limit a little bit and I'm sure none of you have ever done this,
you go over the speed limit a little bit and the officer pulls you over and he takes your license and he says, oh, you recently had your license renewed.
You actually can see the speed limit signs, right? You have vision. There is no ignorance in your efforts. You were willingly
doing the wrong thing and broke the law and so we are held accountable for our acts. The same way as Paul lays out this preaching here, he says, there is a judge and you are no longer ignorant of this. You no longer have an excuse. You are required to repent.
You are required to make a response here. And then he gets to verse 31 and he says, because he has set a day when he's going to judge the world in righteousness by man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him, Jesus, from the dead.
And we see that through the forgiveness of Jesus, we see a God that is the forgiver. We see a God that judges us but looks at his son and says, the sins that you did, the wrong that you did, I've placed them on my son and there is forgiveness of your sins.
And as Paul walks through this message, he begins to say that this empty tomb that Jesus, who was crucified, who lived a perfect life, who died a Roman's death on a cross, was buried in a tomb and three days later rose again.
And because there was an empty tomb, there's a guarantee of God's forgiveness in your life if only you would trust in him.
He drives this message home by pointing everything from the creation to the cross, this creation to Jesus Christ who steps out of heaven and steps into our world to give us the forgiveness of our sins.
And when we begin to say, well, I don't know what I'm going to say to people. When they begin to ask me questions,
start with creation, start with Jesus and say, there was a man who came into this world who died for your sins, who loves you so much.
Responses to the Gospel
And I begin to ask myself, what does our culture need to hear from us?
There are people who are looking everywhere for every different type of acceptance and we have this message of Jesus that we can tell people and when we begin to confront them with their idols and confront them with what they're believing and saying, listen, there's this man named Jesus. He cares about you.
He loves you and he came into this world so that you can have forgiveness of sin. Now, as we look at from every single one of Paul's messages, there's now a response in what other people say.
Verses 32 through 34, we begin to see how these people respond, which drives it back to us. How are we going to respond? There were some that looked at this and they rejected him. They mocked him and they said, this man is speaking as someone who doesn't even know anything.
And there were others who said, I want to hear you again. I want to hear what you have to say. Can you come back and preach to us again? And we're interested. And then there were others that said, I believe you wholeheartedly.
I gave this illustration last week because it's so applicable in our life. As we go through life, Jesus said in Matthew 24 that there is this man who is a sower who goes out and sows seed into his yard. And as he sows this seed, as he,
I'm sorry, Matthew 13, not 24, Matthew 13, where he begins to throw seed out and the seed goes out and some fall on hard ground and they don't want to accept it and it just dries up.
And some go on stony ground where it goes in a little bit but then it withers away as the sun comes up and some goes on fertile ground.
Oftentimes, we preach the same message but there's different responses which drives us to ask ourselves, where are we at when we share the gospel?
Are we so consumed that as we share and as we throw those seeds out that it's just going to come back with that dry, hard ground and no one's going to respond? And so we say, well, Pastor James, I don't want to share because I'm afraid of being rejected. I'm thankful that someone
when I was 65 years old didn't look and say, I'm afraid to share the gospel with that five-year-old because I'm afraid he may reject me. I'm afraid he may reject Jesus. No, they told me anyways.
They began to tell me, they told my wife when she was 14 years old that Jesus comes and he loves and he died for her and all of a sudden we begin to hear the gospel and we had
people in our life that weren't afraid to tell us and yet we're often afraid to share the gospel because we're afraid. We may get mocked or we may get persecuted for our faith when Paul steps in and he tells them the gospel and he says, this is what we must tell others.
Others are going to reject you. Others are going to say things and others are going to turn away but our responsibility is just to go and to tell. As Terry comes, as we begin to close the message down, this happens to us all around us. The world hasn't changed.
The world is still full of idols as we were teaching this morning in Sunday school as Scotty was telling us and we were walking through a couple things he said.
As we read through Romans chapter 1 and the end of the last couple verses of Romans, he said, does this not tell us about our culture today?
Now, that passage in Romans was wrote over 2,000 years ago
and all of a sudden we can see scripture and how it's defining a group of people and we can say, you know what, there are still idols, there's still distraction in this world and there are still people searching for meaning to life everywhere they go. Are we aware of our community?
Are we aware of what people are looking for and how we can share the gospel with them? How do you feel when you see someone living a lost way, that's living a way that's away from Jesus, that they don't know Jesus, they've never heard the gospel? Does it grieve your heart?
Does it grieve your soul as it does like Paul here and it moves them to action to say, can I tell you about this man named Jesus? Where are you going to go this week?
What marketplace are you going to go in? What workplace are you going to go in? What school are you going to walk in?
What just random place are you going to go that God's going to appoint for you in your neighborhood where you're at to share the gospel with someone?
People around us and we begin to pray in the manner of God, give me someone to share the gospel with. I promise you he's going to give you someone to share the gospel with.
I promise you he's going to put someone in your path that's hurting, that's in need, that maybe lost a loved one, that maybe is going through a hard time and they're just searching for an answer and we can walk into that situation and say, can I tell you about Jesus?
Can I tell you about this man who changed my life?
And all of a sudden we get to ask ourselves, what are you going to say and how clearly can you lift up Jesus as the creator, the sustainer, the forgiver of all of our sins?
people are going to mock us, people are going to abandon us, people are going to turn their eyes away from us and people are going to turn their hearts away from us but the call is simple, to go and to share. Paul walked in, he saw them, he was grieved
and then he just began sharing. He began saying, listen,
I know there's some surface level things here, I know there's some things that you have maybe figured out but can I tell you about the real meaning of what's going on here?
I want you to think back to my open illustration as I'm walking through Brody with that museum, I'll eventually probably take him back as he gets older and he's going to go through and he'll appreciate the magnitude of
the ministry of Billy Graham and he'll say, man, why didn't I see this before? Because you were distracted.
You were distracted in your thoughts, you were distracted because you had friends around but now you get to see the beauty of this and oftentimes we're distracted in our witness
and we've got to get back to where Paul was at with a vision, a burden, and a boldness to step up and say, can I tell you about Jesus? Let's put the distractions away, let's put our phone away for a minute and let's just look at what Jesus has done.
Let's just look at how Jesus loves us and cares for us. You see, if we don't start seeing as Paul saw in the scripture,
we'll never live the way Paul lived. We'll never see the people who come to know Jesus because we're not seeing people the way Paul sees people as hurt, broken people who just need Jesus.
Call to Action and Conclusion
Every single one of us, myself included, are broken and have done wrong things and we need Jesus every single day of our life.
Me included, me standing here in front of you and when we begin to engage in our own Athens group of people and say, how can I help you? How can I share the gospel with you?
How can the gospel encourage us to live a certain way or to be a certain way? That's when we begin to see true life transformation happen.
We begin to see our families and our friends and our schools and our neighborhoods and our workplaces all begin to change for the sake of the gospel. So I challenge us this morning, where are we going to begin at?
Maybe you're here today and you don't know Jesus and you need to come and trust him as your savior. Maybe you just need to go and tell people about Jesus.
Whatever it may be, as Terry plays and as I pray to conclude the service, you respond as you see fit. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. Lord, help us as we process this message, as we process what Paul went through. Lord, he saw people differently.
He felt their need. He felt their hurt. He grieved his spirit when he saw that they were living a way that was unacceptable to you.
But it just didn't grieve him enough to walk away and say, I'm going to pray for you. No, he went in and he began to share his faith and he began to tell others about him. And we see at the end of the story, people come to know you.
I pray, God, that would be our testimony that we would be moved so much to compassion that we would go and we would tell others and that you would get the glory through everything that's said and done. Help us today. In your name we pray. Amen.
Thank you again for taking your time to listen to the sermon audio of Pleasant Grove. Please subscribe to get our latest sermons each week. 예�onie Ab ado
Auto-generated transcript · 7,992 words. May contain errors. Select a timestamp to play from that moment.
More from The Book of Acts
View all
The Book of Acts - Sermon 41
The Book of Acts - Sermon 40
The Book of Acts - Sermon 39
The Book of Acts - Sermon 38
The Book of Acts - Sermon 37
The Book of Acts - Sermon 36
Listen to this sermon