Building Bridges, Not Barriers Series

Last weekend, Pastor Ed and Sheila, Gary and Kathy Pinger, and Beth and I had the privilege of attending the Keep Believing Ministries retreat. KBM is one of Edgewood’s Go Team Partners. One of the many highlights was learning how the free gospel book, Anchor for the Soul has now been distributed in all 50 states! The only state we were missing was Rhode Island but an order from a homeless shelter came in on the day we began our retreat. To date, over 800,000 copies have been given away to prisons, pregnancy centers, homeless shelters, and other outreach ministries. Gary and Kathy ship these books out of a Moline storage facility.

Didn’t Justin Rumley do a great job preaching last weekend? What a super reminder of how the sufficiency and supremacy of Christ meets us at the point of our insufficiency.

[I’m grateful to Ray Pritchard for this idea]. Imagine you are a missionary arriving in the capital city of a country you have never been to before. Your itinerary was suddenly changed and now you find yourself alone in a place filled with people whose education and intelligence surpasses your own. The city is filled with people discussing art, debating philosophy, and describing the latest fads.

You are the first Christian to ever visit this city. There are no churches, no Christian schools, and no Moody Radio. As you walk down the streets, you become nauseated by the sheer number of statues to pagan gods, and you begin weeping because no one has even heard of Jesus.

What will you do? How will you find an opening for the gospel? Where will you begin? How will you find someone to talk to? And who will even listen to your message?

This is precisely the situation the Apostle Paul faced when he arrived in Athens. Listen as I read Acts 17:16-21: “Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols. 17 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. 18 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 and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, ‘May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.’ 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.”

Two weeks ago, we learned this truth from the first part of Acts 17: “To turn the world upside down, the Word must first turn us inside out.” Our main point today is this: If we’re going to reach unbelievers with the gospel, we must build bridges, not barriers.

Background

The Apostle Paul had to bounce out of Berea because of persecution so he made a 200-mile journey to Athens where he waited for Silas and Timothy. To pass the time, he went sightseeing. Instead of being impressed with what he saw, verse 16 says, “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.”

The phrase “full of idols” means they were covered with, or “under” idols. There were gobs of gods everywhere. One ancient writer estimated there were 30,000 gods in the city, making it easier to bump into an idol than an individual. Athens was next to Mount Olympus where the Greek gods Zeus and Aphrodite supposedly hung out. In addition, the Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, was built on the highest hill overlooking the city.

The Greek word for “provoked” is where we get the word “seizure” from. It has the idea of being so morally shocked his insides convulsed. It’s a combination of anger and sadness. Paul was deeply distressed about the depth of their depravity. Jesus had a similar reaction when seeing the hardness of the people of Jerusalem in Luke 19:41: “And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it.” It’s how Lot felt in 2 Peter 3:7 when he was: “greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked.”

When I was working on this very part of the sermon, I took a break to scroll through my news feed. I came across a story out of Vermont which made me feel sick to my stomach. During halftime at a recent high school football game, many students and teachers went onto the field and celebrated sin in front of a cheering crowd. As the show came to an end, the school superintendent participated with the performers on the track.