ANY CULTURE, ANY PLACE ON EARTH, ANY ERA - GOD IS AND CAN BE KNOWN!
The man’s name I cannot tell you but his story I cannot forget. He burst into the Waffle House with unbridled enthusiasm praising God and telling anyone who would listen how thankful he was to be alive. I invited him to sit next to me and to share his reason for being so happy.
He had spent two months in the Grady Hospital Burn Unit with third degree burns over most of his body after he had survived an explosion while cooking on a gas stove in his mobile home. The blast was so great that the door to the outside had been blown off with a huge hole in the wall, and it was through that hole that he wound up in the yard, on fire.
“Why God spared me I don’t know but one thing I do know is that I will be praising God for the rest of my life and serving him in any way that I can. Have you ever been set on fire? Well, let me tell you, that’ll humble you like nothing else. I’m 63 years old, ain’t ever amounted to much, but I get up every morning and thank God I’m alive and tell God I’m ready to do whatever He wants me to do.”
You of course know who in the Bible that man’s story recalls. After being thrown out of Thessalonica and escaping hell fire for preaching the good news about Jesus, the apostle Paul spent a few days in the city of Athens, Greece.
The sin of idolatry in Athens bothered Paul so he began to talk about his life-changing encounter with Jesus . . . his brush with death and how God helped him escape the fiery ordeal that he had faced . . . the negative effects that idolatry was having on the people in Athens and how it was leaving them with no hope. And, as is often the case – surprise, surprise - some folks did not like what Paul was saying and began to dispute him – Acts 17:16-21 . . .
Have you noticed how it is that when someone starts talking “Jesus” in the public arena, there are always those who wish he’d hush up and quit talking like that? Would the mere mention of Jesus makes some folks feel rather uncomfortable? Why do you suppose that is?
Do you think maybe “religious” talk gets too close to one’s conscience and gives rise to feelings of guilt which, up to this point, have been dealt with in ways that dull the senses or alter one’s state of mind and thereby makes one prone to depend upon an idol of some kind to give them approval?
Paul was endeavoring to persuade these high-minded self-sufficient fake religious folks to understand that there is One God and that getting close to and being on good terms with Him would require of them devotion far greater than lip service and religious associations of the permissive kind – living in denial by telling oneself that sinful behavior has the approval of a false god of one’s own making.
So, they called a meeting and invited Paul to address their issues of concern about what he was going around telling highly-educated men of the leading cultural center of the then-known world – Acts 17:22-23 . . .
There is no shortage of religious people today, many who use “religion” for their own self-aggrandizement or selfish purposes - for example, to gain wealth or fame, and the power that goes along with it.
But what they fail to realize is that religion will not save them from wrath to come, either by their own making in the here and now or at the time of their date with destiny - the eventual judgment that awaits everyone.
If the Lord God remains unknown to any one of us, what that means is that the person to whom He is not known as Lord and Savior will have missed what he or she was created for – everlasting fellowship with God our Maker, Father, and Redeemer.
You see of course what Paul was trying to get them to see, and that is, that Christianity is not about religion, it is about a relationship with God through Jesus Christ God’s Son and the Savior of all who believe and receive. That relationship begins by accepting the truth about God . . . – Acts 17:24-31 . . .
We began this series by asking, “How in the world is it possible to spread the good news against such odds?” The odds of which we spoke had to do with hostile opposition to the preaching of “salvation in no other name” than that of Jesus the Christ, Son of the Living God.
It was the “living God” theology that threw philosophers for a loop since they had spent countless hours establishing a system of “gods” by which people were to order their lives – “gods” made with hands or made up gods as figments of one’s imagination.
So, Paul’s thesis was: It is possible to spread the good news against such odds by speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). There are two aspects of the truth we speak – the truth about God, the truth about Jesus. “Now”, Paul said, “what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you . . . The God who made the world and everything in it is the LORD of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands”. * He created everything (24a) . . . * He is totally Self-Sufficient (24b, 25a) . . . * He gives life, breath, and everything else to mankind (25b) . . . * He is a divine strategist (26, 27a) . . . * He is not far from any of us (27b, 28) . . . * He is much more than man’s grandest idea of Him (29) . . . * He has overlooked past ignorance, but now requires repentance (30) . . . * He will judge the world by the Man He raised from the dead (31) . . .
What does He want from us? In His wisdom, God made Himself accessible to His creation. He wants us to FIND Him and to KNOW Him so that we might have FELLOWSHIP with Him.
Folks, God is not playing games with us, making it difficult to find Him, so He can get a kick out of watching us stumble around in the dark. No! He wants us to have an intimate relationship with Him. “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jer. 29:13).
How do I find Him to get close to Him and have Fellowship with Him? Acts 17:30-34 . . . It would be safe to say that, by now, Paul lost much of his audience because most did not believe in the resurrection and life after death, let alone final judgment.
Many of them just wrote Paul off as a lunatic - to believe that someone could come back to life after dying. Some of them did want to know more – later. Yet, there were some who wanted to know how to find God and get close to Him – now.
Thus, Paul told those who were receptive that such a relationship begins with repentance, whereupon a few of them repented, were willing to change the things in their lives that were offensive to God, eager to get started in their new relationship with God as their Father and His Son as their Savior.
What God desired to hear from them is what he desires to hear from all of us: “Forgive me O God for I have sinned.” The psalmist: “The sacrifice you want is a broken spirit. A broken and repentant heart, O God, you will not despise.” (51:17)
Hopefully, at our stage in life, we are past the point of caring more about what people think than caring about what God thinks - as was the case with Athenians whose rulers and philosophers had pretty much conditioned them to go along with a philosophy that says, in effect, “any god will do and anything goes” - morally speaking - not unlike the mindsets of segments of society today.
Folks, the only way I know to be in the world but not of the world is to set our affections on nothing that is unchristian, on no one whose allegiance is to any god other than God our Father who art in heaven and His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.To Him be honor and glory both now and forevermore! Amen.
