LIVING IN A DIVERSE CULTURE 2
Text: Acts 17:22-34
Introduction
1. Illustration: What is culture? It is the ways of thinking, living, and behaving that define a people and underlie its achievements. It is a nation’s collective mind, its sense of right and wrong, the way it perceives reality, and its definition of self. Culture is the morals and habits a mother strives to instill in her children. It is the obligations we acknowledge toward our neighbors, our community, and our government. It is the worker’s dedication to craftsmanship and the owner’s acceptance of the responsibilities of stewardship. It is the standards we set and enforce for ourselves and for others: our definitions of duty, honor, and character. It is our collective conscience. (Robert P. Dugan, Jr., Winning the New Civil War, 169).
2. Last week, we started a two-part sermon on the topic of living in a diverse culture. In the first sermon, we looked at how Paul went into a diverse culture and ministered the Gospel.
3. Today we will look at the second part of that sermon, and we will base our strategy of living in a diverse culture by things we learn from Paul in Athens.
4. Read Acts 17:22-34
Transition: The first step in ministering in a diverse culture is…
I. Build on Common Ground (22-23).
A. To an Unknown God
1. In the first section of this text, we learned that Paul went to Athens and was deeply troubled by all of the idolatry he encountered there.
a. Then he went, as he usually did, to the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles.
b. Then he went to the marketplace and spoke to people there.
c. Afterwards, he debated with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. During that batting around of ideas, they criticized him of when he talked about the resurrection, referring to him as a “babbler.”
d. They then took him to the high council of the city, and they were very interested and wanted to hear more of what he was teaching.
e. But he had to change his normal tactics in order to reason with them.
2. Now Luke tells us of the things that Paul told the high city council. In vv. 22-23 it says, “So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: “Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, 23 for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.”
a. Let’s be clear, Paul was not ill-prepared for this meeting.
b. He came from Tarsus, which was an educational center in the Roman empire, and he was a rabbi trained by the most significant rabbi of the time, a man named Gamaliel, and he spent most of his life thinking and reasoning with people by using the Scriptures.
c. But now he finds himself in a situation where quoting Scripture was not going to work, because these people weren’t familiar with the Scriptures, and frankly could care less about what the Scriptures had to say.
d. So, he had to come up with a new game plan.
3. He began by almost complimenting them. He said that he noticed how religious they were.
a. The phrase “very religious” means fear of or revering evil spirits.
b. So, Paul was saying they were religious, but the things they were religious about were wrong.
c. Now, Paul uses something that they were familiar with, which he was able to do because he took the time to understand what they believed in.
d. Paul didn’t come in and criticize what they believed in without knowing what they believed.
e. When Tina and I were in Bible college, we were required to read this book, The Universe Next Door.
f. In it we learned from a Christian perspective what other world religions believe.
g. It’s helpful to understand what others believe in order to minister to them. If Paul took the time to do that, it would be helpful to us to do this too.
4. Now, Paul talks about something he saw when he was walking around the city. He talked about a shrine he saw to the “Unknown god.”
a. The Athenians were very superstitious people, so, they didn’t want to take the chance of making anyone mad.
b. Christian comedian, Mike Warnke, who served in Vietnam, talks about a guy he met when he first got there who was an atheist.
c. Mike said he saw him again six months later, and he had a chain around his neck with a cross, a Buddha, a Star of David, a Crescent, and Indian arrowhead, and hair from a sheep on it. Mike asked him what was wrong, and the guy said, “I believe!” To which Mike responded, “what in? I can’t tell from that chain around your neck.
d. And the guy said, “I don’t know, but in my case, I can’t afford to make anybody mad!”
e. That’s kind of how the people in Athens felt, so, they had this shrine to an “unknown god.”
f. Paul uses this to begin his conversation with them. He tells them, this unknown god is the one that he had been talking about.
g. Paul says, you have been worshipping him and didn’t know it.
h. So, Paul took something they knew about and used it to tell them about Jesus.
B. Friendship Evangelism
1. Illustration: Before you can convince a man of anything, you must first convince him that you are his true friend. (Abraham Lincoln).
2. The most effective way to lead someone to Christ is to become their friend.
a. “The seeds of good deeds become a tree of life; a wise person wins friends.” (Prov. 11:30).
b. The easiest way to lead someone to Jesus is to become their friend first.
c. It is hard enough to talk about something as intimate as a relationship with Christ with a friend, it’s even harder with someone you hardly know.
d. So, the best way to share Jesus with them is to build a relationship with them.
e. In my job as the chaplain at the Ford dealership, my first priority is to build relationships with the employees there. It’s easier to get them to talk to me about their problems if they see me as me as a friend, rather than someone doing a job.
f. It’s the same in sharing the Good News with someone; they have to know you care about them first.
g. So, start by finding a common interest you have together. Like, say, football, hunting, or fishing (if you’re a man).
h. Build a friendship and let the Holy Spirit open the door to talk about spiritual things.
Transition: The next step is to…
II. Make the Cloudy Clear (24-29).
A. He Doesn’t Live in Man-Made Temples
1. Now, Paul builds upon the common ground he had established with them to help them see some of the misconceptions they had about this unknown god. Paul tells them in vv. 24-25, “He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.”
a. First, Paul deals with the fact that they believed in many gods.
b. Paul makes it clear that this unknown god that they had been worshipping is THE GOD.
c. He makes clear to them that the God he serves is the creator of everything that exists.
d. Everything they had, everything they saw, everything they touched was created by this God.
e. Second, Paul deals with the issue they had with worshipping idols. They worshipped things they made with their own hands, and they worshipped these gods in temples they built themselves.
f. But Paul tells them that the true God doesn’t live in man-made temples because he is everywhere, and he doesn’t need people to serve his needs because he has no needs.
g. The Greeks believed that the god’s needed them to take care of their needs for food and shelter, but Paul makes it clear that his God doesn’t need humans to take care of him.
h. In fact, the opposite is true; he takes care of their needs.
i. He says that he gives life and breath and satisfies every need.
j. The things they were trying to give to their many gods, the true God was giving to them.
2. I love what Paul says in v. 27, “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us.”
a. Paul tells them that the true God’s desire was for everyone to seek after him.
b. “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” (Jer. 29:13).
c. So, God wants for people to come and look for him even if they don’t really know what they’re looking for.
d. The phrase “feel their way,” is from the idea of groping around in the darkness without the help of the light of God’s revelation.
e. Paul, in a way, is commending them for searching after God, even though he considers their search groping around in the dark.
f. Paul even tells them, that not only does God want people to know him, but that he is not far away. This is different from the Greek gods, who lived far away and could not be approached.
g. He is telling them that the altar they built to the unknown god could be realized in Christ, because he was very near and able to be know.
3. In vv. 28-29, Paul again uses something familiar to them. He says, “For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.”
a. What Paul does here is he quotes a couple of their own poets.
b. The phrases “in him we live and move and exist,” and “we are his offspring,” were quotes from some very popular and accepted literary sources from their own day.
c. So, Paul took something that they knew and used it to help them understand about Jesus.
d. He used this to show them that God was not something they could build with their own hands, but rather that he was a being that they could know and with whom they could have a relationship.
e. He wasn’t an impersonal but a personal God.
f. Paul took what was cloudy and made it clear.
B. Correct Misconceptions
1. Illustration: I remember one morning in high school; I was trying to share my faith an old partying friend of mine. He said, “don’t waste your time; I’m a hopeless case.” My response to his statement was, “look at me, if God can change me, he can change anybody. With God there are no hopeless cases!”
2. When talking to someone about God, often we need to correct their misconceptions about God.
a. “But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” (Acts 10:15).
b. “Peter told them, “You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:28).
c. Some people struggle with coming to Jesus because they have misconceptions about God.
d. Like my friend who thought he was too bad for God to change him.
e. Some people think that God is a mean ogre in the sky waiting to strike them down if they do something wrong. Instead, we can show them that God loves them and wants to forgive them and show them a better way of living.
f. Other people think that God wants to take away all their fun. But the truth is that God wants to give them abundant life.
g. The point is that sometimes we have to dabble in a bit of theology and show that God is not really like they think he is.
Transition: Another thing that Paul did was he…
III. Get Specific (30-34).
A. Commands Everyone Everywhere to Repent
1. Now Paul takes his proclamation of the Gospel to the ultimate reality; the need to turn from our sin and turn back to God. In v. 30 Paul says, “God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him.”
a. In reference to their idol worship, Paul states that God used to overlook people’s ignorance about such things, but now, he is calling them to repent of their sins.
b. Repentance is a decision that results in a change of mind, which in turn leads to a change in purpose and action.
c. So, God is calling people to see that what they are doing is wrong and not a part of God’s better purpose for us.
d. He was calling the Athenians to give up their idol worship and worshipping many gods, to worshipping the One True God and his Son Jesus Christ.
e. When we minister to people and tell them that it’s okay to keep doing what they are doing, we are doing them a great disservice.
f. Jesus didn’t die on the cross so that we could stay the same, but rather he died to give us the opportunity to change are ways and turn to him.
g. This is an essential part of the message we need to proclaim.
2. Finally, he confronted them with the truth that God was going to judge people for their sin. In v. 31 it says, “For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.”
a. There were two things here that for the Greeks were hard to hear.
b. First, he said that God had set the day to judge the world. The Greeks had no concept of punishment, which is why they worshipped many gods instead of just one.
c. If they thought one god got mad at them, they just moved on to another one. Although their gods got angry with them from time to time, but there was no accountability like what Paul was talking about.
d. Second, Paul affirmed that the judge would be the one that God proved his ability to judge by raising him from the dead.
e. Again, this was something foreign to them. To them the idea of a resurrection was unbelievable and offensive, but the whole Gospel message hinged on this one fact.
f. Paul would occasionally change his approach, as he did here, but he never changed his message, and we shouldn’t either.
g. Please notice that nowhere in this message does Paul quote Scripture, but he still based what he was saying on Biblical principles.
h. You can tell people of the truth of the Gospel without quoting chapter and verse. While we may change our method, we must never change our message.
i. We should also notice that some people laughed at him, some wanted to hear more, but some joined him. Don’t get discouraged when people reject your message; just keep working on those that listen.
B. Call to Change
1. Illustration: Jack Nicklaus is considered by most as the greatest golfer who has ever played the game. Once, when he was at the top of his game, he quit playing for 30 days to correct something with his game. He couldn’t correct it. He tried but to no success. Then he went back to his coach that taught him golf--and his game straightened out. He went on to win more major tournaments than any golfer in history. What’s repentance? It is going back to the Lord and the cross. It’s telling Him you are absolutely dependent on Him to change and be forgiven. When the Prodigal Son came back home, he didn’t just get a ring, a robe and shoes. The greatest thing he got back was his father.
2. The thing that we cannot change, or leave out or our message, is the need to change.
a. “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” (Matt. 3:2).
b. Paul may not have quoted chapter and verse, but neither did he water down the message.
c. He preached the truth to them.
d. People need to know that God is a loving, and forgiving God, but he is also a God of justice.
e. People need to know that they cannot continue on the path they’re walking, because in the end it leads to death.
f. People need to know that they need to allow God to change them.
g. There is forgiveness, but we must come to God and repent in order for forgiveness to take place.
h. Be honest with people but do it in a way they can understand.
Conclusion
1. When trying to share the Gospel…
a. Build on common ground
b. Make the cloudy clear
c. Get specific
2. What’s the point preacher? It’s not necessary to quote chapter and verse to share the Gospel, but it is necessary to tell the whole story.
