First Things First #1
“There is a God” Deuteronomy 6:1-5
Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
Sometimes, no matter how much you know (or think you know) it helps to get back to the basics…
• For Israel—they were about to embark upon their greatest challenge yet; entering into and laying claim to the land of Promise. It wouldn’t be easy and neither would living there, so in Deuteronomy, God prepares them by getting back to the basics… by telling them again of the fundamentals, the first principles.
• Dt. 6-ff is where he’ll list the Ten Commandments… “God’s Top Ten Most Basic Rules” but before that, I think its interesting that he begins with a statement about himself that will forever set Israel apart from its neighbors, “The Lord your God is One!”
• In a world of polytheism—where there was a different god to worship on every corner—Israel boldly proclaimed There is ONE GOD!
Christianity through the ages has had to face some pretty tough obstacles.
• It has faced persecution from without (oppressive governments, etc.) and false teaching and corruption from within.
• Through its history, there have been those rise up from within the church who would deny the sovereignty of God, the deity of Jesus, the power of the resurrection, the nature of the church, etc.
• Through it all, faithful Christians have been helped by constantly going back to the basics to be reminded again of those core teachings of Scripture, those FIRST PRINCIPLES.
• It is those FIRST PRINCIPLES that I want us to explore in more detail over the next few weeks as we look at… “First Things First.”
• To get the most out of this study, let me suggest to you a few things…
o Make note of the listing of the coming topics.
o Read the text each week I’ll print in the bulletin.
o A study guide to go along with each lesson will be available on the web site & in my class.
o We’re going to continue the discussion in my Christianity 101 bible class… so you’re invited to come and critique the lesson.
Let’s begin this morning in Acts 17:16…
The Apostle Paul has found himself in Athens Greece. It seems everywhere he went he got himself into trouble!
• He had just spent three weeks in Thessalonica where he had been chased into hiding by an angry mob. Under the cover of night he had fled to Berea just a few miles down the road. BUT, the mob had followed him and stirred up trouble for him in there, so the brothers there help him flee to Athens- some miles to the south.
• But, while Paul is awaiting Timothy & Silas to join him in Athens, he just can’t stay out of trouble! He goes to the synagogue AND into the marketplace where he attracts the attention of all the philosophers in the city.
16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 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." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) NIV
Athens was a cultural center for learning and education; for science & philosophy; art & religion. It was a University town with all the academic snobbery that goes with that.
• In that, there were a wide variety of ideas & philosophies; pluralism. It was a world where ‘everything goes’… much like our world today, it seems to me.
o Epicureans believed that either there was no god, or if there was he was so far removed from the world that he had no influence in its affairs. Agnostics or Deists of today.
o Stoics were first & foremost rationalists- they were the scientists of the day. To them REASON the highest principle. If it couldn’t be proved thru reason or the scientific method… they didn’t buy it!
• And so, Paul begins to “reason” with them and engages them on their turf… the Aereopagus… a meeting place (coffee shop?) where all of the top philosophical brains would come together and discuss philosophy & “all the latest ideas.”
Notice Paul’s Approach… he begins by complimenting their “religiousness”
22 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. 23 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. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.
• Notice, he didn’t have to convince them that “there is a God”… THAT was obvious to them! How else would you explain all of this—creation? But, it was so obvious, in fact, that they had a different god for everything! In fact they called the early Christians “atheists” because Christians wouldn’t worship all of “the gods.”
• Now this isn’t as far removed from our day as you might think. We, too, live in a pluralistic society and we’ve got a buffet of gods from which to choose: Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, L. Ron Hubbard (if your Tom Cruise).
• Everybody worships something, right? Even if it’s ourself? Money? Power? Science?
• Paul’s challenge was to reveal to them the ONE, TRUE GOD.
24 "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. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
This TRUE God is the creator of the Heavens & Earth… he is God, ALMIGHTY!
• Even today many philosophers refuse to buy into it. Scientists want to explain the creation with unexplainable theories… the Big Bang to Charles Darwin’s Macro-evolution… that all of this, somehow, spontaneously “just happened”.
• When pressed to describe what might have sparked the Big Bang or caused that amoeba to evolve into a man… the best they can offer is to talk about a “First Cause” or a “Prime Mover”… buts that’s the closest many of them will come to acknowledging the existence of a God.
• Christians believe that “First Cause” is God—not only “a god” but THE ONE-&-ONLY God! The all-powerful, almighty, maker of Heaven & Earth! This is the god of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob. Israel called him Yahweh… Jehovah.
• He isn’t dependant upon anything, especially us. He doesn’t need anything from us. He is the all-powerful creator and sustainer of all things…
He is still in control of this world; NOT distant or far off! He is actively engaged in his creation… for one purpose!
26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27 God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28 ’For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ’We are his offspring.’
• He wants us to Know Him! Isn’t that incredible? That the all-powerful, creator of Heaven & Earth wants to know us?
• He hasn’t hidden from use… he has revealed himself to us in so many ways! It was Adam & Eve who ran to hide, NOT God!
MOST important- there will be eternal consequences for rejecting Him.
29 "Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone-an image made by man’s design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead." NIV
• There will be a day of judgment… those who don’t believe that have only to wait… because they will.
• There will be a day when “every knee will bow and every tongue will confess”… there will be no unbelievers on that day!
• And it will be FAR better to believe that BEFORE that day arrives, because then it will be too late!
Well, how was Paul’s sermon received? The same way most sermons today are received…
32 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." 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 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. NIV
• That’s the way it is today, right? Some hear & believe and some still sneer.
In approaching this 1st principle this morning: “There is a God”… I thought about presenting to you all of the reasons why you should believe in God, telling you about some of the empirical evidences for the existence of God. Talking about the teleological argument or the cosmological case. The moral argument or the existential… but my guess is that most of us already believe in God.
• Maybe what we ought to consider this morning is, “What if there WERE no god?” or at least… “What if he isn’t the God that Moses or Paul spoke about?”
• Have you ever stopped to consider, “What if they’re right? What if there really is no god?
• What difference would it make in your life? Would it make a difference?
It’d be liberating, right?
• No more rules to follow… no more sermons to sit through or hard pews to endure (I mean would you really still come to church?)
• No! We could leave here today and go out, do whatever we wanted to and it wouldn’t matter! We could get drunk, party all night long, do whatever with whomever, eat, drink & be merry and just have a big ol’ time!
• Who would care? We aren’t hurting anybody… life would be all about a… “pursuit of happiness.”
• If there is no standard that I’m expected to live up to… no eternal consequences for my actions… no all-seeing God looking over my shoulder meddling in my business… wouldn’t it be great?
• No longer having to be concerned with “what God might think” I’d be free to just worry about myself… “what I want” or “what makes ME happy.”
• That’s be fantastic, wouldn’t it? The freedom to do whatever brings me pleasure!
You know anybody who lives that way… as if there were no god?
• Just look at how happy they are! How content! They have it all! Right?
• Have you ever thought what it’d be like to live as if there were no god?
• I heard a story once of a young man who was fed up with all of the rules at home so he sat down with his Mom & Dad and told them so. You know what his dad told him, “As long as you’re living under my roof, you’ll abide by my rules.” Okay, fine then. The young man decided he’d had enough and he would leave. He was old enough to take care of himself. He didn’t need Mom & Dad’s protection anymore. He didn’t need their guidance. So, he left. He packed up his things and headed for greener pastures… in the pursuit of happiness. His Mom & Dad pleaded for him to stay, but he still he left.
o Rejecting their authority, their guidance and even their very presence… he went off in pursuit of a life on his own, without Mom or Dad… “as if they didn’t exist.”… no rules, no curfews, no responsibility.
o Any idea where he ended up?
o When Jesus told the story, he said, “14 After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.” Luke 15:14-16 NIV
Life on our own without God wouldn’t be all that its cracked up to be.
• The prodigal son learned that life without Mom & Dad wasn’t what he thought it’d be… the pleasures and riches that he thought it promised, simply weren’t there (for long anyway.) I imagine he watched in anguish as his delusions disappeared like a vapor!
• The writer of Ecclesiastes did… he wrote…
10 I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor. 11 Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. 10-11 NIV
• Meaningless, meaningless, meaningless… that’s the word he uses. A “vapor”, a “chasing after the wind.”
• That’s how life would be if there were no god.
• The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." Ps 53:1NIV
When we stop to think about it… the problem isn’t that we have intellectually rejected the notion of God. Its just that in our hearts we often live as if he weren’t there…
• We go to school and plan our jobs or careers thinking about what might bring us the bigger dollar or the greatest responsibility or the most satisfaction… without thinking about what God might want us to be doing with our lives.
• We go to the car lot and think about how we can stretch our budgets to afford the nicest car we possibly can pay for… without thinking, if we got a little bit cheaper one, one with a little better gas mileage, we might have more to give away.
• We teach our kids how to hit a baseball, we get them to piano recitals and get them tutors if they struggle in school. We help them with their homework and do everything we can to make sure they grow up to be good citizens… but we forget to put the same kind of effort towards their spiritual growth? Making sure they get to Bible class, making sure we teach them that being in church is important, that reading their Bibles is important.
Is wonder if we sometimes practically live “as if there were no god”?
• Oh, we remember to go to him for advice on occasion… we like to come to church and talk about what OTHERS aren’t doing right…
• We especially remember him when we need something. (when the doctors have found something to be concerned about, or we’re worried about our kids.) We remember him then!
• But, what about the other times? The times when things are going good? Is God REAL to us in those moments?
The #1 claim of Christianity is that there is a God and that makes all the difference in our lives!
• Where would we be without God in our world? Just imagine…
• Where would YOU be without him in your life?
Have you been living “as if there were no God”?
Let me say to you today… there is a God! He is the God of the Bible. He loves you and wants to know you. If you don’t know him, you need to! One day, it’ll be too late. What do you need to do today to get right with God?
