April 27, 2008 Sixth Sunday of Easter

Sermon Title: “Knowing the Unknown God”

Series: None

Text: Acts 17:22-31

Dr. Steve Jackson

NewSong Community Church

Delivered on April 27, 2008

 

“What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you …”

Acts 17:23

Knowing the Unknown God

 

In 1943 as Nazi bombs rained down upon Great Britain, Oxford professor Clive Staples Lewis was invited to give a series of radio lectures on the BBC addressing the central issues, or the “essence” of Christianity. In 1952 these radio lectures were published in a little book titled “Mere Christianity” which is still considered a classic work of Christian apologetics today.

 

Standing on the precipice of the modern age and set against the backdrop of the darkness of war Lewis argues in his book that “at the center of each there is something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.” This twentieth-century masterpiece is a powerful, rational case for the Christian faith.

 

Almost two thousand years earlier the Apostle Paul stood on a precipice of his own: a hill in Athens Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, and made essentially the same argument in a powerful sermon. I don’t know if Paul was in the habit of giving his sermons catchy titles, but if he was he might have called it what I’m calling my sermon today, “Knowing the Unknown God.” He could’ve also named it “Mere Christianity.”

 

Paul’s sermon, which I just read for you, is amazing. Like Lewis’ book, even though it’s not very long, there is a lot of meat in it – you can read it over and over as I have done this week, and as you do you find layer upon layer of truth. So much so, that at one point during the week my message on Paul’s little sermon had thirteen points! I realized that you wouldn’t appreciate a thirteen point sermon however, so I’ve cut my comments down substantially. I think I can have you out of here in a couple of hours. :-)

 

Let me begin by giving you a little background about the sermon. Paul is on his second missionary journey. He’s been to Thessalonica and Berea and he made the folks there so angry with his preaching that the believers in those towns had to sneak him out of town. So Paul goes to Athens and while waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him he takes in the sights of the city and is distressed to see the city is full of idols (17:16). Paul begins to debate anybody and everybody he can about these so-called gods and is eventually invited to come to the Areopagus a kind of “orator’s court” to speak more about his “foreign god.” And it is there, in the same spot where philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle spoke before him, Paul stood to proclaim the great truths of God.

 

Most sermons you hear about this passage talk about how Paul’s message is a great model for preaching to non-believers because it is Paul’s only sermon in Acts that is spoken entirely to pagans. Commentators like to point out that Paul used symbols and language his audience could understand. But the more I read over his sermon the more I kept seeing things that really apply more to us today than they did to those in Paul’s own day. I believe there are things in this sermon that you and I need to hear and wrestle with as we consider our own beliefs. Who is this God? Is he unknown to us? And what does he require? Paul has the answers for us in this sermon.

 

1. Being “religious” is not enough

The first word Paul has for us is that “Being ‘religious’ is not enough.”  Paul opens his sermon cleverly by complimenting the Athenians, “I see how extremely religious you are in every way” v. 22. Even without reading or hearing the argument that follows, even if you were to just read the beginning and end you could draw only one conclusion: Being ‘religious’ is great; but it’s simply not enough according to Paul.

 

Actually there is no way Paul could have drawn any other conclusion than that the people of Athens were “extremely religious.” Historians claim there were as many as 30,000 altars or shrines in Athens during this time. But why have an altar to an unknown god? My guess is they were trying to “cover all the bases.” Just in case the gods of their other altars failed them, perhaps an acknowledged but unknown deity would look favorably upon them. Although this may sound absurd to you, or like a problem only ancient superstitious people would have, it’s not. Even today we what some call “Fire Insurance” Christians – folks who think, “Well, I’ll get my name on a church roll, and I’ll show up every so often and drop a dollar or two in the offering plate – I’ll go through the motions – and that way I’ll cover my bases just in case there is something to this god thing.” everything will be alright.” Not so, says Paul, mainly because of second issue in Paul’s sermon that applies to us.

 

2. There is a difference in acknowledging God and in knowing Him

And that is that “There is a difference in acknowledging God and in actually knowing Him.”  Paul continues his sermon with an anecdote about how as he was touring Athens he noticed the altar I mentioned a moment ago, the one that bore the inscription, “To an unknown god.” Clearly the people acknowledged there was an unknown god, and they worshipped him. But they did not know him. Of course Paul planned to take care of that with his sermon, but it points out that simply admitting there is a God doesn’t cut it. There’s more to it than that. The Bible teaches that even demons believe in God - and tremble (Jas. 2:19). There’s got to be more than acknowledgment – you’ve got to do something with your faith.

 

Will Willimon tells the story of an undergraduate who complained about her college’s religion department which included four professors who taught courses in everything from Hindu beliefs to Christian history. “They know a great deal about a great many things in religion,” she said, “but none of them in the department are practitioners of any particular faith. I find that strange. They know everything about God except God!”

 

This is an enormously relevant point for us today when you think about it. A Newsweek Magazine poll last October revealed that 9 in 10 Americans surveyed (91%) claimed to believe in God. If you count just the Christians the number drops to a still-respectable 82%. But here’s the problem: study after study indicates that the attitudes and behaviors of Christians is not significantly different those of from non-believers. This tells me there definitely is a difference in acknowledging God and knowing him because if you truly know him then your life – your actions – your behavior will be different from those around you.  Are you listening to Paul church?

 

3. There is but one God

A third very relevant word to the modern age is this, “There is but one God.” Look at verses 24-26, “The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth…he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things…”

 

Sounding like a psalmist Paul declares that God made the world and everything in it. There is only one supreme, absolute, all powerful, all encompassing, God of the universe. Don’t miss the significance of this teaching. If there is only one God, then there are no other gods. All other gods are false. They are, as Paul says later in verse 29 “an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.”

 

How is that relevant? Perhaps when I say “false gods and idols” you’re thinking of ancient superstitious people hunched over little household god statues or something. But don’t miss this – there are many other false gods and idols besides little statues.

 

Power, prestige, position and possessions constitute a formidable pantheon of gods for modern man. When these things, or things like them, become the primary objects of our trust and attention, energy and efforts, hope and confidence then we have created an idol. The problem with idols is they create distance between us and God. Worship of anything but God separates us from God. Paul says there is only one God who is worthy of the trust, worship, time, and energy of man and further that we are not to bow before nor serve any other god. This is so important that it made it to number one on God’s original top ten list: “You shall have no other gods before me.”

 

4. We are made in God’s image, not He in ours

Word four from Paul is this: “We are made in God’s image, not He in ours.” I believe that’s what Paul meant by saying “we are God’s offspring” (v. 29) and all the stuff about him giving life to us (v. 25) and about him not living in shrines made by human hands (v. 24) and not being made of “gold, or silver, or stone, an image made by the art and imagination of mortals” (v. 29).

 

In Japan there is a temple called The Temple of the Thousand Buddhas. This unusual place of worship is filled with more than a thousand likenesses of Buddha; each one a little different from the next. Worshippers can walk around and literally pick and choose which image of Buddha they like best and then bow down before it and worship it. You may be thinking you’d never worship an image of brass or clay, but ask yourself if you’ve ever been tempted to make God more like you instead of trying to make you more like God. It’s a whole lot easier to bring God down to our standard than it is to live up to his. We create God in our image because we want a God we can understand, a God we can predict and figure out. We want a God we can put in a box and control. But look at Paul’s sermon – we are created in His image, not He in ours.

 

5. God is actively involved in the affairs of this world

A fifth word from Paul to us this morning is this: “God is actively involved in the affairs of this world.”  In verse 26 he writes, “From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they should live.” 

 

I don’t know about you, but I hear all kinds of theories about God’s level of involvement in the world today. I was talking to a gentleman yesterday at the full-service gas station event and he was expounding on this very issue.

 

To some God is an ancient clockmaker who at some point in the past created an intricate machine, wound it up, and now is letting it tick away until it simply runs down. To others God is like a great chess master sitting high and lifted up over a celestial chessboard watching the game unfold, occasionally making moves, occasionally letting man, or nature make their moves. To others God is involved in even the tiniest minutiae of daily life like which socks to wear each morning, or helping you decide which way to drive to work and whether or not to go through the Starbucks drive-through.

 

What do you think? I believe what Paul said, God is not like the Greek gods sitting high up on Mt. Olympus – he’s not some grand cosmic God who doesn’t know or care about the world he has created. God is a personal God and actively involved in the affairs of this world. As Paul says, “we are his offspring” and he is “not far from each one of us.” And Isaiah 30:21 says “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” That sounds like he’s pretty involved to me. God isn’t just a higher power, an energy field or bright light. He’s a loving parent with many children. God oversees the birth and life of every person and nation. All people and nations are given an “appointed a time” to live and are given “bounds” within which to live. We simply need to reach out to Him and to Him alone and then we will come to know the glorious care and guidance of His hand.

 

6. We will all answer for our lives

A sixth word of truth from Paul is especially relevant and especially difficult for some of us to hear and believe: “We will all answer for our lives.” Near the end of his sermon Paul looks to the future and says “He has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed” v. 31. Of course the man is Jesus himself and the judgment he refers to is the final judgment.

 

I just finished a book about a soldier fighting for a cause he believes in and as he approaches the battle that he is certain he will die in he has an extended inner dialogue going on where he’s questioning whether he made the right choices in life and whether this person or that one will at this person or that will think he was a good man or not. As I was reading this I kept on thinking to myself, “You know what? In the end all that really matters is what God thinks. He’s the one you want to please.” The author never settles the question for the protagonist of his story, but the truth remains: In the end only one opinion matters; God’s. He’s our judge and one day each one of us will find ourselves before him. Of course this flies in the face of many because they feel like they are answerable to no one but perhaps themselves and their own conscience.

 

Paul says God has been lenient, he’s “overlooked” what we’ve done in the past; but now God demands that we repent – that we change. And God has the right to demand that whether we believe it or not. Just like in our court system today, you don’t have to believe in the judge for him to have the authority to judge you. Imagine a criminal who is sentenced by a judge and the criminal says to the judge, “But I don’t believe in you!”

 

Paul says God has “fixed a day” to judge the world. The tense of the word “fixed” is significant. It means that Judgment Day is set; it is already determined, the clock is ticking. Note also that judgment concerns righteousness, in other words, how we live and behave matters.

 

So there we have six words of truth that apply just as much – if not more – to you and I sitting here today as it did to a bunch of Greeks sitting on a hill in Athens years ago. I love how God’s word does that – it’s so relevant even through the ages.

 

The message will always produce the same effect

And speaking of relevance, I want to point out one more thing; something that has to do with the response of the people that heard Paul that day so long ago. And that point is this: “The message will always produce the same effect.”  We didn’t read on to the conclusion of the story of Paul’s sermon to the Greek philosophers – but if we had read the last three verses of this story, verses 32-34, we would have seen the responses Paul’s message about Christ drew from the crowd. I’ve got the verses up here for you.

 

It says some scoffed, others delayed (we will hear you again about this) and still others believed.

 

Here’s the amazing thing – the message of Christ produces the same effect today. In fact it produces the same effect wherever and whenever it is preached. Personally, I’ve found that whether I find myself preaching in El Salvador, or Ghana, or right here in the good old USA the message receives the same three responses: scoffing, delay, or belief.

 

And so this morning I ask, what will your response to the message of Christ be? I know most of you believe in him – there’s no doubt you’re Christians. But can you personally affirm the six statements Paul makes to us across the ages?

 - Do you agree that being ‘religious’ is not enough?

 - Do you recognize the difference in acknowledging God versus knowing Him?

 - Do you believe in only one god, and is it the real God?

 - Do you understand that we are made in His image, and not He in ours?

 - Do you believe God is actively involved in the world He has made?

 - Do you believe that we are all answerable for our lives?

 

This morning let’s reach out to God, after all Paul tells us in his sermon that he is “not far from each one of us.” Our groping for him can end today as we have come together to worship Him and be reminded that God has come and will come again in Jesus the Christ and that He has left us His Spirit to be with us forever. Let’s pray.