Dennis Tuuri

wonderful song of harvest time and our equivalent of the feast of tabernacles at the end of the harvest year of Israel. Our family camp together in which we mark our years are ones in which we look forward as history progresses to the full harvest of the earth singing of praises to God most high.

Please stand for the scripture reading. Reading from Acts chapter 17 beginning at verse 16. Our subject will be Paul’s method and message of evangelism and missions in the book of Acts. Shorter title, how Christianity conquered the world and we’ll reconquer it again.

Acts 17, beginning at verse 16. Now while Paul waited for them in Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given into idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicurans and of the Stoics encountered him and some said, “What will this babbler say?” Others some he seemth to be a setter forth of strange gods because he preached unto them Jesus at his resurrection.

And they took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears, we would know thereof what these things mean. For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”

Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath, and all things.

And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they may feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ For as much then, as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone graven by art in man’s device.

In the times of this ignorance, God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, “We will hear thee again of this matter.” So Paul departed from among them.

Howbeit, certain men claved unto him and believed, according to which was Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the gift of your Spirit given to us in the basis of our Savior’s work as our covenant keeper. We pray that Spirit would do its job now, Lord God. And we pray that the Holy Spirit take this word, write it upon our hearts that we not forget it, that it might transform us from the inside out and we might then indeed transform the cultures in which we walk as Paul transformed the cultures in which he found himself.

We pray Lord God you would open our ears to hear of your scriptures that we may open our hands and mouths to serve you today and the rest of our lives. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

May be seated. One. I attended the first annual Pacific Northwest Conference for Christian Reconstruction. And the title of that conference was “How Christianity will reconquer the world.” An intriguing title to me having been trained in Moody School of the Bible that the only legitimate form of Christianity was one that said the world will conquer Christianity as history progresses.

Well, in a way that’s what we read about today in the context of Acts 17 as I’ll explain in just a moment. That conference was promoted developed by a couple, Clinton Elizabeth Miller who basically Elizabeth particularly said this over and over again. Our job is to speak the word and God will take care of the rest. And she and Clint spoke the word and my life was completely changed as a result of going and hearing Marshall Foster and R.J. Rushdoony speak on the Christian faith and how it will indeed reconquer the world. My life has not been the same and many of your lives have been touched by my life who was touched by their life who was touched by other people’s lives and there are these chains.

Last night is the thing that went on is a little embarrassing when you realize you’re a link in a chain and a very weak link at that. Nonetheless though, God in his love and mercy and kindness chooses to use each of us as links.

You know, I there are things that happen to us that are kind of miraculous in a way, you know, things that all of a sudden things work out well. And I’m convinced that God does that as an object lesson about what he’s doing in every bit of our lives. And so if there are people such as some of these men I’ve mentioned, Marshall Foster earlier in the 80s, R.J. Rushdoony, other men, Pastor Grainger in Salem, Doug up in Seattle, and the officers of RCC, etc., who have been useful in your life, recognize their chains.

They are, if you see in them things that you like and want to emulate. Recognize that God’s using of them in that chain that helped you and your family is just an example of what he’s doing in all things in your life. And you’re the same thing to someone else. Maybe not seen as visibly, but that’s who you are.

I say that because the sermon today, I don’t want to just impart knowledge. There is a lot of intellectual knowledge what I’m going to say, but at the end of it, I want us to understand that the whole purpose of the preaching of the word is to change us and to motivate us to action. Certainly to praise God for what he’s done, but then to be different as we go forth into the week. And as each of us individually, every little child, every boy and every girl and every teenager and every parent acts in obedience to the word in the context of the rest of the week. That’s how the world is conquered ultimately.

And we’re going to read about Paul and the special place he had in God’s plan. But understand that it is those small actions of obedience and faithfulness to preach and apply the word heard in every last person’s life that transformed for instance the culture of the middle ages into a Christian culture. So that’s by way of encouragement to listen up particularly if you stayed off during the middle come back at least for the end for the application.

I want to talk about Paul’s method. That method was to proclaim good news to covenantal representatives of the entire world. That’s what I’m going to say just a couple minutes at some length. But in summary, his method was to proclaim good news to covenantal representatives of the world. And I want to talk about Paul’s message. Paul’s message to those without the Bible, people who are not people of the word of the scriptures. Well, I’ll get to them actually.

He begins first by going to the Jews. To the Jews, to those with the scriptures, he affirms two things. Christ had to suffer and die for sins. He talks about justification and salvation and forgiveness of sins. But secondly to those with the scriptures, he also told them of the need to understand the world implications of Messiah or the Lord Jesus Christ in light of the coming judgment that would come upon the world in AD 70.

I believe that and I’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes. To those with the scriptures, he was talking to the Pharisees as it were or that group of people who thought they had justification by their works. He spoke of justification by faith. And to the Sadducees who didn’t understand the implications of that faith or rejected it in terms of their culture and had become part of the culture round about them and integrated in fully, he challenged them to recognize the fullness of Christ’s kingship that he was David’s son.

To those without the Bible, the message that Paul brought to the Athenians and those at Lystra in the first missionary journey, the message he brought was one of culpable ignorance. He told them that they were ignorant and that their ignorance was not made gave them no excuses. It was a culpable ignorance because he knew what he would write later in Romans 1 that all men suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

Their ignorance is culpable ignorance. He told them that there is an antithetical relationship. Their worldview and the Christian worldview are in opposition to each other. He did not try to build on common ground with them. He challenged their ground. He tried to pull out the roots of their worldview.

He did this in the context of the biblical message of creation, providence, judgment. Creation, providence, judgment. God made the world. Genesis. He sustains the world. Genesis to Revelation. And he judges the world. The book of Revelation. These are the great themes of the scriptures.

Now, in the context of judgment, his message is one of hope in the context of judgment. But it is in the context of creation, providence and judgment that he spoke. Paul’s method was to proclaim good news to covenantal representatives of the world. His message to one set of representatives, the Jews, was that Christ must suffer for sins and he is also Messiah King and that has worldview implications. His message to the Greeks representing the Gentiles and all the world was that they had culpable ignorance. Their worldview had to be shaken at its very core and they had to understand, they did understand, they knew that God had created them and made them and they had to understand that now at the coming of King Jesus things had changed and judgment was thrown into the world.

Paul’s motivation for this message to the Jews and to the Greeks was a hatred for idolatry and a love for holiness. And that’ll be my third point as we close. A hatred of idolatry and a love of holiness.

Okay, first of all then to go back to the method, message motivation. Let’s return to method. Method is to proclaim good news to covenantal representatives. And by covenantal representatives, I mean the Jews and the Greeks. Those were the two groups of people.

Now, in order to talk about this idea of these two groups being the covenantal representatives of the world, we have to know a little bit about the Bible and about world history. Sorry, but we just have to. In the book of Daniel, we see God revealing to us and to Babylon that with the captivity of the Jews, you know, God, the Jews were in sin. God took them into captivity into Babylon.

This is long after the kingdom period of David. Long after the judges period, kings had gone bad. The people had gone bad. God took him into captivity to Babylon. And in the context of that captivity, Daniel reveals to us what’s going to happen as God moves into the final phase of preparation of the world for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what’s going to happen is Daniel said there’s going to be four world empires that’ll come to pass.

And these will be, as I said, the final stages preparing the world for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, I’m talking about this because we have an interesting fact in the book of Acts and in the epistles. Paul says over and over that he is going to take the message to the Jews and to the Greeks. Now, sometimes he says to the Jews and the Gentiles, but frequently he says to the Jews and the Greeks.

Why does he do that? Now, these are Rome was in charge then, right? But he calls them the Greeks. Well, he does that because the Greeks were one of these key empires that I’m speaking of. Daniel said that the first world empire that God would establish to maintain his people in preparation for the coming of the Savior was the Babylonian Empire and Nebuchadnezzar was brought to conversion through the sovereign God of creation in the context of the this particular the writings of the book of Daniel.

Nebuchadnezzar was this first great world empire leader. The second empire that would come as his empire faded was Persia. And we see in the context of the book of Nehemiah and also the book of Esther, we see Cyrus and Darius, the rulers of the Persians, who would be used by God to protect his people and actually to bring them back out of captivity and to sponsor the rebuilding of the temple back in Israel, back in Canaan.

So, the Persians headed by Cyrus and Darius. These weren’t, we have no picture of their great conversion to God. There’s a bit of a declension, but they protected God’s people and they helped him to rebuild the walls of the temple and of Jerusalem. And they of course were used as in the context of Esther to kill off those who would kill off God’s people while they were still dispersed abroad.

So the Persians, the third empire that was to come along were the Greeks. And Alexander the Great was the great Greek emperor who went and conquered the world. And again here, that’s still a little bit of a declension going on, but when he comes to Israel and he comes to Jerusalem and he meets the high priest, he says, “I had a vision about you. I dreamt about you.” And he does homage to the leader of the Jews and he doesn’t tax the Jewish nation. He taxes everybody else. Why? He provides protection to them as it were.

He is there because he’s been established by God to protect God’s people in the context of the land, the Greek Empire. Now, the Greeks then split up and after Alexander died, several Greek rulers ruled. The Seleucid family was given control of the Greek Empire to the north and the Greek Ptolemaic family was given control of the Greek Empire to the south and at various times as history moved to the coming of the Savior the north ruled for a while and then the southern Greeks ruled but essentially it’s all Greeks okay I hope it’s not Greek to you but it was Greeks to them and then actually Rome comes along as this fourth empire.

So we’ve had Babylon with Nebuchadnezzar we’ve had Persia with Cyrus and Darius, we’ve had the Greeks with Alexander. And then the fourth empire would be this Roman Empire into which Savior would come and it would bring all of that to a close because it was preparatory to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Well, the Roman Empire also was Greek actually. It took over Greek philosophy and it is seen as Hellenistic Rome really. It’s influenced by the Hellenistic culture of the Greeks. And so Paul even while going to Rome talked about preaching to the Greeks because they were this world empire Greek and then the Roman Empire also essentially Greek that Paul is referring to.

The arrangement was that these four empires would provide protection and establishment for the covenant people and the covenant people would pray for them and also worship in the temple and in the context of the worship services for the nations of the world represented by these empires.

You know Paul later would talk about if I minister to you spiritual things you should minister to me physical things. And in a sense, that’s kind of what’s going on here in the Old Testament with these empires. They protected God’s people. And God’s people were supposed to pray for them and to minister to them spiritual things by taking the revelation of God that he had entrusted to the Jews, not to keep up bottled up, but to flow out like water through all the world through those empires that were established.

So this was the system and in the providence of God, as Daniel saw this image of these four, this beast comprised of these four parts, it was a declension of value moved from gold down to base metals and then clay. And as we move from Nebuchadnezzar to Cyrus to Alexander the Great and finally to Rome, by the time we get down to Rome, there’s very little religious value left in that empire. They’re not really worshiping the God of Yahweh anymore, but they’re still protecting the church.

Pilate doesn’t want to kill Jesus. The Jews prevail upon him. Rome gives Paul protection from who? From those Jews. They didn’t want to kill Paul. They were still being used by God to protect the church. But they were in declension. Why? Well, because the church had also been in declension. And by the time Jesus is born, the Jews had totally forsaken their mission to minister spiritual things to the Greek, to the empire that God had established for their protection.

And instead, the pharisaical, the conservative Jews had built up big huge walls between themselves and the Gentiles didn’t want anything to do with them. And the Sadducees, the liberal Jews, well, they wanted everything to do with them because they’d forsaken the faith. They were totally compromised to the end, and either both of them, the fact the conservative and the liberal Jews were guilty of failing to do what God had instructed them to do, which was to go to those Greeks and to minister the word to them.

Now, that’s the context for the book of Acts. We look at the book of Acts as a missionary model. Well, it isn’t quite that to us because a particular special thing was going on. God sent Peter as the apostle to the Jews and he sent Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles. Now, both had you know Paul to the Jews also and Peter was the first to bring in Cornelius into the fullness of the church. But in essence, Peter was the apostle to the Jews.

And it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because Peter’s a fisherman, an unlearned fisherman. You know, you got all these fishermen in the New Testament. We got farmers in the Old Testament because they’re going to harvest the sea. They’re going to harvest the Gentile nation out at the coming of Christ. But it’s odd, isn’t it? Because Peter, his calling really isn’t to that sea. His calling is to the Jews. And Paul is a trained Jew.

Really knows that Bible up and down and sideways and back and forth. Pharisee among Pharisees. And yet he’s called as the apostle to the Gentiles. Why is that? You suppose? Well, I don’t know. But I think maybe that what’s going on there is that Peter, what the Jews need is not more learning about the scriptures. They need the humble preaching of the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ to remind them of their sin in failing to submit to King Jesus.

And the Gentiles, God does them great honor, the Greeks, by preparing a man, a minister of ministers. Remember, Israel was supposed to minister spiritual things to this Greek Roman Hellenistic Roman empire that’s going to protect them. And God sends the best of the best to them, the best minister there is to go to those Greeks and tell them what the scriptures say. He knows that word. So, he takes it to them.

So, do you see what’s going on here in the context of the book of Acts? And why Paul says that I’m going to go to the Jew first and then I’m going to go to the Greek. The Greek represents all the Gentile nations. So between the Jews and the Greeks, we have the representatives of God’s household priests as it were in the context of the temple who were to instruct the field priests, the Gentiles, and how to worship and obey God.

That’s the idea. That’s the context I think for the book of Acts. There was a declension of the civil state, the protector state. There was also declension of the church. And God after the culminatory work of the Lord Jesus Christ sends messengers to both the church as it were the special priestly nation and also to the world representatives that the Jews were to take that message to. And so we have the establishment of God’s ministers to the church to the Jews and to the Gentiles, Peter and Paul.

Okay. So that’s why Paul goes to the Jews first and then to the Greeks. It’s interesting because the book of Acts doesn’t tell us a thing about the conversion of people on the east to the east of where our Savior ministered great Persian Empire out there at one time. A lot of people out there was talking to Mike Casman who knows a man who’s a Syrian and Syria now you know the geographic region of Iraq those people were converted to the faith in antiquity a long time ago.

We know that Christian ministers were to go out to all the nations and disciple them we know there must have been missionary activity going on you know other than this westward perception of Paul, that westward progression of the gospel, but it’s not recorded for us. It’s not recorded because Acts is not ultimately a missionary manual for us. It’s ultimately a representation of what God was doing to these two particular groups he had set up, calling the Jews to minister again to the Gentiles and Paul going to minister to that protector nation, which at that time was Rome.

AD 70 was coming and the message of Paul was repent. It was repent to the church for their failure to believe in justification by faith through Christ and their failure to recognize the worldview implications of King Jesus. And it was repent to the Greeks because they were ignorant. But really, even though the Jews had failed in their job, God hadn’t failed in his job. And there was enough in general revelation to make them culpably ignorant and bring them to full judgment for their sins if they failed to repent.

So the method that Paul has is to go to all the world and see it is the world because all the world as it were is going to be judged through the judgment of Rome and Jerusalem in AD 70 and after AD 70 we will have a whole new world in place and these four empires are gone and they are no longer applicable to us today and we can see some implications for us which I’ll talk about toward the end but not direct implications or application not specific implication from the method here.

Okay, let’s talk then about the fact that it is to these covenant representatives that Paul proclaimed good news. We’re talking about the method still talked about covenantal representation of all the world. What does he do to the Jew and the Greek? He proclaims good news. He doesn’t invite men to accept Jesus as Savior if they want to. He proclaims the word means to speak with authority. And if we’re to emulate Paul’s missionary and evangelistic method. The base of what we do is to proclaim things to the world round about us.

Now, he reasoned. The word is used in the scriptures. It means to thoroughly speak to a matter. He persuaded men. He convinced them that at the heart of his message was the proclamation of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not the invitation, but a proclamation and a command that says that God is calling on commanding all men everywhere to repent of their sins.

Now, he proclaimed not neutral news. He proclaimed good news. And this is not my main topic, but I want you to understand that this is good news that we proclaim as well. Why is it good news? If we go to the world with a message that says only a few of you are going to be saved and the rest of you are going to be damned and history will then come to an end with a minority saved, Is that really good news for the world? I don’t think it is. I think it’s a proclamation of good news because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

We take a message of judgment, but we take a message of hope to the world because God is saving the world. Just as the judgment in AD 70 didn’t do away with everything, but rather established the people, who would then fill the world. So the judgments now that fill our earth are not to the end that the Christian gospel will fail and then comes the end, but rather that the Christian gospel will succeed, that the world will be reconquered by us through the proclamation of the good news of judgment and yet hope to the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then at the end of that successful mission, the Lord Jesus will return and destroy his last enemy, death.

Okay. Now, so we’ve said that it is a command, a proclamation, not an invitation. It is good news. The context for the command is the salvation of the world. And it is good news given to the covenantal representatives of all the world. Again, a picture that all the world will be saved through the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not every last man and woman. People go to hell, but overall in time and history, the world will be saved through the preaching of the gospel.

Let’s look at the message now. Then, talking about that. We’ve talked about the method. Let’s turn to the message and we’ll go more specifically in just a moment to the passage we read from Acts 17. Now, I’m going to read I don’t you don’t need to turn in this account, but as Paul’s missionary journeys begin, the first missionary journey, the first recorded message is at a town called Antioch of Pisidia.

And he speaks to the Jew first and then the Greek. And in the progression of his first and second missionary journeys, he begins with these recorded activities on the Sabbath in synagogue. And by the time we get to the fourth city, he’s now talking at Lystra and Derby. But he’s not talking now in the synagogue on the Sabbath. He’s talking to complete pagans.

So we have a picture in both the first and second missionary journey of Paul going to the Jew first and then to the Greek. And we have a recorded sermon to the Jews found in Acts. And let me just read you what he says.

He says, “Men of Israel, ye that fear God, give audience. Now ye that fear God with a Gentile converts who would be at synagogue. The God of this people of Israel chose our fathers and exalted the people when they dwelt as strangers in the land of Egypt, and with a high arm brought them out of it. And about the time of 40 years suffered he their manners in the wilderness. And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan. He divided their land to them by lot.

And after that he gave unto them judges about the space of 450 years until Samuel the prophet. And afterward they desired a king. And God gave unto them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin by the space of 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will.

Of this man’s seed, that is of David’s seed, hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Savior, Jesus, whom John first preached before concerning the baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John fulfilled his course, he said, “Whom think ye that I am? I am not he, but behold, there cometh one after me whose shoes of his feet I am not worthy to loose.”

Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent. They that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voice of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in concerning him. And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate, that he should be slain.

And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulcher. But God raised him up from the dead, and he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, which are his witnesses unto the people. And we declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.

And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption. He says, on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Wherefore he saith also in another psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption. For David after he had served his own generation by the will of God fell on sleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption. But he whom God raised again saw no corruption.

Be it known to you therefore men and brethren that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins and by him all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets. Behold, ye despisers and wonders and perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which you shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.”

And the Jews go out, and the Gentiles like that message, but the Jews don’t. And they stir up the Gentiles against Paul and the missionaries. What’s Paul saying? He says, “Well, you know, God delivered his people out of Israel, but 40 years they wandered in the wilderness and then they get into the land and God destroys seven nations in the land of Canaan at the end of that 40 years.

And then he says after they had judges for a while, God raised up the king. Kings are good things, but they had a bad king. They had a king like the nations round about them. They had Saul and they had Saul 40 years. And at the end of the 40 years, God removed Saul like he removed the seven wicked nations and he establishes his people under David and he says this is the greater David the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the Savior. This is the one who is the forgiveness of sins is effected through his work.

But this is also the greater David the greater king. And he says he refers to Psalm 2 kissing the son. He doesn’t quote that part of it but you know it’s like you sing it. You hum a song you bring the whole bar to you bring the whole song to remembrance and Psalm 2 is the ascension the coronation of King Jesus in terms of his resurrection and ascension and then he shall rule over all the kings of the earth.

He’s telling the church the people of the word and he’s using the word to do it that Jesus had to suffer and die and he places the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ in the context of a deliverance 40 years of sin the part of the people delivered and then a final judgment on them and the establishment of a new people.

You see, and I’m I’m convinced that Paul is referring here to the 40-year space between the death and resurrection of the Savior and the destruction of all the Jewish synagogues that failed to convert to the Lord Jesus Christ and of all Jerusalem that failed to bow the knee to King Jesus. God would deliver them the Christians that is from the persecution of the Jews in AD 70. The point is that to the people of the word, the two-fold message that Paul brings to Antioch of Pisidia is one of forgiveness of sins through the death and resurrection of Christ.

But the context for the death and resurrection is that Christ will now rule in all the world and everybody better obey him in terms of their entire worldview with political implications and the references to King David included as well. And we won’t take the time, but if you go to Thessalonica, the corollary city of the second missionary journey to Antioch of Pisidia. The message is summarized in one brief little sentence that the message was that Christ must suffer and be buried must rise again and that he is Messiah that he is the Christ that he is the anointed king of Israel.

Same message in summary form Paul’s method is to go to the covenantal representatives. Paul’s message to the first group of covenantal representatives, the people who have the scriptures is to call them to acknowledge forgiveness of sins, justification by faith, and to cause them to acknowledge the lordship of Christ in every area, including the political realm. That’s the message to the Jew. That’s the message to the God-fearers as well who had the scriptures as their as their already was their assumption for their worldview.

Now, the second message he took was different somewhat kind of and yet not so different. The message to the Gentiles. The message to those Gentiles now who did not have the scriptures. The God-fearing Gentiles were included in the first group. Those that had the scriptures. But the pure pagans, let’s put it that way. The pure pagans both at Lystra, which was the city in the first missionary journey, and at Athens, the portion that I read for our scripture reading today, Paul’s message is a little bit different.

Paul’s message to Athens and to Lystra was that the men on the one hand at Lystra they were superstitious common sort of people at Athens they were the intellectual elite of the Greek culture and to both groups he said you guys are superstitious and you’re ignorant. He didn’t look at I mean when you begin a conversation with someone in this way that you are trying to win to the Lord Jesus Christ. He goes up to him after the area.

And he first thing he says is, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious. For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” See, he challenges from the initial opening of his message their ignorance, their culpable ignorance, their lack of knowledge declared by them of who God is.

And he declares to them who God is. Now, he goes on to say, “Ah, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwells not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with man’s hands, as though he needed anything.” You think God needs you? He says, “No, he goes to the message of creation. God made the world.” He goes to the message of providence. God gives us all things in the context of that world.

He provides everything for us. He made you Athenians. He takes care of you. You don’t take care of him. He doesn’t need your service. And that somehow makes him fuller or better. Doesn’t need you. You’re ignorant because you think that God needs you. You’ve replaced God with yourself is what he’s saying. You’ve contributed to yourself the doctrine of creation and providence. But God doesn’t need that. He gives to all life and breath and all things.

He’s made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth. He’s determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. See, providence is what he’s speaking here. God’s sustaining of the universe and control of every detail of it that they should seek the Lord. What is the end result of God’s creation and providence that men who see clearly, they have culpable knowledge, they have enough knowledge to make them culpable before God when they claim ignorance that they have been created by the God of heaven and that the God of heaven sustains them.

The whole purpose of that is that men might seek him then and might give him praise and worship and thanksgiving. And as they do that, Christ is revealed to them. But these Athenians had rejected Christ. They had built up a whole system based upon an idea of a God who did not create them and a God who did not sustain them. So to those without the Bible, to the pagan, Paul asserts their ignorance versus the sureness of Christian knowledge.

He declares to them a God that they saw as unknown. Paul contrasts their man-made idols, things that they made, with the God who had made all things, who creates all things and sustains them. Paul told these Athenians that they were culpable for their ignorance. He says, “God has winked at this sort of stuff in the past. The fullness of God’s judgment hasn’t been brought forth yet, but it is coming. and it’s coming right soon.

We’ll read on here. He says, “In him we live and move and have our being. He sustains us as well as creating us. As certain also of your own poets have said, we are also his offspring. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that God is like unto gold into under gold or silver or stone graven by art and man’s device.”

And the times of this ignorance, the times of your culpable ignorance, oh pagan man who rejects the God of Scripture and presses the truth of God in unrighteousness who doesn’t want to assert that there’s a creator God who’s sustaining a moment by moment the time of your ignorance. In other words, God winked at but now he commands all men everywhere to repent because he has appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained. That’s Christ. Whereof he also gives assurance unto all men and that he had raised him from the dead.

What is he assuring all men of in the resurrection of Christ that there is a common grace and everybody’s okay because Christ has died for the sins of the world. No, what he is assuring all men of is that judgment is coming. That the judgment of their sins is now come upon them in full with the coming of Messiah. God’s coming. God’s coming to judge them. He has appointed a day. And for the Greek culture, the culture that Paul was called to minister to, as we’re called to minister to the world, and to serve the world by preaching the gospel of Christ to this Greek culture.

He was coming in AD 70 to remove the Roman culture, the Roman use of Rome as a protector for the church after they had turned against the church in the last few years of Nero’s reign. Judgment is coming. Now they mocks all this. The response of the Athenians is to mock it. But Paul’s message is instructive to us. And that message, as I said, is one of creation. It’s one of providence and it’s one of judgment.

The context for the message of the resurrection of Christ to people of the book is forgiveness of sins and the establishment of the greater David as we saw at Antioch of Pisidia. The context for the message of the resurrection of Christ to pagan cultures is their culpable ignorance, the suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. It’s the doctrines of creation and providence which assures them the resurrection does of their judgment.

Now, if we preach the resurrection of Christ and fail to accompany it by the preaching of the sovereign God who made all men, sustains all men, and shall surely judge all men through Christ. We’ve not preached the resurrection of Christ. The Athenians would have accepted a resurrection of a man if it was a resurrection of a man different than this truth. But Paul is not interested in just giving them to give their assent to the fact that Jesus died and rose again. He’s not interested in adding Jesus as a little chapel up there on the second story of their life. He says that this Jesus destroys your foundation.

You must pull up everything that you’ve built upon this false base which denies the God of creation and the God of providence. That’s the message that Paul took to the second covenantal representatives of the world. He said, “You are culpably ignorant. My word in the Lord Jesus Christ is not a common ground word with your culture. My word is an antithetical relationship. It’s an opposition to who you are.

You must not simply add this to your life. You must repent of your idolatry as represented in your philosophy and is represented in your city here in which he found himself in Athens. Culpable ignorance needing repenting of Paul did not seek neutral ground. He didn’t seek common grace with these men to try to build from a shared set of presuppositions. From his opening words, he tells them that they are superstitious.

They’re just like those people back in Lystra who called Paul Mercury and a god because he healed a man who had been lame from his birth. Ignorant pagans out there in the wilderness. Paul says, “You guys in Athens are no different than them. You’re all suppressing the truth of God in righteousness. They do it through these superstitions and call me Mercury. You do it by calling me a seed picker.” He says they said who is this babbler?

I read that. The more literal translation would be they called him a seed picker. Guy just itinerant kind of philosopher didn’t know nothing. They made fun of him and mocked him. They did afterwards too cuz they thought they were so intelligent. And he says you’re not intelligent at all. You’re superstitious. He’s like those guys out there. You got it dressed up with a lot bigger words and a lot of neat philosophy.

But you’re no better because you’ve suppressed the truth of God in unrighteousness. And you’ve suppressed the only basis for knowing anything at all. You make a god with your hands. You make a god with your hands. You see, God made you. The message to the pagan then is creation, providence, and judgment. And in the context of that, it is the proclamation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners.

Now, you know, Greg Bahnsen does a wonderful job. Praise God for the work of Greg Bahnsen to our church is represented here in articulating Paul’s presentation of the gospel to the Athenians. And we could get into a lot of that excellent material. But you know, on the other side of it, it is as simple what I’m saying here that the message that we’re to take into our culture, to the pagan culture we live in, is so simple that my youngest daughter could at least articulate the words two years ago when she was two and one half to three years old.

There’s that little catechism, you know, who made you God. What else did God make? All things. It begins with creation. All things. Why did God make you and all things? And Charity used to say, for his own glory. Couldn’t say glory yet. You know, little children shall lisp his fame. Own glory. Yeah, that’s right. Why should you glorify God? Answer. He made me and he takes care of me.

Now, we want to add third thing based on what Paul said to the Athenians and he’s going to judge me. So, it’s a simple message. You young children can tell your schoolmates or your playmates in the ball field, whatever you do, you can take this simple message, the same message Paul took to tell people, God made you. God’s taking care of you right now. And you know what? God’s going to judge you. Got to believe in Jesus. He’s the one that made you. He takes care of you.

It’s a simple message. Paul took to the Gentiles, to the unbelieving Gentiles who didn’t have the word of God. And yet, it is a message filled with great significance for reforming our method of evangelism and our missions as well. We’ve looked at Paul’s method proclaiming the good news to covenantal representatives. We looked at Paul’s message and really both messages are essentially the same to the ones with the scriptures. He speaks from the scriptures to talk about God’s creation and his promises and his judgment and that judgment has been is hope and salvation to those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins and to those who submit their entire worldview to King Jesus.

He’s told the Gentile representatives that it is the same