Dennis Tuuri

# Listening: The First Step in Communicating the Gospel

One of those accounts that we’ll be talking about later is Acts 14:8-18, and our sermon topic for today is listening as preparation, or our first step rather, in evangelism. So please stand for the reading of Acts 14:8-18.

“In Lystra a certain man without strength in his feet was sitting, a cripple from his mother’s womb who had never walked. This man heard Paul speaking. Paul observing him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed, and with a loud voice, said, ‘Stand up straight on your feet.’ And he leaped and walked. Now when the people saw what Paul had done, they raised their voices, saying in the Lycaonian language, ‘The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men.’ And Barnabas they called Zeus and Paul Hermes, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priests of Zeus whose temple was in front of their city brought oxen and garlands to the gates intending to sacrifice with the multitudes.

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard this, they tore their clothes and ran in among the multitude, crying out and saying, ‘Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways.

Nevertheless, He did not leave Himself without witness in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven in fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.’ And with these sayings, they could scarcely restrain the multitudes from sacrificing to them.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for these accounts in the book of Acts of Paul’s presentation of the gospel to various settings, to various sorts of people using various tactics or techniques of speech and rhetoric, and with different content that seems to be tailored to each of these groups. We pray that you would bless us as a church as we seek to evangelize, to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to our neighbors, to our communities, coworkers, and our cities. We pray that you would bless the preaching of today’s word, Lord God, that it might help us to understand who it is we talk to when we reach these people. In Jesus’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So Allen is on the move. I’m not sure he’s always on the move, but there are overt times of movement that the Holy Spirit seems to be shaking things up. Dennis Peacock said years ago when he preached at our church that when God plows, what God is plowing up, you can read about it in the papers, and that’s where we plant the seed. And so there are many things happening in the context of our culture right now in its immediate context. I heard Allan Alley say that he actually now supports the shutting down of the government to accomplish the elimination of Obamacare.

Allan is a moderate Republican here in the state who no doubt will run for governor this next year. That’s very interesting. There’s been tremendous movement over the last few days on this issue as Obamacare rolls out, and many people are quite concerned about what’s happening. Art Robinson—we have one of his books in our church library, co-written with Gary North—he is now the chairman of the Republican party in Oregon as of this weekend.

Art is a homeschooler. Eli was mentioning to me this morning he just ordered some books from Art. Some of these Henry books, I guess that they’re the ones who are responsible for publishing those books. So a lot of us have known about Art Robinson for years and years and his curriculum that he used and recommends to others for homeschooling. A very fascinating man who will definitely change the discussion and conversation here in Oregon.

Howard tells me there’s a front page—or maybe not front page, maybe I’m not sure where it is on the paper—but the Oregonian today has a big article on the work of Kevin Palao and churches in this “serve the city” endeavor, specifically in their relationship to Roosevelt High School. And this is a seminal sort of article according to Howard that would provide great discussion for us. So hopefully maybe we’ll try to find a time in the next few weeks to print the article out, make sure you have it, get together and talk about it.

We live in one of those crisis periods of time. It seems like there’s a lot of that in history. But this is a dangerous opportunity for us. It’s dangerous because as a culture moves away from Jesus, and ours has, then you know what happens is oppression starts to build up, and people who are seeking to be free apart from Christ end up being enslaved to worthless idols, as we read about in today’s text.

But it’s a tremendous opportunity for us, as the culture which has drifted away from Jesus now suffers the implications of what that means in their lives. So we have a tremendous opportunity in the power of the Holy Spirit to reach our neighbors for the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m thankful to be back here today. Please, you know, thank you so much for your prayers. I’ll see my surgeon on Tuesday and hopefully that’ll be the last check-up so that I can start walking some again.

These skin grafts, which I had three weeks ago, take six weeks to get up to full strength, but I was approved by the doctor last week to come and preach today. So praise God for that. And everything seems to be going well.

So today I want to talk about listening. We talked a couple weeks ago, three weeks ago, about preparation for evangelism. And this is sort of the first step—kind of maybe I’ll take that back just a little at the end of the sermon—but it’s kind of one of the first steps in evangelism. And it’s one that we don’t think about necessarily. Maybe we do it intuitively, but I want to focus on it because I think it’s important in the scriptures.

Before we get to listening though, I wanted to clear up one thing that I said that could be misunderstood from my sermon three weeks ago. I had a quote I said: “Our ultimate identity and calling is to engage in the holy war of the Great Commission.” And I defended that statement in the Q&A time or explained it.

Now, what I don’t want us to do is to think that what this means is that most of what we’re doing is evangelizing our community and neighbors, etc. You know, if you look at—I’ve listed the references for the original creation mandate, the dominion mandate, and God said that the purpose of man was to exercise dominion to mature the world, right, and maybe the universe. So that’s our job and calling in the original creation. When the dominion mandate is republished in the Great Commission, and I think that’s what it is, it changes somewhat because the world is fallen now. To accomplish the task of exercising dominion over the world as mankind, we need to have essential to our identity this holy war of evangelism and discipleship of the nations that we live in. And you know, you don’t do that with nations all at once—that happens in different ways. But one significant way it happens is with each of us talking to people, our neighbors, coworkers, etc., and talking to them about the gospel of Jesus Christ, making disciples out of them, and then teaching them to observe all that Christ has commanded us.

So there’s just this connection between who we’re originally created to be and our vocation. Vocation is central to that, right? Our vocation, our callings, doing work—it’s not something we do just so that we can support evangelism. It really is the mission of God’s people on earth. And that’s significant to think of it that way. I hope all of you that go to work tonight or tomorrow morning or whatever it is think of that—you’re not engaging in something just to pay the bills. This is also essential to your calling.

But to exercise that task most effectively, we have to have an understanding that we’re gathered together on the Lord’s day to be sent out to vocation, but also to preaching the gospel, evangelizing people. And so I think that evangelism is indeed central to our identity and it is connected to this concept of holy war. I spent two sermons on that. I don’t need to talk about it again. But the idea is that there are definite connections between what goes on in the book of Acts and the book of Joshua. I handed a chart out three weeks ago. If you didn’t get it, ask Angie. She can get it to you to show the correlations.

So, you know, I wanted to explain that. It’s kind of like—when we talk about making disciples of our neighbors and coworkers as Christian parents, we don’t want to forget that our best disciples are our children. And I’m going to talk today about listening to your neighbors, to your coworkers, to people you’re going to talk to about the gospel to understand who they are distinctively. And the same thing’s true of our children. To effectively evangelize our children, to preach the good news to them, and to disciple them, we have to think of each one somewhat distinctly as well and listen to who each child is.

So we don’t want to get so overbalanced, you know, with evangelism that we’re saying vocation is of secondary importance. It’s really not. In fact, evangelism serves vocation. Right? Matthew 28, the Great Commission, says evangelism, making disciples and training them, is essential to carry out the dominion mandate, to exercise vocation in the context of beautifying the world and making it more glorious. So hopefully if you got more questions than that, we could talk about it. But I wanted to make that caveat before we get going.

That’s point one on your outlines if you’re keeping track. Point two is preparation for evangelism—holy war. This is just a review. I didn’t have an outline three weeks ago, and I wanted to review the last part of that sermon, which are these stages here. Not really to spend any time reviewing them but to give that to you, and particularly for your community groups, for your discipleship groups, for your group leaders. I think these things are quite important.

So the book of Acts is about this holy war evangelism. But there’s this first chapter where things aren’t rolling yet. They got to wait. They do several things in the context of that chapter. And we’re told that certain things are significant as involvement in the evangelistic endeavor: Christian discipline. We talked about Ananias and Sapphira, but in chapter 1, of course, mostly what they actually do is replace the excommunicated Judas. And so you’ve got excommunication, so to speak, at the beginning of this discussion of what’s going to happen in the holy war evangelism of the book of Acts.

Unity—we talked about that. And then the Holy Spirit—you know, right relationship to the Holy Spirit. Jesus says don’t witness until you’ve received power from on high. So unless you have this relationship with the Holy Spirit empowering you, your evangelism isn’t really going to count for much. And I know there was a special setting in Acts 1 and 2, the giving of the Spirit with the ascension of Christ. But it’s true as well in terms of application for us—to be very sensitive to our relationship to the Holy Spirit, that we don’t grieve the Holy Spirit, and that we have good communication with the Trinity through the Spirit.

And that good communication kind of goes two ways, right? We pray and then He speaks to us through His word. So Bible reading, meditation, memorization to some degree, study—essential part of preparation for evangelism. Prayer, the same thing.

And I sent out for our community group leaders—just so you’ll know, and you can ask them what they thought about it, that’ll give them a little bit more incentive to do it—we have this right now media online training thing. And there’s a little short, just a couple minute video on transparency and accountability for small groups. And the guy says he likes the word “transparency” better than “accountability.” It doesn’t sound like the same thing, but it produces the same thing. If your leaders are transparent with you about their shortcomings—for example here, prayer or Bible reading—and ask you to pray, that produces accountability and that opens up your freedom. You feel a little freer to share your difficulties, whatever area it might be in.

And so there’s a little training session that I sent out this week to the community group leaders, and I hope it helps them in their small groups. So I wanted to give that to you so you can have that in your file and remind yourself of it regularly.

Okay, then number three: listening to Jesus in formal convocative worship. So basically my sermon—what I wanted to do today is to start by talking about the 25-cent word, which is “contextualizing the gospel.” We have a proclamation of the gospel, but it’s contextualized. You think of the context you’re speaking to. If you go—you know, if I go to Poland and I’m going to preach the gospel, I’m going to want an interpreter. If I don’t have the interpreter, I won’t be as effective as if I do have the interpreter because a lot of people won’t know what I’m saying. That’s an extreme example, but you know, you can think about that through all kinds of levels.

If we take Westminster Standard rhetoric and language and use that in the public proclamation of the gospel, it’s old language and old ways of looking at things and representing them. To some people, it’ll resonate, but to some it won’t. And so it doesn’t mean changing the content of the gospel, but it means presenting the gospel so that if it’s rejected, you know, as much as you can, that they’ve rejected the gospel, not your sloppy presentation. Okay?

So I’m going to talk about that. In order to do that, you have to listen, comprehend, observe what’s going on with the people you’re going to talk to in order to communicate best with them.

Well, this follows up nicely to Mike Meyer’s sermon from two weeks ago when he talked about Mary and Martha. I thought Mike did a great job in that sermon. And I wanted to sort of stress one more application of that sermon, and that is that when we come together in convocative Lord’s day worship, this is probably the preeminent place where we listen to Jesus instead of being busy with things.

And so you could make application of Mary and Martha to what we do on the Lord’s day and specifically what we do with that time in Lord’s day worship. Jesus speaks to you in a very concentrated, effective way in Lord’s day worship. Not just through the sermon, but throughout the service, right? So when Doug gets up there and tells you your sins are forgiven, that’s Jesus speaking through Doug. As long as he’s consistent with what the Bible says, we can believe that’s Jesus articulating to you a message your soul needs to know—that your sins are forgiven.

Okay? And so through the whole service, there are these communications of God. And so what we want to do is prepare to listen to God in the worship service, which means getting to bed on time, doing a good thing Saturday night, praying with your family, whatever it is—it means all kinds of things. But this is really where the words of Jesus are spoken to you and you hear with your ear the good news. See, this is what happens in Lord’s day worship.

We’re not like we used to be about worship. I’m not sure most of us, I hope, understand how we’ve changed in how we see worship. If you haven’t read the CRC memorial on worship, it’d be a good thing to do. Maybe I’ll have Angie this week make copies or send out an email with it. But it expresses what our church wrote—that basically it expresses what we believe about Lord’s day worship and what our denomination believes as well.

And what we believe is that we are connected up with heaven. We ascend into the heavenly places, and God communicates to us important truths. So it’s very important to understand that when we come together in worship, this is a heightened way that we listen to Jesus. And I think this is a significant difference from the way we used to approach things. You know, I guess what I’m saying is that if you want to prioritize things, it all starts here with listening to Jesus, not by reading your Bible alone, but by listening to Jesus in the context of worship and responding to His words to us.

I hope that makes sense. It’s a big topic. There are several sermons on the web page that go into this—that Jesus is speaking to you when the word is properly preached and through the other portions of the worship service: assurance of forgiveness, calling you to repent, passing of peace at the end of the service, commissioning, etc. So we actually believe, as in Revelation 1, that when we’re in spirit on the Lord’s day, that means the Spirit is going to communicate to us.

And so Jesus—when did He make appearances? His post-resurrection appearances. You remember it was on the Lord’s day. It was on the first day of the week—now that’s the day of resurrection. But then the next appearance, He waits a week. He doesn’t come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. He comes again on the Lord’s day, on Sunday, to speak to them and to commission them and to disciple them and to send them out.

So you know what we believe at Reformation Covenant and in the CRC is that we really need to listen to Jesus in the personal reading of our scriptures. As I mentioned earlier, your community group can help hold you accountable and make sure that happens. But we also think it’s very important that you understand the need to listen to Jesus carefully in the context of convocative Lord’s day worship.

Chris Hilderbrand at family camp this year talked about this, and he sort of said what I’m going to say in more length and in greater depth perhaps, or I’ll take more words—I’ll be less efficient than Chris was probably—but this is the same point Chris made: that Lord’s day worship prepares us for evangelism because in Lord’s day worship we listen to a lot of things in the service in a concentrated way. You’re listening to me right now, and Jesus is communicating, I think, through the presentation of the gospel when it’s consonant with the word of God.

And so, you know, Hilderbrand said that kind of models for us the need to listen throughout the week. And what we’re going to say is that’s what Paul does. When Paul goes to Athens, he looks around the city. He listens. He thinks. He observes who he’s going to be talking to there. And then he takes certain actions. We’ll look at that in a minute. And so we’re prepared to listen to our cultural setting when we listen well in the context of hearing Jesus on the Lord’s day.

And there’s an important point—this is not just that this is the same trained skill. We believe in a totally sovereign Lord. We believe that whatsoever comes to pass is His decree—His decreed will. It’s what He’s decreed will happen, okay? So if we look at a city or a neighbor or a workplace, what we’re seeing there is what God has brought to pass to some degree. Now, it’s twisted by sin, but it’s also what God has brought to pass.

We’ll talk about this in a little bit when we get to one of these presentations of the gospel. But we listen in preparation for gospel because we’re not just listening to what men are like. We’re listening to some extent to what God is doing to the people we’re going to talk to—what positive things are they striving after, and what twisted ways are they using to accomplish that? Then that prepares us for how to preach the gospel effectively or share the good news of Jesus effectively with our neighbors.

Does that make sense? If you don’t—if it doesn’t make sense to you, write down a question. It’s why we have this wonderful Q&A time afterwards.

So the Bible shows us Paul’s work here. He listens. Now the basis for this is Romans 1 and 2, that everybody knows, right? God’s nature is “clearly seen.” It’s not as if people are neutral. They see who God is but they twist it. They take good things, created things that are good and have their place in God’s creation, and worship them instead of God. But they can only take what God has created, okay?

So Romans 1 and 2 says we all have this common understanding that we’re suppressing as sinners, but we all have it. And so that means whenever we talk to somebody, we’re talking to somebody who actually knows certain things. And some of those things they actually will articulate in a positive way.

So in 1 Corinthians 9—so we’re now on outline point 4—1 Corinthians 9, Paul says this. This is verses 19 to 23. And you’re familiar with this, but think about it in terms of listening to who we’re talking to and putting our proclamation of the gospel in a way that reaches them particularly. Here’s what he said:

“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win the more. And to the Jews, I became as a Jew that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law. To those who are without law, as without law, not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ, to what purpose? That I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became as weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men that I might by all means save some. Now I do this for the gospel’s sake that I may be partakers of it with you.”

So Paul says he doesn’t just talk about Jews and Gentiles, the divisions that were existent that God had prepared and was now going to do away with. He extends it out to all men. He starts talking about people that are weak in conscience or whatever it is. So Paul says when he’s going to present the gospel, he’s going to contextualize it—to use this 25-cent word. He’s going to present it in a way that is best toward those people so that they’re not offended by something other than the gospel. So if they reject it, they’re rejecting the gospel.

But his motivation—so if Romans 1 tells us the basis is the common revelation of God through the created order, 1 Corinthians 9 says that the motivation for doing what I’m going to tell you to do today (listening and changing your proclamation as a result)—the motivation for that is the gospel. The effectiveness of the gospel, that he might win more in the providence of God. So the motivation for this listening and then altering our message from person to person and setting to setting—the motivation is spelled out as “for the sake of the gospel itself.”

Now turn to—this is interesting—turn to 1 Corinthians 1, if you will, and we’ll talk about the basic kind of method. So we’ve gotten the basis and the motivation. Now the basic method is kind of laid out in 1 Corinthians 1:22-24. Okay, are you there? Okay. If you don’t have a Bible, listen.

“For Jews request a sign, seek a sign. And Greeks seek after wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified. To the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

Now, it’s a very fascinating few verses. You can talk about it from different perspectives, but look at it from this perspective. He’s saying that the Jews of his day sought after a sign. And if we look at then how he carries out the message—so he sets up two scenarios, Jews and Gentiles. They’re seeking a sign—the Jews—or the Gentiles are after wisdom. And he says that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom. So the power is what the Jews are seeking after when they seek a sign. Get it? Power. Wisdom is Jesus. And he’s talking about the two groups that seek a sign and those that are looking for wisdom, okay?

So he gives parallel words here to us. And then in verse 25, the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men. So the Jews are seeking something strong. The Jews want a sign. They want something that’s powerful. They want something that’s strong. The Jews were not interested in the sort of philosophical discussion held at the Areopagus on Mars Hill. They wanted practical stuff. They wanted Messiah to kill the Romans. They wanted, you know, the power, the strength. “Give us a sign that you’re the Messiah, that you’re going to take care of this Roman invasion we’ve got.”

The Jews are practical people, is what Paul is saying. And what they’re seeking is something that actually is good because he says that the gospel of Jesus is strong, right? But they’re seeking it correctly. The Gentiles, on the other hand, they don’t know about all that stuff, but what they want is wisdom. Their big deal is, you know, culture and art and wisdom. And so they’re seeking after that.

And Paul doesn’t say wisdom is a horrible thing. He doesn’t say that a sign of strength and power is a horrible thing. In fact, he tells them that Jesus is the answer to both of those searches. Now, now what’s he doing? He’s looking at a particular audience, the Jews, and he’s looking at what God has done in their lives. They’ve twisted a particular aspect—the practicality of the gospel, of the word of God rather—and they’ve taken that and made it idolatrous, right? They’ve put it above the work of Messiah, and they’ve not understood how strength actually works.

But they’re seeking something good. And the Gentiles are seeking something good. Wisdom is a great thing. There’s a whole book about it in the Old Testament, right? But not if it’s not under King Jesus. Wisdom and strength comes mediated through the work of Jesus Christ. The gospel is strength and the gospel is wisdom.

All right? So this is the basic method. How are people twisting the goodness of God, right? Now I’m not talking about the culture. He’s talking about groups here. I’m talking about if you’re witnessing or have a desire to see your neighbor come to faith, or a coworker, a friend, a relative, whatever it is, you’re supposed to be able to figure out what they’re after—something practical, something wisdom-like. There are other things involved as well. And you know, you can affirm that, right? The thing that they’re actually seeking, and then you can tell them that the way to seek that properly is mediated through Jesus Christ. Do you understand?

So this is the basic method: understanding what a particular group or a person—you know, what good things about God they’re actually focusing on, but in a twisted way, and then untwist it by relating it to Jesus Christ. I think this is the basic method. So you see, this keeps us from going into evangelism with just like railing against the non-Christians. That’s not what Paul does. And it also keeps us from going into the culture as some of us are concerned the greater church is doing right now and never getting around to telling them that their wisdom-seeking or their good society, the common good they have, is idolatry because it’s not mediated through Jesus.

So properly understood, if I’ve got this right, and this is the method of how we present the gospel, it keeps us from two ditches that are ineffective because they don’t acknowledge God’s sovereignty in the created order around us and in the lives of the people we speak to. And in fact—and this is not the point of today’s sermon, but in fact what you begin to realize is that sometimes when you’re going to the culture and doing this sort of analysis, they’re doing things that you should be doing better.

If you go to certain cities or groups of people, they got a great desire to help the poor. They talk about it all the time. They try to do things. Now, it’s twisted. It’s not biblical. It’s not under Jesus. But when you see that God is bringing up a desire, a discussion about social justice or about poverty, you see, sometimes that helps us because in our context, we don’t talk about that stuff so much in our particular setting. There’s always that we’re always living in our own context. So we need to hear what God is doing in the broader world to help us mature in particular areas. You can learn from your pagan neighbor. That’s the point. You know this. You know it. You know, they do things better than you in certain ways. And that’s because of the grace of God. Okay.

So 1 Corinthians 1—that’s kind of the basic idea: that God is doing these things but people have twisted them, and you use those very things as you observe and listen to them to do your proclamation of the gospel in a way that meets that particular person or group.

Okay, so now let’s look at some of these texts, and I won’t have time to go through all of them. At the top of your outline, chapters 20 and 21—it should be 20 and 21, not 20 in isolation. It just begins at the end of 20 and then he talks to a group in chapter 21 more. And these are presentations of the gospel that Paul makes in various settings.

For instance, Acts 13. Now, this is—you know, this happens in Acts 13, and we read there that they were going on their missionary journey, right. And actually, well, I don’t want to be distracted, but suffice it to say that before we get to a verse that I want to talk about, we actually see another example of the discipline of Elymas the sorcerer, that produces the conversion of a man not because of the power of God but because he’s impressed by the teaching of Jesus. The teaching of Jesus is focused on, but it happens in the context of discipline. Paul disciplining Elymas and striking him with blindness. So reinforcing one of my points from three weeks ago: discipline is an important part of preparation for the gospel.

Anyway, so now they move on, and in verse 14 they departed from Perga and they come to Antioch in Pisidia, and they go into the synagogue. And look at verse 16. They’re actually asked by the members of the synagogue to share some word from God. Verse 16, Paul stands up and motioning with his hands says, “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.”

Okay, so right away we know the particular audience that this presentation of the gospel is going to. We could call these people Bible-believing Christians, or at least Bible-affirming Christians. These are Gentile God-fearers, and these are Jews who want to hear something from the word of God and want to hear this message. So Paul knows his audience, and he knows that this audience are Bible-believing Jews and proselyte Gentiles who have come to faith in God.

Then he says, he begins to talk about the God of this people: “Israel chose our fathers. Exalted the people when they went down as strangers in the land of Egypt.” This is verse 17. And what he does then is for six verses he gives this sort of history out of the Bible of the people of God. So what is he doing to people who are Bible-believing? He’s talking about the Bible to them. And later in this same presentation, he’ll quote the Bible at several places.

So mark it down: when you talk to somebody who believes in the Bible but needs to be brought to faith in Jesus (like these people), then you use the Bible. Your standard is the Bible. And what you communicate to them is from the scriptures. That’s the authority you’re citing. And then, a little further down in the speech, he talks about David their king. And then in verse 23, “From this man’s seed according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a savior, Jesus.”

So he brings Jesus into the discussion as God’s faithfulness to keep His covenant, to fulfill His promise—that this promise fulfillment is Jesus. So to people who are looking for the fulfillment of the promise, now he tells them it’s happened in Jesus. So his presentation is based on the word, and it quickly says—that word culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ and His salvation.

Verse 26—if you’re in Acts 13, verse 26—he says, “Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God.” So again we’re reminded that the audience is this mixed group of Jews and Gentiles. But they’re Jews and Gentiles who are Bible-believing. And then he mentions what the prophets say every Sabbath rather, in verse 27. And then in verse 28 he starts talking about the death of Jesus.

Now, we’re going to go back over these presentations in detail one at a time in weeks to come. So this is just a quick overview. But the overview shows us that he’s talking to a particular audience—Bible-believing people. He uses the Bible as his standard, and what he communicates is really Bible-based, nearly completely. And he shows them the culmination of the scriptures’ promises is in Jesus. So he brings Jesus into it, and then he talks about the death of Jesus quite a bit here. Jesus was crucified, and then God raises Him from the dead, of course. So he gets to the resurrection but he spends some time talking about His death.

Again, in verse 32, he says, “We declare to you good tidings, the promise which was made to the fathers, the fulfillment of the scriptures. That’s the gospel.” And so the gospel for these people is related to God fulfilling the scriptural promises for us. And then in verse 38, he says, “Let it be known to you, brethren, that through this man is preached to you the forgiveness of sins.”

So he brings it to the idea that Jesus is the savior, but he brings it to a particular place: that only through Christ has forgiveness of sins come and is accomplished. And then he tells them in verse 39 that this is the only way to be justified. You can’t be justified by the law of Moses. So now you’ve got Jews who are tempted to think they’re justified by the law of Moses. Some of them actually think this. And he corrects their particular problem. Gentiles never thought they’d be justified by the law of Moses, but the Jews did. And some of the God-fearing Gentiles being taught by these Jews, they would think that.

And so he corrects their twisted thing. Justification’s a great thing, right? The law of Moses is a great thing, but you’ve reasoned incorrectly. If you think that lawkeeping can bring you right relationship with God, that’s wrong. So he looks at their misinterpretation of the scriptures and corrects that in his presentation of the gospel.

And then finally in verse 40, he warns them, right? He says, “Beware therefore, lest what has been spoken in terms of some of the judgments of God happens to you.” So that’s his presentation to that particular audience.

Now, if we look to Acts 14, that was the text we read at the beginning of the sermon today. This is a completely different group of people, and Paul doesn’t address them as what they are, but we recognize in terms of what they do that they think that, you know, they call Barnabas Zeus and Paul Hermes. These are polytheists, right? They’re kind of like gross idolators. “The gods have come down.” So these are probably uneducated pagans that, you know, they’re going to see a different group in Acts 17, but these are people that are kind of clinging to the old ways, the old polytheistic ways. They’re still buying into the myths and the polytheistic myths of the Greeks and the Romans. And so they’re stuck in that world, okay?

And so that’s the particular audience here. And what does Paul do to address them? Well, in verse 15, he says, “Men, why are you doing these things? You know, they’re going to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas.” And they, of course, get all upset about this and they try to stop it. So they present the gospel. Well, how do they do it? They say, “We also are men with the same nature as you and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, and who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways.”

So here he cites as his authority not the Bible. Here he talks to them not about the promise that’s found in the Old Testament, fulfillment in Jesus. They don’t have the Bible. What they do have is what some would call general revelation. And he points to that with these pagan idolators, polytheists. His authority is the creation of all things—that God created all things and that in His providence, He’s doing these things. He’s in His providence bringing to pass particular things. He’s established these nations and they walk in their ways, but things are changing now.

Nevertheless, at verse 17, “He did not leave Himself without witness in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.” Now, I know that, you know, you have to be careful. This is a truncated presentation. They’re really trying—this is not like they go in and preach the gospel, but they’re preaching the gospel in reaction to some pretty bad sin.

So you’ve got to be careful. But, you know, they don’t talk about Jesus. They’ll get to Jesus with these people eventually, but they talk about the nature of God because they’re talking to people whose problem is the nature of God—polytheism. And they say, “Well, God’s not like that. There’s one God who created the heavens, the earth, everything in it. And two, this God is providentially sustaining all things and gives you good gifts. And then three, in the past, maybe you did this stuff, but the implication is you’re not going to do it anymore.”

So Paul uses a different presentation of authority. The actual subject or content is different. He’s focusing on the nature of God, not starting with Jesus, right? And so that’s what he does with pagan Gentiles.

Now, if you look at Acts 17, this is the next presentation of the gospel by Paul. And this is a whole different group of people, right? You know this story probably better than the last one. And you know that these people are smart guys. They’re educated. They don’t believe in all those gods anymore. They’re modern, you know, philosophical guys. He’s in Acts—I’m sorry, he’s in Athens.

And it’s interesting because what he does in Acts 17, in verse 15, he’s brought to Athens. And in verse 16: “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.”

Okay, so now Athens is still idolatrous, but as we’ll see in a couple of minutes at the Mars Hill discussion, they’re not like those guys with Zeus and Hermes actually literally believing in this polytheistic view, right? They’re philosophers. Athens is the cultural center of the Greco-Roman world. This is where philosophy, beauty, art, all this stuff is flowing. This is sophisticated Gentiles, and the last group were unsophisticated, okay? So this is a different audience for Paul than his last presentation.

But notice how he listens to them by observing what’s going on in the city. And notice as well—and I’ll return to this in future weeks—he’s provoked by it. Now, no doubt he saw some good things. In fact, he’s going to commend a statue of the unknown god. He’s going to use that and kind of say, “Well, you know, you got some good things going on here about, you know, God—and that you don’t know him—but I’m going to reveal them to you.”

So he’s going to affirm some things (like I mentioned about the Jews and Gentiles and a sign and wisdom), but then he’s going to tell them that they’ve become idolatrous, thinking that they can, you know, know God apart from Jesus and the way they’re doing it. So Paul observes the city, and yes, he sees some things that he’s going to use in a positive presentation at first, but his spirit is provoked by the twistedness of Athens, okay?

And so when we talk about understanding our neighbors or going into our communities or cities, you know, one ditch is to not do that and not understand them. The other ditch is to go in and just buy it all and to think all they need is a little bit more Jesus. No. Our soul should be provoked at the nature of Portlandia. Provoked, irritated. We’ll talk about this more in the future. But you don’t get to that place if you don’t listen to what’s happening, okay?

So Paul listens to the city, he observes it, and then when he gets the opportunity to present it, then he talks to them. And then as we read in verse 18, “Certain Epicureans and Stoic philosophers encountered him and they say, ‘Well, come talk to us.’ And Paul goes and talks to them.”

And these people love to sit around and talk. And they’re sort of like the philosophical or cultural philosophical kind of elites of the city, and what they do sort of determines what floats out into the city in the same way that you have kind of centers in Portland as well that are like in that way. But what Paul—okay, so what does Paul do with these people?

Well, in verse 23, he says, “The one whom you worship without knowing him, I proclaim to you. Yeah, you’re right. You don’t know this God, and I’m going to proclaim Him to you. Okay? God who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.”

So he gives them the same basis of authority. God’s creation—that he gave to the gross idolators—to the sophisticated ones as well. He also uses that, and not the scriptures, not the Old Testament scriptures. He uses the created order and God’s being the creator of all things as his standard for what he’s going to present to them.

And then he says that “He’s determined the pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,” that’s verse 26. So just like with the other folks, he talks about God’s creation and God’s providence in history to them. And this is the God that you have to deal with. And he says that they should seek after the Lord in the hope that He might be grasped by them.

Verse 29: “Therefore since we are the offspring of God, he has common ground with them. We ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and men’s devising. So don’t worship these creation things of your own. God’s the creator.”

“These times of ignorance God overlooked but now commands all men everywhere to repent. So Paul gets to the same place of telling them, you know, how wrong they’ve been and calling them to repentance. And he says that now that Jesus has come, the judgment is stronger. The judgment is stronger. And then he brings up, he begins to talk about the man Jesus Christ.

So he moves from an exposition of who God is as creator and sustainer and then brings them to the resurrection of Jesus. Now, to the Jews, he sort of stressed in that first sermon the death of Christ, His suffering, because they think Messiah wasn’t going to suffer, right? Some of them don’t have much problem with the resurrection, but they don’t like the suffering. So he stresses that. But to the Gentiles, what does he stress? Not the suffering of Jesus on the cross—that he died, yes—but that he was raised from the dead. And so his message is changed from one group to the other.

Now, we could go on and talk about Acts 24-27. Here we have three men that Paul speaks to, and we’ll talk about these in future weeks: Felix, Festus, and Agrippa. These are cultural elites, political rulers, and men from varied backgrounds. None of them really Jewish, but knowing about Judaism. And Paul’s presentation to them is also unique. He sort of brings the two aspects of what he said together. He talks to them about the scriptures and Jesus suffering and resurrecting, but he also talks to them about God and the nature of God.

So these men are educated Gentile ruler elites, and they know about Jews as well as their own culture. So he brings both of those aspects together in his presentation in Acts 24-27. So we’ll be looking at these in more detail, but my basic point is that Paul’s presentation has some commonalities, right? He’s always preaching the gospel. He always brings them through—if at least beginning with God, he brings them to Jesus, as he did at Athens, and the death and resurrection of Jesus. And he always corrects their misinterpretation, right?

To the Jews, he says, “You can’t be justified by works.” To the Gentiles, he says, “You can’t get there through your idolatry and your philosophy.” The only way to get to both of those things you’re looking for is Jesus, God the creator and sustainer, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So he has commonality in challenging their view of things. They’ve misinterpreted things, both groups, but from different perspectives. And then he urges them all to action, to repent and to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Commonalities, but he presents it in varying ways. This is obvious, I guess, but it’s important for us: if we’re going to talk to our neighbors or coworkers or maybe think about a neighborhood or a city or get involved in Portland work generally, it means we’ve got to listen. We don’t just want to have the four spiritual laws and give it to everybody we see indiscriminately. We have to care enough about the people around us to listen to who they are and to change our presentation of the gospel, acknowledging what things they may be looking for that are really what God wants them looking for, but how they’ve twisted that without having it mediated through Jesus.

So affirming, and then calling them to repent of their idolatry in it, and pointing them to the true source of their happiness, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So that’s the basic point today. The point of all of this is, you know, hopefully we’re going to be doing evangelism. Hopefully you’ve got an individual or two that you’re hoping to reach with the gospel, or maybe you’ve been doing it for the last year or something. You need to get to the place of speaking to them about Jesus. Number one: friendship evangelism is great, but only if you get to the proclamation point and probably sooner rather than later. In fact, there’s really no point in a lot of chitchat and idle conversation and friendship building over six months if you’re not using it to understand who they are so that you can correct them and show them that Christ is the answer to whatever it is they’re desiring to get, and that they’re actually involved in a sinful rejection of Jesus.

You have to get to proclamation. But you get there and you proclaim it correctly by understanding, you know, the particular distinctives of the people that you are speaking to.

So the first practical step, so to speak—the first step in evangelism—is listening. And I know the context is one thing, but James 1:19 gives us a general truth: “My beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.” He’s talking about anger, but quick to hear, slow to speak. Don’t be so slow you never speak. That’s not proclamation of the gospel. Just living your life around pagan people is not what Paul ever did. He always tried to make use and then get to the place of conversation and a proclamation of the gospel. But do that by being quick to hear. That’s the first step.

Well, it isn’t really the first step, is it? I mean, because you could be listening to nobody if you’re not actually targeting somebody or a neighborhood or the city, whatever it is. Then you don’t have to listen to anybody. So the first step is doing what we’ve been urging for the last three or four months: committing yourself to sharing your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to proclaiming the good news of God’s mercy and grace. And if you do that, you do that best by listening to the people you’re sharing with, so that your proclamation of the gospel is effective.

That’s the only hope for the crisis and the opportunity we have before us. There’s no political answer. There’s no political solution. There’s no cultural solution. There’s no bureaucratic solution. There’s no educational solution. The Lord knows we’ve looked to education as our savior for way too long in this country. And now we’re looking to politics. The only salvation for what we’re suffering through in our families and communities is what we have to do now: which is to share the gospel and to share it in the most effective way by remembering to listen, to discern, to become somewhat familiar with these basic groups in Acts now, how Paul modified his presentation so that you can see in that a model for your own evangelism.

May the Lord bless us to that end. Let’s pray. Father, we do thank you that you’ve given us this wonderful book that helps us to understand how to take the gospel into a culture that has become more and more opposed to you. Bless us in our efforts to find people, neighbors, coworkers that we want to talk to about Christ and bless us in our efforts to listen and be ready to speak and to listen carefully out of love for them and concern for them, to see what you’re doing in their lives as preparation for bringing them the full gospel of Jesus Christ—that what they seek for can only be properly found through the Lord Jesus.

In His name we pray. Amen.