Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Acts 17 (Paul at Athens)
## Reformation Covenant Church | Pastor Dennis Tuuri

We turn today for our sermon text to Acts 17, and we’ll sort of be continuing to some extent with what we began at Lystra on the first missionary journey, although the trip to Athens is on the second missionary journey. We’ll be dealing again this week and in the next week that I have preached. Next Sunday, Bomi Yarmiach, a pastor from Postine, Poland, will be here preaching. By the way, he’ll also be doing adult Sunday school class in the sanctuary.

There’ll be several Ukrainian pastors and a Russian pastor, I believe, with him. So it’s your time to get acquainted with the great work that God is doing in the CRC in Ukraine and the number of churches that are lining up to become members in our presbytery. But after that, I’ll return to Acts 17 and get to the actual center stage discussion that happens in Acts 17. Today, I just want to deal with one verse, though. We’re continuing with this theme of idols. You’ll notice that the psalm we just recited is, of course, one of the classic texts on idols.

And just by way of pointing things out, there is this truth that people who worship idols become like what they worship, and so they become dead and lifeless, enslaved to their idols. That’s what the text says. It says idols can’t do all this stuff. They’re blind, they can’t talk, they can’t walk, and the people who worship them become like them. It’s a tremendous enslavement. And then to counter that, what did he do?

He presented just what the Psalms give us—just what Paul presented in Lystra to combat blatant idolatry. He talks about God’s creation of all the things that we’re worshiping as idols. So the creator, God, who overarches all other good things that he’s given to us. An understanding of that is what keeps us from idolatry. And then he talks about the blessings of God on Israel, on Aaron’s house, and on all who fear him.

Three-fold repetition to praise God and acknowledge him. And a three-fold repetition in this psalm that he will indeed bless all peoples, all houses, the leaders, the spiritual leaders, the people that direct the worship, the priestly order, and then the people themselves. All of us are called to turn from idols to the living God with the assurance that God will bless us with life. So I didn’t want to let that go.

It’s a nice summation essentially of what Paul taught at Lystra. And today we turn to the account of Paul’s arrival at Athens. So we’ll read the text, and as we read it, sort of see that it wasn’t necessarily Paul’s intent to end up at Athens. This is just where he is placed on a boat by other people, and this is where he goes to. It’s not a planned itinerary. So please stand for the reading of Acts 17.

I’m going to read verses 1 through 17. There’s some great stuff in here. We’re skipping over some material as we deal with evangelism by looking at Paul’s major presentations in the book of Acts. But I wanted to read this in context. Okay. So this is the second missionary journey. This is several years after the end of the first missionary journey. So we’re moving forward in time.

Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Then Paul, as his custom was, went into it, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ, that is, his Messiah.”

And some of them were persuaded, and a great multitude of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women joined Paul and Silas. But the Jews who were not persuaded, becoming envious, took some of the evil men from the marketplace, and gathering a mob, set all the city in an uproar and attacked the house of Jason and sought to bring them out to the people. But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some brethren to the rulers of the city, crying out, “These who have turned the world upside down have come here also.

Jason has harbored them, and these are all acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying, ‘There is another king, Jesus.’” And they troubled the crowd and the rulers of the city when they heard these things. So when they had taken security from Jason and the rest, they let them go. Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Therefore, many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men. But when the Jews from Thessalonica learned that the word of God was preached by Paul at Berea, they came there also and stirred up the crowds.

And then immediately the brethren sent Paul away to go to the sea. But both Silas and Timothy remained there. So those who conducted Paul brought him to Athens. And receiving a command for Silas and Timothy to come to him with all speed, he departed. 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. Therefore, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this account in your holy word of this important presentation of Paul at Athens. Bless us, Lord God, as we seek to be provoked the way Paul was provoked for the city that he visited. Help us to be provoked for our cities as well. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen. Please be seated.

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Well, my main goal today is to get you angry, sort of. That’s what happens here. Paul gets stirred up, provoked, angered. He gets all worked up, and that’s the motivation for him to go into the marketplace at Athens then and do what he does and enter into that dialogue on Mars Hill as well. So really the question is: Are you provoked? Are you stirred up by the city in which you live? And of course part of the answer to that is: In what way is your city like Athens or not?

So that’s my main focus. But this text that I just read has so much stuff in it that I just wanted to at least read it or maybe even point out a little bit of things as we go through it.

Acts 17 is significant to my family. My name is Dennis, and Dionisius was one of the men from the Areopagus that we’ll see came to faith in Christ through the preaching of Paul. So that’s kind of there. And then Jason, whose account we just read—this account in Acts is why I named my son Elijah. His middle name is Jason. So because we as Christians proclaim another king, a king above Caesar, a king above whatever civil state ruler or emperor, whatever idol men put their trust in, we declare another king: Jesus.

And the end result of that, then and again today, is to turn the world upside down—or actually, to put it right side up, right? Jesus is putting the world to rights. It’s become topsy-turvy because of sin. And when a culture moves away from Christ, it tips over. And our job is to tip it back up. And we do that through proclaiming another king, the king, the King of Kings, Jesus Christ.

This text also talked about Bereans, right? And the Bereans—we know, we always think about the Bereans as: “You know, you’re supposed to be a good Berean. Go home today and see if what the pastor said is true or not based on the scriptures.” But the first half of what the Bereans did was to receive the word preached with all readiness. They gratefully appreciated the word. So they take it in. And yes, they then study to make sure it’s true.

But the characteristic of the Berean is both those things: a readiness to hear the preached word of God and then a commitment to the word of God to make sure that what they heard is consistent with the scriptures. So that’s Bereans, and that’s who we’re supposed to be as well.

And then several places, prominent women are mentioned. It’s very significant how the gospel transforms the lives of women in a culture. We’re going to talk about Athens, but the Greek mindset was that women were inferior ontologically, by their very nature. And so women respond to the gospel because it’s the truth that brings them into their position of equality with men ontologically, in terms of their nature. And so that’s a significant thing we’re just breezing right over.

And then a final significant thing I wanted to point out is the place of envy. If you were listening carefully when we read the account that preceded Lystra in last sermon, and in this account and in other accounts, the motivation of the Jews who seek to kill Paul and stir people up to kill him, to reject the gospel, the motivation is given as envy. And this is significant. The scriptures tell us that’s why the Jews crucified Christ: was envy.

You know, envy is a little different than coveting something. Coveting something says “You have what I want. I’m going to try to take steps to get it,” and if it’s wrong steps, then you’ve entered into sinful coveting and you’ve tried to get what somebody else has—stealing it or whatever. Envy, though, is a much more dangerous personal emotion. The scriptures talk about envy as: You have what I want, but I can never have it, and therefore I’m going to take it away from you or I’ll kill you.

So the Jews could never have what Christ had—right relationship with the Father. They could have it through belief, but because of that envy they killed him. And the Jews here are not trying to get the popularity of Paul and the disciples. They’re just trying to end their lives. That’s envy. That’s envy.

Envy is a very important factor in the scriptures. You know, when Isaac would dig wells, the people, the pagans that he was in the context of, would fill them up. You know, they destroy his well. Envy seeks to destroy what other people have. Young people will key automobiles. They’ll never have the Mercedes-Benz. Well, in fact, we have that in Portland in the last couple of weeks. People are cutting open the cloth on convertibles. That’s envy. Destroying what the other person has.

A tremendous psychological truth to fallen men and to those of us who are even redeemed. We have these tendencies toward envy within the church. I think envy probably is pretty easily seen on the internet and particularly in terms of whose ministries are successful. One of the reasons—you know, there may be some legitimate differences with this or that preacher—but one of the things that happens when a preacher is successful is envy arises in the heart of other ministers or the heart of other Christians.

And envy, no doubt, is part of the attack upon people like Mark Driscoll, Doug Wilson, Tim Keller, and other people that the Lord is blessing in their ministry. Envy, you know, can occupy our hearts and all we want to do is tear them down. So you know, it’s not my sermon today. I have sermons on envy listed online when I preach the seven deadly sins. But I wanted to mention it because it’s been mentioned several times in these accounts from the book of Acts—that it’s envy that is motivating the Jews.

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What our purpose today, though, is to set up our discussion of Paul’s presentation at the Areopagus. You know, what we’re trying to do is say that—think of it this way. So it’s football season, and when the Seahawks play the 49ers, it’s different than when they play somebody else. And so their game plan is different, right? I mean, all these brilliant coaches and strategists—you know what they do is they try to exploit the other team’s weaknesses, see what strengths they have that the other team can’t defend against.

Every time they play a game, it’s a different strategy. They got some basic stuff there, but you know, they’re playing a different team and they got to use different strategies. If you don’t, you don’t win in the NFL. Well, this is what we’re trying to say about evangelism. Whether it’s citywide evangelism or you talking to your friend or neighbor, you got to have a different game plan for who you talk to.

Right now, the basic game plan is to preach the gospel, to preach Christ crucified. But what does it look like to that particular person? How do you best communicate to that person? And we saw that Paul—and we saw it again here—that when he goes to people that have a prior commitment to the scriptures, he reasons from those scriptures. That’s his authority.

But when he goes to, you know, overt pagans at Lystra who are worshiping Zeus and Jupiter at temples, you know, he doesn’t do that. He points to—well, he points to a portion of the scriptures, which is creation. And as we just read in the Psalms, that’s what it is: it’s creation. It’s how you combat idolatry—is the sovereign Lord and his goodness. Right, that his sovereignty and his creation is reflected in his goodness. That’s how it ends Paul’s presentation at Lystra.

And he’s actually able to restrain gross idolators in the heat of passion and commitment to their gods. It may not seem like much, but he’s able to stop them from doing that through bringing the message that God has created all things. So whatever good created things God has given to us that we’re exalting higher than God—this is idolatry. And that’s what they were doing.

So his authority that he cites is different. The language he uses is different. He has to appeal to that particular person. We don’t want people rejecting Christ crucified if we’ve said it in Aramaic and then they say, “We don’t understand what you’re saying. Go away.” They’re not rejecting the gospel. They’ve rejected our crummy presentation.

So what we’re saying in this series is that the person that you’re praying for this year to reach with the gospel, or maybe a number of people, you’ve got to know who they are. And today in Acts 17, the primary example is Paul spending time there. Now that’s interesting too—that he’s spending time there. What’s he doing in Athens? Why doesn’t he get at it?

Well, he’s waiting for other people, for Timothy. By the way, Timothy was from Lystra—that place of gross idolatry. He knew the scriptures. He was raised with the Old Testament scriptures. But that’s where he was from. He came out of that. So there were converts, significant ones. But Paul doesn’t go it alone, so to speak. He’s not going to launch into things until he’s joined by his compadres—a very significant truth that we don’t want to overlook.

But what does he do with his time? He prepares for that team that he’s playing that week, right? He looks at the game film. He watches their past few games. He spots their weaknesses, their strengths, what he’s got to guard against. He goes around the city and he observes the city.

He’s able, when he gets finally around to his presentation at the Areopagus on Mars Hill, to quote one of their poets. He’s read their literature. He kind of gets what’s going on. He makes reference to one of the works of art that he saw in the city. Paul is listening, right? That’s what we said: the first step to evangelism is to listen to the people you’re trying to reach with the gospel. And he’s going to effectively present Christ crucified through these mechanisms, which are different than the mechanisms that were used at Lystra or at places where the synagogue—where you had to go to the synagogue.

So you know, it’s a different team requiring a different strategy, and he spends his time first of all listening, watching, observing. And we’ll see in a few minutes that he’s not just looking at the outside of the thing. He’s intently looking to discern what’s happening in this great city.

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There was a movie a number of years back. Some people claim it’s the best movie of all time; some people think it’s one of the best movies of all time. It’s Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. It’s a movie that I deliberately did not watch for, I think, a year or two, and that’s very unusual for me. At that time, I was given to anxiety and kind of claustrophobia. I had struggled, you know, in some ways, and the Lord has pretty much gotten rid of that for me, and I’m able to help other people now—which is why God sometimes gives us things: so that we can learn how to combat them biblically and then help others to combat them. But at the time I was—and so I thought, you know, this movie was described as being very good, very effective.

And you know, the basic story is you follow this guy who’s trying to get this really evil fellow who’s gone rogue from the American war effort in Vietnam. It’s a Vietnam war movie. And he goes up this river, this twisting river, and he goes into, you know, places he shouldn’t be going. And the further he goes down that river, the more darkness, right? It’s based upon a short story called The Heart of Darkness, which is about an ivory trader, actually one that killed elephants.

But the point is, it’s—you know, he’s going into darkness as he goes through this twisty river. And I thought, man, I don’t want to go through that journey, particularly if it’s good. And I like to enter into movies, right? I don’t just sit back. I like to put myself in the movie. And I thought, that’s not going to be good for me. I’ll freak out, go running into the street screaming or whatever it is. So I didn’t watch it.

Right now I bring it up because, you know, to us today Athens—while another city that Paul visited. Now, Paul—and as I said, it doesn’t seem like it was necessarily his intent to go to Athens. He just sort of ends up there through persecution. He’s delivered by other people who put him on a boat. He’s sent up the river, so to speak, and where he arrives at in Athens—you have to understand this to understand what he does.

What he arrives at in Athens is the heart of darkness.

You know, Rome and Greece—Athens had lost its political superiority by this time, but you know, the Roman culture was essentially Hellenistic. It was based upon Greek philosophy, right? I mean, the Romans just kind of incorporated all that into who they were. So when you think of Greeks and Romans, there’s kind of a synthesis. The Romans are really developing in the context of Greek philosophy. And of course, Rome and Greece become the kind of the template for Western civilization.

And today, you know, if you’re going to understand government or philosophy, at most schools they have you read the Greeks. This is the city, right, of Aristotle, Plato, Epicurus, Socrates. This is that. This is the heart of what would send out in all directions a completely pagan—according to Paul—idolatrous culture.

Now they weren’t just kind of a source of authority, but they were really the cultural center of the world and still were. Their political fortunes had gone by the by—the Romans have taken over. They become actually not even the capital city in their region. But still, philosophically, artistically, culturally, in terms of education, this is the top university town. This is it, okay? This is where Cambridge is, or whatever you want to put the name of the school that you think is the best in there. This is Athens. And this is the best place of artistic flourishing.

Right now, we don’t know much about it. I mean, we don’t have much of this art left because these were idols for destruction—to use Herbert Schaeffer’s title of his book. God would destroy these idols. And when the Roman Empire falls and when the Goths come in, they absolutely destroy Athens. You got the Parthenon left, but not much more. So you know, but this was it. This is the heart of darkness, so to speak. This is the heart of idolatry.

And so you have to understand that about Athens. It was said—and it’s kind of sneering but we’re, you know, tongue in cheek, but there’s a truth to it—and that is it was easier to find a god in Athens than it was to find a man. It was that filled with visual representations of things, right? Certainly the mythological gods and goddesses are all represented there. But in addition to that, you know, there’d be altars to, you know, fame, wealth, wisdom, industry, fishing. I mean, everything for every endeavor of human life, there were these altars—these idols rather—that were sitting there.

And even they had one, which we know Paul will talk about when we get around to the rest of the chapter. There’s even one to an unknown god. They just in case, you know, they hadn’t covered all the gods and powers and everything, they put up one to the unknown god. So just to cover their bases, you know, they did that.

Now, you have to understand here that as we see from the dialogue that Paul has on Mars Hill, these were different people than the crowd at Lystra, who went and had oxen and garlands and stuff—were going to make sacrifices. They did that stuff still in Athens, but they were far more sophisticated than those kind of rank pagans at Lystra.

These men were men of learning, understanding, knowledge, intellect. As I said, the artists were the best. You don’t get that way just by being stupid about things. And so they were highly developed and highly cultured. And as I said, their influence comes right down through the ages to much of who we are as Western civilization today. And that’s why they’re still studied.

So you know, a second thing I’d want to point out is that this country as it moves away from Christ becomes more and more—it reverts back to some of its foundations in Athens. I don’t remember the actual building now, but there was a recent show on PBS on architectural structures that changed America. And one of the first ones was Jefferson’s—what was it, his home or his capital? I don’t remember. But Jefferson wanted to start this new world, and what did he choose? He chose a Greek art form—this kind of classic Greek-looking, you know, structure—for the foundation of that what he saw as the new country of America. So there was a self-conscious connection between America in its founding back to Greek and Roman culture.

I believe that much of Christendom, being birthed in this context, has for 2,000 years had this problem. For instance, you know—well, we’ll talk more about this when we get to Paul’s actual presentation in Acts 17. But suffice it to say that it’s been an admixture of Greek philosophy and biblical teaching.

Now, the Greeks were the opposite of—you know, there’s a—I don’t remember who quoted who said this, but what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?

So Jerusalem and Athens were seen as the two representations of man and their fulfillment: either the revealed God and worshiping him, or humanistic religion and culture, et cetera. Jerusalem versus Athens. And so Athens is this antitype. You know, it’s interesting that around pretty much somewhat the same time as you have the prophets doing some of their writings that are quoted in the scriptures, you have the Greek philosophers beginning to develop.

And so the Greek philosophers can be seen—at least in terms of subject matter and approach—as the anti-prophets, the opposite of biblical prophets. Our classical period really is Old Testament history and specifically the prophetic age. That’s our classical period. But so often now what we think of as our classical period is Athens and its Greek democracy and Greek law systems that the Romans picked up on and then developed.

So this is a very pertinent section of scripture to us today. These are the kind of people you will increasingly meet in America. We’re becoming pagans again. And pagans of this sort—every one of them is a little god unto himself. Every human endeavor is represented by these idols, right? Beauty by Aphrodite, as we’ve talked about before; commerce by Diana. You know, but we have our own idols as well, even though there’s no physical necessarily representations of them. But maybe there are.

What is that Portlandia thing downtown? I don’t know. Looks like an idol of gambling. Maybe she’s throwing the dice. Well, she’s not. But the point is artistic representations of people demonstrate what’s core, what’s most important to them in their lives. And what we said is that idols are what is the most significant thing for you. It’s what gives you meaning and purpose in life.

To identify your idol, think: What is it I most crave or desire and yet I can’t seem to get? That’s probably one of your idols. What is it that if I can’t get this in life, it’s not worth living? Okay, it’s not worth living anymore. That’s your idol. And in Athens there were so many idols because there were so many people off into so many directions.

And that’s what America, Portland, is becoming more and more. Everybody now is living their lives based on fulfilling their own personal desire. Your own personal Jesus has become your own personal God. And that’s you. And you try to bring fulfillment to your life by meeting every desire you have. You’ve become an idol to yourself. And so America is becoming more and more like Athens.

So this text is important to us. It’s particularly important. It’s always important when God puts it in the scriptures, but this text is particularly relevant to us, I think. And there’s only one point I want to make out of this text today in preparation for the next sermon in a couple of weeks on Acts 17.

And that is that we—if we regard ourselves as mature Christians—should have the same response to our city if they really are becoming more and more Athenian, or if the Athenian thing that had scripture painted over it, the scriptures worn off and now Athens comes roaring back, right? In the context of our day and age. If we’re similar that way, we should feel the same way about the city that we live in as Paul did to this one.

And by way of application, we should feel the same way about the people that we’re evangelizing. I mean, that’s—he’s doing this on a broad scale in a city. It’s describing that. What is his reaction to the city? What does he feel? He feels angry. Well, the word there is a word—paroxysm, right? It’s an English word, paroxysm. And it’s like a, you know, a fit—or a very—it’s being stirred up. You’re really disturbed in your soul. A paroxysm. It can refer actually to a medical situation where you kind of go into a seizure, but that’s kind of the idea. It’s just kind of a soul seizure, right?

And so you react and you just are—violently, kind of—no, not violently, but you’re really stirred in a negative way. That was Paul’s reaction. What’s the reaction of so many Americans? Particularly if those idols hadn’t been destroyed by the Goths. “Oh, isn’t this a great city? Let’s go visit it. Let’s enjoy the Parthenon. Let’s look at all these things. Let’s think about the great classic roots of Western civilization.” Painted by these men—like America, they had their own sexual proclivities. We’ll leave it at that. But let’s look at these philosophies written by these men who couldn’t even use the natural use, you know, of the marriage relationship.

But we—it’s fun. It’s a vacation spot. Let’s visit it. Let’s be tourists. Let’s enjoy it. Let’s be broad-minded enough to appreciate the art of these people. That was not what Paul’s reaction was, dear brothers and sisters. His reaction was completely different. He got worked up by what he saw.

Why is that? If we think that’s the proper reaction, and if we think that maybe that wouldn’t be our reaction, what’s the difference? Well, maybe part of it, you might say, is the grossness of what he saw. But you know, here’s a little bit of thing you won’t know reading your Bibles. When it says that he was provoked by seeing that idols were everywhere, the word for seeing isn’t the simple word for visually looking at—that might be if he’s just referring to the idols, the representations. That might be the word it used. But the particular word for seeing is theoria—to theorize—to understand the foundational elements of something that’s seen.

What Paul was irritated by was not the actual statue. It was what underlied the statue. It was the idolatry—the mental idolatry of the people—represented, ultimately, in these statues, but it wasn’t them. He was theorizing when he looked and discerned. He didn’t just look on the surface. He looked underneath the surface. And what he saw represented in every direction is the sort of thing you’ll see today, increasingly, in Portland in every direction. Some of the idols are easy to spot, right? Some are not so easy.

We don’t want to get into a list of them today, but the point is Paul saw the underlying idolatry of the city, and he didn’t go in there and start a food ministry. Now, it’s good to start food ministries. He didn’t go in there and say, “Let me help you in your Greek anti-Christian school system to make sure your kids are learning that Greek philosophy well by bringing you food.” He didn’t do that. Now, I—you know, I’m all for, you know—I talked last week that what Paul did to help discern the idolatry was to serve the people at Lystra. He healed the lame man. So acts of benevolence are good. We want to lead with those things.

But I’m telling you, I worry a little bit that we’re going to be so emphatic these days on trying to do penance—supposedly for being judgmental in the past as a Christian community—we’re doing almost penance by going into the cities and just thinking everything’s cool and we’re working for, you know, whatever we can do to help people, and that’s that.

Now, Paul was provoked. Why was he provoked? I’d say two things—two things that are not so easy for us, although they sound incredibly easy. Now, you know, we want a quick answer. Tell me today, Pastor Tuuri, how I can be like Paul, so tomorrow when I talk to my neighbor or when I go into Portland, I’ll have the right response. Tell me about that, Pastor Tuuri. What can I do tomorrow? Nothing. You can’t do anything tomorrow to change this.

Okay. In the Bible, it doesn’t quite work that way. We were studying Proverbs in Sunday school today. You know, it’s a long-term assignment. It’s a growth in character. I’d suggest it’s the character of Paul that made him react the way he did—a character that was developed over time. Now, you can take steps tomorrow and today to reach that, so that in maybe a couple of weeks or a month or a year you’ll be more effective in reaching your neighbors and the city for Jesus.

But you know what? If you don’t start today, okay, you’ll never get to that place either. Okay, so what are the two elements of Paul’s character that I think are undergirding this kind of reaction? And the reaction is important, right? Because the reaction is the reason he goes into the marketplace, which is what we’ll talk about in a couple of weeks. But why he begins to interact with the culture. Now, he’s not so angry. I—he doesn’t go in there and start shouting at people. He reasons with them in the synagogue. And we’ll see with his speech on Mars Hill, he treats them respectfully. He doesn’t tell them what jerks they are.

So that’s not what I’m advocating here. But I’m advocating a holy zeal in two directions that would get us provoked about what we see with our neighbors or our cities—potentially—that would move us to the sort of action that Paul was moved toward.

And I think those two things are this. First, an abiding desire to see God given his glory. What’s the chief purpose of man? To glorify God. And we say it; we have our children recite it. But is it your chief purpose? And I’d say that probably if you’re not provoked by idolatry, it’s an indication that no, it’s probably not what you’re mostly concerned about. You’re mostly concerned about having a good time, enjoying the artistic pleasures of the city, whatever it might be.

But if the holiness of God is your driving motivation in life, and you see all kinds of things that God has created receiving the ultimate value from people, that should offend you, brothers and sisters. It should offend me more than it does when I see things in the movies, the popular representations of culture, when I go to Portland. It shouldn’t just be interesting when you watch Portlandia. There should be a holy stirring of zeal.

Zeal for your Father’s house, which is the whole world, and his glory in that world—that Paul had. And I think that’s a significant element of what drives him then to try—once he’s discerned the idols—that drives him to try to expose them and destroy them. Remember from last week: discern, expose, destroy. He’s moved to destroy the idols from day one when he sees that stuff and discerns the underlying idolatry that leads to the sort of cultural expressions that he finds in the city.

That’s the way it works. Cities create artifacts. They create monuments. They create things, and those things reflect underlying presuppositions. And increasingly in America, those underlying presuppositions are not Christian. And if you’re not working with God, you’re working against him, right? You’re either loving life or you’re loving death. They’re representations of the love of death. And it should just, you know, it should really move us to action when people aren’t glorifying God with their art, with their lives, with their culture, with their education, with their business and commerce, whatever it may be.

Now, if we had a whole—a higher desire to please God and to have him glorified in all things, then people who don’t do that would irritate us. The whole thing would begin to really disturb us. And you know what? Not only would you be better at evangelism, not only would I be better at evangelism, we’d be better Christians. We’d be better at our own sanctification. We’d be better at discerning, exposing, and destroying the idols that live in our heart. Right?

That’s a simple answer, Pastor Tuuri. Yeah, it is. It’s very simple. What’s the chief purpose of you and I? To glorify God. And that should be our motivation: the glory and honor of God. What does it say throughout the scriptures? What provokes God to anger? Well, if you just read those texts in the Old Testament, it’s the same thing that provoked Paul to action where he was. God says, “Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked. And Jeshurun turned from me and began to worship things—created things—idolatrous things—and they provoked me to anger.” Look it up in your concordances. Over and over, God says, “I was provoked to anger.” Paul is reflecting the character of the God he serves by being provoked to anger.

So number one: what we need is a better commitment and desire to see the glory of God in our own lives, personally, and in the life of the cities in which we live and in our neighbors.

Number two—and this goes on at the same time. You—we’re made in the image of God, brothers and sisters. We’re nearly infinitely complex, right? You know, people are amazing. You want the best apologetic that there is a God? Look at people. I mean, it’s amazing what God has made, and we’re not infinitely complex, but we’re nearly infinitely complex. And there’s another major factor that you might not think of here.

He doesn’t go in to blast them. He goes in to rescue them. The glory of God is number one. Number two, for Paul, I think that provokes him to anger is a recognition of what that psalm says—that it’s true that people that worship idols become like them. The humanity, the very life of who they are, that God gave them as a wonderful gift, is sucked out of them.

You know, if you see people engaged in bondage, your reaction should be to be a hero and to rescue them out of that bondage. So that’s why you don’t go down, you know, to people who are addicted to Aphrodite and just curse everybody. You see, you try to rescue women from the kind of degradation and bondage that goes on in Portland every day and increasingly. It’s horrible. Any rescuing—praise God that, you know, Esther Prentice and other folks here have been involved in trying to rescue. And you know this, but you know, from a male perspective: ask most men about the bondage of Aphrodite, beauty, the worship of beauty. And they’ll say the same thing.

So you know, we should want to rescue people from the bondage that idolatry creates, right? Idols enslave people. It sucks the life out of people. It sucks the hope out of them. It degrades them incredibly. You know, think about some of—and some of the stuff doesn’t appear to be degrading, but it is. And I don’t think we care enough about that. I don’t think we care enough about our neighbor, right, or our city and the degradation, the bondage that idolatry produces.

I think Paul saw both those things. And as I said, you know, that’s why I think we can infer this from the text: because he goes then to reason with them, and he tries to help them in the best way possible. He’s playing that team not to defeat them, but to save them. He’s trying to save people at the Areopagus. And so he doesn’t come out bam, bam, bam—”you lousy jerks.” He comes out trying to reason. He quotes some of their authorities and themselves. He tries to move them from their folly into wisdom and life. Why? Because he loves them. Because he loves them.

And so I think those are the two things. If we have a great passion for the holiness of God, and then we have a great passion to rescue fallen humanity—whether it’s our neighbors, the city, whoever it is—I think if we have that, we’ll be provoked. Then we will be provoked for our city and for our neighbors. And then we’ll be like the Apostle Paul. And like the Apostle Paul, we’ll be moved into action in our evangelism, both personally and in terms of the city as well.

I pray that the Lord God would do this with us. Like I said, don’t be discouraged and know it’s not something you can wake up tomorrow with a greater passion for the glory of God and bringing people out of spiritual bondage. You won’t be like that tomorrow. But as you apply yourself to those great aspects—you’re applying yourself to what we’ll celebrate here in a couple of minutes—because these aspects come together in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. More about that at communion.

But as you drink in, and as you eat, this great truth of what God did in sending his Son to rescue redeemed humanity and at the same time, you know, preserve his own honor and glory to his created things, you’ll be like that more and more.

Let me make one last little thing. What this means is God is a jealous God, and he says that about himself. You know, one of the worst things I see in life sometimes are marriages where the husband or the wife isn’t properly jealous. And somehow we have this weird view of love in the Christian church that love is passive and accepting and whatever happens is fine.

It is God’s love that motivates his jealous wrath against anyone who would dare to attack his bride—or against her bride when she would dare be unfaithful to his covenant. Right? That’s who God is. And if we’re going to see these marriages we just celebrated the last couple of weeks succeed, that’s what they’re going to have to have: a kind of love that goes beyond sort of a sweetness and light, “whatever is okay,” doormat sort of, you know, spouse for the other person. Instead, be spouses who act such that they have such a deep love for each other they could not stand to see their spouse attacked, right? Or they couldn’t stand to see their spouse not be faithful to their vows to them. That’s what that’s what God is like. He has both those things going on.

And as I said, it comes together—this is where he accomplishes the salvation of his bride, right? This is where he gives us victory. This is where he saves us. And so this is the message that we drink in every Lord’s Day. That should then motivate us to properly seek the release of those in bondage that we see in the context of our lives and the glory of God exalted.

This is what gives us a proper anger, a proper wrath, a proper being stirred up for the Lord God—that drives us then to the kind of evangelism we’re talking about. Still got to be smart about it. But you know, if you don’t have this motivation, forget it. Lenski, I think, said—maybe it was Calvin. If you don’t have that kind of motivation, you’re not a child of God. You’re just not a child of God.

May he give us that. Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank you for the life that we have in Jesus Christ. And we do ask you to forgive us, Father, for not having a greater desire for your glory in this world, in our own lives. Forgive us, Father. Renew us by your Spirit, by your Church, by the sacrament itself. Build us up, Lord God, for a holy zeal for you and your honor to be declared to you by those you created. And then give us also, Father, hearts for people around us. Help us not to be so selfish and insulated away from the true bondage that idolatry produces.

Help us to remember that people become like their idols, and that means they become a little more dead the more they worship them. Lord God, we don’t want that. We want to see life. We know that’s glorifying and honoring to you. So give us that zeal, Father, in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.