In the life of Paul, that came about
by happenstance, circumstantially, by a man who did
not intend to be in Athens, who was
really in flight from persecution, and was brought
to the city by other men.
He was not there by his own volition
or choice.
And while he was waiting for his brothers
and the Lord to catch up with him,
God began to stir his heart by his
spirit, and step by step something unfolds, which
becomes a jewel that is timeless in its
importance and its value.
A confrontation or a collision between two essential
forces or mentalities.
One is Paul, the apostolic man, the Hebrew
of the Hebrews, representing the mentality of God,
and the other, the Greeks themselves.
And not just any Greeks, but Athenians.
And not just Athenians, but philosophers, Stoics and
Epiphyrians.
In other words, the cream of the crop,
the finest of Greek civilization, meets the finest
of Hebrew or divine civilization.
While the finest of the secular meets the
finest of the sacred in a head-on
collision.
And I want to say to you that
when we read this, we need to read
it not just as an academic exercise, we
need to read it as a description for
a course upon which we ourselves are set.
Because what Paul represents as himself in Acts
17 is a statement of the church which
he prefigures, and that what the end of
the age is going to be is yet
another collision between an apostolic body meeting the
world head-on in the depths of its
wisdom in a final and ultimate confrontation for
which we need now to be prepared.
Are you following me?
Okay.
So let's begin from verse 14 of chapter
17.
And then immediately the brethren sent away Paul
to go as it were to the sea,
but Silas and Timotheus abode there still.
And they that conducted Paul brought him unto
Athens, and receiving a commandment unto Silas and
Timotheus for to come to him, with all
speed they departed.
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens,
his spirit was stirred in him when he
saw the city wholly given to 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 Epicureans and of
the Stoics encountered him.
And some said, What will this babbler say?
Others some, He seems to be a set
-aforth of strange gods, because he preached unto
them Jesus and the resurrection.
And they took him and brought him unto
Areopagus, saying, or Mars Hill, May we know
what this new doctrine whereof thou speakest is?
For thou bringest certain strange things to our
ears.
We would know therefore 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 you 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, dwells not in temples made with
hands.
Neither is worship 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 in the bounds of their habitation, that
they should seek the Lord, if happily they
might 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 and man's
device.
And the times of this ignorance God winked,
but now commands all men everywhere to repent,
because he has 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, in
that he hath raised them 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 claimed unto him and believed, among the
which was Dionysius an Areopagite, and a woman
named Damaris, and others with them.
Amen.
So we're going to be pouring over this
text, we're going to be sifting it, scrutinizing,
analyzing, burrowing in, because it's enormous.
And I would just assume that most of
us are guilty of the usual practice of
too hurried or rapid reading of the Word.
You cannot believe the treasures that are hidden
in the few verses that I've read.
What makes it all the more marvelous is
the complete unselfconsciousness of Paul.
He didn't take a deep breath and bring
himself to his full height.
He didn't recognize that this was some momentous
confrontation that was going to be recorded for
time and for eternity.
It's simply something that happened, an event that
came upon him unawares, which makes it all
the more glorious, because what is struck and
what is sounded is what Paul is through
and through.
His thinking and what he expresses is not
just convenient doctrine, it's something that is written
into his very nature and being.
And what he expresses in these brief words
is a total philosophy, a world view, a
global view, or if I can use the
fancy word, a cosmology.
From the word cosmos, it's a total view
of the whole purpose of being, of creation,
spoken to philosophers who did nothing else but
spend their time in discussing and contemplating some
new thing and never came to the end
of their discussions.
The Bible speaks about those who are always
seeking knowledge and always seeking the truth, never
coming to the knowledge of it.
And from those of us who have had
background like this, particularly in the academic world,
we know what that means.
We always love to play with ideas.
We always like to discuss scintillating things, but
we really do not have any real deep
desire to be confronted or to be found
by truth, the kind of truth that makes
requirement.
And in fact, if truth does not make
requirement, if it is not costly, neither is
it truth.
So Paul understood these things, and what's recorded
here is a sublime confrontation that is universal
and timeless and valid in every generation and
especially our own.
Because the Greek spirit, the spirit of humanism,
the secular mind has been brought to such
a full perfection and sway in our generation
that not only does it pervade the world,
it also pervades the church.
Secular thinking describes not only the thinking of
worldlings, it describes the thinking of those who
profess to believe.
And I mentioned two books last week.
I'll mention them again to those who are
here for the first time, that you should
put in your order and get them.
I think them outstanding.
They were a great influence and inspiration for
me and have a great deal to do
with the subject and our discussion.
By the same author Harry Blymeier is an
Englishman.
The first is The Christian Mind, and the
thesis of this book is that though Christians
use a spiritual vocabulary and have a spiritual
mindset or a religious mindset on Sundays in
terms of activity pertaining to the church, for
all the rest of their week they are
governed by a secular mindset.
That is to say that they move by
the same rhythm and the same logic, the
same suppositions and assumptions by which the world
itself conducts its business.
That indeed that there is a spiritual mind
or a Christian mind or a biblical mindset
which God did not intend to be confined
to Sunday use, but to govern the life
of believers.
And that what we need to do is
to contend for the faith that was once
given, to find our way back to that
mindset consciously, to see the clash of these
two contrary and conflicting views and to live
our life consciously in the biblical mindset that
God intends for his people.
The title of this other book is worth
the price of the book alone, The Secularist
Heresy, and the thesis of this book is
this, that the very word secular is itself
heretical.
You say, what do you mean by that?
What he means by that is that there
is nothing legitimate about the word secular.
The world thinks so, but God never intended
the distinction of secular and sacred.
The whole of life was intended to be
sacred.
The whole earth is to be pervaded with
the glory of God.
The principles of God and the commandments and
the laws of God are to govern all
men everywhere.
Righteousness exalts a nation and not just the
church.
So the very idea that we have allowed
ourselves to submit or to subscribe to the
idea that there is a sacred and a
secular is itself a heresy.
It's a distinction that should not exist.
And part of our function as those who
believe is to see that that distinction is
dissolved and that the sacred comes into the
secular, pervades it, finally captures it, and that
the whole earth is permeated with the knowledge
of God.
Okay, Paul believed that.
We need to believe it also.
Paul is not confronting religious men.
That is to say, a church in my
cell is confronting secular men.
He's confronting not the apostasy of the church,
he's confronting the apostasy of the world.
And we need to know, this is part
of the spiritual mindset, that the world is
apostate.
That the world is God-rejecting.
And part of the function, of the prophetic
function of the church, is not only to
confront the apostate church, but to confront the
apostate world.
The world that sniggers and scorns at any
reference to God in its secular discussions, thinks
it bad taste to introduce the name of
the Lord in a discussion on chemical dependency,
when the fact of the matter is that
the whole thing, the whole discussion is shot
through with deception, as is suggested even by
the phrases that they use.
Because chemical dependency is a euphemistic evasion of
the reality of the satanic problem of drug
addiction and alcohol addiction.
And if we allow them to get away
with the vocabulary of chemical dependency or abuse,
we are acknowledging the premises by which they
operate.
And therefore the problem is seen in a
secular context, which requires a secular solution, psychiatric
or social.
But if you call the thing for what
it is, sin, then it's got to be
addressed in another way.
And the appeal then is not for a
social answer or a task force, as was
suggested in those days, but repentance.
So just to remind us that
Acts 17 is a confrontation between two classic
mindsets, and that in it, though Paul was
not conscious of what he was expressing, what
he was expressing is a whole statement of
a Christian or spiritual world view completely at
opposition with that which was held by the
Greeks.
It says Paul stood in the midst, in
verse 22.
It's a beautiful statement of the role that
God intends for the church.
Not at the sidelines, not at the periphery,
not content with a schedule of services or
activities or programs, but to stand in the
midst of a secular and apostate world and
to bring a penetrating statement of the reality
of God, which if men do not see
it and do not respond to in this
lifetime, they shall eternally suffer.
That's why in the very same statement of
the cosmology of God, that He created the
world and He's the Lord of the heaven
and the earth, that He's appointed the habitations,
the bounds by which men live, for the
purpose of seeking Him, in the same statement
Paul ends by talking about judgment.
For God has appointed a day in which
He will judge all men by that one
whom He has raised from the dead.
See, it's a complete statement.
There's a church that needs to stand in
the midst and not only confront and unmask
the premises by which the world thinks and
conducts itself, but to warn them that except
they repent, what does that word mean?
Change their mindsets and take on the mind
of God and His view, they shall be
judged and there shall be an eternal consequence
for their willful ignorance of God.
So part of the function of the church
is to unmask the false assumptions, the premises,
the unspoken values by which the world conducts
itself and which no one ever faults or
examines or questions.
If you leave something in silence, you are
testifying to your witness or affirmation of that
thing.
So the standing in the midst is not
just an accidental phrase and Paul stood in
the midst.
It's a picture of God's intention for us.
To unmask the false premises, the assumptions, the
pretenses of an apostate and arrogant God-rejecting
world.
You say, but they had a statue and
a monument that said to the unknown God.
Doesn't that show that their heart was in
the right place and that they're God-minded
and that they pay some acknowledgement to a
God whom they do not know?
Doesn't that impress you?
No.
It doesn't impress me and it didn't impress
Paul because the inscription on the monument said
to the unknown God and what Paul discerned
by the Spirit was not only was he
unknown to the Greek philosophers but they chose
to willfully keep him unknown.
They not only preferred a God that was
unknown, they preferred a God that was unknowable.
You say, why would men prefer that?
Because an unknown God makes no requirement but
a God who is known does.
A specific God has a specific will.
He speaks.
He gives commandments.
He says, thou shalt not.
But an unknown God?
What consequence is there for men in the
world who have this kind of faint pseudo
-spiritual reference to an unknown God?
As you can see by the eye of
the Spirit, all it is doing is inflating
their own ego and giving them a sense
of spirituality, a sense of being tolerant or
even faintly interested in spiritual things.
But the truth of the matter is that
they don't want to know a God who
makes himself known.
And what Paul says is that the very
purpose of your life and being, that God
has by one blood established all nations of
men for what purpose?
To seek their fortune?
To establish their careers?
To have successful businesses?
To live a comfortable worldly lifestyle?
No.
That they might seek after God if happily
they might be found of him.
Just let that sink deeply into your hearing.
The utter simplicity of Paul, out of all
of the motives for which men might reasonably
and decently and even in a sense significantly
live their lives on the earth, he speaks
of one thing, the central thing, and he
sees it with the eye of absolute clarity.
There's only one purpose for our human existence.
It's to seek God and to be found
of him.
You know that that was the view of
the church in the Middle Ages?
That they looked upon the life on this
earth as a veil of tears, as a
transient and momentary experience, as preparation for eternity.
And that the whole issue of our human
being and existence is the knowledge of and
the relationship with God.
That view is dismissed today as medieval.
It came out of the Dark Ages.
But the interesting thing is that Paul believed
it.
And he believed it with such a totality
that he could speak it with conviction to
men whose mindset and lifestyle was completely contrary.
You say, why don't we speak it with
the same kind of penetration?
Because we ourselves do not really believe it.
You say, what do you mean by that?
I mean this.
Believing is not just a matter of giving
acknowledgement to creedal truth.
It's not just acknowledging the correctness of doctrine
or Bible statement.
True believing is attested by true living.
Paul lived what he believed.
And that's why he could stand in the
midst and speak this with such penetration because
the words had a quality of penetration because
it was in keeping with what his own
life is.
That's why he was fleeing persecution.
Because men do not want to hear something
that challenges the comfort, the well-being, the
culture that they have constructed for themselves in
absolute ignorance, if not defiance of God.
There were two premises that ruled the Greeks
then and that rule those who are Greek
-minded now.
And one is the premise of intellectual attainment.
Greeks were keen about intellectual attainment.
And their other distinction, the other foundational thing
was moral attainment.
So by virtue of intellect and by virtue
of morality one can come to a distinguished
human life.
So what do you think about this Jewish
character who has not much to look at
and comes into their midst and in the
first statement he blows down their two premises.
I perceive that in all things you are
too superstitious.
What?
If there's anything that an intellectual hates it's
to be called superstitious because he prides himself
upon his intellectual attainment.
But Paul was not impressed by the outward
show.
There are other things about being moral.
It's really interesting.
Plato was a homosexual.
I think many of the great philosophers, Aristotle,
men of great intellectual distinction also had boys
with whom they practiced their homosexuality.
It was just a common feature of Greek
civilization.
And yet such men can conceive of themselves
moral.
Do you know why?
Because they measure by themselves.
Because the premise of secular humanism is that
man is the measure of all things.
That's why they want God to remain unknown.
And if they can throw a bone to
appease their conscience by having a statue or
a monument with the inscription to the unknown
God it allows them the subjective sense that
they're making some acknowledgment that there might be
some force out there.
And then they're free to pursue their own
sensual delight and gratification.
A conflict of mindsets is more than just
an idle engagement of ideas.
It's a vital clash of lifestyles.
And the reason that the church has not
suffered persecution in modern times is because we
have not stood in the midst of an
apostate world to confront them with the phoniness
of their pretense and their premises so as
to challenge the way in which they actually
live.
And the reason that we have not is
because we live too much like them.
Which is to say that unconsciously or otherwise
most of our own life is governed by
secular rather than by spiritual premises.
Do you really believe, can I ask you
tonight, that the single dominating purpose for which
we have life and being is to seek
God that we might be found of Him?
Is that your ruling passion?
It's not unusual to find ministers of God
whose ruling passion is their own career.
Although they will employ a complete Christian vocabulary
and terminology with all sincerity, they have not
come onto the ground upon which Paul himself
stood.
If you think that Paul came to Athens
by accident, it shows the kind of secular
mind you have because in the spiritual mind
there is no such thing as accident or
happenstance or circumstance.
Paul was not ruled circumstantially.
He was ruled by the Spirit of God.
It gives every appearance of a man not
having control over his own situation.
He was brought by other men.
But I believe with all my heart he
was in God's place in God's appointed time.
I believe that there's a Mars hill that's
waiting for us.
There's a place of confrontation waiting for us
that is a final and ultimate confrontation.
But the reason that we have not ascended
it yet is that we're not yet ready.
We're not yet apostolic.
We do not yet have a Pauline mindset.
We do not see with the single-eyedness
of a Paul.
And we cannot proclaim with conviction the way
that he could because our lives are not
yet in conformity with what we profess to
believe.
Much more than we realize, we have been
affected by secular assumptions that the real purpose
of our life is our family, our well
-being, our comfort, our acceptance, our satisfaction.
And if we can do God a service
at the same time, who could ask for
anything more?
In fact, isn't that the picture of American
Christian respectability?
To be a good family man and successful
in your career and to give God an
hour or two on Sunday and to acknowledge
him by saying grace over the table and
putting a dollar in the collection plate or
on special offerings for missionaries, something like that.
It is so distorted.
It is such an aberration, such a removal
of the passionate thing which God intends for
all men.
That maybe before we confront the apostate secular
world, we need first to stand in the
midst of the church and to confront it.
In the American Standard, it talks about the
object of your worship.
I mentioned this last week.
We spent a few minutes in this text
by the end of the session.
What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I
proclaim unto you.
While I was passing through and examining the
objects of your worship, I also found an
altar.
I love that statement because it gives a
penetrating statement of the nature of idolatry.
Idolatry is always the elevation of objects over
God, examining the objects of your worship.
It was a false subject and therefore also
a false worship.
And Paul nails it in his very first
statement.
Whom you therefore worship in ignorance, and you
can write down in your notes, willful ignorance.
It's not an ignorance that is accidental, that
they couldn't help themselves.
It's the kind of ignorance by which men
choose to be ignorant and to keep God
as unknown.
Him I proclaim unto you.
So I want to raise a question now,
just to bring again the subject to our
own situation.
What is being unmasked is false religion, false
philosophy, insincerity.
Men who profess to hold intellectual integrity as
a value are false in the very thing
that they profess to seek.
It's neither moral nor intellectual.
It's a pretense and a sham that gives
the faint impression of a kind of spirituality,
but it is a pseudo-spirituality.
It has for the object of its worship
not God, but objects.
And my question is, to what degree is
that a statement of our present Christianity?
A sham, a pretense, giving the appearance.
Is it possible for idolatry to be conducted
even in the name of Jesus?
What you see here is men fashioning a
God in their own image and for their
own use.
That's why the very next statement has to
do with God doesn't live in temples made
by human hands as if he's in need
of anything that hands could make.
And as I survey, excuse my impression, our
contemporary Christianity, that's the impression I get.
We want a God that serves our purposes.
We're fashioning him as an instrument for our
ends.
And you need to understand that because it's
not always carnal.
It could even be, in a sense, spiritual.
We want to receive the benefit of church
attendance.
We want a Sunday school where we can
bring our children.
We want a nice, happy addendum to our
week-long experience.
We want the sense of uplift by having
gone to a church on Sunday.
We want to feel the kind of sanctifying
and uplifting thing that a proper church atmosphere
should provide.
You say, what's wrong with these things?
What's wrong with them is that it has
at the central object of its concern man
himself.
False religion and idolatry by whatever form, even
in the name of Jesus, will have as
its central object and concern man himself.
Spiritual self-gratification.
You say, but oughtn't men have uplift?
Shouldn't they experience blessing?
Shouldn't they receive benefit of the word?
Shouldn't their children be instructed?
Yes, but these should be secondary consequences of
a single-eyed pursuit of God for his
own sake and for his glory and not
the first object of our concern.
You see how subtle it is and how
faint is the line and the boundary between
true faith and idolatry.
As a matter of fact, the only one
who can unmask it is a Paul.
That is to say, an apostolic man or
an apostolic or a prophetic presence.
Someone so steeped in God, someone so absorbed
in concern and passionate concern for the jealousy
of his glory that the faintest deviation of
that which appears to be God and yet
is a misuse and a misappropriation is made
only an object for the purposes of men
is identified and spoken to with boldness.
Him whom you ignorantly worship, I declare unto
you.
That's very bold and it has to be.
It will always be looked upon as offensive.
In fact, it's nothing less than a miracle
that Paul came down from that mountain alive.
These kinds of confrontations don't end by your
being applauded.
They may end by your being carried away.
Remember that the first martyr Stephen suffered his
death because of the confrontation that he brought
to men who thought themselves religious through the
power of the spirit and word which he
proclaimed to them.
As your fathers did, so do you always.
So do you also.
You do always grieve the Holy Spirit.
And when they heard that, they gnashed with
their teeth upon him because men cannot stand
to be confronted over a construct that they
have made for themselves that celebrates their own
spirituality if it's a pretense or a sham.
And the instance, the situation of Stephen is
a graphic illustration that Jews could even use
the things given by God, the law, and
the whole construct of Jewish religion and yet
fashion it in such a way as to
form a kind of an idolatry that elevates
themselves pharisaically.
That when a simple waiter on tables, a
busboy, comes in the power and the anointing
of the Holy Spirit to confront them and
to challenge them with their farce, they cannot
bear to hear it.
If you've ever been to Paris, you can
visit the Hill of the Martyrs, excuse my
French pronunciation, Montmartre.
Have you ever heard of that?
M-O-N-T-R-T-E, something
like that.
It's famous now.
It's on the left bank for artists, for
prostitution, for red light district and all that
jazz.
But you know what the original meaning of
Montmartre was?
This guy Dionysius, it says that, some said
we'll hear again of this matter, some scoffed,
and it says, some clave unto him and
believed.
Among them was Dionysius.
Interesting that the very name means revelry.
It means orgiastic, sensual revelry.
And a man who was named by that,
hearing the bold proclamation of this unprepossessing Jew
who had nothing about him that was impressive,
among these distinguished and scholarly and erstwhile philosophical
Greeks, heard the power of God given to
those who speak the words of God and
clave unto Paul and believed.
And according to Christian history and legend, this
same Dionysius became an evangelist of God to
proclaim the gospel and came to a pagan
part of the world in Europe today called
France and on that very place in Paris
he went up to a hill to proclaim
to the pagans there their deceptions, their illusions,
their myths, their shams, their pretense, but did
not come down.
Do we love truth enough that we're willing
to a confrontation in which we might not
necessarily be a survivor?
And maybe unconsciously because our first concern is
not seeking God that we might not know
him, but it has been our comfort.
It has been our security.
It has been our well-being that we
shrink from the kind of confrontation that might
be costly.
I can't think of a more desperate need
for this hour than men like Paul or
a church like Paul in the midst of
an apostate Christianity that is really an idolatry
in the name of Jesus that does not
require anything from men, but their mere bodily
attendance and the dollar in the collection plate,
that it needs to be in the midst
of all of this which is celebrated as
Christianity, an apostolic, powerful and bold presence that
shows unto them the way of truth.
Wouldn't it be devastating for Paul to come
into the midst of little old ladies and
to give them the kind of blast that
he gave these Greek philosophers?
Isn't that something of the gist of the
question?
Well, the premise upon which the question itself
is framed suggests that we have a control
over what we speak or that we can
determine the content or the character of our
speaking in any situation.
But what I want to say is this,
and it's a spiritual view, a mindset, is
that Paul himself was not the author of
his words on any occasion, either before Greeks
or before Jews.
And that's why he was so powerfully relevant
whether he was in a synagogue or on
Mars Hill.
Because in the same way that Jesus said
that the words that I speak are not
my words, but the words which my Father
gives me, I believe the same is also
true for Paul, which is really the statement
of the glory both of his life and
his ministry.
What was standing on Mars Hill was the
incarnated God in the body and life of
a man who forsook his own distinction, his
own academic ability, his own brilliance, his own
Jewish attributes, and counted them as dung that
he might know Christ.
And what was being expressed out of his
mouth was the wisdom of God appropriate for
that particular moment and for that setting.
See, we are on really profound ground right
now.
In fact, we are on really the heart
of the offense of the faith.
People don't mind a Christianity by which the
believer subscribes to certain principles or tries in
an admiring way to follow the precept or
the example of Jesus.
But to believe in the supernaturalness of a
resurrected and ascended God who has somehow incarnated
in the very man who is speaking, that
is mind-blowing and offensive.
Paul did not just proclaim to them the
resurrection.
He demonstrated it.
And what I want to say is that
if Paul ever stood before old women, I
believe that the wisdom of God and the
grace of God who knows these women because
they are utterly transparent in His sight would
speak through the apostle in the way appropriate
to that need.
And the enormous significance of what is being
transacted by the words that come out of
the mouth of the minister who faces them,
it's an enormously significant thing.
But no less significant than Paul on Mars
Hill.
Not just in terms of those who were
then before him in that moment of speaking,
but something is being established that is timeless
and it is going to affect every subsequent
generation.
And it is even in fact becoming the
core of our own discussion in these days.
Why?
Because it is the one place in all
Scripture that shows in a profound way the
clash of two mentalities that are absolutely opposed.
The mentality of the world and the mentality
of the kingdom.
If Paul knew that, that he was not
just speaking to men before him, but that
what he was going to say was going
to be recorded for posterity and influence generation
after generation and even be a text that
might release the church in our generation to
be that apostolic presence and to come to
a Mars Hill confrontation with apostasy, what then
would he have said?
And the answer is not one syllable other
than what he did say.
You know what?
One of Paul's most frequent statements, and I
repeat it continually myself and all of us
who stand before men in the name of
God need to, and that is, who is
sufficient for these things?
And I want to tell you that though
this is a little building and we have
only a handful of souls, it was our
prayer for tonight.
If you think that I think that this
is just a class and that the only
issue is to get through the material and
to present it reasonably so as to edify
those who come and then think that it's
well done, that that's it, you're mistaken.
I see this in an eternal context of
meaning.
In other words, I bring even to this
situation the mindset of a Paul.
I see this apostolically.
I see this thing that is happening tonight
as once and for all.
We'll never again be able to repeat it.
I see it as being something that is
going to come into the spirit and consciousness
of those who assemble.
But there's a mystery even that goes beyond
that, that we spoke in prayer before some
of you came tonight, and that is suggested
in Isaiah where the prophet says, Hear, O
heaven, and give ear, O earth, for the
Lord hath spoken.
That there's a mystery by which the word
goes into the earth and into the air,
into the heavens, to perform a work irrespective
of or despite or even beyond people.
And maybe as we go on in this
hour, we're going to come increasingly into this
kind of prophetic experience where there's a mystery
of speaking that goes beyond those who are
hearing you.
I believe that that's taking place tonight.
I can't explain it.
There's something that is going into this community.
In fact, it ought to be true every
time the word of God is spoken by
men, and especially so in the secular situation
where up till now we have been barred.
There's something that God is wanting to penetrate
and to bring a measure of light, and
that the enemy with its principalities and powers
that brood over this place would be required
to recoil.
There's a strategy of God that goes far
beyond this class tonight that has to do
with its ultimate purposes for Cast Lake, for
this region, for revival in this area, for
which this is a fitted portion and part.
Knowing or sensing these things, how then ought
we to speak?
How then ought we to conduct the class?
I have to tell you, and I said
half-jokingly, tonight as I began and last
week, I don't know how to commence.
Who is sufficient for these things?
And that brings us again, and I'm going
to hammer this again and again, the whole
central premise of Paul that was so devastatingly
displeasing to these Greeks, for which reason they
called him a babbler and they scoffed, was
the issue of resurrection.
Which is to say, the issue of a
supernatural God who has come into earth historically
in a moment of time and performed something
that has been recorded and witnessed and through
it has affected all subsequent generations through his
death and resurrection.
You see, this stops men from the vagaries
of being only superficially spiritual.
I have heard rabbis talking about higher powers,
or how do they say it?
They use a pseudo-spiritual vocabulary that seems
at first hearing to be very honoring and
flattering to God, that acknowledges somewhere up there
in some distant place there's a higher power.
But what it is, is an absolute cop
-out.
They do not want to recognize the specificity
of God.
They don't want to have to face a
specific God who has come historically in a
moment of time and done something that once
and for all rips the mask off of
every false pretense of religion and says, absolutely,
this is the way.
And if that were not so, Paul would
not have to be in Greece.
This is the gospel for all nations.
Go ye into all the world.
Because Paul himself said that in times past
God has winked at your ignorance, but now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent.
See, these are bold and absolute statements.
And I, boy, Lord help me.
It's the absoluteness of the faith which offends
men.
It is the supernaturalness of the faith which
offends men.
It's the resurrection of the faith which offends
men who do not mind it only as
a doctrine.
See, that's okay.
But God never intended it to be mere
doctrine.
He intended it to be life.
He intended a whole church to stand in
the midst by the same power and boldness
as by which Paul stood, which was not
his Jewish moxie.
It was the boldness that is in the
resurrection.
Paul not only spoke the resurrection, not only
proclaimed it, he demonstrated it.
As a matter of fact, nobody can proclaim
the resurrection except by the demonstration of its
power.
That's why we're content to let it remain
as doctrine.
There are very few resurrection men about who
can stand in the power of God and
trust the wisdom of God to give them
the appropriate words whether they're standing before old
women or they're standing before a bunch of
hardened worldly intellectuals who need the sharpest penetrating
word of God.
Because Jesus himself could roar like a lion
or he could bleat like a lamb.
But the fact of the matter is that
he himself never determined which one or the
other.
The words that I speak are not my
words.
They are the words which my Father gives
me.
How many of us have the apostolic faith
tonight to believe that as the Father gave
Jesus words, he can give us words also?
And that as a matter of fact, what
God is waiting for is men who will
come to that faith.
And that when they'll come to that faith,
they'll find themselves in the place of confrontation
not speaking their words, but his.
Paul began with a patent insult to intellectuals.
I perceive that in all things you're too
superstitious.
What?
I'll tell you what.
There's not a school of evangelism on the
face of the earth today that would prescribe
that as a principle in witnessing.
You know what they tell you?
Four spiritual laws.
Treat them, make them nice.
And is God averse to using insult?
See, I see this as a divine sarcasm.
The object of your worship, the God whom
you ignorantly worship.
I observe that in all things you're too
superstitious.
My point is this, that this is not
a calculation by Paul.
Paul on his way up to Mars didn't
say, now listen, what am I going to
say to these guys?
Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, now
that I have this opportunity, I want to
say today that there are a lot of
questions that flow from this, like even the
question about whether confrontation is not love, or
severity is not love, or does love have
only the form that placates or that is
pleasant or receivable.
For example, if we think that this is
not likely God, there's another place that I
can think of.
Again, prophetic confrontation, Elijah against the prophets of
Baal on another hill, Carmel.
And there he mocked them.
I mean, this is terrible impoliteness.
Where's your God?
Is he sleeping?
Perhaps he's gone out for a walk or
something like that.
From what I understand, you can check me
out on this, in the statement where it
says that perhaps he's gone for a walk,
that the King James interpreters did not have
the courage to give the literal statement.
And what Elijah really said to his adversaries
was, is he on the john?
I mean, it's scandalous.
You wouldn't think a prophet would say something
like that.
So, I don't want to belabor this, but
you need to understand the use of the
text in the theme that's before us.
And we're not talking about how to minister
to the various diversity of needs, except this,
that the spirit of God is the wisdom
of God and the power of God and
the love of God.
And he does all things well.
And I think that some of us who
may have a sentimental view of love may
miss that God when he chooses to express
himself severely.
And then I want to say also, that
the nature of this hour is such, in
the kind of apostasy that is sweeping the
world and the kind of sleep that is
in the church, that I'm expecting more of
this kind of confrontation.
And I'll say this, that if you're capable
of this kind of use, you're equally as
available to God for gentle use as well.
But if you limit yourself to that which
is gentle because it is amenable to your
spirit and to your way, and you think
it appropriate to the gospel, you're going to
find yourself not a participant in the kinds
of historic things for which God is intending
his church.
You've got to be instant.
This is a phrase from Paul himself.
Instant, in season, and out.
In synagogues or in Mars Hill.
In fact, the whole chapter talks about Paul
in the marketplace.
The whole thing begins with the spirit within
him grieved when he saw the city wholly
given to idolatry, therefore disputed he in the
synagogues with the Jews.
What has that got to do with idolatry?
Everything.
He went to the place of public religion
where it is most commonly practiced.
And then he went to the marketplace with
the Jews and with the devout persons, and
in the market daily with them that met
with him.
And I don't believe that there was any
encounter in the marketplace that was circumstantial or
apprehensive.
And then those hearing him there brought him
up to meet the philosophers that they might
hear what this babbler says.
You can see a whole divine progression, but
it begins with one thing, and it's a
central thing, and maybe the deepest answer to
the question that's raised, that Paul's spirit within
him winced when he saw the whole city
given to idolatry.
Every divine action begins, must be initiated, with
the operation of the Spirit of God.
It wasn't the man who was just acting
out of his own humanity.
His spirit winced.
The thing of God that was in him
winced at what was ungodly in a celebrated
capital.
God had a man who reacts as he
himself, and from that point of beginning the
whole thing unfolded.
And Paul trusted the grace of God.
And if you follow his career, you see
the diversity of speaking.
It's not always confrontational, but if we're not
willing for that, it may be that we're
not as yielded to the Spirit as Paul
is.
And it's a premise.
This is one of the premises of the
biblical mind, that the resurrection is not just
an event that's historic with Jesus, but by
it there is a life available in the
earth today for men and women in society
who can live in the power of it.
Paul was certainly bold.
You don't sense a tremor.
Him whom you ignorantly worship, I declare unto
you.
It almost sounds arrogant, and I'm sure that
he could be accused of arrogance, but I
think that he'll have his reward for his
obedience on Mars Hill.
That's my impression.
We're speaking about an apostle, which is to
say a man brought to a place of
maturity in God, where he's had a long
history.
Remember, 13 years in the wilderness, and he
was not taught of flesh and blood, and
he served an apprenticeship, and God is not
going to send a novice up to Mars
Hill, but a man who is grounded in
God, who has been dealt with in the
sufferings of his own heart, his own motives.
It's interesting that God chooses a Jew to
be an apostle to the Gentiles.
Being Jewish, I know that one of the
areas in which God has dealt with me
over the years, and even presently, is still
the lingering anti-Gentile thing that has come
into me with my mother's milk.
Twenty years in the faith, and the Lord
had me on my knees four o'clock
yesterday morning to impress me that I need
to pray for his deliverance in the power
of the cross from what yet remains as
a residue of anti-Gentile feeling that is
characteristic of all Jewish culture.
Now here, God takes a Jew and makes
him an apostle to the Gentiles, and he
sends him to the Gentile of the Gentiles,
to the epitome of Gentile civilization, if I
can put it that way, in Greece.
And yet his word is not in any
way discolored or warped or adversely affected by
any subjective or human or personal aspect of
his own being or Jewishness, because he's an
apostle.
He is the full-orbed man in God.
So we're touching things that are very large,
and maybe one of the problems is why
we lack confidence whether the offense is the
offense of the gospel or the offense of
ourselves is that it's a statement of the
degree that we are not yet of apostolic
stature, which also raises the question of the
church environment in which we're in from week
to week.
Is it encouraging that stature?
Are we moving in God?
Are we facing the challenges and the confrontations?
Are we growing in maturity and the knowledge
of God?
Are we moving in security in the spirit
of God that we can discern between what
is our own offense and the offense that
is inherent in the gospel?
See, the whole of our environment is not
apostolic.
It is very churchy, very tame, timid, insipid,
maybe too deferent to old women, too afraid
to offend, and therefore it's not an environment
that is conducive to men coming to the
kind of maturity that allows them to go
to a place of confrontation with the knowledge
that the offense, when it comes, will not
be of themselves but of God.
So we're opening up, we're lifting the lid
on tremendous questions, and then just to say,
to bring it into our subject matter, why
is the church that way?
Because I think far more than we realize,
we have allowed secular suppositions to come into
the operation of the church.
As a matter of fact, we have allowed
the world to define the church.
We've allowed the world to determine the hours
in which we can conduct our services and
what the relationship between the church and the
world is to be, and not to cross
that line or to be impertinent and to
bring a divine or godly dimension into secular
discussion.
So we're the victim of a great deal
of unconscious infiltration from the spirit of the
world that has affected many of our premises
by which we conduct church and has kept
us from the environment conducive to producing men
of the stature of Paul.
Apostasy doesn't come full-blown, ipso facto, by
the snap of fingers.
It comes by process of carnality.
So we need to watch very keenly what
is carnal today is tomorrow's apostasy, and already
there's a mixture and an eleven working in
the entire lump.
But to say apostate is not spitting a
word out of the church.
Your heart is touched with compassion and concern
that out of that very thing God is
wanting a bride, and therefore the greatest love
is to confront it and to show its
error and its deviation and to bring it
to the original faith that God intended, which
is the apostolic faith.
So you always take a risk in making
the kind of statements that you do in
the space of an hour or two that
you need to come back and define and
amend and put a footnote on and explain.
We need an apostolic environment, which is to
say a loving environment that can hear something
and not be offended with a man willing
to hear again, willing to consider, willing to
see him rather than the thing that shuts
him off.
And maybe it's a statement of our immaturity.
And the whole construct of the church, of
the sermon on Sunday, that it's not in
that kind of environment of exchange, of hearing,
of coming back again, of willing to hear
something that is sharp or cutting.
I took that very risk myself in our
own congregation Sunday.
See, I'm not just a prophetic man.
I'm also an elder or a shepherd for
a flock over which I have responsibility before
God.
And yet after prayer and looking to the
Lord, I had a word to share that
I knew that if it didn't come off
just right, that if there was so much
as a certain valence or a certain emphasis
or too strong a sense of things or
the wrong syllable, wham, the whole thing could
be misconstrued and become an offense rather than
a blessing.
And maybe to some degree that happened.
But I had responsibility before God that required
me to take the risk.
And I believe that we are in a
context in which such risks can be taken.
And in fact, it is the taking of
those kinds of risks that is the very
ingredient for spiritual maturity.
But the fear of man that paralyzes us,
that keeps it safe, that is unwilling to
take the risks, that makes us tremble before
men lest they be offended is the very
factor that has been contrary to the maturity
encouraging thing.
So one of the premises and the difference
between the secular and the spiritual mind is
the secular mind is foundationally man-pleasing.
There is no God.
But the truly spiritual mind is rooted in
the fear of God and is willing to
take its risks with men.
But, for example, Isaiah in that first chapter,
I keep coming back to that, not only
did he say, Hear, O heaven, and give
ear, O earth, he also said to Israel
that from the top of your head to
the soles of your feet you're full of
wounds and sores that need to be bound
up, that the city of righteousness has become
a city of horrors and murderers.
He made the most extreme and outlandish statements
that were not yet true to those to
whom he spoke it.
But the prophet always has an intense burden
and sees something in a proportion that men
do not see and always in a certain
sense before it has yet become revealed to
them.
And yet why must he speak it now?
Because by that speaking he forewarns them and
calls them to a repentance which, if they'll
heed it, will save them from becoming the
thing that he's describing.
Jerusalem, the city that was the city of
righteousness, has become, he said, a city of
murderers and a city of horrors.
It wasn't yet so, actually, and historically, but
by his prophetic sight he saw that that
was the imminent conclusion.
And he described Israel as the ass knows
its owner, the ox its master's crib, but
my people do not know, they do not
consider, or a sinful nation and laden with
iniquities.
Now maybe that wasn't yet true, but it
was becoming true, and he spoke it with
that prophetic vigor and totality and extremity that
sounds a warning.
Maybe one of the things that we need
to distinguish is the difference between a pastor's
perspective and the prophet's.
And both are needful for the total well
-being of the body, and it's interesting that
God does not subject a people to the
continual barrage of the prophet, but they move
on.
They are a traveling mobile ministry, but the
pastor who remains with their people then picks
up the pieces, then reviews what was said,
then brings it into proportion that they can
receive and applies the bombs and so on
and so forth.
But that's not my calling.
So I have to confess, yes, I'm speaking
this subject from an intense and prophetic view,
and I don't believe that that's an accident.
I believe it's God's intention, because that's the
way it needs first to be sounded.
Your problem as pastors is to take the
things that are being sounded into your own
spirit, and then by the same spirit by
which I'm speaking to mediate and to minister
that to those who before you week by
week by week.
But we need to see.
The prophet sees, as they say, the large
picture.
He sees the total overview.
He has the cosmic view, and he's very
jealous of the glory of God, and he
makes those kinds of statements.
And I think that when the dust settles,
we may find that though their view sounds
extreme to us, it's more true than what
we think it is, and closer, if not
identical, with things as God sees them.
And in fact, one of the requirements of
the spiritual mind is to see as God
sees.
We would be shocked.
Remember what Isaiah said, who was the prince
of prophets, when he caught a revelation of
God as he is?
Woe is me, I am undone, I'm a
man of unclean lips, and I live in
the midst of a people of unclean lips.
And this is a prophet and an oracle
of God, but he did not see it
until he saw the revelation of the glory
of God.
Not only did he see God as he
is, he saw himself as he is.
And he cries out in great shock.
And I think that we need to prepare
ourselves for that kind of seeing.
In fact, a great deal of what I
believe is going to be the anguish of
hell is that when we pass this life,
we're then going to see as we are
seen.
And part of the role of the church
presently is to communicate that seeing while many
have a chance to rectify their lives and
to repent and to be brought into the
knowledge of God.
We have an unhappy task.
It is to confront men with a view,
a cosmic view, of reality, of judgment, of
things to come, which is totally contrary to
their entire mindset.
And that was the issue of Paulette Marceau.
Some scoffed, some called him a babbler, some
said, we'll hear again of this matter.
They never did.
But a very few clave unto him and
believed.
And that, I think, is the pattern that
is going to be characteristic of all confrontation.
The church is built on the foundation of
the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ being
the chief cornerstone.
And one thing that is distinctive of prophetic
and apostolic seeing is this sense of eternity
that is powerful and present, which is lacking
from our present mindset.
Paul said, knowing the terror of God, I
persuade men.
He might well have said, I offend men.
In fact, if we knew the terror of
God, we'd be more willing to take the
risk of offense than assume the safety of
propriety.
He had a sense of eternity and the
consequence of eternity outside of God that was
so vivid for him that it affected the
way in which he confronted and stood and
spoke, whether in synagogues or before Greeks.
And maybe if we had that same burning
sense, our view also would be altered about
whether we're going to offend or how are
people going to receive it.
He said, how is it about falling into
the hands of a living God?
That's the whole scripture.
It's a fearful thing to fall into the
hands of a living God.
How many believers today who are not apostate,
good, sound, bona fide believers could say that
and could say it with conviction, who know
the fear of God?
As a matter of fact, the very thing
that keeps us from that fear of God
is the fear of man.
And it's the thing that needs to be
restored if we are going to have a
spiritual mind.
And I just want to stop there.