Welcome to From the Pulpit and Classic Sermons.
Each week we bring you a different message
from some of history's greatest speakers in the
Christian faith, and powerful sermons from modern preachers
too.
This week we have Tim Keller with his
message, A World of Idols.
Acts 17, 16 to 21.
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens,
he was greatly distressed to see that the
city was full of idols.
So he reasoned in the synagogue with the
Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well
as in the marketplace day by day with
those who happened to be there.
A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began
a dispute with him.
Some of them asked, what is this babbler
trying to say?
Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign
gods.
And they said this because Paul was preaching
the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to
a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said
to him, may we know what this new
teaching is that you are presenting?
You are bringing some strange ideas to our
ears, and we want to know what they
mean.
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived
there spent their time doing nothing but talking
about and listening to the latest ideas.
This is God's word.
Now in our series here that we've been
doing in the morning on the church, last
week we came to talk about how the
gospel, the essential message of Jesus Christ, changes
us on the inside, how it revolutionizes us
on the inside.
And if we end there, I think modern
people can really get into that.
They say, that's great.
Surely you notice that the newspaper articles are
telling you that the supposedly secular city is
filled with people who want to be spiritual,
and spirituality is a big thing.
And people want now in a way that
is surprising a lot of folks.
People are reaching out and saying, I need
spirituality.
But when I listen, and this is an
oversimplification, of course, but when I listen to
people talk about it, from what I can
tell it goes like this.
By spirituality they mean I want an inward
center.
I want an inward peace.
I want an inward…
I want to be suffused with a sense
of meaning and the sacred.
I need that inward strength so that I
can reach my goals, so that I can
follow my agenda.
Now the problem is that Christianity doesn't actually
fit into that model, and we mustn't listen
to the Christian message in a way that,
you know, tries to work it in.
It doesn't fit in that model, because Christianity,
though, on the one hand, is definitely inward
transformation.
It's a whole new agenda.
It's not a way of helping you get
to your agenda.
It's a whole new agenda.
Put it this way.
I think most people think of religion like
this illustration.
Most people think of religion like this.
Imagine you're in a room.
It's a party.
There's 20 people at the party, and you're
supposed to get out there and mix, and
you just don't have it.
You don't have the energy.
You don't have the love.
You don't have the confidence.
And so you say, how am I going
to do that?
And God comes up, and He touches you.
And now you go out into the party.
Now you can meet people.
Now you have joy.
Now you have energy, you see.
Now you're ready to mix and do the
things you want to do.
That's not how Christianity understands what the touch
of God means.
Christianity would say, yeah, you're at a party,
and you look out there.
There's 20 people, and you're sitting here, and
you're real upset because you just don't have
what it takes.
And God comes up and touches you, and
you feel inwardly renewed.
But when you look out there, now you
see 80 people, 60 people who were invisible
now are visible.
And you see in the former approach, the
difference between a person who's been touched by
God and a person who is not touched
by God, this person who's touched by God
is out there meeting people, and the person
who's not touched by God is sort of
sitting there, needs inward strength.
But Christianity would say, you don't just get
it when God touches you kind of inward
strength, but you get a whole new way
of seeing everything.
Everything.
You can't listen to music the way you
did before.
You can't relate to other cultures the way
you did before.
You can't look at yourself the way you
did before, but you can't relate to other
people the way you did before.
You relate to your government different.
You relate to your neighborhood different.
You relate to your job different.
Everything changes.
And actually, the difference between a person who's
been touched by God and a person who's
not touched by God is not a matter
of just inner energy.
It's a matter of worldview.
I'll go further.
It's a matter of sanity.
Because if you haven't been touched by God,
you look at the people who have, and
they're walking around, and they're getting joy out
of parts of the room that look to
you like thin air.
And they're filled with joy because they're hearing
and they're seeing something, and you don't see
it at all.
And they're avoiding areas that you walk right
through, and then you fall down, and you
say, what happened?
Christianity does not just inwardly change you, but
it transforms not just inside, but it transforms
the way in which you relate to every
part of the world.
Now, to understand that is important for everybody
here.
If you're a Christian, you say, yeah, I've
heard you say that.
What is that?
How do I do that?
And I will try to give you some
principles today.
What does it mean that Christianity transforms absolutely
everything about my life?
Modern people think religion is for the private
world.
Christianity will never do such a thing.
Christianity says, when you're touched by God, it's
deeply personal, but it's not at all private.
It changes everything.
So if you're a Christian, you need to
know that.
Now, if you're not sure you're a Christian
or you're sure you're not a Christian, okay,
if you're not sure what you believe or
you're sure you don't believe, here's my suggestion
to you.
Please listen.
It's very important, and here's why.
I can say this without fear of contradiction.
I can definitely make this case, but I
don't have the time to.
The vast majority of people who don't believe
in Christianity have radically inaccurate ideas of what
Christianity is.
The vast majority of people who say, I've
had it with Christianity, or I'm not interested,
or I'm just indifferent to Christianity, they don't
know what they're indifferent to.
And what that means is—that's very dangerous—it means
you don't know what you're rejecting.
And I would think there's nobody here that
wouldn't want to know what it is they're
indifferent to.
No intellectual integrity.
It's very dangerous.
And therefore, if you're here, you need to
listen to understand what Christianity is.
It's a very important way of understanding it,
because almost always we take our modern categories,
and we take our modern views, and we
hear Christian lingo, or we hear Christian talk,
and we work it into our category, say,
oh, it's just like that, but it's not.
Now, the best way to understand how Christianity
doesn't just change you on the inside, but
changes your relationship with everything in the world,
is by looking how Paul reacts in this
very famous place in time.
Saint Paul—let's just take a look under these
headings.
Where he went, how he felt, what he
saw, and what he did.
Okay?
Where he went, what he saw—pardon me—where he
went, what he felt, you know, how he
felt, excuse me.
You know, I've gotten my—you know, went, saw.
Went, felt, saw, and did.
First of all, where he went.
Look, we're just going to look at these
first few verses.
In verse 17, he went not just to
the place where people were worshipping the Jews
and the God-fearing Gentiles, not just the
place where the God of the Bible was
worshipped, but he went into the marketplace day
by day.
That's where he went with his faith, into
the marketplace.
Ah, what do we mean?
Well, you know, one of the problems we
have here is this word marketplace is just
not going to evoke the reality because we
don't have such a thing anymore.
Not really.
It's the agora, the marketplace in Athens.
Now, what do we know about that?
First of all, you have to remember this.
Athens was the cultural capital of the world
at that time.
Yes, it had been—it wasn't the power capital
anymore because Rome had taken over Greece, but
it was still the intellectual capital.
It was still the cultural capital.
And in the midst of Athens, there was
the marketplace, the agora.
And one commentator puts it this way, on
or just off the marketplace were temples, law
courts, state offices, public archives, libraries, shops, concert
halls, dance halls, gymnasiums, theaters, and galleries.
Now, who was there?
Everybody.
And it's because there was no technology, really,
everybody was there.
You had the town officials and judges deliberating.
You had artists creating.
You had the stock market right there.
Businessmen and—businessmen, I guess, were making all their
deals.
You had the media because you didn't have
newspapers, and therefore, you had to go face
to face and listen to the heralds.
You had the philosophers debating.
Why?
You didn't have journals.
You know, you couldn't work out your particular
field of thought through journals debating back and
forth.
You had to go to the marketplace.
You had to have face to face debates.
You didn't have a stock market.
You didn't have computers.
You didn't have telephones.
You had to go and actually make the
deal.
Everything happened in the marketplace.
We have nothing like it anymore.
And therefore, this was the public space.
This was the center of what set all—because
it wasn't just wares.
The marketplace was not just a place you
shop for food.
This is not a shopping mall.
This was a place you shopped for everything.
This was the marketplace of ideas.
This was the marketplace of philosophies.
This was the marketplace of business.
This was the marketplace of everything, the marketplace
for art.
This was the marketplace for everything.
Everything happened here.
And because it was Athens, maybe there's only
three marketplaces in the whole Greco-Roman world,
probably Rome and Athens and Alexandria.
These are the three marketplaces that most had
effect on the culture and society of the
whole Greco-Roman world, and Paul goes there
with his faith.
Paul goes there.
Now, this doesn't make sense to modern people
because our idea is religion is something—your faith
is something for your private world.
It's something that keeps you happy and gives
you inner peace, but you do not bring
it to the marketplace.
Now, of course, that's not at all what
the Bible does.
That's not what the Bible says at all.
In Proverbs chapter 1, there's a great place
where Paul must have known this when he
did this.
Back in Proverbs chapter 1, what do we
read?
God says, my truth is just for the
insides.
It just helps you in your private life.
It gives you meaning.
No.
What does the Bible say?
Wisdom cries aloud in the streets.
In the market, she raises her voice.
At the head of the noisy streets, she
cries out.
At the entrance to the city gates, she
makes her speech.
Now, you see why.
The reason that this was a shock and
is a shock today is because we're pagans
again.
See, paganism says everybody's got their own little
territorial god.
You know, there's a god of Ephesus.
There's a god of Athens.
There's a god for, you know, for business
people.
There's a god for fishermen.
There's a god for this.
Everybody's got their own god.
And because everybody's got their own god, that's
fine.
But you don't tell somebody, you know, the
god, if you're worshiping the god of the
fisherman, you don't go and tell the businessman
how to live.
And if you're worshiping the god of Ephesus,
you don't tell the god of, you know,
the Athenians how to live.
And therefore, everybody's got their own god, and
that's how we see it again today.
But if there's a god who's not the
emanation of some aspect of creation, if there's
a god who is the creator of everything,
just now think.
This is just logic.
Let's not talk about what's narrow or not.
This is just logic.
If there is a god who's created everything,
then that god would have to be lord
over every area, including the marketplace.
You wouldn't have, you couldn't keep this god
in a private place.
And so Paul moves on out with his
faith into the marketplace, into the world of
ideas, into the public realm.
He raises his voice.
He talks every day, day by day.
In other words, he says, shoppers.
In a place where people shop for everything,
he says, shoppers, this is the way.
Turn away from the empty.
Turn away from the ephemeral.
Turn away from the superficial.
Turn away from the partial.
Turn to the substantial.
Turn to the permanent.
All that is not eternal is eternally out
of date.
I guess that was C.S. Lewis, but
maybe Paul said it first.
That's what's going on here.
The Athenians were just one of the latest
fad, and Paul says all that is not
eternal is eternally out of date.
All that is not substantial, all that is
not universal, he said, you know, put it
aside.
Shoppers, this is the way.
And therefore, he was lifting up Christianity in
the public place.
Now, that's the first point.
Your faith is for every part of your
life.
It's for the way you work.
It's for the way you relate to other
cultures.
It's the way you participate and get enriched
through art, the way you watch a movie.
It's part of everything.
Now, let's move on.
You're going to say, well, how do I
work that out?
But let's just, for a second, let me
just remind you this first point, and that
is that that's the way to do it.
Put it this way.
Somebody's going to say, and I, you know,
I thought about this.
I said, well, the trouble is Paul is
a preacher.
And so when Paul takes the faith into
the marketplace, we see what he's doing here.
But how does that help me?
I'm not a preacher.
And that is a problem.
Let me give you another example, though, just
to show you that the principle, though it
has to be worked out in everybody's particulars,
the principle is the same.
In 2 Kings chapter 5, there's this great
story of Naaman, who was the military prime
minister of Syria.
And he was a pagan, but he was
also a leper.
And he comes to Israel, and he finds
healing through the God of Israel and through
the prophet Elisha.
And then we get to the place where
he says to Elisha, now I know there
is no God except in Israel.
And then what happens?
Now, what's he going to do?
He's discovered the true God, and he's received
his healing, both on the outside, really, and
on the inside.
Now, what is he going to do?
Now, there's two things Naaman does not do.
And you can go back and read them
and what he does do, and I'm going
to tell you.
But it's worth pondering, and the reason it's
so shocking is because virtually none of us
get this balance down.
The first thing he doesn't do is he
doesn't say, Elisha, let me stay here.
There's nothing but dirty pagans back there, idolaters.
And he says, you know what my job
is?
As the military prime minister, every week I
have to go with the king, the king
is on my arm, and I have to
go into the temple of Rimon.
And there the king bows down and I
bow down.
I can't do anything like that.
I can never set foot in that temple
anymore.
I know the true God.
Therefore, can I stay here with just believers?
He doesn't do that.
Nor on the other side does he say,
well, you know what?
No problem.
I now have my healing.
God has touched me, and it won't make
any difference.
I'll go back.
I'll do my job.
There won't be any difference.
I can keep it to myself.
There's no reason to rock the boat.
He doesn't do that either.
He neither avoids his culture nor capitulates to
his culture.
He neither runs away from his culture, nor
does he privatize his faith away from his
culture.
You know what he says?
And this is something that I think both
believers and non-believers are shocked at when
they hear.
What does he say?
He says to Elisha, the prophet, he says,
may the Lord forgive me.
This is Naaman talking.
May the Lord forgive me when my master,
the king, goes into the temple of Rimon
to bow down and is leaning on my
arm, and I bow there also.
May the Lord forgive me.
Here's what I will do.
Give me enough dirt as two mules can
carry so that your servant will never make
burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other God
but the Lord.
Now, I love this because it's so absolutely
particular that nobody can dare copy it.
You're just going to have to go to
the principle.
It's so easy to be wooden when it
comes to the Bible and miss the principle.
Here's what he's saying.
He is saying, I am going to do
my job.
I'm the prime minister, and that's part of
my job.
But when I go in there, I'm going
to have some dirt from Israel, and my
servants are going to spread it, and I'm
going to kneel down so that everyone who
sees knows that I am sacrificing the God
of Israel.
Now, somebody would say, oh, is that superstition?
No, no, no, no, no.
The dirt is not superstition.
It's witness.
It's a symbol.
It's a witness.
Here's what he's saying.
He's saying, I'm going to do my job,
but I'm going to let everyone know, and
that's my way of showing people.
People are going to ask me about it.
I'm going to tell them that I don't
serve the way I used to serve.
Everything I'm doing, I'm doing out of honor
for the true God.
I'm still the prime minister, and that will
affect the way he does his work, and
I'll get to that in a second.
But here's the point.
He neither privatizes his faith, nor does he
run away and stay away.
He doesn't engage.
He doesn't run from his culture, and he
doesn't capitulate to his culture.
He took his faith into his public life.
He took his faith into the marketplace.
Now, somebody's going to say, oh, see, nobody's
going to do that.
You're going to have to work it out
yourself.
That was his way.
Paul's doing his way.
You have to do your way.
I don't know why in the world people
say, oh, yeah, you're Christians.
You believe the Bible.
You like pat answers.
Pat answers?
The Bible doesn't give you pat answers.
Bible creates problems for you.
Don't you feel it?
If you take the Bible seriously, are you
walking out here saying, oh, I have to
do—you don't even—you say, oh, my gosh, I
now see what I've got to do, but
I'm going to have to work it out.
I'm going to have to be creative.
I'm going to have to have wisdom.
It's going to take me all of my
life to figure out how to do this.
Pat answers.
I'll tell you what a pat answer is.
A pat answer is to say there's no
truth.
A pat answer is to say there's no
truth, so basically whatever feels good, you can
just sort of go with the flow.
That's a pat answer.
That takes no creativity.
That takes no innovation, you see.
There's no calling.
There's no pressure.
There's no intensity.
That's a pat answer.
Another kind of pat answer, of course, is
on the other side and saying if you
want to witness in your public life, here's
exactly what you do.
Every one of you, 2,000 of you,
take these five things.
That's the other pat answer.
Bible doesn't do either.
Paul goes into the marketplace.
That's where he goes.
Now, somebody's going to say, okay, tell me,
how do I do this?
And the answer is there's three, but they're
mainly principles.
Here's what you get.
First of all, look at Paul Felt.
He was greatly distressed.
Now, the first thing I'm going to tell
you by way of practical application is this.
The Bible, when you go to the Bible,
some of us are so practical that we're
impractical, and we miss what the Bible says.
In general, when you ask the Bible for
guidance, when you say, I need guidance.
I need to make this and that decision.
I need to know whether I should go
to school or not go to school.
I need to know whether I should marry
this person or not marry this person.
I need to know this.
I need guidance.
How do I do it?
And in general, the Bible does not tell
you how to get God's guidance.
It tells you the kind of person that
discerns the will of God.
Now, we don't like this.
We're very Western.
You say, how can I face death?
How can I face suffering?
How can I have the wisdom?
How can I understand these things?
And the Bible continually says, here's the kind
of character.
Here's the kind of heart.
Here's the kind of person that works through
these things.
And you say, but I need this tomorrow.
And it says, wait a minute, the kind
of person, character, you're talking about reflection.
You're talking about prayer.
You're talking about habits of heart.
You're talking about time.
And I need this tomorrow.
How Western.
How sad.
So let's get started.
It probably means that you won't be ready
for tomorrow.
But if you don't get started now, you
won't be ready for next year or the
year after that or the year after that.
And most of you are young.
Now look, the first thing we learn here
is Paul had deeply complex feelings.
John Stott, a commentator on the book of
Acts in this passage, he says, the reason
we can't speak the way Paul speaks is
because we can't see the way Paul sees,
and the reason we can't see the way
Paul sees is because we don't feel what
Paul feels.
The feelings, now I know this is going
to be incredible for some of you to
hear a Presbyterian talk about feelings, but the
first principle is you must have the feelings
Paul had if you're going to be effective
in the marketplace.
Now the trouble with this word, it's a
word that is kind of hard to translate,
and every translation will do it differently.
If I give it to you in the
Greek, the literal Greek doesn't help much because
it's the word paroxysmus, from which we get
our word paroxysm, which means a seizure.
And that tells us something about the depth
of the feeling.
It doesn't really tell us about the nature
of the feeling.
A lot of people think it means he
was just simply angry.
That's if you do a careful study, that
this word tends to be associated in the
Old Testament, in the Greek Old Testament, with
places where it talks about how God feels
when He sees people worshiping idols.
But when God says, this provokes me, when
He talks about His feelings, He says, the
reason I am so provoked, the reason I
am so distressed is because I am a
jealous God.
Now people really react to the places in
the Bible where it says God is jealous
because when we think of jealousy, we think
of the kind of selfish jealousy.
We think of the proud jealousy that says,
I don't like you because you've got something
I want.
But there's a healthy jealousy, there's a pure
jealousy, there really is.
In fact, the biblical word for jealousy, the
idea of a jealous God, I think we
know it, but it is so profound because
it shows us that love is not just
sweet feelings but thunderous feelings.
If you love somebody and you see them
ruining their life, or if you love somebody
and you see somebody wooing them in the
wrong direction, you don't just say, oh, you
get mad.
Listen, the opposite of love is not anger.
The opposite of love is indifference.
And anybody who's ever been deeply in love,
just filled with love for somebody or something,
knows that there's a sweetness, you're melted, you're
filled with compassion, and you're filled with indignation
all the time, all the time.
If you've loved children, if you've loved a
spouse, if you've loved parents, it's both.
And you see, the reason that God says,
I am continually provoked in my heart when
I see you worshiping idols, that's because that's
the complexity of love.
On the one hand, He's outraged at the
dishonor, but on the other hand, jealousy means,
I love you.
I want you in my arms.
I don't want you in the arms of
that.
And when Paul was filled with…
See, this is all in this word, greatly
distressed.
Paul has a deeply, deeply complex and very
strong mixture of both indignation and compassion, and
it's both, it's both, it's both.
And you've got to have both.
See, on the one hand, you can see
the compassion, because the word…
What did he do out there in the
marketplace?
Did he get up?
Did he say, you dirty idolaters?
It says he reasoned, he dialogued.
And he did such a good job, actually,
that he was invited in to talk to
the Areopagus, which was…
These were the philosophers.
These were the culture brokers.
And if you go ahead, and we didn't
do it, if you read, you'll see that
his speech starts off very civilly, very, very
respectfully.
So there was compassion.
There was gentleness, but there's also indignation.
And here's why Paul was effective.
If you're not filled with indignation, you will
not have the courage to do what he
did.
And if you are only filled with indignation,
you won't have the gentleness.
You won't be able to give people the
impression that you care about them.
You won't be able to get into their
questions.
You won't be able to understand them.
They won't feel respected.
They'll turn you right off.
Do you remember the place in John chapter
11 where Jesus comes to Mary and Martha,
whose brother Lazarus just died?
One of the most astounding insights is that
I got when I listened to a tape
on this once, was that Jesus walks up
to Mary, and Mary says, If you had
been here, he'd be alive.
And he wept.
That's all Jesus did.
He just wept.
And Martha comes up to him and says
the same thing.
If you had been here, my brother, he'd
be alive.
And Jesus says, I am the life.
In one case, he's filled with tears.
In the other case, he gives a stern
lecture.
And here's why.
Jesus Christ is a man just as much
made of truth as of tears.
And that's not true of the rest of
us.
We've all got our temperaments.
Some of us are full of sweetness, and
some of us are full of thunder, but
nobody does them both good.
Some of us are great at the ministry
of tears.
Some of us are great at the ministry
of truth.
And here's what I want you to know,
that if you are only one or the
other, if you're only indignant or compassionate, you
won't change anybody's life, and you'll go out
in the marketplace, and you'll be utterly ineffective.
Oh, what's the solution?
Let me just say something to both Christians
and the people who are not sure where
they stand.
First of all, Christians, I want you to
know something.
If you go by your natural proclivity, if
you follow your natural temperament here, you will
be ineffective, and you won't make good choices
in the marketplace.
You know, 98 percent of everything we say
publicly, 98 percent of all our public expressions
of Christianity in the public realm are either
obnoxious or cowardly, and Paul was neither because
he was filled with holy, loving jealousy, and
we're not.
We're either too afraid to open our mouths,
we're too cowardly, or else when we do,
we're obnoxious.
We're filled with either indignation or compassion.
You say, well, how in the world do
we overcome that?
And the answer is this.
Paul told the Corinthians when he first—this is
how Paul must have done it.
Paul said to the Corinthians, when I first
came to you, he said, I was filled
with fear and trembling, which is, by the
way, the first right thing, but he says,
and I resolved to know nothing but Christ
and Him crucified when I was among you.
Paul looked at the cross.
He burned it into his heart.
Now, somebody says, why?
What does that mean?
I'll tell you why.
The cross is the only spot in any
religion that shows us, on the one hand,
a God so utterly and completely and relentlessly
and absolutely and infallibly holy that He has
to pour out wrath and divine justice on
evil and sin, and at the very same
time, the cross shows us a God who
is so absolutely and completely and utterly and
relentlessly and perfectly and infallibly loving that He'd
do it on His own Son rather than
lose us.
And if you don't have a cross in
your understanding, if you say, well, I don't
understand the cross or I don't believe in
the cross, if you don't have a cross
in your religion, you will either have a
moralistic religion or a relativistic religion.
You will either have a God who's very
demanding and that's it, you know, live up
or else, or you'll have a God who's
so completely accepting but whose love for us
cost Him not a thing.
And moralistic or relativistic view of God, a
thundering, thunder religion or sweetheart religion, never has
changed anybody, never.
Only the cross, only the gospel, that Jesus
Christ had to die, God's that holy, and
Jesus Christ had to die, He's that loving.
And when that is burned into Paul's heart,
it turns him into the thing that basically
we're not.
Now, you say, I thought you were going
to tell me how.
No, I said sometimes we're so practical we're
impractical.
The Bible says this is the kind of
person who will make smart decisions out there,
a person filled with holy jealousy, loving zeal,
somebody who thinks so highly of God and
so highly of people that he wants them
in each other's arms, and he's outraged, and
he is brokenhearted until he sees it.
That's what you've got to do.
Now, I said I want to say something
here to people who aren't sure you believe.
Do you know fanatics?
I guess you do.
I understand the latest polls show that 75
percent of Americans would not like to have
a fundamentalist living as their next-door neighbor.
And, you know, considering what I think most
people think of when they think of the
word fundamentalist, I probably would say the same
thing, you know.
I would probably check the same thing.
But here's what I want you to think
of.
Surely you've been turned off by Christians who
are clumsy in their expression, who are harsh,
who are, you know, sounded condemning and so
forth, and you see people say, I'm a
Christian, and they do things like that.
Now, what do you think the solution is?
You're absolutely right to be turned off.
You're absolutely right to be upset.
What do you think the solution is?
And the reason I'm bringing this up is
because I'm using this as a little learning
tool for you.
I think what's very typical is people say,
yeah, the gospel, yes, Jesus Christ, that's fine,
that's fine, but don't go overboard.
That's fine, the gospel, cross, Jesus, fine, but
be more moderate.
Don't go overboard.
Fanatics are people who go too far.
No.
See, this shows that you don't understand Christianity.
I'm not saying you've got to accept it
here today.
I wish you would, but I do insist
you understand it.
Anybody who says they're a Christian and is
harsh or condemning, their problem is not because
they're too fanatically devoted to the gospel, but
they're not fanatically devoted enough, because the real
gospel that I just gave you, the only
place, the only religion, the only spot that
we see a God who is not more
fundamentally holy than fundamentally loving, anybody who understands
the real gospel, that turns you into somebody
who's both thundering and sweet, somebody who is
absolutely gentle because, look, look at Jesus, somebody
who's a fanatic in the sense of being
harsh, you know, the person you're worried about,
that person isn't too much like Jesus.
They're not enough like Jesus.
They see the Jesus who says, I'm Lord
of heaven and earth, but they don't see
the Jesus who says a bruised reed, I
will not break, a low burning candle, I
will not snuff out in my ministry to
you.
They, you see, they see a moralistic or
relative, they don't see the whole picture, and
you know what?
Martin Luther King understood this.
Martin Luther King stood up against racism, and
how did he do it?
Boy, every New Yorker loves Martin Luther King.
I wish they'd listen to him.
What did Martin Luther King say?
Did he get up and he say, you
know the trouble with racism, how we can
deal with racism?
People are too religious.
You're overly religious, you know, you're overly into
this Christianity.
We need to get rid of that.
That will get rid of bigotry.
Absolutely not.
What did he say?
He said racism is not in line with
the gospel.
He said to the churches of the South,
he says, you're not being true to the
gospel.
He said, get more gospel oriented.
He said, go to Jesus more, be more
fanatically like Jesus Christ.
You see, he understood.
Anybody who looks harsh, and probably they are,
and condemning, and you say they need less
of religion, maybe they need less of various
religions, but not of Christianity, they need more.
And if you think a person who is
absolutely sold out for the gospel, if you
think a person who is in a sense
obsessed with what Jesus Christ has done for
us on the cross, is a boring person,
if you think that person is insensitive, is
harsh, is going to always make you feel
small, you haven't met one who really has.
It's not that they're too fanatical, they're not
fanatical enough.
Those are the people who are effective in
the marketplace, okay?
And secondly, I said the first thing, if
you want to be effective there, you've got
to feel what Paul feels.
Why did I just spend so much time
on it?
Because I think, frankly, the rest will take
care of itself, but not quite.
Then secondly, you have to see what Paul
sees.
Where did he go?
The marketplace.
What did he feel?
Holy jealousy, deep complexity, indignation, and compassion.
Then, what did he see?
He saw idols under everything.
Now, you say, well, of course he saw
idols.
He was distressed because he saw idols.
Heck, you go to Athens today, you'll see
idols everywhere.
There's Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty.
There's Ares, the goddess of power and war.
There's Apollos, the god of music and art.
There's Bacchus, the god of fraternities.
And you can go to all of these,
and you say, well, of course, they were
out there.
There were statues.
You know, everybody could see them.
There were statues.
They were all there.
It took you a minute, didn't it, yeah?
I thought about it.
Anyway, but that's not what the word see
is.
See, the text could easily have said see.
It could have used a simple Greek word
for see, blepo, or something, you know, just
take a look.
But it's the word that Luke uses to
describe what Paul was doing there is the
word theoreo, the word to theorize, to get
underneath.
Now, what the gospel will do, and this
is actually the key to working out how
to be a Christian in the public world,
Paul saw that underneath all the art, underneath
all the business, underneath all the government, underneath
all the philosophy were idols, that the real
problem with the world is not the bad
things, but the good things that have become
the best things.
And he saw what we should see, and
this is how it changes the way we
do things, that under every personality are idols,
under all psychological problems are idols, under every
culture is idols, under all moral problems are
idols, under all social problems are idols, under
all intellectual problems are idols.
Now, you know, I'm going to do a
Q&A afterwards, and if somebody really wants
to press me on this, I'll spell it
out.
But let me, first of all, he, theoreo
means he saw underneath everything.
And this is how a Christian does it.
Naaman, when he went back, and he says,
I'm going to go into the temple of
Rimon, but I'm not going to sacrifice to
Rimon.
Somebody says, oh, that's awful, but you see,
boy, he was smart.
What is the god of Rimon?
It was the god of Syria.
What are we talking about here?
Here's what's going on.
They were worshiping their country.
Rimon was the god of Syria.
They were worshiping Syria.
The reason there's so much bloodthirstiness in the
old days was because everybody had their own
god, and therefore they saw themselves as superior
to other people.
And here's what Naaman said.
Naaman says, what I'm going to do is
I'm going to go back, and I'm going
to be the prime minister, and I'm going
to serve my country, but I will not
worship my country.
Now, it's very typical of Christians to make
a big difference, a big mistake here.
Some people know that they've made an idol
out of their career.
See, it's one thing…
Apollos is the god of art, right?
Is there anything wrong with art?
No.
Is there anything wrong with worshiping art?
Yes.
And how do you worship art?
When you say, this is my whole meaning
in life, and artistic acclaim is, for me
as an artist, what gives me an identity.
Is there anything wrong with business?
Is there anything wrong with competition?
Is there anything wrong with a party?
Bacchus?
But when that's where I get my integration
point, where that's where I get my meaning,
where that is the thing I live for,
and my dear friends, everybody…
The gospel shows us that everybody is worshiping
something.
You don't use the word worship, but you're
living for something, and let me put it
to you this way.
Everybody has something that if they lose it,
means they won't even want to live life
anymore, and whatever that is, is the thing
you're worshiping.
Now, here's what Paul did.
Paul said, I can get out now, and
I can recognize and understand how everything changes.
You're a Christian, and you suddenly realize now
that you're saved by grace and not through
your being an artist, what are you going
to do?
You can run away and say, oh my
gosh, the art world, oh my word, look
at all these people.
So look at that.
Look at all the hubris.
Look at the people who get their very
definition from being artists.
Look at how they look down their nose
at everybody else who's not.
Look at how they live and die by
what the critics say.
Look at all that.
I want nothing to do with that, so
you pull on back.
Naaman didn't do that.
On the other hand, he didn't just go
back and say, well, now I have peace
in my private life.
He says, I will serve my country, but
I will not worship my country.
I will serve in my career, but I
will not worship my career.
If you have to run away from something
that used to be an idol, you're actually
still enslaved to it.
You shouldn't just be emancipated.
You've got to be even emancipated from your
emancipation.
It's not enough just to say I'm free
from that, meaning I can't even be involved
in it anymore.
You've got to say Jesus Christ is my
glory, is my beauty, is my goodness, is
my righteousness, is my love, is my meaning.
And then what happens?
You're going to do things differently than other
artists.
You're going to dance differently than other dancers.
You're going to do business differently than other
businessmen and women, because like Naaman, you're going
back into the temple, but you're letting people
know visibly and in your heart everything you're
doing is for God.
God comes first.
Do you think that Naaman was as bloodthirsty
as he would have been before?
Do you think he was the racist he
was before?
How could he be?
Because now he had the God who was
the God of all human beings.
His life wasn't broken into pieces the way
paganism does it, but his life was united
in a whole.
Dear friends, Paul saw idols under everything.
If you want to understand the intellectual trends
in your field, see the idols.
If you want to understand what's going wrong
with your field, see the idols.
If you want to understand dysfunctional families, see
the idols.
I watched The Great Expectations the other day,
the 1946 version, the good one.
And here's Mrs. Haversham, and she is miserable.
Why?
Because she's made an idol out of marriage.
And here's Pip, and he's miserable.
Why?
Because he made an idol out of Estella.
And Estella is miserable.
Why?
Because she's made an idol out of her
emotional independence.
She will not give her heart to anybody.
And why has she got that as an
idol?
Because Mrs. Haversham raised her up that way
because she hates men because of her idol
of marriage to wreak vengeance on the male
gender with Estella, the beautiful Estella.
That's life.
Idols beget idols beget idols.
And Paul said, with the gospel I could
look underneath and I could see everything.
Suddenly I figured it out.
And I knew how to go about everything
differently.
I listen to music differently.
I respond to my neighbors differently.
I do my job differently.
Everything's new.
Now, I did say the last thing is
what Paul did.
See where he went, how he felt, what
he saw, the idols, and what he did.
He preached Jesus and the resurrection.
And I guess this is probably—this is just
a sec—60 seconds on this.
What did Paul actually bring out in the
marketplace?
First of all, he brought out the objectivity
of Christianity.
He was willing to get up in the
marketplace and say, resurrection.
He was willing back then to become utterly
vulnerable.
He based the truth of what he was
teaching about Jesus Christ to a historical event.
There's that great place where he's talking to
Festus and Agrippa.
I love it.
And Paul says, Jesus Christ was raised from
the dead, and they scoff, and he turns
to Festus and says, ask Agrippa.
Agrippa, of course, was Jewish, and he was
in Palestine.
He'd been there for years.
Festus was a pagan from elsewhere.
Festus says, come on, resurrection from the dead.
What does he do?
He turns to Festus and says, ask Agrippa.
He says, he knows about these things, for
these things were not done in a corner.
And what he means is, Paul says, there's
no religion that made itself so vulnerable, no
religion that came up and said, the reason
you want to know it's true is because
hundreds of people saw Jesus Christ physically raised
from the dead after he'd been crucified.
Paul was willing to get into the marketplace
with that.
He was willing to come up and do
apologetics, they're called.
That's the old term.
He's willing to come out and say, Christianity
isn't true because it's relevant.
It's relevant because it's true.
Christianity isn't true because it changes your life.
It changes your life because it's reality.
And that's what he said.
He got out in the marketplace and was
willing to say, come on, ask me why
this is true.
Other religions don't want to do that.
They say, well, you'll find peace within.
You know, golly, a dirty sock will give
you peace within, I suppose, if you smell
it long enough and you think good thoughts.
I mean, you can, peace within, people get
peace within.
He doesn't do that.
He lifts up the objectivity in the marketplace.
But the other thing he does is he
lifts up Jesus subjectively.
I love the way he puts it, don't
you?
He was preaching the good news of Jesus,
not Jesus Christ, Jesus.
How personal.
John Donne said, take me to you, imprison
me, for I, except you enthrall me, never
shall be free, nor ever chaste, except you
ravish me.
Paul was jealous.
And what Paul wanted was to you to
be in love with Jesus and for you
to know how much Jesus can be in
love with you.
Paul was willing to pick that up and
pull that up, and it's not just the
objective, but the subjective, and say, the only
way you'll be free from idols in your
life is if you're ravished with him.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
You have to experience him.
That's what Christianity is.
It's not just an abstract truth or just
a mystical experience.
It's an experience of truth because the truth
became a person, and now relationship is the
way in which the truth comes in, and
my whole life has changed and everything else
has changed.
Do you understand that?
Are you the kind of person who feels
the way Paul felt?
Are you the kind of person who is
able to see what Paul saw, able to
do that kind of analysis, now seeing everybody
trying to save themselves through idols?
So the gospel gives you that kind of
analysis.
You're no longer up there looking and saying,
yes, there's the religious and the irreligious, the
good and the bad.
No, no, no, there's the people who are
trying to save themselves through idols and the
people who have finally given themselves to Jesus.
That's the only two kinds of people in
the world.
If you're here and you're not sure if
you're a Christian, you say, I'm kind of
neutral, you have, you Christians have faith.
I wish I had that kind of faith.
My dear friends, you have already got incredible
faith.
You couldn't have, you couldn't be living without
putting your faith in something.
It's not Jesus, that's all.
What is it?
It's your career or it's sexual attractiveness or
it's partying, it's Bacchus or it's Ares or
it's Aphrodite or it's Apollos or it's something.
And all I can tell you is those
gods, if you fail them, will never forgive
you.
And if you get them, they'll never satisfy
you.
This is the only God who will.
Jesus and the resurrection.
You've been listening to the From the Pulpit
in Classic Sermons series.
This week, you heard Tim Keller with his
message, A World of Idols.
Tune in next week to hear Oswald J.
Smith speak about five solid facts on From
the Pulpit in Classic Sermons.