Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

In 1867 a bearded Norwegian named Lars Skrefsrud, and a Danish colleague found two and a half million people called the Santals living in a region north of Calcutta, India.

He quickly learned their language and began to proclaim the Gospel.

To his utter amazement the Santals were expecting just such a message, and they were excited and enthused about it.

One of the leaders said, "This means Thakur Jiw has not forgotten us after all this time.

Thakur means genuine and Jiw means god.

The Genuine God has not forgotten us.

Lars was dumbfounded, for he expected to tell these pagans about a God they never heard of, and instead, he finds they have heard of the one supreme God.

He asked them how they knew, and one of the elders told him of their oral tradition.

"Long, long ago thakur Jiw, the Genuine God created the first man and woman.

They were tempted and fall, and knew that they were naked and were ashamed.

They had 7 sons and 7 daughters, and founded 7 clans.

But the people became corrupted and so God hid a holy pair in a cave and destroyed the rest of mankind with a flood.

The pair that was saved multiplied and God divided them into many different peoples.

"The Santal people once obeyed Thakur Jiw, but as they made their way through the Khyber Pass they became discouraged with the hardships of the mountains, and they began to pray to the spirits of the mountains, and then to the spirit of the sun.

They just drifted away from Thakur Jiw.

They still recognized him as the one supreme God, but they developed their religion around lesser gods."

The missionary could not believe his ears.

Here was a people who had the same experience as the Jews.

They had the truth of the supreme God in their tradition, but went after other gods, and their religion became corrupted.

When the Gospel was proclaimed they recognized it was their supreme God showing mercy on them, even though they had forsaken Him.

If this was only an isolated case we could put it into the category of the freak accidents and coincidences of history, but it is not isolated.

Don Richardson, author of Peace Child, in his book Eternity In Their Hearts reveals how the belief in one true God is a part of the tradition in hundreds of cultures throughout the world.

This one true God has many names, but he is always the Creator and Sustainer of all, and supreme over all.

The missionaries who confront these people have to make a decision as to whether the name of their God is the name of the God of the Bible, or not.

In many cases they have concluded that it is, and the result is God has a great many names.

It all started with Abraham and Melchizedek in Gen. 14. Abraham had just come back from a victory over some kings and Melchizedek, the king of Salem, brought out bread and wine and blest him.

He was the priest of the Most High God, and he said to Abraham, "Blessed be Abraham by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth."

This God was El Elyon.

This was a Canaanite name, and Abraham was being blest in his name.

Abraham did not say, "Hold on there, my God is Jehovah, and not El Elyon."

He not only did not say that, but he gave this high priest of El Elyon a tenth of all he had.

Heb.

7 makes much of this and shows Jesus Christ to be a priest forever after the order of melchizedek.

El Elyon became associated with the God of the Bible and God was named in the Bible as Elohim, and El Shaddai.

This same thing happened in the New Testament world.

Zeus was the king of the gods, but he was so corrupt that he could not represent the one supreme God.

But the Greek writers, like Plato and Aristotle, used another name for the supreme God which was not contaminated.

They used Theos, and this became the name the translators of the Old Testament into Greek used for God, and this is the name Paul used in his New Testament letters for God.

The pagan peoples of the Gentile world had names for the supreme God that were kept pure enough to become the names of the God of the Bible.

So getting back to Lars and the Santal people-he decided if Abraham and Paul could do it, so could he, and so he accepted Thakur Jiw as the name of Jehovah.

He said it felt strange at first to be proclaiming Jesus Christ as the son of Thakur Jiw, but after a couple of weeks he felt comfortable.

The response was overwhelming as thousands of Santals wanted to learn how they could be reconciled to Thakur Jiw through Jesus Christ.

They were averaging 80 baptisms a day.

Lars baptized 15,000 during his years in India, and 85,000 were baptized by others.

There are many amazing missionary stories like this, but now we want to look at the amazing experience of Paul as the missionary on Mars Hill in Athens, Greece.

Nowhere do we see Paul more eloquent as he faces the greatest intellectual audience of his career.

He stood on the very spot where men like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle stood, and he had to persuade the best minds of Greece.

Gordon Lewis said, "Here is one of the most dramatic moments of history as Jew meets Gentile, Jerusalem confronts Athens, Christianity faces philosophy, faith meets reason."

Athens was the capital of the intellectual world, as Rome was the political capital, and Jerusalem the religious capital.

By his approach here Paul teaches us how the Christian is to approach this world in fulfilling the Great Commission.

You begin by-

I. FINDING COMMON GROUND.

This calls for being observant, and doing some research.

On the surface it would seem that Athenian polytheism and Christian monotheism would have nothing in common.

Athens had so many gods that it became a proverb, "As well haul rocks to a quarry as bring another god to Athens."

It was the god capital of the world, and you would need the yellow pages to keep track of them all.

The streets could be deserted of men, but their was always a god around on every street.

It is the same story over and over again all through history.

Once a people stray from the one true God in favor of lesser deities, they soon discover there is an inflation factor in idolatry.

They need more and more gods to fill the shoes of one supreme God.

You have to come with a god for every detail of life and nature, and this becomes an endless process.

The result is that even the most intelligent people become utterly ridiculous in their multiplying of idols.

The Greeks were scholars and philosophers of the world, but in their wisdom they became fools.

Athens had an estimated 30,000 gods, which was more than all the rest of Greece put together.

Paul could have stood up and said, "You stupid superstitious screwballs."

He could have lashed out at their folly, but he did not take that approach.

He took the wiser approach and began his message by saying, "Men of Athens!

I see that in every way you are very religious."

He was saying this, not with a sarcastic voice, but with a note of appreciation.

He was saying we are one in this, for I too am very religious, and I have a religious message to share with you.

He then selects a specific object of their worship as a jumping off point to share the good news.

Paul had walked around the city, and he had observed the idols and altars everywhere.

He found one to an unknown God.

Paul was looking for some common ground from which to begin, and he found it in this altar.

Don Richardson says there is some common ground in every religion and culture, for God in his mercy has given every people an insight into the truth that enables them to understand the Gospel when it comes.

It is the missionaries task to find that common ground, just as Paul did here.

The unknown God was perfect, for his goal was to share with them the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

They did not know this, and so the God of the Bible was an unknown God to them.

Paul says this God whom you worship as unknown I am proclaiming to you so you can know him.

The unknown God whom Paul made known was not just another god, but he was the supreme God.

He is not one of the gods of gold, silver, and stones, or a god who lives in temples made with hands.

He is the God whom all peoples instinctively know as the God of all.

He is the God who created all, and the God of all nations.

He is the God in whom we live, move, and have our being.

Paul quotes one of their own poets who said of this God that we are his offspring.

Paul is saying by his approach to the Athenians that there is common ground for all people who believe in God.

In all the religions of the world where there is a belief in God, there are universal truths held in common by all.

No matter how corrupt and perverted a religion becomes there is always the concept of a supreme God who is the Creator of all, and the Lord of all men.

Paul is saying that this is, in fact, the God of the Bible.

He may be called many names, or even the unknown God, but logic demands that since there is only one God, all concepts and names of the supreme God in other religions are the names and concepts of the God of the Bible.

All the religions of the world then have a concept or name for the one true God who is the God we proclaim as Christians.

This becomes the common ground on which Christians stand with all the peoples of the world.

It is the key to reaching them.

Mission minded people are ever seeking to find that in the culture of other people which becomes a link to the God of the Bible.

God has never left himself without a witness.

Man has natural revelation that gives them a concept of an almighty and all wise God over all creation.

Even the religious writings of the world convey much of the truth that God wants all men to have, and which opens them up to receive the greater truth in Christ.

Paul quotes the poet Cleanthes in verse 28.

Paul read this pagan poet and said to himself, "This is good.