Sermon Tone Analysis

Acts 17:16-34

Knowing the Unknown

 

*Secular*:

* RMS TITANIC - SPECIFICATIONS

* Length: 882 feet, 8 inches~/268 meters

* Gross tonnage: 46,328 tons

* Total capacity: 3547 passengers and crew, fully loaded

*  Lifeboat davits: 14 double acting Welin's with Murrays disengaging gear

* Lifeboats: 20 total

Kind of interesting…

            … but it is about the facts

            … some of us are not satisfied with just the facts…

            … we want to fill in the gaps

-          insert our perspectives

-          insert our understandings

* Hollywood has made a business of fanciful fantasy… filling in the Gaps..

* Taking us into the mind of General… on a battlefield…

* Introducing us to a boxer from Philadelphia and his challenges…

* Just like the RMS Titanic…

* Remember the Movie …

* Romanticized the Titanic… generated a whole story of what happened on board…

* Jack Dawson… the swarthy young man who gambled his way onto the Ship…

* …and his beloved Rose… aristocrat trapped in a bad engagement…

 

* The nature of humanity… we want to fill in the gaps…

*  When we turn away from the facts and deal with what we construct… we create something we can manage… based on us…

* When we stick to the facts we can grow in our understanding… when we stick to the Truth of Scripture we grow in our understanding and relationship with God.

 

*Biblical*:

NAU Acts 17:16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols.

17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing /Gentiles/, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present.

18 And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him.

Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"-- because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming?

20 "For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean."

21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) 22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.

23 "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

24 "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all /people /life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one /man /every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined /their /appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' 29 "Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

30 "Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all /people /everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."

32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some /began /to sneer, but others said, "We shall hear you again concerning this." 33 So Paul went out of their midst.

34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.

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*Body*:

*The Shotgun Approach…*

NAU Acts 17:16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols.

17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing /Gentiles/, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present.

18 And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him.

Some were saying, "What would this idle babbler wish to say?" Others, "He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,"-- because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection.

19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming?

20 "For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean."

21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.)

* City full of idols… provoked (Angry, infuriated…)

*  Jeremiah 2:27 Who say to a tree, 'You are my father,' And to a stone, 'You gave me birth.'

For they have turned /their /back to Me, And not /their /face; But in the time of their trouble they will say, 'Arise and save us.'

* Father… made of wood… the craft of human hands…

* Mother… stone… again fashioned by a human…

*  In an attempt to cover all the bases they had statues every known Greek and Roman god… Zeus, Hermes, Prometheus, Ares… etc…

* A rifle shoots a single shot… one point of contact with the intended target

*  A shotgun throws a wide pattern of ‘shot’ metal pellets and takes out a broader area…

*  This approach that infuriated Paul… was a broad approach… a shotgun approach to faith…

*  We have many who would consider all the faiths of the world equal…

* It doesn’t matter which statue you bow down to…

* It doesn’t matter which god you deify…

* Our society has a plethora of statutes… and tolerates them all…

* B’hai is a group that sees all religiosity as valuable…

* Even within “Christianity” there are a large number – shotgun approaches…

* Wide road theologies

* Many ways to God…

* Why does it infuriate Paul?

* Why should it infuriate you?

* Exo 20: 3 "You shall have *no* *other* *gods* before Me. 4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.

5 "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your *God*, am a jealous *God*, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me

* 10 let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, that by the *name* of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead-- by this */name/*/ /this man stands here before you in good health.

11 "He is the STONE WHICH WAS REJECTED by you, THE BUILDERS, /but /WHICH BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER /stone/.

12 "And there is salvation in *no* one else; for there is *no* *other* *name* under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved."

* And as we look at a perishing world… infuriated as Paul was infuriated at those who would take a shotgun approach to faith….

* We as believers in Jesus Christ can know…

* NAU Romans 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

* Like the imagination… that filled in the story of the Titanic people want to make up their own story about God… romanticized… made order… happy ending and all….

* The Athenian Philosophers called Paul “The idle babbler” but idle babblers … are those who speak boldly about things they do not know….

Paul knows Christ crucified, risen and gloriously ascended… and speaks with the precision of high caliber bullet… NO SHOTGUN

 

*The Blind Approach*

22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects.

23 "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, 'TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

* What spurs on this shotgun approach…

* God reveals himself… in a general sense…

* Romans 1: 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine *nature*, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

*  And so they seek… this UNKNOWN GOD…

* NAU Hebrews 3:4 For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.

*  Heb 11: 6 And without faith it is impossible to please /Him/, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and /that /He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.

*   The Blind Approach… seeking… desiring… butnot knowing…

*  Understanding that GOD is… next step find out about God…

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*The Intellectual Approach*

24 "The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all /people /life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one /man /every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined /their /appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we also are His children.' 29 "Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.

* Paul… Let me introduce you to the Creator…

*  we saw how we are all without excuse before God…

* We can see the hand of God on creation…

* That we were not once amoeba or guppies…

* But we are created…

* Look at the facts…

* 1) 2nd Law of Thermodynamics… reoccurring again and again in God creation….