The Next Adventure

Message Transcription

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I invite you to turn over to acts chapter 17. We'll be there together this morning. We're in the middle of our series on a new kind of kingdom. A New Kingdom adventure, in fact, is what I've called the message today as we're thinking about Missions and Missions Sunday coming up in two weeks, I'm really excited for us to get to hear from a couple of of incredible speakers and teachers who will talk to us about the ways God is at work in the world, and opportunities for us to partner with them. We'll hear from JR Bucklew, who works with Pioneer Bible Translators. If you're not familiar with their work next week you don't want to miss. They're going to tell us all about the incredible translation work that's happening here in the US, but around the world as well. Translating scriptures into native tongues, many of which I think somewhere around 400 have never had a word of Scripture ever in that language. So we're going to have a they have a Bible translation kind of a project display that kind of illustrates the work that they're doing, and they're going to come this, this coming Saturday, set that up. So when you come in here on Sunday morning next week, you'll get a chance to walk through that and see that some of you may have been out on campus at LCU and seen that earlier this spring, but we're excited to get to have it here in our building to see some amazing things that are happening there.

And then on Mission Sunday, we're going to gather and hear with Rick Russo. Some of you may remember, Rick was with us back in 2020 online, and in 2018, he came in person and and shared with us the power of being a good neighbor. The neighboring church is one of the books that he's written a number of years ago. It's been really impactful on our leadership team and how we've shaped what we do here at Broadway, but we're excited to have Rick back with us. He's going to talk to us and challenge us again with some of the ways that God's working in the world that we just may not be aware of in ways that we can partner with him. So I invite you to those next two Sundays. Be sure to mark those out and join us as you're in acts 17. I want to catch us up to where we find our passage today that Adelaide read for us just a couple of minutes ago. As acts 16 is ending, Paul is setting out on his second missionary journey. This just comes on the heels of Paul and Barnabas having a little disagreement. Um, and they decide to go separate pathways, but but they're going back around and checking back in with the churches that they planted in that first missionary journey.

It's a pretty amazing adventure. He travels through Lystra and Derby, and he picks up a young man named Timothy. In fact, there's a couple of letters in our New Testament of Letters written to Timothy. That's Timothy who comes along with Paul and Silas as they are making their way around and checking in on all the churches. Well, they they wind up in Philippi, where a woman named Lydia is converted. And if you haven't read that story again, acts 16, you got to go back and read. It's a really amazing story. But in the midst of all of this, uh, mission of the preaching and teaching Paul was doing in Philippi, this slave girl keeps following Paul around, and he keeps and she keeps kind of projecting all these talking about all this stuff. And it's just annoying Paul to no end. So he finally stops and he cast the demon out of this young lady. And her owners realized that her divination ability has now been ruined. Their chance to make money off her, to use her for their own advantage has been taken away, and they obviously are really upset. If again, it's a wild story. If you haven't read it, you need to read it. They're thrown in prison, they're beaten, they're thrown in prison. And then in the middle of the night, we're told that Paul and Silas are in prison.

Midnight crying, just wasting. No, they're singing hymns and they're praying. And the jailer is like, what is the matter with these two? And this incredible earthquake happens and all the lights go out and the bonds. Bonds are loosened on all the prisoners. The doors fling open. The jailer is about to commit suicide because he's thinking, this can't happen. This is going to happen to me anyways. I might as well get it out of the way. And Paul stops him. He says, we're all here. Don't hurt yourself. Write this amazing story. And he's converted, he and his whole household. And so Paul moves on from there. They they end up leaving and moving on to Thessalonica. And Paul as his custom, we're told, over and over and over again, the first time he would go into a city, he would find the local synagogue, and he would meet with the Jewish leaders in that city and talk and debate with him and talk with him about the gospel. In fact, Paul shows up in Philippi and we're told this at the beginning of acts chapter 17 and verse four, some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks, and not a few of the leading women. But the Jews became jealous, and with the help of some ruffians in the marketplaces, they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar.

Right again, uh, violence begins to break out. And so the brothers there in Thessalonica, they send Paul and Silas on to a town called Berea. Now, Berea is kind of off the beaten path. We'll come back to that in just a minute. But Philippi sits on the Via Egnatia, which would take you if you followed it all the way to Rome. Well, Berea is south of that road. It's kind of off the beaten path. And and that's where they send Paul and Silas. And so they wind up there. And so we're told again, as his custom, he shows up in the synagogue, but this time he gets a little bit of a different response. We're told in acts 17, verse 11, these Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly, and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing. Right. Every preacher's dream conversations you have this conversation and their responses tell us more, tell me more I don't understand, I've got a few questions. Would you answer? Could you help me discover this? Right. Incredible conversations that they have in Berea. But then again, from that town just north of Berea, Thessalonica, they, the Jews there hear about what's going on. And so they come down to Berea to also set that city in an uproar.

So the brothers in Berea send Paul to the coast, say, get on a boat. And they they usher him all the way down. They walk with him or ride with him rather on a boat all the way to Athens. And so they turn around to go back home. And Paul says, hey, tell Silas and Timothy to come join me when they can. All right. So this is how we've wound up now in Athens. It's it's the place where we'll pick up our story for today. And Paul's waiting for his friends to join him. But again, as was Paul's custom, he starts moving around. He goes to the synagogue, he begins to interact with some of the Jews, but he also goes somewhere else. He goes to the marketplace, the marketplace of ideas, the marketplace where things were bought and sold. The marketplace of of Athens was the leading intellectual city of the day. And so far, if you've been following Luke as he leads us through the book of acts, we've seen the gospel encounter, uh, what it's like to run up against Jews who are, um, who are adamant they're zealous against stamping out this message about Jesus. But we also have seen, even like an example in Philippi, of what happens when the gospel comes up against the force of the Roman economic and political machine.

How does the gospel respond to that? What does the gospel have to say to that? Well, here we're going to find the gospel is going to encounter now some of the philosophies of the day. And I know, at least at some level, we read through these and or we hear about philosophy and we kind of think of, oh, this, you know, something academic, but I want to bring it down to a different level if I could number one, because I'm not that smart. But number two, philosophy simply means the ways that people think about the ways that people interact with the world around them, these different philosophies that were being taught. It wasn't necessarily just things you learned in school, but they were ideas, belief systems in fact, they impacted what you thought about the world around you, how you interacted with the world. They were what you used to define, what is reasonable, what's unreasonable kind of how you think about the world around you. Are these different philosophies had a word to say about the gods, whether or not there were gods, and if there were, how were we supposed to interact with them and how would they interact with us? Not only that, but these philosophies talked about what the purpose of life was, what your role in and purpose in life is. So as we think about Paul engaging with the philosophies of the day, it wasn't just this academic debate that he had somewhere on a university campus.

Instead, it was this interaction with the day to day life what Charles Taylor or James K Smith would call your telos. What is your end in mind? What's where's this all headed? Right? We all have an idea about where our lives, where this world is headed, and we can see that in our day to day lives. Paul was bringing an idea that Jesus had now, something to say about where this is all headed into the future. Jesus had a lot to say about this. In fact, if you go back and read his sermon on the Mount, we did a series at the beginning of the year just looking at chapters five, six, and seven that Jesus talked a lot about how we live today, what we think about where we're headed, where this whole thing is going is really important, he says. Because if we misunderstand the gospel, we could end up spending our whole life chasing after the very same things that people who don't know God chase after. What do I eat? What do I drink? What am I going to wear? Right, he says. Even pagans run after these things. And followers of Jesus who don't really understand where this is all headed. The goal, the end, the aim of the Kingdom of God coming into the world, he says, will end up living our lives chasing the very same things.

Well, the same was true in Paul's day. Uh, but it's true even in our day, isn't it? I mean, just stop for a minute and invite you over the next couple of months to just listen for what's the end game of the conversations that you hear happening. So many people will say, well, the most important thing you could do is get out and vote and vote for the right candidate, because this is the most important election that's ever existed in the world. And as Christians, your faith, well, it's on the ballot and the future of it. It's on the ballot. So you better you better get out and vote. And then you're going to have others who say, listen, it doesn't really matter. Life just happens. Let's just make the best of it. Let's just do what we do, enjoy life, and then you die. I mean, there's all kinds of philosophies out there. Well, same is true in Paul's day. And that's what we encounter here, especially what we're told by Luke. In Acts chapter 17, Paul encounters a couple of different philosophies, Epicureans and Stoics. Now, for those of you who are not philosophy or were not philosophy majors, let me do a quick reminder of what those belief systems entailed. Now, again, there are some philosophy people out here, and this is going to embarrass me in front of you.

So lots of grace, please. But Epicureans, they believe that the world and the gods were separate, like they were real. They were out there, but they didn't really care much about what was happening in the world. They were very little to no communication. So the best that you could hope for in life was to to live a pleasurable kind of max, happiness life. But you wanted to do so in this quiet, sedate experience. You know, the Stoics, they believe that divinity, it was present in the world, and it was accessible through the mind, through rationality, that that's how we experience this divine force in our lives. And so we could we could discover, excuse me, we could discover it. And it led us to be independent and self-sustaining. And we don't debase ourselves, and we don't chase after silly little things like emotions. Instead, we reason our way. And so we have these competing ideologies, philosophies at stake. And you can imagine that if you believe either of those, that your life is going to look a particular way, right, that your telos, your goal, your aim of your life, if it's just to to be happy, to pursue things that make you happy, or if it's just to to know this inner wisdom, this inner knowledge, like you're you're going to orient your life around some certain practices, some certain beliefs, some certain behaviors. Your conversations are going to sound like something, right? Again, no different than in our day that you can tell when you're at school or when you're in the workplace and just listening to the conversations going on around you that people talk about what matters, what's important, and they don't talk about what doesn't, that we get a sense for how people live their lives, tells us something about what they believe is most important, and where this is all going.

And so the same is true for Paul here. And when he encounters them, they hear Paul. They ask, what is this? The Nrsv says pretentious babbler want to say. Others said he seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities. This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. And as Paul is beginning to share the gospel, he's interacting in the synagogues and in the marketplace. He's having some very different conversations, and he's talking to them about Jesus and the resurrection. And the response by the crowd is, what does this babbler or word scatterer say? He seems to be proclaiming foreign divinity divinities. Now again we hear that and we hear it in a particular way. But let me invite you to to consider something different. Immediately after this, the crowd comes to him and says, what is this? Can we understand what you're talking about? Why don't you come with us to the Areopagus and tell us more? And I kind of grew up hearing that story like, oh, that's cool.

He gets invited to this important place, you know, like the Areopagus is up on this hill and it looks over kind of the city, the marketplace there in Athens. It's right across from the Acropolis, where if you've been to Athens, I know some of you have. You've seen the remnants of the Parthenon, this incredible Greek temple that had been built. It was one of the wonders of the world. And Paul gets to go there and talk about Jesus. Isn't that incredible? You know what a what an incredible opportunity. Well, yeah, it was an incredible opportunity. But it wasn't quite the simple conversation that sometimes our translations make it sound like. Huh. That's interesting. I don't quite understand. Why don't you come with us to the Areopagus now, the reason that we we see this. We don't always know what the Areopagus is. It was the highest court in the city. I so imagine you're talking with your friend and they say, that's so interesting. Let's go down to the courthouse and see if, um, see if our county judge is available and sit him on the bench. And then let's go in the courtroom and talk about this some more. You know, Curtis is like, no problem, I'm there. Right. It's a it's a little more laced with, with negative and evil outcome there. Why don't you come to the court and lay out this argument? And now again, if we hear our echoes of, uh, philosophy and history, we remember there was this guy named Socrates.

Or some of you may know him as Socrates, but he was a philosopher, perhaps the most ancient one and most popular one ever. Well, you may remember that one day Socrates was invited to the Areopagus, and he was put on trial, and he was condemned to death. Why? Because he was, uh, he was accused of preaching different divinities. And this. This wasn't a simple invitation to just come and and tell us about your faith. This was. We're going on trial, pal. The stakes were a lot higher, a lot heavier than we give to them. Now, again, I'm imagining how this is unfolding in Paul's life. The last few cities that he has been in. He has faced all kinds of aggression. He has faced all kinds of backlash and pushback. And he finally makes it to kind of the city of intellectuals, the place where ideas are well thought of. And anybody can talk about anything unless it actually goes against something someone believes. Have you ever found that to be true? Meanwhile, Paul found it to be true. And so he's, in a sense put on a trial here. And his arguments are amazing. This produces again. Paul invited to explain himself to the court. It's a little more complicated.

There's a little bit more going on. One of the other philosophies of the day was espoused by a guy named Cicero, who wrote a book. Um, and I'm blanking on the name of it, but it was a really good one called The Academy. Uh, called the Academy. But in that he, he prescribed this idea that it's really not enough evidence out in the world to know for sure. Is there a God? Is there not a God? We're not really sure. We just we don't know enough. Now that produces a couple of different kind of responses. You could have like the the closed agnostics meaning. Yeah, we don't know. But since we can't know then it doesn't really matter. We're just going to do whatever we want to do. Or you could have this idea of kind of an open agnostic. Well, we don't really know. But man, it sure would be interesting to find out. And I wonder if we studied or if we looked or if we listened, how we might be able to find out an answer to that question. So you have this kind of idea as well, floating in the world. And I think that's kind of the the tenor that Paul takes as he begins his message in the Areopagus, because he points back to the people of Athens, he says, I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God.

So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship. And this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. Well, he starts off by saying, I can tell you're religious. I can see there's some questioning going on in your minds and in your hearts. And again, he's assuming the best as best he can, that maybe there's some openness to we have this, we have this idol. But it's to an unknown God. Isn't that kind of a curious thing to have? Like, well, we've got them all covered, except maybe the one we don't. So let's let's be sure to add one in there just in case. And Paul says, well, let me tell you about that just in case. God. In fact, he'll end with that same assumption. He says, in the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, for he set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. Paul says, I know you have some questions, but and for a time that was probably pretty normal. But now that Jesus has come, those questions have been answered. Let me share with you. Let me share with you a different telos.

Let me share with you a different vision of of where this is all going. Of what God is doing in the world that God isn't off, distant, far away, unknowing and uncaring about what happens in the world. God created everyone and everything in it, and his hope, his desire is that you would seek him, and in doing so, you would find him. And the God that has created it all. He actually wants to be a part of your life. And that's not just an intellectual idea that that you ascend to rationally, but it's this relationship, this relational idea that God's presence and his power in you. It's not just set aside for those who are smart enough to figure it out. It's it's available to anyone who wants it. It's not a secret. And then again, Paul continues to unpack the gospel in this beautiful way God lovingly creates and he calls. And he is willing to redeem. He's determined the time and the place for every single one of us. That's how much he cares about creation and the people that he has created. And he's not far away. He's not disinterested. It goes deeper than just a rational idea. But to this heart. Truth. He says one day we know judgment is coming, and God has called us to be ready for that day, to turn to repent, to move away from these idols that actually don't take us and answer the questions that we're asking.

They they don't help us very far along the road. Instead, would we turn? Would we repent? Would we seek Jesus? And we know this is true because he has raised the one who will do the judging from the dead. Now, again, if we know our history of the Areopagus, we remember that fifth century play that was written by Aeschylus, who in it, Aries, who is the one who is inaugurating the Areopagus into its role as a court. He's quoted as saying, when a man dies and his blood is spilled on the ground. There is no resurrection. And that was the belief that kind of was a part of the Areopagus. That was the belief in that day, was it just ends. There's no life after death. Paul says, I disagree. I disagree. The reason you have that longing in your heart that you've created all these idols to these different gods, hoping that they would be appeased, that they would bring to you or solve whatever problem you have in your life. So much so that you would even create one to the unknown God. Because, you know, something deep inside says there's something out there. I'm not exactly sure what it is or where it might be. But there's. But there's possibly a god out there. Paul says, you're right. That impulse, that desire to to seek for something more.

He says, you're exactly right. Let me tell you about that God. That God has been most revealed in and through the person of Jesus Christ, whom he raised from the dead. And so after his message ends, we're told when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered. But others said, we want to hear you again on this subject. At that, Paul left the council. As Paul Harvey might say, the rest is history. What might happen? The story for me is one that reminds me you never know what God is up to. You never know how God is working in a situation to create an opportunity. Where his presence, his kingdom might be expressed, embodied in and through the life of his people. I'm sure Paul did not expect that on his way to Philippi, and traveling through that arena would would find this kind of pushback. I know that that Filippi sat on the Via Egnatia and if he followed that road, it would take you all to Rome. You'd go through Thessalonica and then on up into Rome, and instead he sent south. He sent to Berea, to a small town, kind of, by the way, town. And then from there back around to Athens, that step after step after step. Things weren't quite going the way he thought they would go. And yet we find God working, God moving. God's already been there, and he's already prompting conversations and people.

And why are we talking about this with missions? Well, I think we're in a really interesting time right now as a church that for many years we've had these five mission points and we've been all in as best we could to all five. Well, a couple of those now are coming off the board and we've got a chance to do something new. Where might God be leading us today? How might he be inviting us to partner with him in some amazing resurrection work happening in our world? Some reconciliation? I was visiting this week with a friend who she had lost someone really close to her, and we were talking and she said, well, you know, I'm not really I've never really been much of a church person. But. It's got me thinking. This loss of my friends got me thinking. Is there more to life? Is there more out there? Is it possible that there is a God? I haven't really given it much thought because I was just kind of rocking and rolling on my own. But then this happened, and now I'm I'm not so sure you have to have a really interesting conversation. I was not expecting to happen. I was just showing up for a haircut. Right. That's that's that was my plan. And instead I encountered somebody who's going. Is there something more? To me, what's exciting about this opportunity with our missions is we get a chance to to come along and partner with some folks who are saying, yes, there's something more.

God's working with this people group. God's opening up opportunities for conversations with people who who've never heard about Jesus. Would you like to be a part of that with us? So we invite you again, church. Would you be praying about the next Kingdom adventure that God might be leading us on? And may we have the same heart that Paul did as he shows up in Athens? And he doesn't begin with, you're all a bunch of idiots for believing all these silly idols. Instead, he says, I can tell it matters to you how you live your life. Now, we may not agree on what that looks like right now, but can I tell you about mine? Can I tell you about why I to agree with you that that how we live our life. It really does matter that this world is going somewhere. And there's a God who loves you and wants you to be a part of what he's doing. So church, in the next couple of weeks, I invite you to come to listen, to, be praying about and help us discern God. Where is it that you want to unlock our next Kingdom adventure? You know, maybe it's not on that Egnatia road to Rome. Maybe you're going to take us off the beaten path somewhere.

But, God, would you give us the courage and the faith to follow? That's one of my favorite things about being a part of this church family is you look back at our legacy. Our history is being the first in line to do really hard things, the first in line to go to places that weren't easy to get to. And it's expensive and it's hard and nobody wants to do it. And this church is time and again said, sign us up, sign us up, sign us up. Because we know we know God is at work and we want to be a part of what he's doing. So church again, would you would you join us in praying about this the next few weeks? Would you join us in dreaming about God? Where is the Berea or the Athens of our day that you want us to impact God? Who are those folks that are looking for something more and God, would you help us introduce them to you? Father? That is our prayer these next couple of weeks as we get to dream together and think together. Would you bless Holly and the Missions Committee as they help start to give voice and shape to the opportunities that are coming before us? God, would you open our eyes to see the opportunities when we go from different cities and towns, to see how you're already at work in the world? God would you give us eyes to see the the different philosophies going on around us, to recognize them for what they are, and especially God.

Those that would try to convince us that election is more important than than a strong and deep faith in you and trust in you. Yeah. Would you help us to see those that just say it's all about just doing and living and gratifying those desires? Then willingness to submit ourselves, to give ourselves away. Not to fill ourselves up. Yeah, but you give us eyes to see and ears to hear those conversations that are just pregnant with promise. Opportunity. To share as Paul did. Sometimes it'll feel like we're on trial. But God, would you give us the courage and the grace to heal, to speak truth and love. Gobert. You give us eyes to see the friends that are going to be around us this week who are really struggling. Struggling to find meaning and purpose. And father, would you help us to be your person of peace in their life? Getting those opportunities that come and we have a chance to tell our story. Oh, God. Would you give us the words to say? Father, thank you for those who have lived this legacy of faith for us and in years past. God, today we're living testimony of that incredible work. God, would you keep that work going and flowing through us here at Broadway? We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.