Irrelevance

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Transcript:

Tonight we’re going to be back in Acts chapter 17. I told you we’d be talking tonight about a second group of people that we will run across as we are out in the world trying to make disciples. And these are people that we work with before their conversion who see the gospel and see God and see claims of the Christian faith as being irrelevant.

And I shared with you this morning that we can, even today here in Fayetteville, we can walk out these doors and find people who are completely ignorant of the gospel. But even more so, we can walk out these doors probably and find people who find the gospel irrelevant. And if you don’t believe me, look at the number of people who are out shopping tonight, who are out mowing their lawns, who are out fishing, who are out doing any number of other things rather than being in the Lord’s house.

And on a Sunday morning as well, you’ll see those things. And part of the reason why that happens so much is people think that Christianity is irrelevant. They think it may work for us, but it really has no bearing on their lives.

It’s not something they’re into. It’s not something they have to think about. When I think about what irrelevance means, you all may have seen this as well back when they showed cartoons that were real cartoons, not the weird stuff they have out today.

But the old Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner type cartoons. and I have no idea what the character’s name was. He was just a big dog.

You remember seeing the big dog in the cartoons that looked like he had giant muscles? Does anybody know what I’m talking about? He would chase the cat sometimes, and the cat would chase the rat.

Okay. And sometimes there would be a little dog with him, and the little dog would have muscles, but he’s just a fraction of the size of the big dog. And I have in my mind very clearly saying at one point there was an episode where the little dog is mad, and he’s just throwing punches, and he’s angry at the big dog, and he’s throwing punches as hard as he can, and he’s trying to fight, and he’s out for blood.

And the big dog has his hand on his forehead, and he’s just holding him out at arm’s length. And every swing he makes, I don’t look good swinging. I’ve never been in a fight in my life.

I’m guessing when you’re in a fight, you don’t swing like this, do you? You wouldn’t have to hold my head. I couldn’t hurt you, probably.

But the big dog’s just got his hand on his forehead, and he’s not even trying to block the blows because they just hit air, and it doesn’t matter how mad the little dog is or how hard he’s punching. He’s so little, it’s irrelevant. He’s able just to hold him out here at arm’s length.

And I look at that and I laugh, but it’s unfortunate that a lot of people think the claims of the gospel, the claims of Christianity, are like that little dog. They can just keep it at arm’s length, and it doesn’t matter. It’s irrelevant to their lives.

It doesn’t matter how hard we hit. It doesn’t matter how forceful we are. It doesn’t matter how passionate we are.

It’s just out here at arm’s length. And folks, some of the people that we’re going to look at in this same passage that we talked about this morning are just like the people in our day and age who view the gospel, who view the claims of Christianity as being completely irrelevant. I don’t need to think about it.

It has no benefit, no anything to my daily life today. If there’s something to it, if there is any benefit, if there is any impact on my life, surely I can think about that 20, 30, 50 years down the road. We’re going to start back in verse 16 of Acts chapter 17 today, tonight.

And just in the next few moments that we have, we’re going to look at people who find the gospel irrelevant and give you a couple of things that we need to do when we approach these people. Again, this is not a fail-safe checklist of what you can do when you run across somebody who thinks the gospel is irrelevant, that at that very meeting you’re going to get them down on their knees to accept Christ as their Savior. But it gives us some place to begin, I believe.

It says in verse 16, Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, What will this babbler say?

Others some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him unto Oropagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine is, whereof thou speakest. Excuse me, I always put the is there before. May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is.

And by the way, when it says they brought him to Oropagus, that’s not a person, that’s a place. It’s a place there in Athens where they would listen to people like this. For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears, and we would know, therefore, what these things mean.

For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For I passed by and beheld your devotions, and found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

And so just as we talked about this morning, he begins to deal with the ignorance, the fact that they had never heard the gospel. But at the end of this, we’ll see that once he shared the gospel with them, and they’ve heard the gospel, they’re no longer ignorant, but many of them treat it as though it’s irrelevant. and even before they begin to treat it as though it’s irrelevant, he’s already made a case here for why they need to take it seriously.

Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. Verse 24, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worshipped with men’s hands as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation.

And he points out to them the power of our God. And I want to say the last time I preached on this, talked about reasons why God deserves to be worshipped. And talked about the power of God, that unlike every other idol that they had, he didn’t depend on them to build him a house, and he didn’t depend on them to wash him and feed him and all the other things that they did for their statues.

But instead, he’s the one who gives life, and he’s the one who gives breath, and all good things he gives to, and he’s the one in power that no matter how powerful their empires were or their countries were, it was God who determined the limits of their habitation and where they should be and made all men of one blood. That they should seek the Lord, verse 27, if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. And so he’s been orchestrating all of human history in order to make it possible for men to find him.

And of course, we know from that he’s been orchestrating the affairs of human history, specifically with speaking to the Jews up to this point, to bring Jesus Christ, the Messiah, into the world through the Jewish nation. And if it hadn’t been for God, working in the affairs of human history, as much as everybody around him hated him, there probably would not have been a Jewish nation for Jesus Christ to come from. That shows you right there the power of God over the affairs of men.

For in him we live and move and have our being, as certain also of your own poets has said, for we are his offspring. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man’s device. Now when he says we’re the offspring of God, that’s not saying that we are the offspring of God in the same way that Jesus is the offspring of God.

Jesus is the Son of God and he is by nature God. We are the offspring in that we are created beings. We are created in his image, but we’re nonetheless created beings.

And what he tells him here is if we were created by God, we ought not to think that God is an inanimate object made of silver or gold or stone. You know, it’s living things that make things out of silver and gold and stone, not silver and gold and stone that make living things. And he tells him again, as I’ve said many times, and the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.

Because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, and again we know this to be Jesus Christ, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, we will hear thee again on this matter. Some of them mocked.

I still, I know I said this this morning, but I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that they think somebody coming back from the dead, if he’s God, is unusual when they consider it normal to split somebody’s skull open and a baby pop out. I don’t understand that mindset that says resurrection, that could never happen. This, on the other hand, entirely plausible.

But when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, that was the big sticking point for them. No, no, we can’t buy into this. And it’s still a sticking point today.

But I’ve not found yet an argument that accounts for the resurrection. I’ve not found an alternate theory that accounts for the resurrection other than the fact that Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose again the third day just the way the Bible claims he was. And believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time studying on it.

And all the ideas that seem to come forward today saying, oh, the resurrection couldn’t have really happened, this is what happened, are just recycled ideas that were discredited back in Christ’s day or two or three hundred years ago when somebody first proposed them. The swoon theory and things like that, that he didn’t really die. He just swooned on the cross.

He passed out. He appeared to die, and they put him in the tomb, and he recovered over the course of three days and came out. I don’t have enough faith to believe that, ladies and gentlemen.

It may sound good and scholarly on the surface of it. I don’t have enough faith to believe that they could beat a man beyond recognition. He could lose so much blood.

The medical experts have looked at the crucifixion story and concluded that the description is consistent with hypovolemic shock, meaning you go into shock from a loss of blood. That’s why he was thirsty. That explains for so many things.

He lost massive quantities of blood. He was beaten beyond recognition. And to top it off, they pierced his side through with a spear, which would rupture the, I believe it’s the pericardium and the heart, accounting for the blood and the water.

You could not. You cannot survive that. I mean, we’re not even talking in the realm of unlikelihood and miracles.

You cannot survive. a direct stab wound from a spear that ruptures the heart. And yet with all these medical injuries, supposedly science in the 19th century thought, it sounded like a good idea that they took him with all these injuries, which are historically attested, put him in a tomb, a dark, damp hole in the ground, for three days and he laid in there and somehow got better without critical medical attention.

So much so that he was strong enough after three days of laying there that he was able to hoist this stone out of position and walk out. If you believe that, you believe maybe that Christ even was more powerful than I gave him credit for. Folks, the resurrection, I have not found any alternate theory that explains the facts other than the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose again from the dead the way the Bible said.

And yet it’s still a sticking point in our world today. And I think if people could be made to look, you can’t make people, but if people could be made to look objectively at the facts of the resurrection, I think they would have to take seriously the other claims of Christianity. And some of them, when they heard the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

Now, others did say, we’ll hear thee again on this matter. So it says, Paul departed, verse 33, from among them, albeit certain men clave unto him and believed, among the which was Dionysius the Oropagite, and a woman named Amaris, and others with them. Okay, some of these people, before he began to speak, they may have only listened to him because it was a novelty.

They didn’t really take it to heart that this was important to their lives. They listened to him because it says the Athenians and those who were with them spent their day in nothing else but to tell or to hear some new thing. It was all about telling stories and hearing stories.

It was swapping stories is all they did. So, of course, they’d give him a hearing. But before he spoke, they thought this idea of the resurrection of the dead, they thought this idea of the gospel, they thought this idea of repentance toward God was a mockery, and some of them still felt that way afterwards.

In other words, once they heard the gospel, once they were no longer ignorant of God, their response was to treat it as though it’s irrelevant, and we see that in our world today. We tell people about God, we tell people about Jesus Christ, and they may not say it in these exact words, but they demonstrate with their actions that it’s not relevant to their lives. But Paul gives them, in the course of his sermon to them, in the course of his defense, he gives them some things that they need to think of.

And I’m not telling you that to the world around us we put them in exactly these same words, but I think we need to give the world some things to think about as well. And first of all, if you’re following along with the notes in the bulletin, those we try to reach may find the gospel irrelevant. They may find the gospel irrelevant.

Do not be surprised when you go to tell somebody that Jesus Christ died for their sins, even if you give a masterful presentation in defense of the gospel, using all the things we talked about this morning, and you take them back to Adam, and you talk about the sin nature, and you talk about the importance of perfect sacrifice, and the justice and holiness of God, and you give them the whole nine yards, do not be surprised, and try not to be offended when people still look at you and say, that means nothing to my life. Folks, that was true in Jesus’ day. John chapter 1 tells us that the light came into the world, and the world did not receive the light because it preferred the darkness.

I’m paraphrasing, of course, but sometimes the world just prefers to live in a dark cave than to come out and receive the light. And so the world will treat the gospel sometimes as though it’s irrelevant. What we’ve got to do, not as some kind of trick, not as some kind of debate tactic, but what we’ve got to do out of a genuine love and compassion for the people that we’re talking about and a care for what happens to their eternal souls, we’ve got to, of course, with the work of the Holy Spirit and Him working through us, we’ve got to find some way for them to see the relevance of what we’re talking about.

And Paul, again, gives us a few things here. first of all we must help them understand the eternal implications of current choices. If we present the gospel, if we present faith in Christ as though we think it is a take it or leave it proposition, we cannot be surprised when the world around us leaves it.

If we treat it as though it’s not an important thing, and I fear that sometimes we do that, if we treat it like, well that’s all right, you just believe what you want to believe, this is what I believe, But that’s all right if you’re not. Folks, if we treat it like a take it or leave it proposition, they will leave it, and there’s nothing to be surprised about there. We cannot and should not twist people’s arms and coerce a conversion.

Christianity, I submit to you, is the only religion that cannot be coerced because it deals with the change of the heart. You can make someone outwardly through their actions and through the recitation of certain things, you can make someone outwardly convert to Judaism, you can make someone outwardly convert to Islam, or outwardly through your actions, you can become a Hindu at the point of a spear if you had to. Christianity.

Yes, there are certain things we’re supposed to do as a result of being Christians, but Christianity is a conversion of the heart, and we can’t make people convert. We can’t twist their arms as much as I would like to. Do you know how easy it would be just to go get a howitzer or something and tell the people of Fayetteville, you are all Christians now, whether you like it or not?

That would be easier, but it doesn’t work that way. We can’t argue them into heaven. We can’t coerce them or twist their arms to get them into heaven.

But we need to treat the gospel as a serious matter. When we come to them, when we come to people, especially those that we’re close to, do we take the time to talk to them about Christ? And do we treat it like it’s an important thing?

We have a responsibility of making them understand this is not just one religion among many. There are eternal implications to the choices and decisions that are made in this life. That’s why he doesn’t tell them, it’s okay, whatever you want to do, we’ll talk about it again some other time.

He does come back and talk about it. He talks about it just about as long as they want to hear about it. But he makes some pretty bold statements when he says, when he says in verse 30, in the times of this ignorance God winked at, but now, now he commands all men everywhere to repent.

That this is the commandment of God. God has let man’s ignorance and man’s wickedness go on for all this time. And he’s let it go by.

But now we’re at a point where God says you must repent because there are eternal implications at stake here. Now the price has been paid for your sins. Now the gospel is set to go forth to the entire world and they have a choice to make.

And he goes back and he talks to them about the God who’s been orchestrating all of human history to bring men to the gospel. He’s been orchestrating all of human history to make it possible for man to come to Christ. You know, if God hadn’t revealed himself to us, we wouldn’t have any knowledge of Him. If God hadn’t sent Jesus Christ, we wouldn’t have any access to Him.

And yet God has revealed Himself through the prophets, and God has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, He’s made it clear to us that there’s sin to be dealt with, and that there’s faith. There’s repentance where we come to Christ, and we trust Christ, and we have forgiveness with God, or forgiveness of God and peace with God. But He makes it clear going back and talking about the power of God, and He says that there would be a judgment because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.

There is coming a day when it won’t matter anymore what’s said or done. All that matters is what was said or done. Did you trust Jesus Christ or not?

Did you throw yourself upon the mercy of God and take hold of the righteousness of Christ that was offered to you? Or did you reject it and keep it at arm’s length? It won’t matter what’s done in that day, just what has happened before.

There will come a day when God will judge over mankind. and it says he will judge so righteously that when God judges mankind, it’s not just gonna be by some arbitrary standard. It’s not gonna be because God doesn’t like the clothes you’re wearing that day or God doesn’t like the accent you talk with or you drove a nice car so I’m gonna let you in.

The Bible says God will judge righteously. That means according to his standards that he has set up and all of us, every one of us, fall short of that standard. Based on God’s righteous standard at the day of judgment when he judges by that man whom he hath ordained, Jesus Christ. When God judges the world by Jesus Christ on our own, left to our own devices, and ignoring what God has already said, we are all in danger, in peril of eternal hellfire.

There are eternal consequences from our current choices. Do you believe that tonight? The world needs to see that we believe that.

I told you before, a missionary friend of mine from Canada spoke at a mission conference a few years ago. And I can’t remember everything he said. I don’t even remember the main premise of what he was talking about.

But he quoted a verse from Psalms that talks about those who go forth sowing in tears will, again, reap in joy. And he talked about the way that we approach our family and friends and acquaintances and people we run into on the street and talk to them about Jesus Christ, and we treat it. He didn’t say these exact words, but we treat it like it’s a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.

Like we’re offering them one option among many, and if they choose another option, that’s all right. If we really believe what we say we believe, that men are destined for hell apart from Jesus Christ, that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes unto the Father but through him, and that there is an eternal hell for all of us who choose to die in our sins, then we should not be able to talk dry-eyed to our friends and loved ones about the gospel that can save them and give them peace and eternal life with God the Father. And he made the point, if your evangelism, if your discipleship, if your harvest is puny, have you tried tears?

I’m not saying you try crying and begging as a manipulation tactic to get people the gospel, but I’m talking about the importance with which we approach this. Have we been to the Lord? Have we prayed?

Have we prayed like it mattered what people do in this lifetime in terms of their eternity? Do we talk to them with a sense of urgency? If we treat it like it’s not urgent, so will they.

But Paul told them, now he commands all men everywhere to repent because he is going to judge the world righteously by Jesus Christ. And so when those that we meet treat the gospel as irrelevant, we need to demonstrate by our attitudes and by our actions that we believe it is relevant, that there are eternal implications for the things that are done and said here on earth. Now, does that guarantee that they will take the gospel seriously? No.

But if we don’t act like we take the gospel seriously, it sets them up not to either. finally tonight talking about the eternal implications it deals with our attitude but folks there was also the fact that paul went all over the known world everywhere god would let him go everywhere the holy spirit would let him preach he went and preached and he we have every indication from the scriptures that he lived a life consistent with with what he was teaching there were a lot of folks there were a lot of charges leveled at paul during his years of ministry but I don’t see anywhere where anybody credibly attacked him because of immorality in his lifestyle, that what he was preaching didn’t match up with what he lived. Now, they might have called him a crazy man, they might have called him a heretic, but they didn’t call him a hypocrite.

And it was because of his total surrender to God and his will. It was because of his love for souls around him that he was in Athens in the first place. And when it tells us in verse 17 that he disputed in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons in the market daily with them that met with him, folks, That was because Paul was completely sold out to God, was completely sold out to Jesus Christ, and whatever they asked him to do, whatever they told him to do.

And not only must we help people understand the eternal implications of current choices, we must demonstrate the relevance of the gospel with our lives. These two are inextricably linked to one another. We must demonstrate the relevance of the gospel with our lives.

The gospel is about Jesus Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins, not just so that we can have fire insurance and live the way we want to and go to heaven, but folks, so that our sins could be forgiven and we could have peace with God, a walk with God, a changed heart that leads us to become more and more like Jesus Christ the further we go along. Do we live that way and demonstrate the effectiveness of the gospel, or do we merely give the gospel lip service while living in a way that’s completely inconsistent with what we say God has done in our lives. You see, we can’t respond to the gospel in faith and live a life unchanged.

Now, I’m not telling you that we have to change everything and be completely perfect before Christ saves us. Folks, that’s what salvation’s about, the fact that we can’t live up to God’s standard. But if we’ve responded in faith or so we say, and nothing has changed, everything I see in the Bible indicates that that might be evidence for us that we need to take a second look because it may not have been genuine.

There’s a reason Jesus called it being born again. Do our lives demonstrate the faith that we testify? Folks, we’ve got to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel with our lives.

Do we live according to God’s word? Do we live clean lives? Do we do things decently and in order?

Do we treat the gospel like it matters on a daily basis? Do our friends, do our children hear us talk about the things of God more than they hear us talk about the things of this world? Or in our homes are the scriptures and the things of God, something that we deal with on Sundays, with never a mention of them in between.

Folks, it sounds so trite to say it, or to make this point, because I feel like it’s made all the time. But people really do watch what we do just as much, if not more so, than what we say. And if there’s an inconsistency between our lives and our testimony, which is it, do you think, that speaks more loudly?

It’s our lives. If they look at our lives and see that the gospel is irrelevant to our lives, guess what? It’s going to be irrelevant to theirs as well.

And just like Paul, we have a responsibility to demonstrate the relevance of the gospel with our lives. He demonstrated that by living a life where everything God told him to do. Yes, Lord.

That doesn’t mean Paul was a perfect man, but when God told him to do something, Paul did it. Paul went where he was sent, and Paul made every effort to try to grow in Christ. And I’ve shared with you that discipleship and making disciples is about getting from where we are and helping somebody get from where they are to where we need to be. Folks, are we living a life that demonstrates we’re trying to get to where we need to be, or are we happy stagnant?

All of this boils down to making it clear by our lives that the gospel is to be taken seriously, making clear in our words and actions that the gospel is to be taken seriously because God may give us chance after chance after chance in this life. He may, but when this life is over, there’s no other chance.