Acts 17:16-34

Acts 17:16-34
Theme: Evangelism in the city

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Cities where strategic to Paul’s missionary strategy; if you trace his three missionary journeys in the book of acts, you will see that he never planted a church in a farming community or an insignificant town. He went to the cities! And not just any city, he chose strategically located cities like Ephesus which was a major link on the old Silk Road connecting Greece with India and China. Corinth was a major shipping and transportation hub and was populated by people from every corner of the Roman Empire.

And Athens was a centre of learning. It was one of the greatest cities in the ancient world; the birth place of philosophy. Some of the greatest men in history lived in that city; men like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. When Christian Europe rediscovered these men it resulted in the Enlightenment, the birth of rationalism and the major scientific advances that remade the modern world. The influence of Greek philosophy (because of its attachment to Christianity) is felt in every corner of the modern world even to this day (whether for good or for bad).

Paul was a long way from Jerusalem (also a great city). If Athens was the seat of manmade wisdom, Jerusalem was the seat of the wisdom of God. On the day of Pentecost when Peter stood up to preach his famous Pentecost sermon he was basically preaching to his own people; he started with the prophet Joel, which he had likely memorized and was familiar to everyone.

Can you imagine if Paul had gotten up in the Aeropagus and preached from Isaiah 53? I think it’s safe to say that Peter’s sermon would not have been appropriate in Athens, nor would Paul’s in Jerusalem.

This underscores an important point: When we preach the gospel, we need to know the people to whom we are preaching it! God has ordained the multiplicity of ways of communicating the same message.

Paul’s strategy was to understand and then to be understood. He found something positive for which to commend them; although he despised the sin of idolatry and false worship and he in no way endorsed the practice, he said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious”. That was his bait to grab their attention. Peter used bait too “We’re not drunk, we’re filled with the Holy Spirit.” It gets their attention.

Sometimes I think we are using the wrong bait to get people’s attention. A lot popular preachers today use the bait of the promise of a better life. Do you want health, happiness and prosperity? Then try Jesus! They commodity Christ: take him out for a test drive; if you’re not satisfied, you get your money refunded. I know a church that offers meat to its visitors. The funny thing is that, although that church has grown and baptisms are up, so is their debt and tithing is way down.

If Paul were walking around our city and looking at our culture and places of business, I think that he would say this is also a pretty superstitious people too.

Although adherence to religious institutions is at an all time low, we live in one of the most densely religious, theologically diverse cities in the world. We have a temple on every street. There’s a spiritual smorgasbord of religious ideas laid out for the citizens of Vancouver and Surrey to pick and choose from. People line up daily at this spiritual buffet with their plates in hand picking a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

It doesn’t even matter to them that their dishes are full of theological contradictions, so long as it appeals to their immediate fast food religion needs. They care very little that their Buddhist view on reincarnation is in complete opposition to their Christian view on social justice. Or that their worship of the mother goddess Earth contradicts their belief in the Big Bang. Who cares if they bow to the Guru Granth Sahib (the Sikh Bible) on Tuesday and then agree with Oprah that the Bible is full of wonderful moral stories on Wednesday and then celebrate Daliwal on Thursday and practice Tai Chi on Friday. This is a city that is in all things very religious?

Paul’s observation about the Athenian’s spirituality is actually a backhanded compliment. He is really accusing these philosophers and lovers of reason and logic of being (not just superstitious) excessively superstitious! They had an immoderate fear of the gods. And tried to cover themselves by erecting a temple to the unknown God just in case they missed one.

Being philosopher, and especially epicurean and stoic philosopher who denied the reality matter, the accusation of idolatry would have been an embarrassment for them.

Mark Cahill offers this strategy when he does evangelism, he often asks people what they think will happen on the other side, after death. He does this for a couple reasons: one is that everyone has an opinion on death and the after life (even atheists). The other reason is that when you seek to understand then to be understood, it helps to develop compassion for the person and makes your effort at evangelism less of a cold call and less confrontational. In fact, it’s easier and more natural when the person you are sharing the gospel with is someone you already know.

if you have sincerely listened to the person and demonstrated that you are truly interested, you will have earned the right to be heard. This is the sad thing, many of us have been relationships for years with coworkers, family members, neighbours and friends and we have earned the right to share the gospel with them (we know we have because we used our relationship to persuade them of other things like: you should see such and such a movie, or you should read this book, or you have to try this restaurant- and often they take our advice) but we are still too fearful to tell them the most important information they could ever know: the good news that they can be set free from the power of sin that leads to death and condemnation and if they put their trust in Jesus Christ they can have eternal life with him in a world without fear and pain and sorrow or death.

Could you imagine spending your life in a relationship with someone and never telling them the gospel, but when you get to heaven you meet them and find out that some nurse told them on their death bed and that’s how they got saved? You would be so ashamed and they would be (if it were possible in heaven) sad that you never told them.
Or worse, what if you got to heaven and realized that it was more real, more wonderful, more pleasing than you could have ever imagined, but you didn’t know a single person who was there because all your friends are in hell? Evangelism has not been tried and found to be fruitless; it has been found uncomfortable and thus left untried. But the truth is, the more often we share the hope that lies within us the easier it gets and the more fruit we will see and the more passionate we will become in sharing it. I can attest, that the times that I have been the closest to Jesus (pressing in to him) have been the times when I have shared the gospel with someone and so if we as a church want to make it our passion to press into Jesus than the most logical thing for us to do is to press his message unto the hearts of men.

I met with the Gateway Evangelism Team (GET) on Friday before prayer and we had a great time of discussion and planning. One of the things that we looked at was Peter’s sermon in Jerusalem and then we contrasted it to Paul’s sermon in Athens.

First we noticed that Peter started with scripture because everyone in his audience recognized its authority. We also recognized that Peter was bold and this is important because only a few weeks earlier, he was cowering and denying Jesus, now in the same city where the blood of Christ likely still stained the streets, Peter was proclaiming the gospel in power because of Pentecost. To look at the evangelism strategy of most Christians today you’d think they were still on the other side of Pentecost; maybe what we need is another Pentecost to get people out risking their comfort zones and their lives to tell people about the saviour of the world.

We also noticed that Peter was not a velvet gloved preacher; he was not a seeker sensitive man pleasing tell them what their itchy ears want to hear preacher. Listen to what he said, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:36). And as a result, 3000 souls were added to the Kingdom that day!

Now compare this to Paul’s strategy: he quotes little or no scripture, but instead he begins with their own theology by appealing to the temple of the Unknown God. He says,
Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: 24God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.

So far everything Paul has said is biblical without having quoted the Bible. But there is nothing that Paul has said so far that you cannot find in Socrates or Aristotle and Paul would have received a hearty amen from his epicurean and stoic audience.

Then he reasons with these men of reason from their own logic and finally he shows that he has done his homework and sought to understand so that he could be understood by quoting one of their own poets -a pagan seer named Epimenides (whose words are now sacred scripture): “In Him we live and move and have our being…” This is the whole verse that Paul is quoting:
They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—
The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!
But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,
For in thee we live and move and have our being.

Be careful when you use the works of other religions to point people to Christ, Paul was an Apostle and he did this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and only on a few very rare occasions. I’ve heard that it is possible to show Moslems from the Koran that Jesus is who we Christians claim he is and when you witness to other religions, be careful never to disrespect their religious works. During the Ephesian riot when an angry mob gathered up some of the Christians to be beaten, a clerk stood and calmed the crowd and gave this defense of the Christians,
… For you have brought these men here who are neither robbers of temples nor blasphemers of your goddess (19:37ff).

That doesn’t mean that there is not a time to speak out against idolatry, but do it in Jerusalem, not Athens (or Bangkok or Vancouver for that matter). You don’t want to put unnecessary stumbling blocks in front of the gospel. The gospel itself is offensive enough so that you don’t have to be.

Paul does not shy away from the offense either; after he has sufficiently demonstrated his understanding of their culture and philosophies and religion he calls them to repentance and then challenges a central theme in epicurean and stoic philosophy- their abhorrence of the body. He says God,
…now commands all men everywhere to repent, 31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” (vv. 30b-31)

And whereas, with Peter’s sermon they were cut to the heart and begged Peter “What must we do to be saved”. These enlightened men of Athens who believed the body and everything material was evil were offended and began to murmur (that’s why the gospel is foolishness to the Greeks and only a stumbling block to the Jews).

Notice that whereas, most of our modern presentations of the gospel end at the cross and with the promise of believers going to heaven, the Apostles gospel ended with the resurrection of Christ and the promised resurrection for believers. 2000 years later and half way around the world we’re still thinking like Greeks and struggle to conceive of an eternity in this flesh which we so abhor and so indulge with sin.

Finally, during our study on Friday night, I asked the evangelism team this question, “After Peter’s sermon, 3000 people got saved, but after Paul’s message only a handful of people believed. Does that mean Peter was a more successful evangelist or that Paul’s strategy was a failure?” The answer was a resounding and unanimous NO! The success of evangelism in not in the fruit, it’s in the faithfulness to preach it. God rewards each one differently and those who see the fruit on earth receive their reward on earth and those who receive the fruit in heaven have their reward there too.

The people who left the Jesus Film with my drug dealer, have no idea that I became a Christian- they never will. They may think that their efforts were fruitless, but they’re in for a surprise when they see me in eternity and the train of people whose lives have been affected by my conversion.

Jerusalem and Athens represent two different cultures and two different generations. The first generation is more like the 1950’s to the 1970’s in our culture. It is a worldview that is more rational and more informed by Christian beliefs. People born in that generation at least had Sunday School. Athens represents the generation born after 1980- they’re three generations away from Christianity. Their worldview is shaped by individualism and a steady stream of Mr Roger’s doctrine “I’m okay”! as well as Sesame Street’s doctrine of “Everybody’s Okay”! and they don’t have a grasp of their own sin and need for salvation. We need to know which city we’re preaching in.

Conclusion:
Paul’s missionary strategy to choose important cities for evangelism and church planting shows the importance of cities not only to Paul, but to God. Although the Bible began in a garden, it ends in the city. In Canada, 8 out of every 10 people lives in the city, but less than 1 of them are Evangelical Christians with regular church attendance.

Where are all of our churches? On the Freeway out in the suburbs!

While the world is becoming more and urban and more and more connected through technology, the world is retreating into the suburbs and becoming less and less connected. When we come into the city, it’s like we’re speaking Hebrew to Greeks and talking about Joel’s prophecy to people who only know Socrates.

I believe that This city (Whalley) is one of the most strategic cities in North America. We’re the second downtown hub of Vancouver, We’re now connected to the skytrain, people are coming from every corner of the world to live here; Athens is coming up all around us but this church is fortress Jerusalem. We need to change that.
For greater things have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City
Greater thing have yet to come
And greater things are still to be done in this City