I want to read a text of Scripture in the
seventeenth chapter of Acts, so open your Bible, if you will, to Acts again, chapter
17. In verse 16, the Apostle Paul has arrived
on his second missionary journey in the great city of Athens. That's where we'll pick up the account...Acts
17 and verse 16. "Now while Paul was waiting for them...that
is Silas and Timothy who were going to join him there...while he was waiting for them
at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. So he was reasoning in the synagogue with
the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles and in the marketplace every day with those who
happened to be present 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. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus,
saying, 'May we know what this new teaching is which you're proclaiming? For you are bringing some strange things to
our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.' (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting
there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) "So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus
and said, 'Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 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. 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,
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. And He made from one, every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times in the boundaries
of their habitation, and they would seek God if perhaps they might grope for Him and find
Him though He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we move and exist as even some
of your own poets have said, for we also are His children. 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. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance,
God is now declaring to all men that all people everywhere should repent 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.' "Now when they heard of the resurrection of
the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, 'We shall hear you again concerning
this.' So Paul went out of their midst. But some men joined him and believed, among
whom also were Dionysius, the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris and others with
them." Paul in the city of Athens confronts the reality
of the unknown God...the unknown God. He says, "You worship but you worship in ignorance. With all the gods that you have here, you
have nothing but idols, you have nothing but false gods. The one true God is unknown to you. All your worship then is misdirected, all
your worship is an expression of ignorance, all your worship is then pointless and purposeless
and accomplishes absolutely nothing spiritually because you don't know the true God." They are in the dark about the true God. As I was thinking about this passage, it struck
me that we live in a nation that could equally be defined in this way...full of notions about
God but the true God is unknown. We have popular theologies in America, in
the western world. We have popular gods who are sadly to say
quite different from the true God. Though people in our nation talk about God
and though as a nation we affirm the existence of God, we're supposed to trust in Him, we
place ourselves under Him in the flag salute and on our coins, we affirm His existence. But He is largely unknown to us. We worship an unknown God. In fact, like the Greeks, we have placed an
idol in the place of the true God and we ignorantly worship him. I suppose the question can be asked, "Has
God created man and revealed Himself, or has man created God and revealed himself?" I think the latter would be pretty much true
of the popular God of our country and even of the so-called church. God has become a kind of projection of our
own minds, of our own will, of our own tolerances. We have designed a God that is comfortable
for us. We have violated Psalm 50:21 which says, "You
thought that I was all together like you?" Well indeed that's the case. There are all kinds of misconceptions about
God. There is the misconception that God is not
to be honored in everything. Oh He is to be honored in some things, but
not in everything. He has no place in the public square. He shouldn't be prayed to in the schools. His Word should not be read in any public
place. His name should be removed from any government
facility. We shouldn't have any kind of national acknowledgment
of God such as a day of prayer or a prayer meeting or any other event led by a Christian
who affirms the God of Scripture, because that's a violation of separation that is germane
to what it means to be an American. But on the other hand, we believe in a God,
we just believe in a God who is to be honored only slightly and only occasionally and only
when kept within certain limits. This God is not a God who is deserving of
supreme honor. This is not a God who is deserving of all
honor. This God lacks what is necessary for such
honor. He also lacks power. We're comfortable with a God who doesn't wield
absolute power. We want a God who has some limited power and
that's the God that is popular today, not only in our nation but in the church. He has good ideas and we're glad for that. He has noble intentions but He struggles to
wee them realized. There are things He would like to do but He
can't quite pull them off. And Satan, oh my, Satan prevents the accomplishment
of so much that God wants to do. God wants to bring goodness into the world
and happiness and joy in everything to be the way everybody would like it to be, but
Satan thwarts all these divine purposes of God and brings trouble and war and conflict
and disaster and crime and destruction. Satan is busily thwarting the desires of God,
and so are people. Poor God, He just doesn't have the power to
really pull off what He would like. And the popular God is also lacking in knowledge. He has definite desires for His Kingdom. He has definite purposes that He would like
to accomplish. But He's really limited in the ability to
accomplish them because He is subject to the same problem that we have, and it is this,
He doesn't know what's going to happen. This is the new view of God called "The Openness
of God," that God does not know the future. That's how you eliminate Him being responsible
for it by saying He doesn't know what it's going to be. God doesn't know anything that hasn't happened
because it hasn't happened, it can't be known and God is just like we are, He doesn't know
what's going to happen until it actually happens. And that makes it really hard to plan. So God has all these great intentions, all
these great objectives, all these great purposes but is severely limited because He can't know
the future, doesn't have knowledge of events that haven't come to pass yet and so He can
only coordinate these things after they happen. It's kind of a mop-up operation. He has no more control of the future than
you do, or I do and He's always reacting just the way we react. The future is not known to Him and therefore
the future is not planned by Him. In fact, the future is known to nobody and
it is only planned as it unfolds by the millions of contingent actions of the multiple millions
of people who act. So God is not the one worthy of supreme honor. He is not the one who is supremely and absolutely
powerful. He is not the one who has all knowledge of
all things past, all things present, and all things future and how they all fit together. We can't let Him be that kind of God because
then He would be responsible for what happens. He's also lacking in wisdom for what we hear
is he loves everybody unconditionally, wants everybody to be saved, but couldn't figure
out a plan to make that happen. He wants everybody even to be healed. And, frankly, if he wanted everybody to be
healed, it wasn't very wise to make that healing dependent upon the faith of the people. If he really wanted everybody to be healed,
why didn't he just heal everybody? Seems like an unwise plan, if that's what
you really want. He also wants everybody to be wealthy. He wants everybody to be healthy and he wants
everybody to be successful and prosperous, but he really devised a rather inept plan
to get that done because he made that dependent upon us. It's a poor plan which reflects a lack of
wisdom. And the popular god lacks in holiness. He really does not believe that the wages
of sin is eternal death and punishment in everlasting hell. He loves everybody unconditionally. He treats everybody with unconditional pity. And he would never send good people to hell. So his sense of justice is limited. The sense of righteousness is limited and
therefore his holiness is limited. He's also lacking in authority. He's not really sovereign over all people,
all creation, and all events and all experiences. He would like to be, and guess what? He claims to be in the Bible but it's really
just an empty boast. Yeah, when he says he's in control of everything,
all his purposes will stand and nobody can thwart them, that's just an empty boast on
his part. He really is not in control. Whatever authority he does have, whatever
prerogatives he does exercise, whatever choices he does make, whatever rights he does possess
are in the end subordinated to the authority and the rights and the choices and the prerogatives
of people. And, by the way, if he does have anything
good to offer to his creatures, he must offer it equally to all, that's only fair. And to be really fair, he has to offer it
equally to everybody and the final decision has to be up to each individual...that's fair. So man exercises the final authority. God has less freedom than man because God
can't choose. He can only offer..man chooses. Is that the God of the Bible who is perfect
in power, perfect in glory, perfect in knowledge, perfect in wisdom, perfect in holiness, exercising
perfect authority? No, the God that I've described to you is
an idol. The God that I described to you is a false
god. The god that I described to you is an object
of blasphemy, exists not only in the thinking of people outside the church, but in the thinking
of people inside the so-called church who have made an idol, they have created a God
who doesn't exist. I can illustrate this many ways, but one that
is on my mind and intending to dominate my thoughts is this idea that the God that we're
comfortable with is not really unique. He lacks uniqueness. He's really not that different than we are. In fact, the truth of the matter is he's pretty
much shared his own nature with us. We're all...we're all sort of little gods. We all have a piece of the Divine Nature. Now you've heard that. That's pantheism, right? That God is in everything and in everyone. That has found its way into quote/unquote
evangelical Christianity. I'll show you how. Some couple of years ago there was a book
written by Rhonda Byrne called "The Secret." Please don't raise your hand if you read it. "The Secret," I'll let you off the hook, "The
Secret." It sold in the millions. At one point it was selling at 150 thousand
copies a week. It is a pagan book based on a pantheistic
view of the universe, that all things are one with God, all things are God, we are God,
everything is God. In fact, in the book it says we are light,
we are the "I am," we are truth, we are God. God is in us. We possess part of God in us, divine power. This sounds like Deepak Chopra, whom I engaged
a few times on the Larry King Program, who believed he was God, he was part of God. I was trying to convince him that even though
he hated everything I stood for, if that was true, then I was a part of God also. He wouldn't buy that. Somehow I didn't fit into his pantheism, I'm
not sure how that works, but at least one person was left out of the pantheistic perspective. But in the light of Isaiah 42:8 which says,
"I am the Lord, that is My name. I am the Lord, that is My name. I will not give my glory to another." God does not share His person with anyone. We are human. We are not divine. We do not possess divine attributes. Even when God takes up residence in our hearts
as believers, it is the living God within us, it is not us. We have no divine power. We do not share by being human beings in the
divine nature. Well that's what "The Secret" said, if you
can get in touch with the divine power within you, you can create your world. You have creative power. Now the Bible says that everything that was
made was made by God and without Him was not anything made that was made. That He is the one who creates everything,
sustains everything, controls everything, consummates everything, and that power belongs
only to Him. But pagan pantheism says, "We all share that
power." God is not really unique. It is a book that essentially says "You have
divine power within you. You're part of the divine energy." In other words, you can create your life the
way you want your life to be. You can create your world the way you want
your world to be. In the book there is something called "the
law of attraction...the law of attraction." You attract a certain kind of reality to yourself. Your thoughts and your words attract this
reality, literally create this reality. The sequence goes like this, "Know what you
want. Two, believe you will get it. Three, visualize the fulfillment of it, and
four, speak it out loud and you will bring it into existence. You want money, then know you want it, believe
you will get it, visualize the getting of it...in other words, go through the emotions
you would feel if you had it...and then speak it and it will happen." The book says, "It works every time with every
person, just place your order and it's yours. You have enough divine power, you have enough
of God in you to create your world. Your life is the reality that you create by
attracting it. Your thoughts and words then have this divine
creative power. What you think, what you believe, what you
visualize and what you speak becomes the reality that you live. And if you like the way your life is, then
keep speaking the same thing, thinking the same thing, visualizing the same thing, believing
the same thing. But if you don't like the way your life is,
change what you want, believe you'll get it, visualize the receiving of it and speak it
out loud. You will cause the universe literally to rearrange
itself to make it happen for you by the law of attraction. Start feeling what you will feel when your
reality arrives and speak it. You have the power," quote, "You have the
energy of the universe to create your world, you are the designer of your destiny." Wow. The outcome is what you choose. The roots of this nonsense are in bizarre
people like an 1860 writer by the name of Phineas Quimby. It's been passed down. It's a form of deception, illusion and kind
of pantheistic sharing of the divine nature which is a pagan concept. So faith is a powerful personal force that
enables you to express supernatural energy that overcomes all restriction and creates
the world that you want. The first thing is to decide what you want. And by the way, I've checked out the list
and I didn't find these things on the want list...humility, brokenness, repentance, holiness,
purity of heart, worship, sacrifice, unselfishness, sacrificial love, not so much. What's on the list? Health, wealth, prosperity, success, all temporal
material things, none of that which we heard Jubilant singing about. Now if all of that sounds familiar to you...you
say, "I didn't read 'The Secret' but that sounds so familiar." You have been watching TBN, that's what you've
been doing. You have been exposed to this lie, this deception,
this pagan pantheistic perspective that has been turned into a spiritual Ponzi scheme,
making the people at the top of the food chain rich, preying on the desires, the material
worldly desires of the people who want all this stuff. It comes under the name, "The Word/Faith Movement,"
"Prosperity Gospel," "Name it and claim it." It's being advocated by people like Benny
Hinn, Marilyn Hickey, Fredrick Price, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Robert
Tilton, a man named Koontz, Oral Roberts, Paul Crouch, on and on and on. That's what they say. They all claim the same thing. As a Christian you have the personal power
to recreate life's reality into exactly what you want it to be. And they do it in the name of Jesus. All this in the name of Jesus. It is a lie, it is a blasphemous lie, it is
a lie that preys on the weak and the desperate and preys on the people who have nothing but
fallen, corrupt, unregenerate, normal human desires. Oh it works. It makes the predators rich because everybody
sends them the money, that's how you trigger it, that's how you prove your faith. And everybody else is disappointed. A few weeks ago there was an event here at
Dodger Stadium with Joel Osteen, thirty-five thousand people at Dodger Stadium, something
like that. He is now the largest, quote/unquote church...I'm
using the word loosely...in America down in Houston. You need to understand that he is a pagan
religionist in every sense. He's a quasi-pantheist. Jesus is a footnote that satisfies his critics
and deceives his followers. The idea of this whole thing is that men have
the power in themselves to change their lives. In his definitive book, Your Best Life Now
, he says...and that ought to be a dead giveaway since the only way this could be your best
life is if you're going to hell. He says that anyone can create by faith and
words the dreams he desires...health, wealth, happiness, success...the list is always the
same. Here's some quotes from his book Your Best
Life Now . "If you develop an image of success, health, abundance, joy, peace, happiness,
nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you," end quote. See, that's....that's the law of attraction
that's a part of this kind of system. Here's another quote, "All of us are born
for earthly greatness. You were born to win." Win what? "God wants you to live in abundance, you were
born to be a champion. He wants to give you the desires of your heart." "Before we were formed, He prepared us to
live abundant lives, to be happy, healthy and whole. But when our thinking becomes contaminated,
it's no longer in line with God's Word," end quote. By the way, "God's Word is not the Bible,
God's Word is that Word that comes to us mystically, spiritually, that tells us what we should
want." Here's another quote, "Get your thinking positive
and He will bring your desires to pass. He regards you as a strong, courageous, successful
person. You're on your way to a new level of glory." Hum...how do you get there? "Believe...he says...visualize, and speak
out loud." Same exact approach. Words release your power. Words give life to your dreams. Here's another quote. "Friend, there's a miracle in your mouth." I think Isaiah might object to that. He said, "I'm a man of unclean lips and I
dwell amidst a people of unclean lips." Here's Joel Osteen's prayer. "I thank You, Father, that I have Your favor." Wow! Did he meet the Pharisee in Luke 18, or what? "I thank You that I'm not like other people." Here's another quote. "I know these principles are true because
they work, for me and my wife." Oh, so that's the test of truth. Are you kidding? I know these things are true because they
work for me and my wife? Sure, you're at the top of the Ponzi scheme. And then he said, "Even finding a perfect
parking spot at the mall." And I ask, "What about the little old lady
you cut off to get into that parking? What about her dreams?" Maybe she was born to lose. I mean, it's so silly, so bizarre. He says, "God has already done everything
He's going to do, the ball's in your court." You have to take that part of God which exists
in you and create your own reality. What is the source of this? Where does this come from? Answer: Satan, this is satanic. This is satanic. This is not just off-centered, this is satanic. Why do I say that? Because health, wealth, prosperity, the fulfillment
of all your dreams and your desires, that's what Satan always offers. That's called temptation, based on the lust
of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That's exactly what corrupt fallen unregenerate
people want. That's why it works so well, right? You can go right into Satan's system, make
everybody feel religious and turn their desires, their temptations into somehow honorable desires. I mean, what did Satan say to Jesus? Grab some satisfaction, why are You hungry? You need to eat. You need to be healthy, whole. Why would You let Yourself be unpopular? Dive off the temple corner, whew, everybody
will be wowed. You'll be the winner, You'll be the champion. You'll be the Messiah. They'll hail You. And by the way, if You just look over the
kingdoms of the world, I'll give those to You, too. That's satanic. So the lust of the flesh, the lust of the
eyes, the pride of life, 1 John 2:15 to 17, it's all a part of the world and it's all
passing away. And why are these false teachers so successful
at what they do? Because they're in cahoots with the devil. Why is Satan successful? Because his temptations, although they might
appear noble on the outside, are in perfect accord with all the fallen, corrupt, selfish,
proud, evil desires of sinners. This is a false kind of Christianity and a
false view of God. God is the one who reserves the right to make
you well. "Have not I made the blind and the lame and
the halt, He says? Or to allow you to be sick? God has the right to make you prosperous or
to give you little. God reserves the right to control the circumstances
and events and experiences of your life for His own ends and His own purpose." False religion is the most heinous of all
sins because it's a violation of the great commandment, "Love the Lord your God, the
true one, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength," and false religion that borrows
His name but creates a false God and borrows the name of Christ but creates a false Christ
is the worst kind of blasphemy. And by the way, I've said these things in
a letter to the people at TBN because I know that they would hear this and I put it in
a letter. They weren't too happy about it. But I need to say that. Do you understand that this is a burden for
me? And I think preachers like this who preach
this stuff, hate the true God. I really believe that. I believe they hate the true God and they're
afraid to death that somebody might find out who He is, that He's a God of absolute sovereignty,
that He's a God of absolute knowledge. He is a God of perfect wisdom. He is a God of perfect holiness, He is in
perfect control of everything, absolutely sovereign over everything. That kind of God terrifies these kinds of
people. And He is a God who is concerned about fulfilling
things in a spiritual level whether you ever receive anything on a temporal level. I think they have hatred for the true God. They hide the true God from the eyes of their
followers and they put in His place an idol of their own making with the same God. Do you remember in Exodus when they made the
Golden Calf? Did you know that when the Israelites made
the Golden Calf, that was their representation of Jehovah? That was their representation of Jehovah. We have it again today. We have even in the church the unknown God
invented by man and worshiped. The comfortable God, the God who can't be
responsible for everything, the God who can't be absolutely just, absolutely sovereign. The God who is to be honored in everything,
the God who is the very source of our existence in whom we live and move and have our being,
the God who sets the boundaries of all nations, therefore the God who is, believe me, in control
of every nation's history and every nation's place in history. We don't like that God. And even preachers use the name of God and
the name of Christ to propagate blasphemously a false God. There's nothing that has a greater effect
on your life than your view of God. Okay? You live your view of God. It affects everything you do...everything
I do. In John 17, we love to go back to the marvelous
High Priestly prayer of our Savior and kind of camp on the fact that He prayed that we
would be one, pray for unity which He did pray but that was a spiritual unity, not a
superficial unity. But what is the first thing that comes out
of the lips of Jesus? The first request? John 17, as He speaks to the Father, it's
in verse 3, "This is eternal life, this is eternal life," this is what He prays, You
want eternal life? Here's how. That they may know You the only true God and
Jesus Christ whom You've sent." What is the prayer of Christ? For a true knowledge of the true God. Do you know that God? Do you understand the fullness of His nature? That's why we're going to do this series? That's our Lord's prayer, that they may know
You. And isn't it wonderful that He has revealed
Himself on the pages of Scripture? That's why the Bible is called in Psalm 19,
"The testimony of the Lord." It is the Lord's personal self-disclosure. In Jeremiah, we are told that we have a right
to boast. But if you're going to boast, Jeremiah 9:23,
"Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom. Let not a mighty man boast of his might. Let not a rich man boast of his riches." Then verse 24 of Jeremiah 9, "But let him
who boasts, boast of this that he understands and knows Me." Humph. "That he understands and knows Me, that I
am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth for I delight
in these things." God delights in a true knowledge of Him. That's why Jesus prayed, that they may know
You, the only true God. Hosea 6 verse 6, the prophet speaking for
God says, "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice," and listen, "and the knowledge of God more
than burnt offerings." There was a place for sacrifice, there was
a place for burnt offerings. But what God really wanted was that we would
know Him, that we would know Him. Why? Because He seeks our worship, right? John 4, "The Father seeks true worshipers
who worship Him in Spirit and in Truth." He must be known to be truly worshiped. There's nothing more important than this,
folks. There's nothing more important than knowing
who God is, worshiping the true God, the one true God, the true and living God. We have one purpose in the world and that
is to know God and to make our boast in the fact that we understand and know Him. Well, let's go back to Acts 17. This is on Paul's heart. You'll have to forgive me, folks. I know I'm talking about very specific things
today and some of you think maybe I've gone too far. Listen, I suppress this as long as I can and
it is not easy. I have a hard time coping with the dishonoring
of God in His name and in the name of Jesus Christ. And I do my best to keep a lid on it. It helps to be going through the exposition
of Scripture because I have to stay in the text. But just give me a Sunday when I can do something
else and this is liable to happen, as you know. And I want you to know that I'm in good company,
my hero, Paul. Verse 16, Acts 17, "Now while Paul was waiting
for them at Athens..." Now get the picture for just a minute, second
tour from the church in Antioch of Syria, a missionary tour. He comes to Macedonia, he founds churches
in Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, and everywhere he went he planted a church but he generated
a lot of hostility and opposition and persecution, so he had to flee for his safety. Well he finally has come to kind of be lost
in the crowd at Athens. He's gotten away from the last stop which
was Berea and the Bereans escorted him to Athens to give him some rest from the trauma
he was suffering in these towns where he had such a large exposure, where he's now just
sitting in Athens and he's waiting for Timothy and Silas to join him. But I understand, he's waiting there, this
is a time for rest, this is a time to recover from the arduous second missionary journey
all on foot, the threats that he talks about in 2 Corinthians, of robbers and all these
kinds of things that he endured in hunger and thirst. Now he's getting a little bit of a break and
he's resting in Athens. However, he didn't rest well. Verse 16, "His spirit was being provoked within
him as he was observing the city full of idols." His spirit was being provoked within him because
he was observing the city full of idols. He didn't find any real rest in this city. Athens was a great city. If you were an architect, you'd be in architect
heaven in ancient Athens. It's even remarkable to see what's left of
it now. If you were an architect you'd see the buildings. If you were a stone mason you'd see how the
bricks were laid. If you were a street cleaner, you'd see how
clean the streets were. If you were a clothier, you'd be looking at
the wardrobe of everybody. But if you're a preacher of the gospel, all
you can see is the spiritual realities. That's how you view the world. That's how I view the world. The rest escapes me, like it escaped Paul. It's very hard to take a tour. I can promise you, I've been in a lot of places
in the world and have seen a lot of things in the world, but when I come away from all
those things, what dominates my mind is nothing physical that I saw, but it's the overwhelming
sense of the spiritual emptiness and the horrors of not knowing Christ and not knowing the
gospel. Friday I did a seminar in Amman, Jordan by
video. Saturday I did a seminar in Beirut, Lebanon
by video. My only interest in Amman, Jordan and Beirut,
Lebanon is to get the gospel of Jesus Christ into those places. I have a passion that the Word of God would
get everywhere in the world where it needs to be heard. Paul only viewed the world from the spiritual
perspective. Remember what he says when writing to the
Corinthians, "I...since I've come to Christ, I know no man according to the flesh." I don't see people superficially anymore. There he is in the great city. He doesn't say, "Wow, this is a very religious
city. That's good." That's not good. He was impressed that it was full of idols. Then he goes to the Areopagus where the Supreme
Court of Athens met, the very court where Socrates, by the way, was tried and condemned. Now four centuries later, the Apostle Paul
is there. And Athens offered a home to almost every
imaginable God in the vast pantheon of paganism. Even if you go to Athens today, you see that
massive temple upon the Acropolis, it was a temple to a myriad of gods. Nearly every public building in Athens was
at the same time a shrine to a god, the recording house where documents were recorded was a
temple to the mother of all gods, the council house where the council met was a temple to
Apollo to Jupiter, the theater was consecrated to Bacchus, the god of orgies and drunkenness. And the Acropolis, as I said, was the collection
of the sculptures of all the primary gods. The importance of Athens could hardly be exaggerated,
it was the city of Socrates, the city of Plato, the adopted city of Aristotle and Epicurus
who started Epicureanism and Zeno who started Stoicism. Sculptures were everywhere. Philosophies were everywhere. Religious philosophies, because all their
philosophies were connected to gods. Athens was a breath-taking city, a blend of
amazing architectural design, natural spectacle Greece, amazing mountains and sea, artistic
genius, a vision of splendor and marble and gold. It was the epitome of human achievement, epitome
of religion. But all Paul could see was all the false gods. That's all he could see. And his spirit was provoked within him, it
says. His spirit was provoked and he was severely
agitated, I understand that. Stirred up his emotions. One of my favorite missionaries is Henry Martin
who went to India. And he kept a journal and it's so beneficial
to have some of these journals from these great men of the past, and after exiting an
early visit to a Hindu Temple, he wrote this, "This excited more horror in me than I can
well express. I was cut to the soul at this blasphemy. I couldn't endure existence if Jesus was not
glorified. It would be hell to me if He were to be always
thus dishonored." "When asked why, he replied with these words,
'If anyone pluck out your eyes, there's no saying why there is pain, it's feeling. It's because I am one with Christ that I am
thus dreadfully wounded.'" Do we understand that? And that was Paul and that was any man who
looks at corrupt religion. Oh, they had a place for God, an unknown God
whom they worshiped in ignorance. But Paul's pain was over the fact that with
all that religion there was not a true understanding of the true God. So he put an end to his little vacation. Verse 17, "He took off and began to minister
every where he could, with Jews and Gentiles and ended up on a mountain with the philosophers. His pain drove him into public discourse. His pain drove him to proclaim the truth and
to tell people the identity of the unknown God, the only true and living God. I understand that pain. I understand that drive because I think we
live in a time even in America where there's a whole lot of confusion about who God really
is. And we have a God that has been made, developed,
concocted. Satan's happy with him. If you want to worship that God who is not
the true and living God, he's okay with that. He's very religious; he's described as an
angel of light, along with his messengers. But we cannot allow the God of human invention
and the god of satanic partnership to be the god that we worship. You need to know more about God. You need to plumb the depths of the nature
of God. I found a quote from Spurgeon. He said, "Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then plunge yourself into the God-heads deepest
sea and be lost in its immensity." That's what we want you to do. And I hope I've been able to stimulate you
as to the importance of this. You need to be a part of the solution and
not be caught up in the false worship of the unknown god in our day. Father, a lot ahead of us and we're grateful
for it. We're so thankful, so grateful that You have
loved us enough to make us Your own. You have given us the knowledge of Yourself
by the work of Your Holy Spirit. You've brought us to truth and to life. You have made us Your sons and daughters,
adopted us into Your family, made us joint-heirs with Christ where we will forever reign as
citizens of heaven. We want to proclaim the true God, we want
to worship Him in truth. We want to rescue people from the idols that
bear the name of the true God. How horrible that Your name would be blasphemed
by being given to an idol of man's making and Satan's commiseration. And give us a clear understanding of who You
are and all Your glory is revealed on the pages of Scripture and make the days ahead
as we learn all these things, days of great enrichment and blessing for Your glory, all
of it, for Your glory and Your honor because unto You are all things, for You are all things. All the glory belongs to You. Amen.
