February 21: Dr. Alistair Begg - Some Strange Things

[Music] good morning and welcome to our worship service online from the chapel at ocean reef so glad that you have joined us this morning our guest speaker once again this week ouster begg is going to be preaching from the 17th chapter of the book of acts so let me encourage you to take a moment now and find your bible and open to that 17th chapter of acts we're going to discover that we have far more in common with the first century as we live in the 21st century than we ever imagined but before we join our worship service let me invite you to join me in a prayer that we have prayed week by week as we say together lord help us see you more clearly in order that we might love you more dearly and follow you more nearly day by day amen and now let's join together in worship as we think about the greatness of our god [Music] is [Music] is [Music] is [Music] true [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] and feel the promised is [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] my [Music] [Music] i can't listen to that hymn without uh with a certain amount of uh cultural pride letting you know that it was written by a scottish minister um he was engaged to be married and he was struck with blindness and his fiancee decided that while she loved him she didn't love him enough to marry him in his blindness and so he lost his love his sister who was his close companion then uh took up the charge and she used to write for him things that needed written and she helped him by learning herself the greek new testament and hebrew so that he could prepare his sermons as he saw it adequately and then one day she came to her brother and she said i've fallen in love and i'm going to be married and we're going to move and so twice matheson was bereft and he sat down and penned the words all love that will not let me go i rest my weary soul and it's a wonderful testimony to the grace of god and i'm sure that's why it was chosen for valentine's day and uh so don't let's miss the opportunity right um a 14 year old girl in 1969 an american girl 1969 sent me a valentine's card um i was 17 she was 14. she's here with me this morning she won't stand up please stand up susan that's okay it's a long time since 1969 and i ain't 17 but anyway okay you have your text it is before you on your seat i hope you're not sitting on it it's not possible to understand the bible by sitting on it as far as i know we need to read it and so let me read the second section which is headed paul in athens and then a brief prayer and then we'll try and follow the tags together um now while paul was waiting for them at athens his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols so he reasoned in the synagogue with the jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there some of the epicurean and stoic philosophers also conversed with him and some said what does this babbler wish to say others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities because he was preaching jesus and the resurrection and they took him and brought him to the audiopages saying may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting for you bring some strange things to our ears we wish to know therefore what these things mean now all the athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new amen a brief prayer make the book live to me oh lord show me yourself within your word show me myself and show me my savior and make the book live to me amen well perhaps you're wondering where verses 10 to 15 went it's not right for me to cut sections out of the bible and as you can see i did it in order that what i wanted in would be here on two sides of one sheet i'm i would like to think that some of you have already done your homework and can fill in the gap but because many of you are like me and didn't do your homework let me let you know that the uproar that took place in thessalonica resulted as we discovered in paul and his friends being dispatched from there they go from there about 45 miles to the west of thessalonica to a place called berea and in berea he does what he did in thessalonica he goes to the synagogue and luke is very careful to tell us that the people who were present in berea were actually more noble than the jews to whom he had spoken in thessalonica and the distinguishing feature of them was as recorded by luke that they received the word of god with great eagerness examining the scriptures every day to see if these things were so so in other words they were listening to the apostle paul and they decided that they better go home and check in the bible to see whether what he was saying was actually the case which of course is what everybody should do when they listen to anybody speaking from the bible in the 17th century newton of amazing grace notoriety says to his congregation as he stands before them about to preach in the morning i counted my honor and happiness that i preached to a free people who have the bible in their hands to your bibles i appeal i entreat i charge you to receive nothing upon my word any farther than i can prove it from the word of god and then he says and bring every preacher and every sermon that you hear to the same standard one of the great concerns for me now as i approached my 70th year as people asked me about the state of the church in western europe and particularly now in the united states i always say one of the great concerns is biblical illiteracy that people are growing up with a scant knowledge of the bible and as a result of that they are then susceptible to every kind of idea notion theology and philosophy because unless there is an objective standard against which we can judge all that is offered to us then we're at sea if you think about it in comparative terms as these planes take off and land here it's a relatively short runway and they need to be very very good one would not want to be on the plane overhearing the control tower speaking to them and telling them that they were now on an approach and they were at a thousand feet and hearing the pilot reply well what do you mean by a thousand feet uh you can't operate on that basis nor in the health center uh when they are dealing in the matter of the double circulatory system of the heart you don't want variability you want absolute authority you want security and that is not in the word of the preacher that is in the word of god well you say well then get on with it you've given us the word let's look at it together super here we are the agitation that had been going on in thessalonica then took place in berea and so under cover of darkness paul is shipped off a few companions take him i and i presume he went by boat some 300 miles from thessalonica from berea out to the port and then from there down 189 nautical aeronautical miles if you're interested in about uh 289 if you try to drive it anyway he goes off on his own and he gives word to those who had been his companions to go back and say to paul to silas and to timothy please come and see me get here as soon as you can and then we pick up the the account as you have it in your text now while paul was waiting for them at athens so this is where he is now he has made a fairly significant geographical move and as you look at this and that opening phrase you made here say to yourself not a bad place to get stuck for a few days after all many of us will have been to athens and have enjoyed the experience very much indeed uh the the city in paul's day uh is something of a ruin in comparison to it now was aesthetically or architecturally magnificent it was at the same time as we see from the text philosophically uh sophisticated it was at the same time morally decadent and spiritually confused indeed spiritually deceived and if you ever read thoreau the great travel writer one of the things he says about travel is when you go somewhere it is not simply that you see things you haven't seen he says but it is you begin to view things in a way that you've never viewed them before because the ability to be put in that new context draws out from you an understanding of life and so uh paul i suppose could have enjoyed athens as a tourist but luke doesn't tell us whether he was delighted with the architecture but you'll note what he was able to tell us namely that he was distressed by the idols it says here his spirit was provoked within him um the word that is used in greek is the word which gives us our english word paroxism in other words this was not some kind of superficial reaction on the part of paul it was a gut level reaction if you like that is he viewed all of these circumstances the various shrines the various altars he didn't as we are tempted to do when we get off a cruise ship or move from the airport in athens immediately reach for our cell phone and begin to take photographs of it so that we can show people what a strange and wonderful place it actually is the fact that we may be able to do that is an indication i think of the absence of the kind of conviction which was at the core of paul himself remember that he was brought up as a good hebrew boy that he went to bed at night as he began in the morning with his parents taking him through the shema hero israel the lord your god the lord is one and he knew the ten commandments he knew you will have no idols you shall have no other gods before me and here he finds himself in a city about which he must have known since he was a youth and confronted by these things and he's provoked by it in his spirit in uh in a contemporary cliched language it really got to him it really got to him as many a day or something say you know what really gets me and if we had had occasion to talk to paul he would say it really got me he's in the cultural capital of the world the home of plato and socrates the adopted home of aristotle who have in the centuries before taking their best shot at explaining the world and explaining life and making sense of human existence and it is there that he is moved by the sight of these things oh you say a place full of idols we know nothing of places full of idols while we may not have the same commitment to the structures but we do understand the nature of idolatry in simple terms um idolatry is turning a gift from god into a god it is turning a good thing into an ultimate thing it is deifying something which we were given simply to enjoy not to worship if you're cs lewis fans you will have read screw tape letters and one of the ways in which the um the nephews of screwtape himself are encouraged to go against the enemy that is against believing people the followers of jesus the enemies of the evil one and screwtape says to his nephew he says you know one of the ways we can get these people is by encouraging them to take good things that our enemy has given them but to take them at the wrong time or in the wrong quantity which is really very clever if you think about it so sex which is given for our good becomes a monstrosity that food which is given to be enjoyed becomes the source of gluttony that work which is the privilege to expand ourselves in endeavors becomes a god in itself and children grow up saying i wish my father had come home once in a while it was almost as though his work was an idol or rest rest itself and we could go through the list so that we could realize that although we're dealing with something long ago and far away here in terms of the historical record it's not really that far from us that is why incidentally the bible makes it very clear that there is no intellectual road to god we do not come to know god by mathematical formula we do not come to know god by investigation ultimately in fact when paul wrote to the corinthians he explained to them that in the wisdom of god the world through its wisdom did not know god and he says on that occasion as he writes to them where is the wise man where is the scholar where is the great thinker of this age you see the bible is very clear that there is an invisible boundary between god the creator and ourselves as his creation he is in the words of one of my friends uh david wells um beyond or outside the raid the the realm of our intuitive radar that the boundary can only be crossed from the one side and that is that god crosses the boundary which is of course exactly what he has done for us in jesus and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory so not by way of investigation otherwise those people would have had it taped by the time paul arrived but by way of revelation you see what paul says in that verse actually which i've already quoted half of it since since in the wisdom of the of god the world did not uh through wisdom no god the verse continues it please god through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe because the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to those who are being saved it is the power of god so it's no surprise and look at the text what does he do he does what he did in thessalonica business as usual play it again sam so he reasoned in the synagogue first in the synagogue in fact luke tells us wonderfully here that paul was really very capable not everybody that can stand behind a box can go down by the food truck and just engage people in conversation some of us that get up behind the box are afraid in public some of us are so insecure we don't know what to do with ourselves it is an interesting person who is able both to stand as it were before the devout people in the religious context in paul's case the synagogue and then go down and hang with them in the marketplace but that's exactly what he did you can see it in the text i'm not making it up he reasoned in the synagogue with the jews and the devout persons and in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there you see it because he knew that he had a message that he'd been called to proclaim he wasn't there to take photographs as it were anachronistically in athens he was there on a divine commission he was a new man with a new message and a new mission and so whether he's in the pulpit or whether he's amongst the people it's the same story and this in that context you will notice this is verse 18 that he was brought into contact with the philosophers uh philosophers who were not you will see particularly quick with their compliments and what does this babbler wish to say so any idea that everyone is going around saying you know the mighty apostle paul is here we just want to hang on every word no they said i think he's a bit of a bird brain to tell you the truth that's the word that is used here the kind of magpie that goes around and picks up scraps and bits and pieces from here there and everywhere they say where's the charlatan who is this plagiarist what is this chap got to say to us that may be the way you've come this morning some of you actually i really don't know i i i i've been called worse things than bird brain i can tell you that and birdbrain fits very well well some said well i don't know if that's fair enough we could say rather that he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities now why would they say that well luke tells us because he was preaching jesus and the resurrection so in other words he is proclaiming jesus and anastasis the resurrection and so the way the greek mind thinks they say well it must be the male uh deity jesus and the female cohort anastasius and so they got the wrong hand of the stick now which is of course not unusual and so he's going to have to try and sort that out now the next time if there is a next time which will be next sunday albion well we'll consider the substance of the address that comes that's the big push for the end and then i make a run for the airport all right but for now for now let's just notice how these ancient attempts at coming to terms with life are alive and well in 21st century america all right because you look at this and you say well epicurean and stoic philosophers who conversed with them well well let's just uh recognize uh how this ties in with where we are epicurus was born in 341 bc he died in 270. we could spend a long time which we won't uh trying to in an elaborate way unpack epicurean philosophy at the risk of oversimplification let me suggest to you that we can think of it in terms of a preoccupation with chance the roll of the dice with indulgence let the good times roll and with escape we got to get out of here if it's the last thing we ever do the epicurean philosophy regarded life as being simply a kind of random collection of atoms the human being was just a gigantic big blob of molecules held in suspension the epicureans decided that there was nothing after death when you're gone you're gone and therefore there was no possibility of judgment that needed to be feared now i never had a chance to ask shakespeare myself and i'm doubt you have done either but when in that wonderful scottish play macbeth and macbeth has his soliloquy remember tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death this is epicurean philosophy out out brief candle what is life but a passing shadow a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more it is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying absolutely nothing now put that on a front of a t-shirt and walk around here with it and put on the back have a nice day it just doesn't work it doesn't work you cannot make sense of human existence on terms of chance indulgence and escape it won't work nobody can live with a sense of hopelessness that is pervasive from that perspective if you didn't do shakespeare you did poetry at school you went to good school i hope as i did you know swinburne don't you and the garden of proserpine or you say i don't know try me well yes you do i know you know it it goes like this from too much love of living from hope and fear set free we thank with brief thanksgiving whatever gods may be that no life lives forever that dead men rise up never that even the weariest river winds somewhere to the sea or if you want to come closer to date uh deadpool society with robin williams as he stands in the hallway and he shows the pictures of all of them and he says boys they were once as you are now and you will be as them you will eventually simply be a photograph on the wall that's all there is he says to them that's epicurus 4th century bc alive and well unless i'm missing something as i move amongst the well-heeled community on the east side of cleveland unless i'm missing something it's alive and well at the other side of it stoics zeno was the founder of stoicism the epicureans were known as the philosophers of the garden the stoics were known as the philosophers of the porch and as they talked and conferred with one another again at the risk of oversimplification their whole take on life was fatalistic you just had to give yourself up to the eventualities of whatever came your way you had to endure pain it was the stiff upper lip it was the big men don't cry kind of approach we'll get through it all which again we learned at school in fact many of us at school had teachers who suggested to us that this was really the way to get through life right now we're in henley w.e henley not you yeah fortunately you got it sorted out in a way he never managed out of the night that covers me black as the pit from pole to paul i thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul in the fell clutch of circumstance i haven't winced nor cried aloud under the blundenings of chance my head is bloody but unbowed beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid it matters not how straight the gate how charged with punishments the scroll i am the master of my fate i am the captain of my soul now i ask you do you really believe that no matter who taught it to you and that is what paul was up against he wasn't afraid of it he entered right into it he clearly wasn't obnoxious he definitely wasn't rude in fact he had a sensitivity of spirit that we would covet so that whether he was as i say in the religious context of the pulpit in the marketplace or in the university campus which is essentially where he ends up in all of these places he spoke to them straightforwardly and graciously no with that we were able to do the same because you see they were not sufficiently convinced of their philosophies if they were they if their worldview worked for them if it really worked for them they could have just dismissed him hey well he's a he's a babbler wait a minute hang on now you'll notice in the text they took him and brought him to the areopagus that's next sunday relax and they said may we know what this new teaching is that you're presenting we'd like to know you're you're bringing strange things to our ears wish to know therefore what these things mean not how they feel what they mean what does it mean and then of course we're told that all the athenians and the foreigners who lived there spend their time doing nothing except playing croquet golf and uh and carts no no no they were doing uh spending their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new well you got a lot of time down here folks and we've got less in front of us than we have behind us and if our world view doesn't work at this point we better get a new world view and that's what those fellows were up against and paul was so clear with that ratzinger who was the pope that retired in one of his books light of the world has the foreword written by a very clever man by the name of george vegel and in the introduction to that book he talks about how the world in which we find ourselves living is a world that has lost its story humanity is viewed he says as a collection of cosmic chemical accidents a humanity with no intentional origin no noble destiny and thus no path to take through history let's just put that down at the ground level for the average public school student they go to school and there is nothing to explain to them their existence where they came from they imbibe a philosophy which says there's nothing to worry at the end because the end is just oblivion and so why don't you just listen to all these billy eilish lyrics and satisfy your soul for the brief moment that you have as a walking shadow neither of those philosophies can deal with life and certainly cannot face death i think i've told you before because i'm so struck by this in the post-impressionist painter gauguin who's this painting to which i refer us in the boston museum of fine art and he wrote on his canvas he didn't usually write on his canvases when i was here last time i'm sure i mentioned it because i went to see we went to see the movie that was here on van gogh and van gogh and gogan were friends and enemies and fought each other and he wrote up on the corner of his painting where do we come from what are we where are we going and you know what's fascinating in all of our political preoccupations at the present time and our intersectionality and our devaluation of language and our great confusions that sweep across our nation do you know what's interesting that is absent from the great dialogue it is the absence of these questions these questions which are the questions of the day for every stripe and for every color and paul goes into that place in athens and we haven't even started his sermon yet but we're finishing this one now for sure and what is essentially saying to them well if he was here he'd say hey well this is valentine's day alistair finish with a finish with a good valentine's verse for god so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life the greatest love story ever told conveyed by a little jewish convert amongst the philosophers and the marketplace dwellers and the religious attendees in athens deep love of jesus vast unmeasured boundless free rolling has the mighty ocean in its fullness over [Music] [Music] is [Music] to my glorious love of jesus [Music] sweet [Music] [Applause] [Music] jesus [Music] and it lifts me [Music] thank you for joining us again this morning i hope you found yourself challenged and encouraged by alster's message he's going to be speaking one more time with us that'll be again next sunday so i hope you'll plan to join us until then hear this benediction this word of blessing friends may the lord bless you and keep you may the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you may the lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and fill you with his peace in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit amen god bless have a great week [Music]

Channel: The Chapel at Ocean Reef

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Length: 39min 41sec (2381 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021