5/25/25 Acts 17:22-34a “Keep It Simple”

22 May 5/25/25 Acts 17:22-34a “Keep It Simple”

5/25/25   Acts 17:22-34a       “Keep It Simple”

This is one Sunday of the year when we remember those who have gone home to heaven.  We honor our veterans on this day which is a good thing.  However, we can honor all of our loved ones as well.  Thinking along these lines of honoring those people I know on this Memorial Day, my thoughts turned to legacies.  More specifically, what legacies have been handed down to me from my family and friends who have gone home to heaven?  You know it takes a lot of people to make us who we are.  I can point to my parents who helped me know many of the moral values I have today.  My grandparents helped to shape my parents who shaped me.  We could go back generation after generation and find this.  These people have left a legacy and they probably never thought about it.  Most of the time it was just the right thing to do and they got this information from the Bible.  This is the same Bible that we have today.  So, if you want to leave a legacy, read your Bible and then live your Bible.  Today, we are reading about a legacy Paul left for us.  Let’s see if we can learn a little bit on how to preach the word of God to those who don’t know God.

Steve Shepherd tells this story of Sir Isaac Newton.  It seems that Newton had made a replica of the solar system, in miniature of course.  The sun was at the center and the planets revolved around it which was quite a revolutionary thought at the time.  Another scientist entered his study one day and saw this model.  He said, “What an exquisite thing this is!  Who made it?”  Newton replied, “Nobody!”  The other scientist who didn’t believe in God said, “You must think I am a fool.  Of course somebody made it and he is a genius.”  Then Newton gravely said, “This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you and I know, and yet I’m not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; still you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker. Now tell me, by what sort of reasoning do you use to reach such a conclusion?”  Of course Newton was right.  If a person can believe that someone built a simple building like a church, then why can’t they believe that there is a creator for the universe?  Everything has a start from someplace and it is the same way with our religion.

Paul was one of the earliest evangelists for Christianity.  Jesus moved him to preach to the Gentiles and that is what he did and he did it with vigor.  Paul would let nothing stand in the way of his preaching the Good News.  This is from a man who previously would let nothing stand in the way of persecuting Christians.  This is the man who held the cloaks of the people who stoned Stephen.  He had been a monster.

Then, of course, he met Jesus and everything changed.  But it didn’t change instantly.  Paul, who was known as Saul at this point, had to be blinded for 3 days.  When his heart changed the scales fell from his eyes and he could see for the first time in his life.  He had spent his life as a blind Pharisee.  He could physically see but was spiritually blind.  Then he spent some time studying Jesus before his ministry really took off.

I just want to stop here for a moment and say that I think that this type of spiritual blindest is all around us today.  This happens when we say that this part of the Bible doesn’t really pertain to me.  Or when we hear that times were different then than now so we have to change things according to now.  You can all name many instances of this in your life and the life of our world.  This is spiritual blindness brought about by the evil one.

Anyway, Paul would not be stopped after he came to love Jesus.  Think about this for a minute.  He was in prison many times.  He was severely whipped and stoned with rocks.  He had been exposed to death and left for dead.  He had been shipwrecked and spent a day and night on the open sea.  He had gone without sleep, food and water.  He was in constant danger from the Jews and the Gentiles.  But still he pushed forward.  He would never let spiritual blindness catch up with him again.

Today, we find him in Athens which is to the north.  As was his custom, Paul went to the Jews first and then the Gentiles.  Athens was a bustling place in those days.  It was the cultural and religious center for Greece.  As a matter of fact, there were hundreds of religions in Athens.  They were all pagan and false but they were all there.  Athens just about accepted anything that came along.  The only problem here for Paul was that any new religion coming in had to be approved by the rulers.  If he had come in preaching about Jesus without getting approval, he could be sentence to death.  In other words, the Greeks were saying ‘death to those who disagree with us.’

We have this problem in today’s world also.  We see this in Muslim countries that allow no other religions period.  The penalty for practicing Christianity in many of these countries is death.  I think that it is pretty amazing that our country doesn’t make any fuss about this when this happens.  Our spiritual blindness has been telling us that it is ok to kill Christians for their beliefs.  We have also been raised to think that we have freedom of religion in this country.  If I express my views from the Bible, I could be run out of town!  I could be called intolerant!  Once again our spiritual blindness says that it is ok to persecute Christians in our own country!  I don’t know about you but there is something really wrong with this picture and it is getting worse all the time.

Anyway, Paul is heading into Athens without permission to preach the scared word of Jesus.  The first thing that Paul notices in Athens is that they have idols everywhere.  It seems that they will worship anything and had idols for everything.  I wouldn’t doubt that they had idols for the god who gets rid of pocket gophers or maybe for the god who controls traffic lights or maybe for a god of mosquitos!  I think that Paul realizes that there might be a problem here.  But because Paul is who Paul is, he forges ahead preaching the Good News and he is once again in trouble.  He is brought before the ruling body for an examination of this new religion.

I think what Paul did here was rather ingenious.  Of course that is my human side working because what Paul did was to let the Holy Spirit speak on his behalf.  He admires the Greeks for being such a religious people.  He noticed that they had been praying to an unknown god who takes care of everything leftover from all the idols.  This makes sense if you are a pagan.  You might as well cover all the bases.  If you forgot to pray for something then the unknown god will take care of everything else.

With the stroke of a genius, Paul asks these people if they want to know this unknown god that they worshipped.  This takes their minds off of trying to figure out if Paul’s religion is legit.  Now they are ready to talk about their own religion.  Paul explains to them that God made the world and everything in it.  He explains who God is in terms of their religions

One of the things that we have trouble with is when we are talking with people of other religions.  Now I’m not talking Baptists or Catholics or Lutherans because they are all Christian like us.  I’m talking about Muslims, Hindus, and Mormons to name just a few.  I’m talking about the religions where they don’t believe that Jesus is God.  All these different cults are works based.  The more you do for God the better chances you have of getting to their mistaken idea of heaven.

We often times like to begin with the premise that these people are wrong.  Some of this has to do with them baiting us into arguments so they can show their side.  Maybe we should tell them that they are wonderfully religious people who are doing wonderful things for God.  Tell them that God loves it when people do good works for Him.  Tell them how God loves our acts of kindness and good will.  There must be thousands of instances of good works done in the name of God or Jesus.  Then you might ask if they would like to meet this wonderful God who has created everything in the world.  This might work for many but not for atheists who don’t believe in anything.  Anyway, it would be worth a try.  A little honey goes a long way in winning a discussion.

Then Paul tells them that we are all God’s offspring.  We are all children of God.  This is not something that is mystical or to be awed.  Rather it is just the way it is.  Now this God, who is God above all other gods or the God of gods, wants everything to be perfect for His children.  Notice that nowhere does Paul tell them not to do good things.  However, they would have to learn to be good themselves.  They would have to repent of their ways and follow God or the God of all their gods.

We have talked of this a lot.  God made the perfect place we call heaven.  There will be no more sorrows of any kind there.  There will be no evil there as Satan cannot come.  Therefore, none of Satan’s allies here on earth will be there either.  None of Satan’s workers will repent because they think they aren’t doing anything wrong.  If God started to let in the workers of Satan, then there would no longer be a perfect place for us.  Heaven would become a disaster.

Therefore, we are all called to repent.  This is the step that goes right along with confession.  We all know this.  Then Paul tells them God will judge the world.  He will judge by His standards which are the readings of the Bible.  He will judge through this man, Jesus Christ, who He sent to this world to die on the cross.  Then God raised Him up on the 3^rd day after His death.  Paul tells them that this is the proof.  There are witnesses.

Now we are 2000 years later and we seem to have forgotten the truth.  If we look back in the Old Testament we see this type of thing happening all the time.  The people would follow God closely for a generation or two.  Then they would start to fall away from God and follow the ways of the world.  In the Old Testament it was Baal or Asherah and this might have led to human sacrifices which were not uncommon in Biblical times.  Modern day sacrifices might be our abortion babies or victims of euthanasia.  Today, we fall away just like in days of old.  We are falling away and humanity for the most part will not listen to the words of the Bible.  But we must not give up.  We must keep on preaching and teaching.  The crux of this whole passage is the incredible amount of love and patience that Paul shows to the rulers of Athens.  This is all about love.  Paul loves these people as he loved all people.  He loved them with the love of Jesus Christ.

When Paul got to the part about resurrection of the dead, things came to a halt.  There were those that wouldn’t listen anymore because they disagreed with this.  It would have been at this point that they could have executed him.  However, there were many who believed in what he said because it made sense.  Paul had planted seeds and that is all we are called to do.

As we read various parts of the New Testament, especially Acts, when the new church is growing at a rapid rate, we need to be aware that one-size-evangelism does not fit all.  We see how Peter and others attacked the Jews and the Pharisees telling them that they had murdered the Messiah.  They didn’t hold back any punches and thousands came to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  Now we have Paul taking a much gentler approach with a people who thought they were superior in every way.

It is the same way today.  There are the few non-believers who really need their world shaken up a bit and we can use more aggressive tactics with them.  But for the most part, I think that we have to use the Paul approach.  If every Christian in the world would just love a non-Christian in a way that shows how much Jesus loves them, we would soon be the majority religion of the world.  Then if we continued to love one other person next year in the same way, it wouldn’t be long before we would be the only religion.  There will always be a few crackpots around who won’t believe anything or anyone but we can’t worry about them if they hear the message.  No matter how we present the Good News to people we should remember to keep it short and sweet.  Keep it full of love!

Joseph Smith tells a story about how we like to take something so simple and make it complicated.  I can name you a half a dozen such causes in our own area where we have to have meeting after meeting to try to get something done.  No one ever does anything but we feel good because we had a meeting about something.  Anyway, some people thrive on making the most obvious matters into something as obscure as possible.  Joseph Smith had a neighbor whose car had a bumper sticker that said, ‘Eschew obfuscation.’  Joseph said he spent some time looking up these words only to find out that they mean, “Keep it simple!”

Paul kept it simple, short and sweet.  He peppered the message with lots of love and many came to know Jesus.  It would be about 3 centuries later when Christianity would become the religion of Rome.  This is all because of the love of a few good disciples who taught in the love of Jesus Christ.  Don’t worry about what to say or how to say it.  Rely totally on the Holy Spirit and you will do just fine.  As we head into summer, I would like each of you to try to love someone in your world with the love of Jesus Christ.  It all starts with the person in front of you.  I thank Jesus for loving these people and also for first loving you.  Let’s pray.