It used to be that people knew their Bible. Not so much anymore. A generation ago, at least here in America, people grew up going to Sunday School and learning the Bible stories. But something happened, they got busy, they got seduced away, they saw hypocrisy in the church or perhaps they just liked to do things that they knew God and the others in their church would frown upon. So they quit going to church. And they had kids. And their kids didn’t grow up going to Sunday School, either. And we now live in a culture that is in some ways post-Christian.
That’s a scary culture and world to live in. It sounds kinda defeatist to say, too. But it is, on the whole, where our culture is. They’ve moved past Christianity. And they didn’t even slow down to wave goodbye. And here we are, living as Christians in a post-Christian world trying to figure out how to be relevant, how to make people care, how to bring people to God. And then we try to do things to attract people that used to work, things that made sense in a culture that valued and supported Christianity. And these things don’t work anymore.
So, today we’re going to look at Paul at Mars Hill. We’re going to see how he reached out to a culture that didn’t value the Bible, that didn’t even know the teachings of the Bible, we’ll see how in many ways he failed. Most people scoffed at his teachings… but some believed and a church in Athens was born.
Let us open in prayer.
I. Babbler
Today’s scripture says that Paul was staying in Athens not because it was on his list of places to preach. Rather, he was there waiting for some friends to join him. But as he waited he looked around at the culture and he found his heart to be heavy about it. He saw all the idols and it made him sick. And he wanted to do something about it.
I remember when I was a junior in High School our choir did a three day tour around the area. It was quite the event. I was a bit of a music nerd, and therefore one of the few people who took the musical part of the trip seriously. But everyone had a great time. We went up to Canada. We rode a ferry. We sang at a number of Christian schools in the area. It was quite the thing. But it also sent me into a deep depression. Why? Because I found myself repulsed by the antics of some classmates and schoolmates. Perhaps the chaperones weren’t doing their job like they should. Perhaps I was just really sensitive to what was going on around me. But whatever it was, it made me sick. Guys were trying to sneak into the girls rooms at night at the hotels. The conversations on the bus were all about things that I am not comfortable talking about from the pulpit or anywhere else, for that matter. It made me sick. It horrified me. I couldn’t believe the depravity that I saw around me. Even though none of it was directed at me, I found myself becoming physically ill by it. It wasn’t that I was judging those around me. I was finding myself hurt by their antics in a strange way.
I share this because that is precisely what Paul was going through when he came to Athens. He saw people worshiping idols and he was hurt by this and felt the need to do something about it. So he began to speak at the synagogue and in the town square, as he would usually do. But something different happened here. Instead of the normal response, he got people wondering what he was babbling about. He was preaching from scripture. He was sharing about Jesus’ resurrection and the people heard him and couldn’t understand him. Basically, they didn’t understand the religious language he was speaking.
Because we are living in a culture where people don’t know their Bibles, because we are living in a culture where the things of God are not lifted up as priorities, we find the same thing happening. If we start talking about sin and getting saved, they’re going to be looking at us and wonder what we’re babbling about. Or worse, they’re going to misinterpret what it is we are talking about altogether. If we want to reach the lost, if we want to share the good news, the gospel with those around us who haven’t heard it, we need to be sure that we aren’t babblers.
II. Arguing to the Scripture
When I was in High School I learned a formula for leading someone to Christ. This formula consisted of reading a couple Bible verses, mostly from the book of Romans and explaining that: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 6:23). God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9). Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).
I spent a fair amount of time sitting with children and walking them through this and asking them to pray with me. And, unfortunately, I found myself, like Paul, babbling just a bit. One time, actually the first time I tried to walk through this with a little girl, she was wanting me to pray for her sick brother with her. But I was so focused on getting through the road to salvation, that I totally missed what she was asking me for.
I was doing what I do every Sunday in my sermons. I was arguing from scripture. This works well with people who accept the Bible, who know the scriptures, who believe that the Word of God has something to say to them. That’s why my sermons always start with scripture and preach from it. This is where we get our Truth and it is what we teach from. As the Covenant Affirmation states, the Bible is the only perfect rule for faith, conduct and living.
But this isn’t the starting point that Paul started with at Mars Hill. He realized that he didn’t hold scripture in common with those around him. And so he couldn’t start there. Instead of arguing his point from scripture, he did something else that is a bit harder to do. He argued to scripture. This wasn’t about taking scripture or truth out of the equation. No, it was about starting where the listeners were and bringing them along until they could discover the scripture.
So Paul started where the people on Mars Hill were. He started with the very thing that distressed him so much, that made him sick. He started with their idolatry. But he used it. Instead of pointing out to them the error of their idolatry, he complemented them on it, “I see that you are a very religious people.” He used their poets and their philosophers to make his point. He didn’t quote the Bible to them, he quoted their own writings. I’m sure he didn’t think much of their own writings, but he used them anyway because that’s where they were.
The question we need to ask ourselves is who are the poets and philosophers that our culture listens to today. When we talked about this on Wednesday night, there was a bit of agreement: the music industry, the entertainment industry, sports figures, the media. These are the voices that are being listened to. When Whitney Houston died last Saturday, the world responded to it. People have the television and radio on nonstop and listen to personalities and voices all day long. Now, we have a choice. We can wallow in our wish that this weren’t the case. We can complain that society has left its Christian heritage. Or we can find ways to connect with that society and lead it back to Jesus. This is how Paul decided to face the difficulty. And this is how we can too.
III. Making Friends
We sometimes think that we need people to become good Christian folks and then we’ll welcome them into our fold. We sometimes believe that when people get their faith and their actions all straightened out, when they give up their sins and become the good, moral people that we like to hang around, then we’ll welcome them in to be one of us. But this isn’t how it works. This isn’t what Paul did and this won’t work in today’s world. You see, we are in many ways much like Athens back then. We have people living around us, in our community, in our culture, who have no conception of what the Bible says. They have no conception of right and wrong. We could just look down on them and dismiss them as the lost, or we could find those connection points, find their poets and philosophers, and see how they might lead to the gospel. Instead of complaining about the voices they follow, we can find ourselves connecting with those voices and dialoguing with them, and discovering where they bring us to God’s truth. And when they do, follow that path, take that journey with someone.
Here’s my challenge for you. And it’s a hard one. Develop relationships with non-believers. Make friends with people who aren’t followers of Christ. Relationships and friendships are what draw people in to church in today’s day and age. I talked with a couple church planters and pastors of very young churches while I was at Midwinter and they all said the same thing. It’s not strangers that come in to church. It’s not flyers that bring people in, either. It’s once someone has connected, they see something worthwhile and they invite their friends, and their friends invite their friends. But this isn’t going to happen if none of our friends aren’t Christian. So let’s go make those friends. It’s not the last step, they’ll have a journey to go on. They’ll need to be led to scripture, and then to God. But it’s a good first step; one that we can begin today.
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