Worldviews

The Apostle Paul engages his Greek audience in a fruitful discussion of the Gospel by understanding and caring about their views of the world.

As many of you know, the Lord opened up the eyes of my heart and changed my life at the age of 20. I was a student at Michigan State University studying journalism, particularly broadcast journalism, and it was in the summer of 1998 that I went up to a camp in northern Michigan, where the Lord grabbed hold of my heart and forever changed the course of my life. My two favorite things that I want to share with you this morning come from this period of my life, and the doctrine that we’re going to look at this morning is important to me, partially because of these two things. The first is a camp. The first is Camp Barakel. This is camp in northern Michigan that I attended as a child. It sits at the edge of the Huron National Forest in the least populated county in all of Michigan. Barakel is a Hebrew word that means blessed by God, and this is a place that surely God has blessed. I suppose lots of people have their favorite camp. You probably all have your favorite camp, the one you went to or the one you worked at. So there are lots of really good camps out there, but I love what I love about Camp Barakel is how committed they are to the mission to preach the gospel and to form young men and women into ministers of the gospel. Passionate, committed followers of Jesus. The fun of camp at Camp Barakel is the context for forming hearts and minds for Christ, and they do it with a very large residential staff that all raise their support in order to be able to help run the camp. And then they have hundreds of volunteers that donate their time every year who are committed to seeing lives transformed by Christ. And I speak at this camp every summer to high school and junior high kids, and even though it is 10 hours away now, I will continue to speak at that camp.

Why can I trust that scripture, that the Bible, is God’s word, not just be told that it is?

The other thing I want to share with you this morning is my love for college aged young adults. So whether or not they go to college or not, I don’t care. But the, the age roughly that 18-23 year old time period of life. I love young people who are in this time of life. This is the this is the time when a young person moves from understanding the gospel through the lens of his parents’ faith to seeing the gospel through his own. A lot of great questions usually get asked at this point. Why can I trust that scripture, that the Bible, is God’s word, not just be told that it is? Why can I trust that it is? Do I follow Jesus or do I simply follow my parents who follow Jesus? How do I compare and contrast my beliefs with the beliefs of other people around me, people who I am increasingly meeting and are getting to know and befriending? How do I compare what I think to what I’m hearing from other people? A lot of times this is the moment in life where a young person begins encountering people who have very different beliefs and ways of understanding the world.

And I happen to think that it’s actually a very good thing for Christians to ask big questions and to seek out true answers. I think that’s a great thing to do. And I’ve had the opportunity to work with college students and young adults throughout my entire ministry, and I’ve always enjoyed the conversations that I have with people in this, this time of life. Back in January, I had the privilege of having pizza with quite a number of the young college age adults here at Calvary; got to know them a little bit. I’m excited about the kind of ministry we can do together in the future to really focus in and develop that area of our ministry more.

What are the major worldviews?

So having come to faith as a young adult and having worked at a camp with young adults and having been involved in ministries with young adults for the past 20 years, I have seen the need for Christians to have a good grasp of other worldviews. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this morning. We’re going to look at other worldviews. The definition of worldview is built right into the world, into the word. It’s a, it’s a view of the world that everyone has a worldview, whether you think you do or not. You might say, well, I don’t really think I have a world. Yes, you do. You have a way of seeing the worldview. You have a way of interpreting all of the things that are happening around you. Some worldviews are robust, and they’re really detailed, like the religions of the world. So think of world views like Islam and Judaism and Christianity. These would be considered monotheistic – one God worldviews that we find in the world. Some worldviews aren’t nearly as thought out as that. They don’t have quite the detail in them. So, so things like hedonism. Hedonism is just the pursuit of pleasure. That’s all it is. So anything that makes me happy, that’s what I’m going to do. That’s, that’s where I’m going to go after. I’m going to go after pleasure. And there are concepts that that make up different parts of worldviews. So sometimes there’s not a full worldview, sometimes just a little piece of it, something along the lines of secular humanism or atheism or moral relativism. Basically, all the isms, if you hear a word with an ism in it, that’s either a part of a worldview or it’s all of a worldview. Now, if that is confusing, if what I just said is kind of confusing to you, do not worry. I am not going to teach all this stuff this morning. We’re not going to do like an overview of all of those things.

Why should Christians study worldviews?

And in no way, by the way, am I suggesting that every Christian needs to be keeping up with every form of worldview that is out there. What I am going to suggest this morning, and what the Bible clearly teaches, is that we are called to be salt and light in a dark and decaying world. We’re called to be that. Our directive from Jesus is not just to sit idly by while the world goes its own direction. It’s not to let our friends and family members continue on in error while we remain silent. Instead, the command from Jesus is to be an ambassador of his gospel, to be a bearer and a representative of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, to be present in the world as representatives of the good news of salvation. And to do that, if we’re going to do that well, we need to learn how our friends think and what it is that they value, so that we can speak the gospel into their lives at precisely the places where their understanding of truth is deficient. We need to be able to do that.

When we learn what our friend believes about the world, we will know how to share the gospel in a way that he will understand. The Apostle Paul is a master of this kind of engagement with the world around him. He cared so much about people. He wanted people to come to Christ so much that he took the time to understand what it is that they believed about the world so that he could start there and walk them toward Christ. And we’re going to see him do this today in ancient Athens.

See, my interest in worldviews is driven by my love for people. I know you have people in your lives, and your families, and your friend groups, and your places of work who don’t know Jesus and you care about them. And that’s why I want you to learn about worldviews and how to engage them.

Paul’s strategy for engaging and interacting with people from other worldviews in Acts 17:16-34?

Worldviews are not a traditional doctrine of scripture, but engaging them as part of our mission. So let’s stand in the crowd in Athens and watch Paul engage the non-Christians. You’ve already heard the passage read earlier in the service, so what I have to do is have Acts 17 open in front of you. We’re going to begin in verse 16 this morning. Go ahead and have that open in your Bible or on your device. And we’re going to look at Paul’s strategy for engaging and interacting with people from other worldviews. We’re going to look at how he does this, and then we’re going to look at a specific example of Paul speaking to the people of Athens.

Let’s start with Paul’s strategy. Let’s start with this strategy. Paul’s mission team at this point, the people that he’s traveling with includes Silas and Timothy. Those two guys are up in Berea. That’s where Paul just was. And so he kind of traveled on ahead of them down to Athens. And so now he’s waiting for them to join him and he’s got some time to kill. And as he waits in this city, it says his spirit was provoked within him as he saw the idols of the city. So this being ancient Greece, he was looking at actual statues of idols. That’s what he’s he’s looking at, statues all over town, of people or gods, or false gods like Zeus, who’s the head of an entire family. If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, Zeus is sort of the head, the top guy of an entire family of different gods like Apollo and Artemis. If you read the portion where Paul goes to, if Ephesus, you’ll see they really like Artemis, they’re Artemis. They’ve got a big temple into to Artemis in Ephesus, and he’s got Athena and Dionysus, who’s the god of wine ecstasy. If you’re familiar with Greek mythology, you know that these stories are filled with immortal gods always messing with people. They’re always messing. And they’re always getting involved in the lives of people in the really messing people up all the time. And if you, as a mortal, want something in particular, what you have to do is you have to make sure that you go to the particular god of whatever it is that you want and you have to appease that God. So if you want money, you have to go to the God of money or fertility or success or if you want rain on your crops, you’ve got to go to a particular God or if you you want good luck in something, whatever it is, you have to go to the particular God.

You have to appease them all the time. And so it’s very superstitious in that sense. But here’s what’s really interesting. You think you think a town like that would seem very backwards to us. And yet at the same time that all this idolatry is going on, that idolatry, that mythology is combined with a very high value placed on thinking and learning. Athens was the home of Plato and Socrates. Now you might not know what those guys taught, but I’m sure you’ve heard their names. They have a big influence on philosophy. Even today, a lot of our popular philosophy is actually rooted in ancient Greece. You know what? Athens was also the home of? It was the home of democracy. We get democracy from ancient Athens. Our political system is Athenian. That’s why when Henry Bacon designed the Lincoln Memorial, he used the Parthenon in Athens as the model because he wanted the defender of democracy to be linked to the birthplace of democracy. So Athens was a place rich in development and discovery and learning and knowledge. But at the same time, it was also a place of idolatry and sinfulness and superstition that was everywhere.

Paul sees idolatry, and his spirit  provokes him to engage the people with the gospel.

It was quite a combination. So, Paul is he’s walking around this city and he sees the idolatry of this majestic place, and it says that his spirit is provoked within him. For all of its advancement in knowledge, the people in this place, they don’t know Jesus. And so what has happened is they’re their great center of learning and knowledge has been filled with idols because they don’t know Jesus. They’re great learning and developments have not resulted in great truth. And Paul is provoked, there’s a stirring in his spirit in reaction to this place, it’s so far from Jesus. Being provoked means having a feeling stir inside of you. You’re provoked when you have your your feelings within you stirred up, it means being moved to react. Usually, when we talk about being provoked, we talk about being provoked to anger. Ok. Usually, when we say someone is provoked, that means that person has become very angry inside a lot of Christians today when they see the idolatry and the sinfulness of our culture, many of them are provoked to anger or to disgust. Ok. It’s usually the two directions. There’s provocation to anger, provocation to disgust. They’re either angry about the choices that people are making, or they’re disgusted by the level of sinfulness that’s going on there. A lot of times that leads to judgment of people or of groups that we don’t know. That’s that’s where we often go. Or if we do know a person, and sometimes it leads to a cutting of relationship with people that we know. My wife and I talk about this sometimes. We often talk about what is the sinfulness of the world do inside of us? What is the sin we see in the world do in our hearts? Often it provokes us to judgment or to disgust. Now I want to say this morning that that that visceral negative reaction that we have toward sin in the world, whether it’s in our lives, what’s going on with us or whether it’s in the world, that that should be negative. There should be a negative reaction to sinfulness. That’s a good thing when it is. But often what that does is provoke us to anger or disgust over the person. We get very upset at the person. And sometimes that even leads to judgment against that person or that group of people. But here’s what’s interesting. This is what my wife and I discovered as we talked about it. That reaction changes when it’s someone we know and love. The reaction changes when it’s somebody that we we know, someone that we care about, anger and disgust turns into concern and a desire to help when it’s someone in our family, or in our church, or someone that we like. So, before I mentioned and discussed it. But now I’m concerned. If some guy on TV says something horrible, I think that guy ought to lose his job.

How dare? He said. But if my son says the same thing, oh, he needs grace and help, right? It changes based on my relationship.

Love all people

Love and relationship makes the difference in the provocation of my spirit. But the gospel says something different about what it means to be provoked by our culture because it requires our hearts to expand and for our love to include all people. See what the gospel does, it doesn’t tell us not to be upset about sin. But it changes how we see all people. Which sends our provocation in a different direction.

Who is my neighbor? Jesus says everyone’s your neighbor. Everyone’s your neighbor. Who do I have to love? Jesus says, you have to love your enemies. You even have to pray for people who persecute you. That’s who you have to love. So that hope and love you feel in your heart, toward your spouse or your child has to be expanded to everyone around you, especially those that you find it hardest to love. Paul looked at a city full of idols, and it provoked his spirit, but that provocation of his spirit didn’t move him to disgust or condemnation. It moved into evangelism. It moved him to want to engage these folks with the gospel. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and devout people in the marketplace every day with those who happen to be there. See, Paul was moved by the idolatry to engage with people because he wanted them to know Jesus. He wasn’t disgusted by these people. He wasn’t critical of these people. He didn’t retreat from the culture. Oh, I can’t believe what’s happening in Athens. I got to get out of here. I got to move away from all of this. He didn’t go into his Christian community and then lob judgment out to the people outside of it. His heart for people moved him to figure out how he could interact with these folks so that he could share the gospel, a gospel that was so foreign to these people they didn’t even know what to do with it once they heard it from him.

Philosophers were were coming and listening to what he had to say. The people who put all their time into learning, they were coming to hear what Paul had to say. Some of them were dismissive. What is this guy talking about? What is this babbler babbling on about? What is he saying? But you know what? Others. Others said he seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, which, by the way, is exactly what he was. He’s a preacher of foreign divinities. He knows that; these guys were on the on course. They were on track. And so what they did was, they said, you know, we want to hear this more, but we’ve got to get this guy in front of more people. Let’s take him to the the Areopagus. And so they took him to the Areopagus, which is a place where you could present basically, it’s a it’s a it’s a public forum.

Basically, what they wanted was a TED talk on on this new God they hadn’t yet heard about. And then so tell us more. Inform us we need to. We’ve got a statue here to an unknown God, and we need to know more about it. So will you please tell us more about him? Because in Athens, the culture was such that that they just love hearing something new and we’ve been talking about our own stuff for a while. This guy has come from out of town. He’s got new things to say. Let’s hear what he has to say. If you’ve ever heard the phrase marketplace of ideas, that’s what’s going on here. This is literally a marketplace, a public forum for talking about ideas. An open forum, by the way, for communicating ideas is actually a really good thing to create. Our our freedom of speech in this country is rooted in cultures like this, where people could just talk about what it is they think and believe, and there would be respect for those things. We’re going to look at this speech here at the Areopagus in just a minute, but before we do, I want you to think about Paul’s strategy. I want you to think about his strategy here. He sees idolatry, and his spirit  provokes him to engage the people with the gospel.

He’s not disgusted. He’s not judgmental. And that’s because he loves people. All people. If you go to Romans 9, you’ll get a little sense of this and Romans 9, Paul says that he would be willing to give up his own salvation in Christ, if it meant that his brothers and sisters who are also Jews would come to faith in Jesus. And he knows that can’t happen, that’s hypothetical, but that’s how much he loves them. He’d give up his own salvation if it meant the salvation of others. And we know Paul’s passion for non-Jewish people is the same because we’re reading about it right here in this passage. These are hard hearted people with very different worldviews, some of whom are going to hear Paul’s gospel and they’re going to mock Paul, and then I mock his God. And despite that, he reasons with them because he loves them.

When we spend the time to get to know someone and we are respectful, a respectful student of their worldview and what they think, they will often give you the opportunity to be an ambassador for the gospel.

In the fall of 1998, I had been a Christian for about three months at that point, when a man came to me in tears asking for my help, I had been teaching at a church here, giving my testimony at the end of three months of being a camp counselor, and he heard my story. He knew I was a student at Michigan State and he came to me just very upset because his daughter had just married a Muslim man. And he this man was a student at Michigan State, and he asked if I’d be willing to go and talk to this guy. Share the gospel and try to lead him out of his error. I had been a Christian for three months at this point, so I, not having any clue about Islam or any sense of what I was getting myself into, said yes, I will do this. And so I went out and I bought Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands A Verdict, and I read the like three pages on Islam out of the middle of that book. And I prayed that God would help me, and I went and I met this guy two times for lunch. I do not have a great story to tell you this morning. I wish I did. We met two times. He shared with me right up front in the first sentence or two after we met that he had no interest in becoming a Christian and he didn’t in the time that I was meeting with him. But that didn’t stop me from discovering the heart and the patience and the perseverance that Paul shows here. What I discovered is that when you spend the time to get to know someone and you’re respectful, a respectful student of their worldview and what they think, they will often give you the opportunity to be an ambassador for the gospel. And that’s what we’re called to be.

Paul starts with a compliment about what they have in common

Let’s look at what Paul does with his opportunity, let’s look at an example here. He starts with a compliment. Starts with a compliment. Men of Athens, I perceive that you are in every way, very religious. What’s a strange way to start this off, isn’t it? I mean, he’s been walking around this town, he’s been looking at all of these idols. Wouldn’t you think he’d start with men of Athens? What is with all of this idolatry? You actually believe this stuff? These are statues. You actually believe this? Look at the immorality of your culture. It’s terrible. You’d better repent and turn to Jesus, or you’re going to be judged. You’d think you’d start there, right? Everything I just said is true. It’s all true. But if you started there, that approach would probably have turned his audience away. Instead, he starts with the fact that they are religious and that they believe in Gods. Paul believes in one God; they believe in many gods, but here’s the key to engage in worldviews church. Here’s the key to it. Here’s how you start. You don’t start with where you differ. You start with what you have in common. That’s where you start. I see that you are so religious that you even have a statue to an unknown God. See, the Greeks were so concerned about possibly offending one of these gods and having their lives fall apart that they even had a statue that was just a catchall statue for any God they might have missed. Just in case we think we got them all covered. But there’s Gods out there. If you’re not around, if you’re not represented here, use this statue so that we can appease you.

Paul observes their worldview and sees a way to share the gospel in a way they understand

And Paul looks into this worldview, and you know what he sees. He sees an angle that will give him the on ramp to the gospel for his audience. He had to be observant. He had to walk around town prayerfully and look at the different ways the people thought. He had to look deep into this culture and find it. But once he did, he had a way for his audience to grab onto the gospel that he preached. Now, if you look at Paul’s speech from verses 24-31, you will see that Paul does not sound anything like the guy who wrote those letters to all the churches that we have. He doesn’t sound anything like that. You will not find anything in there that sounds like 1 Corinthians or Ephesians. You won’t find that. He sounds like a guy who knows how to use words and concepts that his pagan Greek audience will understand. He talks about the God who made the world and everything in it. Who is the Lord of Heaven and Earth. And you know what he says? He says this God does not live in manmade temples. That would explode the mind of Greeks listening to him. You kidding me? Look at all the temples. We built temples to all these guys. You’re telling me the unknown God doesn’t even need these temples. Because this is the God we don’t know. Ok, well, tell us more. Tell us, tell us more about this God. He also doesn’t need human beings to serve him, Paul says. You know that because he’s the one who gives us everything. Wait, wait a minute, Paul, are you saying that the unknown God that we were trying to serve with the statue that we don’t have to take anything to him, we take things to all these gods. We don’t take anything to this God because he’s the one who provides everything we need. He gives to us. That’s super weird, Paul. Tell us more. Let’s hear about it. He also made the nations, he gave different lands and boundaries, and he told these different nations to seek God and to feel their way toward him, which is what you’ve been doing. You’ve been feeling your way toward God. But you know what? He’s actually not that far from you. This God I’m talking about, he’s not that far from you. He’s accessible. So, so Greeks, your pursuit of God, that’s a good thing. You and I are aligned in that way. We are both seeking God. But here’s the problem with the Greeks. They’re seeking of God has landed them in idolatry so far. But Paul doesn’t start with what the error they made. He starts with what they have in common. The fact that they want to pursue God is a God given impulse, and Paul applauds them for using that God given impulse.

And then Paul quotes two Greek sources, and this is where it gets really weird. This is where this is, where Paul, it’s hard for us to understand Paul sometimes, but this is awesome if you grab hold of it. Paul quotes two Greek sources. He quotes one of their philosophers, and then he also quotes a line out of one of their poets. In him, we live and move and have our being. He’s not quoting the Old Testament there. He’s quoting a Greek philosopher at this point. And, one of your poets said we are indeed his offspring. You know what that be like? That would be like if I was presenting the gospel and I started off with a quote from Hillary Clinton and then followed it up with a line from a Pharrell Williams song. That’s what that would be. That’d be like your philosopher Hillary Clinton once said. The worst thing that can happen in a democracy, as well as in an individual’s life, is to become cynical about the future and lose hope. And your great poet Pharrell Williams once said. Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth. Right. You think we can get to the gospel from there? Oh yeah, no problem. I can go from there to the gospel real fast. It’s a wonderful thing. These are worldview statements, even if those who wrote them and said them do not see themselves this way. these are statements of people who are feeling their way toward God. They’re trying to make sense of the world, they’re trying to figure out hope and happiness. Even if they wouldn’t say that’s what they’re doing, the bits of truth that linger in the worldviews of those around us are footholds for the gospel. That’s what they are.

Where do we find true hope for those who have grown cynical? Why does the pursuit of happiness drive us? And where can we find it? Well, Jesus is our true hope;; he gives us a future. Who pulls away our cynicism? Jesus provides true happiness that we can’t find in the world and worshiping other things in the world, created things.

Gospel’s call to bring correction and guiding them to Jesus

But church, as we look for these footholds for the gospel in the worldviews of others, we can’t lose sight of the gospel call to bring correction and guidance as we engage these things. You’ll see Paul transition in verse 29, if you look there. He’s moved into their way of seeing the world right. He’s even quoted their own people. He’s, he’s gone as far as he can into their worldview so they can rest in there. You can say we are seeing eye to eye on these things. Here’s where we are together. But then in verse 29, he begins to guide them toward Jesus, starting from their own philosophy. If we are God’s offspring, like your philosopher said, that means that we come from him, that we spring off from him.

He doesn’t come from us, which means God can’t be made of materials. He cannot be conjured up by human imagination. See, we don’t produce God. God produced us.

Right now, Paul says we are in a time when God will overlook our ignorance of him, but we need to repent of our sin. Particularly of our idolatry, because there’s an appointed day coming and an appointed judge who will judge our sins with righteousness. The people of Athens are tracking with Paul right up to this point. But then he says something that divides them. Then he says something that throws this whole thing off. We know who the judge is, this judge that’s coming to judges and righteousness. We know who he is because God raised him from the dead and with saying that with God raised him from the dead, he splits this crowd with the mention of Jesus resurrection. He doesn’t even mention Jesus name. He just says this judge has been raised from the dead.

Paul, why? Why did you get you had them? You had him in the palm of your hands. They were all listening. You were in the Areopagus. Why did you have to divide them at that point? You didn’t have to bring it up there, right? We might think that that Paul made an error here. We might say that that that all his hard work to build the bridge of the Gospel was destroyed by bringing up the part of the gospel that would be the hardest for these Greeks to believe. But here’s the thing, church, we are not the editors of the gospel. The gospel does not change based on the culture. We are called to trim out the difficult parts or to tailor it, to fit the belief patterns of other people. See, a gospel without the resurrection of Jesus is a hopeless gospel. Paul knew that this would be the point that they would have the most trouble with. But he also knows that if you remove it, you don’t have a gospel. You don’t have good news at all. A righteous human judge is no judge of others if he died for his own sins like everyone else. But a living judge who overcame the penalty of sin, who was proven righteous because the penalty of sin, death, could not hold him. Well, that judge can be a judge of righteousness. Philosophers like Homer and Sophocles. They have already argued that the dead can’t rise. There’s a whole lot of people in the crowd that day who had the preconceived notion dead people cannot rise. Because of that, they marked Paul, and they pulled back. One group of people, they mocked him, they mocked his God, called them a battler, told him to go away. There was a second group. Said, can we hear more about this? Can we hear more? You’ve just challenged one of the most fundamental things we think about the world.

But something’s going on here. There’s some kind of truth stirring in us. And, you know, right at the end of the story, it tells us there was a couple of people who actually came to faith in Jesus because of the work Paul did that day.

Love compels us to be students of our friends and our neighbors to learn what they believe, to find where their belief lacks gospel truth and to be bold and sharing with them what Christ has done to reveal the one true God to us.

Church, the reason we do the hard work of listening and understanding and reasoning through the views of others is for that second group. It’s for that second group. There are a lot of people in our community who are in the dark here in Rochester, who are in the dark and your families who are in the dark. They are without the gospel, but they are feeling their way toward God. They’re feeling in the darkness toward God and those of us who have had our eyes open to the truth of Christ, you know what we were? We were just like them. We were them. It was God’s grace that opened our eyes, there’s not a single person sitting here this morning who trusts in Jesus, who is that way because you figured it out, because you were smart and knowledgeable. It’s because God opened the eyes of your heart that you would know him, that he gave you grace. Love compels us to be students of our friends and our neighbors to learn what they believe, to find where their belief lacks gospel truth and to be bold and sharing with them what Christ has done to reveal the one true God to us.