Well, somehow, some way, with someone, or in some circumstance, it happened to you this week; you were provoked. Maybe it happened to you many times this week; you were provoked. I would just invite you, this evening, just to think back on your week. What were the things that provoked you? What were the things that had the power to change your emotional temperature, to cause you to be angry, that drew out of you, emotion and some kind of response? Maybe it was being confronted as a parent that, in fact, your children are less-thanperfect.
Provoked This Week
Maybe it was being faced with the fact that your husband or wife still has sin inside of them. Maybe it was somebody who bumped in front of you in the line at the grocery store, and you just couldn't believe their audacity. Maybe it was that the cable guy didn't show up when he said he was going to show up, and you were required to wait. What provoked you this week? It's been said that you can really know the heart of a person by what makes them angry. You really know what a person truly values, by what provokes him.
Turn, with me again, to that passage in Acts 17. It's there in your 'Order of Worship' on page 926 in your church Bibles. Now, I want to set the scene for you because I love this scene. This is a commuter's passage; it's got a real city feel to it. Paul is not actually in Athens to do missionary work. He was in Berea; there were troublemakers there, so some of his friends got him out of Berea. He was on the way to Corinth; he was supposed to connect with Timothy and Silas, but his friends only took him as far as Athens.
And he's now waiting for his transportation to get to the rest of the way with Timothy and Silas to Corinth. Imagine Paul at 30th Street Station, realizing that he has missed his train, and realizing he's got more hours than he thought he would have, and so he begins to wander around the city of Philadelphia. That's the scene. He's in Athens; he's waiting, and so, he begins to wander around the city. You have that feel of the different locations, the prominent sort of locations of Athens. I had this experience once; I was flying to Johannesburg, South Africa.
I was told that I did not have the proper visa on my passport, and so I begged the British Airways people in the states to fly me as far as London, and I said, "I'll get that visa." I arrived at the visa office, and the man told me, "There's no way we're ever going to get you a visa on time to get you on that plane this evening to South Africa." (I had about six hours.) "But we'll try; just go see London." And so I did, and I was an observer of, sort of, the life and culture of London during that day.
Luella tells me I don't finish the stories that I tell, so I want to say this, "I did get my passport and went to South Africa," for those of you who would miss the whole sermon if I hadn't told you that. Now, this is profound; Paul's not just chillin'; he's not just hunting for the best restaurant where there would be the best food. That's what I would do; I would find somebody who looks like they know, and I would say, "Tell me where to eat." He's not just thinking, "What are the sites of the city that I want to see?"
He is much more engaged in sort of a spiritual observation of his surroundings because that's his heart. Paul has a Gospel heart, and that shapes the way he looks at his city. Now, those of you that attend Tenth know that, over the last few months, we've been dropping these bookmarks in your bulletin to help you think about ministry to our city. And, each bookmark had a question on it. And, one of the questions was, "When you look at your city, what do you see?" I would ask you that question, "What do you see?
What eyes do you bring to your surroundings as you commute, as you matriculate your way around your surroundings in this neighborhood and this city and this region? What is it that your eyes observe?" Loot at that verse there, verse 16: 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. Paul, who looked with the eyes of the Gospel, and because he looked with the eyes of the Gospel, he was upset. He was provoked because, everywhere around him, he saw this idolatry.
Paul Was Indignant
That word actually means 'indignant.' It's not just mildly bothered. You could actually translate this word 'angry'; he was angry. I believe that there is something wrong with us if we can walk around our communities, so broken and marred by idolatry, and not be mad. It's not okay that people, made in the image of God, made for relationship with God by everything they do and everything they say, deny His existence. That should rip at our hearts. It's not okay! And, oh, that God would provoke us; being provoked, brothers and sisters, is not a hassle; it's not a bother; it's the blessing of grace.
And, oh, that God would provoke us. I'm a man who needs to be more provoked. I may be more attracted to the fact that, as I walked from Arch Street here, to 17th and Spruce on Tuesday to meet with the staff here for various meetings, I may be more engaged to the fact that, as I walk by Banana Republic, they have a sale. And I get a bit 'sale-istic,' and I think I know what I'm going to do with my afternoon. I am going to stop back by Banana Republic because they may have some clothing there that I don't actually need.
I'm being serious. Is there, in us, brothers and sisters, God-glorifying, grace-produced, gospel agitation? Are we able to be blind to what is around us? Do we come to the point where we're numb and dull and it's okay for us, where it doesn't bother us anymore; it doesn't provoke us anymore? We're not grieved anymore? Oh, this gets back to this discussion of ministry. Where does ministry begin? Ministry does not begin to this city with Paul Tripp and Jonathan Olson and Ann Davies and others on the staff, thinking about how to strategize for city ministry.
It does not begin there. Ministry begins with the provoked hearts of the people of God. Ministry always starts with your heart. And if your hearts are not engaged, if your hearts are not agitated, if your hearts are not moved and grieved, it doesn't matter how creative we are in designing ministry, you won't participate, nor would I. We ought to be asking questions about the degree to which the body of Christ is comfortable with its passivity? I do believe, and this will offend some of you, that when we have a weekend ministry conference, this room should be filled, because we come with agitated hearts, we will grab every opportunity to have our hearts moved and skills acquired so we can be part of what Christ is doing in the communities where He's placed us.
Paul was provoked; he was agitated. Now, why? Well, there are really two reasons in this passage. One is more pronounced in the way the passage unfolds than the other. It says, "His spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols." Paul knew this: That every human being is, by his very nature, a worshipper, and that you are either giving your life to the worship of Almighty God, or you're giving your life to the worship of something that Almighty God created. You're either acknowledging His existence, or you're placing yourself in His place.
You are either a joyful server of Him, or you rebel against His authority and write your own rules. There is no neutrality out there. Worship is never neutral; it can't possibly be; worship always has an object. And so, when Paul looks at his culture, he looks at his culture with the eyes of worship. He gets the paradigm. And, his heart is grieved that everywhere he looks, what he sees is not worship of God, the thing for which every human being was created, given life and breath, emotionality and mentality.
All of that is so that we could have relationship with God. Rather than seeing companies of people giving themselves to worship of God, he looks around and sees the mass of the people around him who are enslaved to idols. That idolatry, in this situation, is overt idolatry. There are actually physical idols to unknown gods. But that idolatry can also be very powerfully covert where I worship pleasure; I worship power; I worship possessions; I worship other people, that my heart is ruled by something other than God.
Listen! We see the shocking effects of that idolatry, and we can't just deal with the effects; our hearts have to be moved at the reason for those effects in the hearts of people. There is a real way in which Philadelphia is the womb of American Christianity, great confessions of faith written here, great Christian institutions started here. And yet, in pursuit of power with an idol of pleasure, we're about to have a temple to that idolatry in the form of a casino built three or four blocks from the Liberty Bell.
Fighting What Lies Beneath
Brothers and sisters, that's not okay. And we should not just fight that casino, but we should fight the thing that lies beneath it, because that thing itself is not the core problem, the core problem is the idolatry that drives those things. We, of all people, who have been called to stand for mercy and justice, should rage against any institution that preys on the poor and the elderly. It's not okay. Idolatry doesn't tend to be merciful and just, because idolatry is self-obsessed and self-focused.
Paul was provoked by the idolatry, believing that every human being is, because he is a worshiper, religious. There is a second thing that provokes Paul here that's very clear here as well, that he was provoked by the philosophy that was around him. Paul was not only convinced that everyone was a worshiper, but he was convinced that every human being is a theologian. The theological nature of human life is utterly inescapable; you are always giving answers somehow, some way, to the profound questions of life.
Who am I? Why am I? What is life about? What is right? What is wrong? What is true? What is false? Is this all there is? You can't be a rational human being without addressing those questions, and you notice in the passage here that those questions sort of exist in Paul's observation at the more technical, academic level, that's the philosophers, the Stoics, and the Epicureans, and it lives at the street level. Look at verse 21. "Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new."
Do you see it in America, the wave of the next philosophical fad that goes across America, and takes people up, and sells a million books, and, in six months, is gone again? Why? because people are grasping for answers; they're grasping to know. Listen! Every human being is wisdom oriented because every human being is wired to be attached to the God of wisdom who would help that human being, by His revelation, to know. If you remove that God, then you have to look somewhere else for the answers, and you will shop for some system of wisdom that makes life make sense to you.
And so, Paul is troubled by these answers. The Epicureans were atheists. They believed that life, bottom line, was nothing but material, and so, grab after all those material pleasures that you can get because that's what life is about; "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I will die." The Stoics were Pantheists; Pantheism means 'all God'; everything's God and God's everything, so there's nothing more ultimate than you and what's around you. So there's nothing ultimate to pursue, so the Pantheists would say that you just have to endure, slog your way through whatever.
Now, both of those philosophies are dangerous and destructive because they miss the center of it all; the center of knowing is recognizing the existence of God. And you cannot understand life if you don't start there. John Calvin said, "There is no knowing that doesn't begin with knowing God." Now, we should be troubled. We should be troubled by the 'Oprah-fication' of Western culture. I'm serious. Pseudo spirituality that uses spiritual language, but is God dishonoring that elevates any supposed wisdom as equal in value.
We should be outraged that the universities of our culture haven't avowed hatred of the divine, where it's hard to exist in those environments and be a Christian professor. That's not okay. It's not okay. Are you provoked? Are you provoked, or do you live in very similar circumstances to what Paul encountered in Athens, and it doesn't move you anymore? What did that indignation produce in Paul? Well first, it was the indignation of activism. You could maybe preach a whole sermon on the first word of verse 17, 'so.' Because Paul was provoked, he moved out.
Paul Could Not Be Passive
He could not be passive; he had to move out, first to the synagogue, and then to the marketplace, and then to the Areopagus; he had to be where those people worked. He moved out. Brothers and sisters, the people who are serving those idols and embracing those philosophies probably won't come into this building. They're not coming. We have to do what Paul did; we have to be activistic; we have to be willing to move out because we're provoked, because, if by chance, in some way, God could use us to break the idolatry of another person, to release that person from false wisdom to find the one true God and the glory of His truth.
Are you moving out? Are you activistic? Do you have a ministry heart because you have an agitated heart? Second, it was the indignation of humility. Paul was willing to be mocked, willing to be thought as being stupid, willing to be misunderstood, he was not protecting himself; he was not hiding his Bible; he was not giving non-answers, afraid of what someone would think of him if he declared his belief. It says here, "Some of the Epicureans 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.'"
Listen! Would you sit in the marketplace and talk about Jesus and the resurrection? Would you be in 30th Street Station and say to the person sitting next to you, "Have you thought about the resurrection recently?" Would you ask somebody, "If I mentioned the name 'Jesus', what would you think?" That term 'babbler' there is very graphic. It actually means "seed picker." The picture is a bird that is just sort of walking around like a bird does, picking a seed here, picking a seed there. It's not a compliment.
"You're just grasping for whatever you can get, Paul, and it makes no sense whatsoever." Listen! Here is the progress of evangelism; evangelism always moves this way. As you bring that evangel to the person the first time, they will always think you're talking nonsense. And as you continue to be willing to be nonsensical for the Gospel, God will begin to move in the heart of that person, and all of a sudden, your nonsense begins to make perfect sense. Praise God! And so, you have to be willing to be nonsensical for the sake of the gospel.
That's humility. If you are worried about people thinking you're smart and wise and insightful, you'll probably be quiet about the Gospel because it's foolishness. We've talked about that to those who don't believe. Third, it's the indignation of graciousness. I want to take you down a little further in the passage. I can just read it there for you, verse 22: "So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said, 'Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious.'" What a sweet introduction!
It doesn't say, "Are you kidding me?" I think it's very tempting for us to be needlessly condemning, needlessly judgmental in ways that are personally offensive, self-righteous in the face of lost people rather than being engaging, and loving, and compassionate, and kind. Listen! You only embrace that wisdom, and you've only been released by that idolatry, not on any merit of your own, but only by the grace of Christ. I look back on my own life. I went to college during the latter half of the 60's, early 70's, when the culture of America was coming unglued.
I was very attracted to the countercultural movement. And I'm very aware how that God, in His grace, held me. I'm very thankful for that, and I can think of circumstances where God held me. I went to a party one night where there was every evil thing available. I didn't actually know that it was going to be that way, but it was. And there was, as I stood in that room, such a powerful fear of God that I couldn't move. And then, after that immediate experience of being stopped by the fear of God, I literally ran out of that house, 17 years old, ran down the street, and walked 5 miles home, propelled by the rescuing grace of Jesus.
That's not my merit. That's God's grace. How could we ever be anything but gracious, kind, understanding? That does not mean compromising truth. This is an uncompromising, Gospel presentation by this man. It literally encompasses everything from creation to the resurrection, but it's gracious; it's loving; it's gentle; it's kind; it's not self-righteously condemning. And then, the indignation of engagement, I should say, "cultural engagement," it's very clear as you read this passage that this apostle is a student of his culture.
Building Bridges Into the Culture
He quotes the poets; he's able to carry on conversation with the dominant philosophies of his day. Hear this, brothers and sisters. If we are going to build bridges of ministry into our culture, we have to somehow, some way, develop some level of cultural competency. You need to understand your culture. You need understand what moves and motivates it. You need to understand the current idolatries, the current philosophies. You do that, not because you want to be cool, but because you want to be useful.
I think there's a way to discriminately watch television so that you will understand what's out there. I think you may subscribe to a magazine that you don't really appreciate, but you'll read it because it lets you understand the philosophical trends there. I read New Yorker Magazine every week; it drives me crazy, but it helps me to understand the idolatries that are gripping in our culture and the philosophies that are gripping our culture. I want to be a person who can build bridges into that culture, who can speak from the vantage point of God's truth into the issues that people are carrying around.
You've got to realize we do speak a bit of a foreign language. You can't assume, as you may have been able to earlier in American culture, that those things will be understood by the masses of people. They probably won't be. Many, many of the people that we see every day don't have a self-consciously, spiritual dimension of their lives. They don't think in those terms. Paul was able to speak into his culture because he was knowledgeable and engaged. Again, that has to be done with care and caution and prayer, but it's for the purpose of being useful in God's hands.
Finally, it's the indignation of the Gospel itself. What all of this drives Paul to, what all of this that we've talked about drives Paul to is not some upper story philosophical debate that we would want to win, what this drives him to is this bottom line... Jesus and the resurrection. Because what do people need? Oh, they don't need all of those arguments corrected and all of those debates won by you. No! What they need is actually a person, and His name is Jesus. And all of their idolatry and all of their philosophical falsehoods are rooted in a broken relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
And rescue for them is not first found in answers; rescue is found for them in the grace of the Lamb who suffered on our behalf, who lived a righteous life for us, who conquered death, and who offers us the gift of life, life eternal. Do you know what they need? They need the most nonsensical thing that you could ever say to them, that there's a Jesus who loves them. And there is a resurrection; that is the hope of humanity. Paul says in I Corinthians, "That nonsense is the power of God." Are you provoked?
You need to be provoked. Being provoked is not a hassle; being provoked is not an obstacle to an otherwise enjoyable life; being provoked is a blessing of God's grace. Because when you're provoked, you attach your life to the most significant work in the universe, redemption. May God help us to be provoked. Let's Pray: Lord, as we come to the end of this weekend where we have focused on ministry and ministry to the city, particularly this city that you've placed this church in for over 180 years, we recognize that there's a lack in our hearts that powerfully affects our activism in ministry.
We pray that You would bless us with stirred-up hearts, with eyes that really see through the lens of the Gospel, hearts that are angry at the ravages of idolatry and false philosophy that are everywhere around us. May that drive us to go, to go with humility, to go with gracious hearts, to go seeking, to understand that we may speak with wisdom, to go with a sweet message of Jesus and the resurrection. We pray this for the sake of many lost souls, for the building of Your church, for the furtherance of Your kingdom, and for the glory of Your name, Amen.
