Engaging Our Culture

SERMON: 2015-03-01--ac15155--engaging-our-culture-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:42:36.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The recording begins immediately with the theological exposition of the sermon and concludes with a scripture reading and pastoral application (1 Peter 3:15-16), which are core components of the message. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: none ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: no ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: none Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- So the question that we continue to look at together in this little mini-series is how can we as believers engage our culture when the values of our culture and the values of the church are increasingly miles apart and when the language that we speak sounds like a foreign language to each other. Let me give you an example just to illustrate the kind of problems that we face. Last council meeting in the break that we had, and I don't quite know if I ought to tell you this but I'm going to anyway, the conversation turned to Fifty Shades of Grey. Fifty Shades of Grey, for those of you not in the know, is a bit of a cultural phenomenon. It's part of a trilogy of books that has become an astonishing bestseller worldwide. It has sold over a hundred million copies. Two weekends ago, I believe it was, it came out as a movie or a film and so far in the first two weekends, I think worldwide, it racked up sales of four hundred million dollars. And the topic came up in our conversation because two of our men in council work in offices where they are surrounded by women. And that particular, at the end of the day, in both of these offices, these women were getting together to plan going to this movie. Sixty-seven percent of viewers of that movie that first weekend were women, interestingly enough. And for those of you not in the know, this movie is not only an erotic love story but it deals with what's known as bondage and masochism. It's a violent kind of sex where the woman is subjected to ill treatment at the hands of her lover. Think Jean Gomeschi's story minus, or with the consent, because that's part of the story in the book, as I understand that. So but as this conversation is progressing, one of the guys was invited by these women to come along to the movie. And he showed his obvious discomfort and they tried to ease his discomfort by saying, "Well, you can invite your wife along too." And you've got to picture this because here we are with values at the opposite end of this spectrum. And that is part and parcel of the society that we live with and in. I mean, the provincial liberal government, just this past week, of course, came out with the sex ed curriculum. And while there may be many good things that are part of that curriculum that many of us can agree with, there is also an underlying value in it that is at odds with biblical values in terms of sexuality. So we live in a world where increasingly the church is over here in terms of its values and the world is over here in terms of its values. And then the challenge is how do you engage each other in a meaningful fashion so that you're not just resorting to name calling, demonizing, and writing each other off? That is the challenge today for engaging your culture. And that challenge is identical, I believe, to the issue that Paul faced here in Athens. Paul, we could say, was the product of Jerusalem, that is to say he was the product of a biblical spirituality that is shaped by heaven's values of faith, hope, and love. He believes in a God who reveals himself, who gives a law, who is a God of salvation, who invites people to live in relationship with him. He's in the middle of Athens, which is the opposite of all of that. It is the embodiment of worldly values. It is steeped in idols. It knows very little about the true God. In fact, one of the ancient writers says concerning the city of Athens, there were more gods there than people, if you can believe that. So they were very religious, but they were not religious in the sense of submitting to God's authority or embodying biblical values. They were as far removed from biblical values as they could possibly be. That's why when Paul was walking around in that marketplace, he was so incensed in his spirit about all the idolatry that was taking place. Ancient writers tell us there was a God and an idol on virtually every street corner. And so the question is, how did Paul handle engaging his culture? And is there anything that you and I can learn from the way that he did that? So in the time that we have this morning, let's see how far we can get. We won't be able to touch base on all the things that we want to look at, but I think we can make a good beginning. So lessons to learn, number one, Paul goes to where the people are. Verse 17 of chapter 17, "So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there." Paul's strategy, we've talked about this before, in ministry was always to go to the synagogue first. That's the place where the believing Jews were. That's also the place where the Gentiles that had become Jewish believers were. They're called the God-fearing Greeks because the message of the gospel was meant for the Jewish people, the literal descendants of Abraham first and foremost. So as is his custom, he goes to the synagogue, but this time he does something more that we don't read much about in any of his other missions to the cities. He goes to the marketplace, and he goes to the marketplace because he is so upset because of the obvious idolatry in this city, and as we'll see in a few moments, he begins to engage people there. He goes to where the people are, and the obvious lesson there is this for you and me. For the church to engage society, it's got to be in contact with and it's got to have relationships with the rest of the world. Jesus said we are in the world even while we are not to be of the world. Paul writing to the Corinthians later on says, "I never told you not to associate with any immoral people in the world. Only stay away from immoral people in Christian community. You have a responsibility to judge them, but you don't have a responsibility to judge the world." Here, of course, is where the rubber hits the road. We talked about this two weeks ago. The holier the church gets and the more sinful the world becomes, the greater is the gap between those two. Generally speaking, once people have been Christians for a little while, they abandon their non-Christian friends or their non-Christian friends abandon them. The two groups are uncomfortable with each other, and pretty soon we have Christians doing the holy huddle thing, and the world is doing its pagan whatever they do out there, and never the twain shall meet. The ongoing challenge for Christian community is how can we be in the world but not of the world? How can we have relationship without being sucked into their sin, because that's the other negative side that causes us to shrink away, because we all know of people who are so accommodating to the world that they fall into the world, and before you know it, they become like the world. So then, salt loses its savor, light loses its penetrating power, and the church is no different from the world, so how can you be in the world but not of the world? That's the challenge, and the genius of Jesus, and the genius of the Apostle Paul, is that they were able to do that. They could hold on to their identity before God, they could remain faithful to God, they could hang out with the world yet not sin with the world. Jesus, for example, could speak to prostitutes but could resist the temptation, if I can put it in those words, of going to bed with them. How do we strike that balance? How can we be where the world is? Well, I think part of the key is building on existing social networks. All of us have families, many of us, depending on what our background is, will have family members who are not following Jesus in some case, maybe having completely turned their backs on him. Many of us are in a workplace situation where we rub shoulders with bosses or clients or customers or co-workers who do not name the name of Jesus and who are pretty blatant in some instances about what they value and how they live, and all of us are part of a larger community where, of course, we take our presence one way or the other. So the challenge in those situations is to cultivate those relationships. It's to stay in contact with family members or with friends who are very different from us when the temptation is to say, "I don't want to be part of you. I don't want to be part of your circle of influence. I am much more comfortable with my Christian friends and with my Christian community." Only the Holy Spirit can lead us there, but the Holy Spirit has to give us wisdom and passion for connecting with the world. And we ought not to be so afraid of being polluted by the world that we refuse to touch them because we think they are unclean. But it takes grace to do that and it takes community to do that lest we go down the tubes together. I'll give you an extreme example. Alan Hirsch, I think he's an Australian church planter, tells this story of striking up a relationship with a woman who works in a strip club. And he is getting to know her heart and recognizes how God is at work in her life. And then he gets to this crisis situation where one day she says to him shyly, "Would you come to my club and watch me strip?" Now what are you going to do? Most of us would say, "Never in a thousand years. I'll ruin my good Christian testimony and all my friends will think I've gone." But he went. And it's easy for us to sit in judgment on that because you can go for all the wrong reasons, but you can also go with an attitude that says, "I really love this woman. This is important to her and I want her to understand that I see her heart and I want to bring her to Jesus." Now understand I'm not recommending you go to strip clubs. Let that be on the record like really solidly. And if you're going to step into any kind of a situation you want to be surrounded by Christian community that can hold you accountable lest you deceive yourself and you go down the tubes. But let's not be so holy and so righteous that we don't want to touch people where they are or where they do their living because they are dirty. Jesus never had that problem and Jesus had confidence that the power of the gospel was greater than the power of sin. And so Paul goes to where the people are. And I don't know what that looks like for you or for me, but we can discern from the Holy Spirit are there situations that we can step into? Are there relationships that we need to cultivate? Are there hearts that at the core have a longing for biblical truth? And does God want to use me in that person's life to lead that person to salvation? So first of all he goes to where the people are and then the second thing that we note in terms of his procedure here is that he engages them in conversation. He engages them in conversation. Verse 18 of chapter 17, "A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute or debate with him." Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" And others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Three things in that verse that we ought to take note of. And the first is the emphasis on the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. These were two philosophical movements that were solidly situated in the city of Athens and that exercised influence over large swaths of people. Now to appreciate why that was, we need to understand that then as well as now, the human race has two particular fears that it needs to contend with from day to day. The first fear is how can I control life when it seems so often out of control? And in the old pagan culture, that came down to how can I live in a world that is ruled by thousands of gods who seem to arbitrarily take their frustrations out on the human race? That's a big, big issue. How can I be safe from the gods? The second one is what happens to me when I die and how can I face the fear of death? So these philosophical movements developed in response to those and other fears that people had and they came up with different answers depending on the values that the founders of these movements proposed. And so the Epicureans were people who were true materialists, that is to say they thought the universe was the product of random actions of atoms coming together. They believed in the existence of gods because in that day and age, if you didn't believe in the existence of god, you were considered an atheist, and atheists got their heads cut off, but they didn't believe that the gods were involved in the affairs of life. And so it was your responsibility to try to cope with the affairs of life as best as you could, and their theory was you did that by pursuing pleasure and by avoiding pain. And so for the Epicureans, the ideal human state was sitting around in your garden, eating food, talking with your friends. And if you look up the meaning of the word Epicurean in the English language, then it refers to a person who enjoys fine food. It's all about managing your discomforts in life by feeling good and by avoiding things that were painful. Now Stoics, founded by a guy by the name of Zeno, were somewhat different in their philosophies because they believed the world was created by the gods, in particular, they believed in Zeus, who is one of the chief gods in the Greek-Roman mythological picture of the gods, as close to the Christian god as you can get, but not quite close enough because he in turn was the offspring of two other gods, and our god, of course, is eternally existent. So they believed that Zeus created the world, but they also believed that he wasn't involved in running the affairs of the human race in any kind of a personal way. Life was managed by what they called fate, and fate is stuff just happens. And there isn't anybody that you can appeal to as a god about the stuff that just happens. And so their solution to the uncertainty of life was not just to avoid pain and to experience pain, their solution was that you hold your passions in check. You don't let yourself feel anything too excited about things that you cannot control because then you won't be disappointed. And so the word stoic has come through in the English language as that kind of a person, a person who is just nothing bothers me. They did not believe the soul was eternal, but they thought it lasted as long as the universe did, and then the universe would go through these repeated cycles of burning up and starting all over again, and keep these kind of things in mind because Paul's sermon to them later on and their responses to his sermon picks up on some of these belief systems. So Paul engages these Epicurean and these stoic philosophers, and that's one of the things I want us to notice in this verse that we just read together. The second thing that is of particular interest here is the use of the word babbler. You may have noticed that. A group of Epicurean and stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say? The Greek word there is the word spermo logos, which comes from two words, spermo, which means seed, and lego, which means pick up, and the literal application of it is a bird picking up seeds and then spitting out the shell, and it was a very derogatory term that in that particular culture meant that here is a person who is picking up tidbits of information in this very complex philosophical world, and he is just spouting them off arbitrarily. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's an idle babbler. You'll meet a lot of those at Christmas parties when some people drink too much, and they just go on and on, and they have an opinion on every subject under the sun, and they haven't a clue what they're really talking about. That's how they wrote off the Apostle Paul, and the reason for that, and that's the third thing to notice in this particular passage, is that they were confused, so some scholars think, about what he was really saying, because you'll notice when they talk about, it goes on to say in verse 18, he seems to be advocating foreign gods. Not just a foreign god, but foreign gods, and this is because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Now the word for resurrection in Greek is the word Anastasis, from which we get the English name Anastasia, which I understand is the name of the woman in Fifty Shades of Grey, but you're not supposed to know that. The guy's name is Christian, interestingly enough. I know that because I read the reviews, not because I read the book, so just relax about that. Anastasis and the resurrection, so they think Jesus is one god, and Anastasis is the other god, but they are intrigued by what they consider babbling, and so they enter into conversation with him. Now, hold on to that thought for a moment, because we'll come back to it. It isn't good enough just to be in relationship with worldly people. We've got to go beyond that. We have to engage them in conversation, but more than that, eventually we need to be able to engage them in conversation about God, and that's the third thing that we need to notice in this particular passage, is that Paul gets an invitation to formally address them. Verse 19, "Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, 'May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting.'" The operative word there is the word Areopagus. The literal meaning of that is Mars Hill. I'll come back to that in a moment. You may have heard of Mars Hill Radio Network. If you listen to the Christian station across the lake, you'll have heard of churches called Mars Hill Church, there's a university called Mars Hill University, there's a seminary called Mars Hill Seminary. All goes back to this story. Now the Areopagus, to this day, is a huge rock in the middle of the city of Athens. Here you see it, and I'll explain the name and where that comes from in a few moments. It's a huge tourist attraction, as you can see. I'll show you the next picture, that is the front of it. Here you see a plaque that contains all of Paul's sermon in Acts chapter 17. This is a world famous spot, and it served for hundreds of years as the seat of sort of a Supreme Court where cases were tried by very wise and fair people. That's where the name Mars Hill comes from, because the name Areopagus is a compound name of Eris and Pagos. Eris is the Greek name for the god of war, which in Roman mythology became Mars. You get that connection. Pagos is Hill, and so there you have Mars Hill. In Greek mythology, the story behind that is this. Mars was taken there on trial because he was accused of killing the son of Neptune. The reason he killed the son of Neptune was because the son of Neptune had raped his daughter. Hell was held on Mars Hill for Mars in Greek mythology, and eventually he was found not guilty. I don't know the rest of that story, but that's the context of this situation. What we have happening here is Paul is accosting people on the street. He's running into these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. They hear tidbits of what it is that he's saying. They don't understand what it is that he's saying because he's talking about Jesus and the resurrection. They have no framework, any of them, to even think about resurrection. They say, "Well, let's hear this guy out." They take him to the Areopagus. Some commentators think they take him by force to hold him accountable. Most commentators don't think that's the case. They just want to give him a hearing. This is where this hearing takes place, in the Areopagus, surrounded by all these wise people. As we'll see later on, it is from there then that Paul eventually launches into his servant. But the point, of course, is this. It's not enough for us to be in connection or relationship with unbelievers, if we're going to engage our culture. It's not enough for us to know how to talk to the drunk in the family, or the woman in the family that nobody wants anything to do with, or any of the alternate lifestyles that the world is so full of today. We also need to know, "How can I bring this conversation to the things of God, so that they can at least make the choice of accepting the gospel message, or rejecting the gospel message?" The big question is, how do we do that? Because we so often speak different languages. We live in different worlds. Remember, that was the function of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit in the church will teach us to speak the language of the people. Not everybody's going to be able to do that equally, but if the Holy Spirit is in you, he can give you words, and passion, and love, so that you can address people where they are and connect with them in places that they would have never thought the gospel can apply. And you do that, you do that by finding out where they do their living, you have to establish a point of contact. And that's what Paul does here, because now listen to verse 21, you know, sort of in parenthesis, Luke throws this in here, "All the Athenians and the foreigners who live there spend their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas." And so, that provides fertile ground for Paul to begin to connect with their interest in new ideas, because he's got some new ideas that they've never heard about, and he has earned a hearing, so that at least he gets an opportunity to talk about the things of the good news. Now, how do we do that? There's a lot of different ways of doing that, and each one of us sort of has to find in the way that we have relationships with people, how to establish that point of contact. I'm jealous sometimes of those of you who rub shoulders on a regular basis with pagan people, because mostly I only get to rub shoulders with you, and most of you think God are not too pagan, so that's an encouraging thing. But there's nothing like having a good conversation with a pagan person. How do you do that? Well, you find out what the points of interest are. You can talk about your own family, or your own life, or the activities that you engage in. You know, we're often embarrassed to say, "Well, I go to church," but to tell somebody, "I'm going to church," is a great conversation starter. As a matter of fact, when I do have an opportunity to sort of arbitrarily connect with people that I don't have much of a relationship with, one of the first questions that I often ask people is, "Well, are you a church-going person?" Well, that always gets the conversation going, because people almost always trip all over themselves to explain why they're not church-going people anymore than they used to be, and here are my reasons why I don't. Great opportunities for speaking. Another way of addressing those kind of practical issues with people is to address current affairs, things that are in the news, things that you can talk about together. Now, I talked earlier about Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not recommending you read Fifty Shades of Grey. I'm not recommending you go to the movie, but it is a cultural phenomenon. And there's enough reviews online of Christians that you can read the review and get a pretty good picture of what the story is about. And one of the things that Christians are scratching their heads about is what is it about this book and about this movie that is so incredibly attractive, particularly to women, including Christian women? One reviewer who talks about the movie talks about walking into a church secretary's office with a book plainly on her desk. Now, I find that rather fascinating, though I must confess, Michelle and I were in the Bible Formations store in Kingston quite a number of months ago, perusing through their used book section, and what would I find but Fifty Shades of Grey? So my wife asked me later, "Well, did you think of alerting them to the fact that this is sitting on their shelf?" And to my shame, I had to confess it never even occurred to me. I thought I was afraid that she might have a heart attack if she did the kind of literature that she was stocking in her good Christian store. So Lord will have to forgive me, no idea whose hands I ended up in, but what's the appeal? And without reading the book or without seeing the movie, but having read a number of reviews, I'll give you my personal opinion and you can take them for what they are. Number one, it pushes the envelope sexually, and that always intrigues society at a particular point. So that's an appeal. But more than that, the appeal is that it appeals to the desire of a certain category of women to be pursued insistently and to be wanted desperately. And thirdly, because I understand that at the end of the trilogy, she wins him over, he leaves his abnormality, I think it appeals to something in some women about thinking that their love can straighten out crooked men. And all three of those are fallacies. I can tell you from years of working with people, that dude named Christian ain't gonna change his way of life. He's gonna break her heart and she's not going to win him over. But those are great contact points if you get into conversation with people around you. Why are you reading this? What is drawing you into this world of fantasy and what the heck is the matter with your own marriage or with your own relationship that you need this kind of kick to fuel your own passion? Good conversation starter, don't you think? Other area, ISIS is in the news a lot. And for months now, I had been wondering, why are these folks so provocative in the public execution of people? You know that, of course, they cut people's heads off and they put it on video and then they broadcast that all over the place. And you'd say, what kind of idiots are you? Because all you're doing is you're getting the whole world mad at you, isn't that true? I mean, Jordan was staying out of this whole business until they burned their pilot to death in a cage and now Jordan is mad and Jordan is bombing the snot out of them. And he used to look at that and, what are you thinking? Are you just trying to shock us? Are you, what's your agenda? So maybe I'm just slow, but I have finally found out what the agenda is. They are trying to provoke a Muslim version of Armageddon. They are trying to draw the Western world into a battle that according to their apocalyptic literature is going to take place in the city of Dabiq, which is in northern Syria, close to the border of Turkey. And when they executed one of the first Americans whose head they cut off, they executed him in that city. Their magazine, their flagship magazine is called Dabiq, because under their version of theology, they are provoking the Western Christian nations to put boots on the ground where they are because in that battle, one third of their soldiers are going to be killed, one third of their soldiers are going to deny and run away, and one third of the soldiers are going to remain standing, there's going to be 5,000 of them left. And when it feels like the battle is over and they have lost, their messiah is going to come to fight with them, and then Jesus is going to come and he's going to join them, he's going to denounce all Christians, and then their kingdom will be established over all the earth. That is the philosophy. And that's what motivates, they don't care about, they want boots on the ground, and they don't care if it looks like they're losing, because that's all part of the prophecy. Now, for me that was a huge eye-opener, because now it finally makes sense what they're doing. And I share that with you, not because, you know, each one of us is going to become an expert on apocalyptic literature, but this stuff is in the news all the time. This past week, over 300 Assyrian Christians have been captured. The news says it's only 200, it's well over 300, though I heard this morning that 23 of them have been released, and it's all part of this. The Assyrian Christians are some of the oldest Christians in the world, one of the few groups remaining that speak a version of biblical Aramaic, which is the language of the Jesus fall. And the Bible says if one part of the body suffers, we all suffer. So you and I not only need to be acquainted, each of us in his or her own way. But we need to be able to use these as conversation points with the people around us to bring in the message of the gospel, because the Bible message is that the final battle of history is not going to happen at Dabiq, it's going to happen at Armageddon, it's going to be Jesus, and it's Jesus who establishes kingdom, not first and foremost by war and by sword and by violence. He doesn't call us to precipitate the end by going to war, no, he calls us to precipitate the end by living lives of holiness and godliness and hastening the coming of the day of the Lord. So there's all kinds of very practical ways in which you and I can make connections and if our hearts are filled with love and we're reasonably knowledgeable about biblical truth and we care for the people around us, the Holy Spirit will create opportunities. And as we step into those opportunities with the graciousness of God's Holy Spirit, only God knows whose heart's going to be open and whose life is going to change. And I'm always reminded of these words of Peter in 1 Peter chapter 3, the verses 15 and 16, "In your hearts set apart Christ as Lord, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:42:31.500; remove through 00:42:36.000] your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander." [CUT] [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:42:36.000; resume after this marked segment]