The True Myth
January 10, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Acts 17:16-34
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. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Some of the Epicurean 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.19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. 26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
I have a distinct memory of going to “Christian Family Day” at Busch Stadium when I was growing up. Busch Stadium is where the St. Louis Cardinals play baseball. I don’t remember how old I was, or if we went more than one year, but I do remember that, when the Saturday afternoon game ended, we stayed after and came down in the stands to sit closer to hear musicians and speakers. I remember a speaker named Dave Dravecky, who was a former pro ballplayer. I think I remember our church promoting the event and several church families going along, but I’m not sure how much I even trust my memory of the event.
I bring it up because, looking back, I can sort of imagine the audience. I can—at least I think I can—imagine the type of people who attended the event. There were church-going families and the friends of those church-going families who were invited along. Many in the crowd would have been Christians already, and others, I presume, would have been sympathetic to the general message of Christianity even if they themselves were not actually Christian. As a Christian pastor, if I were famous and had written books and our church was huge, I could imagine this summer being invited to speak at Christian Family Day at the St. Louis Cardinals stadium—if they have such a thing anymore—or perhaps at the Philly’s Christian Family Day. I can imagine the sorts of words I would want to say to draw near to the audience, to give a compelling presentation of who Jesus is, why he is awesome, and what it means to know him and have your life changed by him. I could imagine that.
If, however, I were invited to speak to the employees of Amazon or Apple or Facebook—say, if they had a venue for outside speakers—I’d struggle to know where to begin. If those huge companies, companies on the front lines of business and design and current events, wanted to hear from an evangelical pastor just because they were intrigued that such people still existed and why Christians even believe what we believe, I’m not so sure I’d feel at home in that sort of a venue. I’m not sure I want that invitation; it’s not in my wheelhouse.
In fact, Google has just such an event. And they have invited Timothy Keller, a long-time pastor from Manhattan, to speak to them about Christianity. (Around here at our church, we tend to like Pastor Keller.) What would you say to an audience full of Google employees, or Apple or Amazon? What would you say to draw near to your audience—not to use the event as a way to speak to your “tribe,” but to actually speak to the people who are in front of you—to give a compelling presentation of who Jesus is, why Jesus is awesome, and what it means to know him and have your life changed by him?
This week I watched just a few minutes from one of Keller’s presentations at Google, the one from 2016 when his book Making Sense of God was published. I thought to myself, Wow, that’s a guy who knows how to take the message of Christianity and, without changing the message, tell it in a way that draws near to his audience. That’s not something every Christian speaker, author, professional athlete, or pastor can do well.
It is something, in our passage today, we see the apostle Paul could do really well.
A prominent feature of the book of Acts is Christian preaching. There are many speeches and sermons given throughout the book—several by Peter, one by Stephen that got him killed back in chapter 7, and Paul has had several sermons alluded to already, but this is the first extended sermon from him. Several of his later monologues will be to Jewish audiences, those steeped in Hebrew Bible. This audience, however, knows little about Christianity. And Paul loves to be the one to help them see Jesus. Look with me how the passage begins.
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.
A few things to notice. First, we’re told Paul is “waiting for them.” Paul is alone in Athens. He had been in Thessalonica, but he was run out of town by a mob to Berea. When the mob from Thessalonica heard Paul was in Berea, they followed him there, so the Christian leaders in Berea sent Paul away from Berea, which is why we read of Paul waiting in Athens by himself.
We read that “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.” He looked around and got angry. This week I saw many images, as I suspect you did, that made me angry. The idolatry bound up in the waving of a confederate flag in the lobby of our nation’s Capitol building provoked my spirit, just to mention one.
Athens was a city of idols, thousands and thousands of them. Listen to a few verses from one of Paul’s letters where he speaks about idolatry to a church in Corinth. On the one hand, he says idols have no real existence (1 Corinthians 8:4), and on the other hand they are demonically driven: “Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry,” Paul writes to this church. “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say . . . . what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Corinthians 10:14–15, 20).
Paul writes those words to the church in Corinth, a city not far from Athens. Paul is provoked in Athens because he sees people who think they are doing something wise and worshipful but otherwise harmless, and he’s concerned because behind their acts of devotion and piety, he sees dangerous idolatry, which he understands to be demonically driven, whether the worshiper knows that or, more likely, doesn’t know that.
This causes me to reflect on the idols of Harrisburg. But to put it that way is probably too monolithic, a painting with a brush too broad. Harrisburg has too many sub-communities to simply say “the idols of Harrisburg.” So, we should be more specific. What idols exist around in our capital culture? Or what idols exist among the downtown urban hipster crowd? What about Allison Hill? Or what about Linglestown or the West Shore or Perry County? What idols exist among the neighbors in your community? I don’t know the answer to those questions of what idols are in each sub-community. But we see Paul has drawn near to his audience enough to really know who they are, what they struggled with and how God wanted to meet with them. Paul knows and loves the lost people around him. In this “knowing and loving,” he’s following in Christ’s footsteps, as we’ll talk more about at the end. Let’s look at v. 17.
17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.
That word “so” at the start of the verse is important. We might also translate it “therefore.” Paul’s anger leads him to do something productive. He drew near. Christians do something productive with our provocations. We draw near. Even though Paul is alone and without his traveling companions, as he waits for them, we read that he “reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.” He goes to the religious centers of society: the synagogue. And he goes to the secular centers of society: the marketplace. Paul goes to Christian Family Day and he goes to Google.
I want you to also notice the phrase “with those who happened to be there.” This becomes more clear as he preaches, but Paul believes that because God loves to draw near to people, there ain’t no such thing as random. Life might feel random, but because God loves people, Paul believes that when he goes out to tell people about Jesus, there are going to be people there who are seeking God because God is seeking them. Look at vv. 18–21.
18 Some of the Epicurean 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. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.
The thought leaders of his day invite him to speak, to give a presentation at what is often called Mars Hill; it’s the Latin name for the Hill of Ares or the Areopagus. Notice in v. 18 how Paul is characterized: a babbler. This group of Harvard law professors think he’s a hillbilly, simply because he’s a Christian, even though Paul is a highly educated Roman citizen. Paul just didn’t attend the right schools, their schools, they think.
Still, others say Paul preaches “‘foreign divinities’”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (v. 18). This is an aside from the passage, but this caricature of Paul’s preaching as being about “foreign divinities” shows that they understood Paul, even if they disagreed with him or thought it was dumb, to be teaching that Jesus was divine. Let that sink in. The notion that Jesus was divine, that he was “very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, was not some later church dogma. The deity of Jesus is intrinsic to true Christian preaching from the birth of the church, from the book of Acts. Indeed, it is the divine Jesus who gives birth to the church. Paul saw Jesus as God, which is why they could characterize his preaching as being about “foreign divinities.” Don’t let anyone tell you that the divinity of Jesus was made up by the church a few hundred years later.
Luke, the narrator of the book of Acts, who is often with Paul through the last half of the book, notes that, “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new” (v. 21). That’s not a compliment, by the way. And it’s pretty easy for us to scoff at them for that. We’ll you just look at those Athenians. And yet this week, just for fun, I went on the homepage of Yahoo and BuzzFeed, and I thought we could classify our society in a similar way.
As we keep going, we’re going to read Paul’s speech. Now, as written it’s only a few minutes long, so we assume it’s a summary of his message. Paper was expensive, and the book of Acts is already long, so we’re given the highlights. Here’s how Paul begins.
22 So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
I want to come back to something I said before. Remember how the passage began? Paul’s spirit was provoked, meaning he was angry. He was amped. He was ready to launch a tweetstorm of rage.
How would you begin a message about Christianity to people who are doing things that disgust you—indeed, you believe they disgust God? As our country becomes more polarized, pick a group of people that makes you very angry, and now picture how you would address them if you were given the microphone as a spokesperson for Jesus? How would you address a crowd at a Gay Pride march? Or a gathering for the Black Lives Matter organization? Or an alt-right gathering? Or a group of young, progressive democrats? Each of those groups is not the same, I but suspect at least one of them pokes your buttons. Maybe just being here at our church, if you’re not a Christian, pokes your button. Maybe listening to me, an evangelical pastor, pokes your buttons—or at least the perception of evangelical pastors pokes your buttons. Again, my point is not to equate all these groups, but to say, that when Paul speaks to this audience, he does not begin neutral. But whatever anger he might have had, legitimate as it was, we see love and care ooze from his words as he speaks about God. What they called unknown, he lovingly proclaims to them as known.
In vv. 24–25 Paul speaks of what theologians call God’s aseity, meaning God’s independence. God is not needy. The maker of heaven and earth does not, as Paul says, “live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.”
But despite God’s aseity, his independence and his self-generating life, God is also near. “[God] himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” God is near, a point Paul continues to emphasize. I’ll read the rest of his speech.
26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, 28 for
“‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
29 Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. 30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Paul moves from creation and God’s independence, then to the human race from Adam and on then to every person who has ever lived. Paul says that where each person lives and when each person lives, God has sovereignly orchestrated the when and the where so that he can be known, so that people will seek him because, as Paul says, he’s not far off. That is true of us today, Church. Where you live and when you live, and where you work and where you grew up—that you are here this morning at church—all of it has been designed by God so that he might draw near to you. You are not alone. God knows the plans he has for you.
In v. 29 Paul continues to draw near to his audience by quoting two of their own poets, first Epimenides and then Aratus. Epimenides said, “In him we live and move and have our being” and Aratus wrote, “For we are indeed his offspring.” This rhetorical move would be like us quoting Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or perhaps popular novelists like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling or a poet like Maya Angelou or some other popular figure with cultural weight. We’d quote them in order to show that what the person said, even though there would be many points of disagreement, by God’s common grace they said something that is actually a pointer to the truth of the gospel. Despite all the disagreement, something they said is true.
This is why I titled the sermon what I did. I called it “The True Myth.” What these people were hoping for and longing for, what the men of the Areopagus hoped for, what Epimenides and Aratus wrote about, and what the people of Athens worshiped, even as they did it through vain idolatry to an unknown God, Paul is saying to them, “It’s true. The myth you only know as a whisper, I proclaim to you as true. There is a God, the God who made everything, and he wants to draw near to you. This world is not random but ordered, and it bends toward a relationship with God—if you would seek him. And if you seek him, this God is holy, and we need to repent because one day he’ll judge the world. But if you trust in Jesus, he’s the one who died for you, so you don’t have to be punished.” This is where we see Paul’s speech end. They seem to have cut him off before he finished. Look at the last few verses.
32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 So Paul went out from their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
This three-fold response should set our expectations for Christian ministry: some will mock, some will be intrigued, and some—praise the Lord—will become Christians. They have names. Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others.
I mentioned before that Paul went to the synagogue and the marketplace to speak about Jesus “every day with those who happened to be there” (v. 17). If you couple that verse with what Paul says vv. 26–27, where he says that God determines when and where we live so that we would seek God, then we are remined that the universe is not random. The universe is not merely a pinball machine. The universe, including the year that was 2020, is not just a series of random collisions and brokenness that have nothing to do with anything. Rather, God is drawing near.
If you believe God is distant and unknowable and the world is dark and random, you’ll give yourself over to a thousand different sins. If you believe God is distant and unknowable and that the world is dark and random, perhaps you’ll despair of life. Or perhaps you’ll say, “Let’s eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” Or perhaps you’ll latch on to some aspect of creation to worship rather than worshiping the Creator. All of these happen in Athens, and they all happen in Harrisburg.
But this passage reminds us that God draws near. This is the point of Paul’s sermon, and it’s even what he embodies throughout the sermon. Paul draws near to these Athenian sinners even as he preaches God’s nearness. As Christ drew near in his incarnation and in the gospel story, so he still draws near through Christian ministry and preaching.
I wonder if there are people that you’ve pulled back from in your life because they annoy you, they provoke you. I wonder if instead, God might be calling you to invite them over for dinner. I wonder if God has put you exactly where he’s put you, so he could seek you and help you seek others on his behalf.
I’ll invite the music team to lead us in a few songs. Let’s pray. . .
