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The Areopagus Encounter: The Sovereignty of the Resurrected Creator vs. the Idols of Human Philosophy · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  Today we are opening up a stack of research that I think is
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  going to genuinely change the way you look at the New
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  Testament. I think so too.
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  We're doing a deep dive into the collision, and I mean a violent
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  philosophical collision, between the Apostle Paul's gospel and
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  the religious world of Greek paganism.
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  It is good to be here, and collision is absolutely the
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  right word. We often read the book of Acts,
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  specifically Acts 17, where Paul is in Athens and we sort of
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  imagine a polite debate in a university hall.
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  Right, like a formal lecture. Yeah, exactly.
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  But when you look at the sources we have today, specifically when
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  you compare Paul's letters and acts against the backdrop of
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  what 1st century religion actually was, you realize this
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  wasn't a debate. It was a a complete
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  restructuring of reality. Right.
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  And just to Orient you, the listener, our mission for this
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  deep dive is to figure out why Christianity wasn't just treated
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  as another option. You know, like I'll have a
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  little Zeus, a little Apollo, and aside Jesus.
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  Which is what the Roman world was very good at doing, just
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  adding another God to the shelf. But the sources argue that
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  Paul's message was structurally incompatible with that.
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  You couldn't just add it on? Precisely.
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  And we should be clear about our lens today.
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  We are looking at this through the framework of Reformed
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  theology. So the Westminster Confession
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  is, you know, in the background for us.
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  We aren't just looking at history.
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  We are looking at the theology of God's sovereignty, the huge
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  distinction between the Creator and the creature, and the
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  absolute necessity of revelation.
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  So let's set the scene. We are in Athens Acts chapter
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  17. Now if I go to Athens today, I'm
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  looking at the Parthenon. I'm taking photos, meeting a
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  gyro. It's a vacation.
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  Sure, a tourist trip. But the text says Paul was
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  provoked. That seems like a really strong
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  reaction to some statues. It is a very strong reaction.
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  The Greek word there is parchineto.
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  Parchineto, OK. It's where we get our English
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  word paroxysm. It implies A seizure, a sharp,
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  sudden outburst of emotion. But we have to be really careful
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  not to just psychoanalyze Paul as being grumpy or, you know,
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  experiencing culture shock. He wasn't.
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  Just having a bad day because the coffee was weak.
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  No, not at all. In the Septuagint.
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  That's the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
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  That same word is used to describe God's covenantal
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  jealousy. When Israel worshipped the
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  golden calf, God was provoked. So Paul isn't looking at this
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  art and thinking the composition is a little off.
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  He is looking at a city that is committing high treason against
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  its creator. For him, he is witnessing a
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  crime scene. That is a huge shift in
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  perspective, and the sources point out that Athens wasn't
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  irreligious, it was the opposite.
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  In fact, Paul calls them DSE Diamond estrus, which is a
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  mouthful. It is.
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  It's a compound word, a DZ diamond, and it can be
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  translated a couple of ways. It can mean very religious, or
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  it can mean somewhat superstitious.
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  It literally refers to a fear of the diamond, the spirits.
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  So they weren't lacking in belief.
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  Oh, not at all. The problem in Athens wasn't
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  that they were atheists. The problem was that the city
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  was absolutely stuffed with idols.
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  I think it was Petronius, an ancient writer, who said it was
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  easier to find a God in Athens than a man.
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  So the thesis we're working with today is that Paul's gospel
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  disrupts this world because it replaces A populated cosmos of
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  naty gods with one sovereign, self-sufficient Creator who
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  demands repentance. OK, let's unpack that term.
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  The populated cosmos. What was the average person on
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  the street in Athens or Corinth actually dealing with?
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  What did that world feel like? Imagine the air you breathe is
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  just thick with invisible agents.
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  It's a world where nothing is empty.
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  You have civic deities who protect the city walls, like
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  Athena for Athens. Right, the big public ones.
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  Yes, but it gets much more local.
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  You have household gods, the lehras and pennantes in the
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  Roman world, who watch over your pantry in your doorway.
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  You've got Guild patrons. If you are a silversmith,
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  there's a God for that. If you are a sailor, you don't
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  dare leave port without pouring out a drink for Poseidon.
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  So you're never really alone, there's always someone or
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  something watching. Never.
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  And these gods were anthropomorphic.
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  That's the key. They're basically Superman.
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  With all the baggage that comes with that.
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  All of it. They had bodies, essentially, or
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  at least they had passions. They got hungry, they got
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  jealous. They had affairs, they schemed.
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  They were powerful, yes, but they were within the system.
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  Zeus didn't create the universe from nothing.
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  He conquered his father Cronus within the existing universe.
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  They're all just parts of the furniture of reality, just
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  bigger and louder than us. And because they are like us,
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  just bigger, you have to manage them.
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  The sources talk about this transactional logic.
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  This is the absolute heartbeat of paganism.
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  The Latin phrase that sums it up is.
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  I give so that you give. That's it.
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  It's reciprocity. You bring the bull to the altar,
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  you pour the wine, you hold the festival.
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  And you ask why? Because the God needs honor.
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  And then some of the older, more ancient conceptions, they
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  literally needed the smoke of the sacrifice for sustenance in
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  exchange that keep the crops growing and the plague away.
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  It's a business deal. A cosmic protection racket.
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  Almost. It is Piety's management.
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  You are constantly managing A volatile relationship with a
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  powerful, unpredictable neighbor.
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  You're trying to keep them happy.
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  And then Paul stands up at the Areopagus.
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  This is Acts 17 verse 24 and he just drops a nuclear bomb on
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  this whole system. He says the God who made the
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  world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,
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  does not live in temples made by man.
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  This is the confrontation. This is where that Reformed
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  doctrine of the creator creature distinction becomes the most
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  practical thing in the world. It's not some abstract idea.
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  Paul is asserting a seity. A seity?
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  OK, that's a $10 theological word.
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  Break that down for us. It comes from the Latin essay,
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  which just means from himself. God is self-sufficient.
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  He is self existent. The Westminster Confession
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  describes God as having all life, glory, goodness,
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  blessedness in and of Himself. So he doesn't get anything from
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  outside himself. Nothing.
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  He doesn't derive his existence from the cosmos.
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  The cosmos derives its existence from him, moment by moment.
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  So when Paul says in the next verse, verse 25, nor is he
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  served by human hands as though he needed anything, he's
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  directly attacking that whole transaction we just talked
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  about. He is destroying the entire
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  economy of Pagan religion in one sentence.
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  Think about the the implications.
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  If God doesn't need your goat, you can't bribe him, right?
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  If God doesn't live in the temple, you can't box him in,
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  you can't control him. The Pagan logic was humans feed
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  the gods, or at least honor them, and in return the gods
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  maintain cosmic order. Paul says no, that's completely
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  backwards. God sustains humans.
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  We are the needy ones. It flips the script entirely.
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  The direction of need is reversed.
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  It's a Copernican revolution in theology.
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  We aren't the benefactors of God, he is the benefactor, Paul
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  says. He gives to all mankind life and
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  breath and everything. So the whole temple theology of
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  Athens, the idea that you build this magnificent house for
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  Athena so she stays put and protects your city, is dismissed
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  as absurd by Paul. He's basically saying you think
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  you can build a box for the architect of the galaxies.
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  Yes, and that is deeply offensive.
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  He's telling them their entire religious infrastructure, the
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  very thing that they think keeps their city safe, is based on a
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  misunderstanding of who God is. That brings us to how we know
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  any of this. The sources draw a really sharp
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  contrast between how the Greeks understood truth and how Paul
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  presents it, between myth and revelation.
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  Yes, this is another huge point of collision.
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  In the Greek world, truth, especially religious truth, was
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  often carried by myth, by ritual, and by custom.
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  You did things because your father's did them.
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  It was about performance, not really about doctrine.
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  So you didn't have to what, sign a statement of faith to be part
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  of the cult of Apollo? No, not at all.
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  You didn't have to believe that Zeus actually turned into a swan
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  to seduce Lita. You just had to perform the
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  correctly. The myths were elastic.
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  You could retell them. You could change the details,
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  you could interpret them as metaphors for nature.
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  They weren't historical claims. It sounds a bit like how some
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  people treat spirituality today. It's my truth, or it's a
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  meaningful story for me, but maybe not for you.
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  Very much so. It's a truth that is malleable.
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  But Paul doesn't walk into Athens and say I have a better
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  myth for you. He claims revelation.
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  He claims God has spoken definitively.
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  And finally. And he points to that altar,
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  right to an unknown God altar. That's his entry point.
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  It is a brilliant rhetorical move, but it's also a deeply
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  theological indictment. The Athenians had these altars
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  just in case they missed a God. It was like a spiritual
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  insurance policy. Covering all their bases.
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  Again, it's that transactional logic.
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  We don't want offend anyone by leaving them out.
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  And Paul looks at it and says what you worship in ignorance.
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  This I proclaimed to you. He isn't saying, oh, you guys
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  were so close. Let me just fill in the.
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  Blanks. He's not congratulating them on
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  their piety. Not at all.
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  He is saying you have suppressed the truth about the one true
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  God, and your altar to an unknown God is the evidence of
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  your ignorance. This connects directly to Romans
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  one, right? That's the theological engine
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  behind this. Correct.
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  The Reformed view looking at Romans 1 is that everyone knows
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  God exists. The creation screams his divine
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  nature and eternal power. But in our unrighteousness we
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  suppress that truth, and we exchange the glory of the
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  immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds
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  or animals. So when Paul sees that unknown
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  God altar, he sees a monument to that suppression.
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  He does, and he uses it to pivot from what they don't know to
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  what God has made known. He pivots to special revelation.
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  He says. I'm going to tell you about the
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  one you are actively trying to ignore.
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  And the anchor for this revelation isn't a philosophy,
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  it's history. This seems to be a major point
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  of contrast. This is crucial.
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  The Greeks loved philosophy. The Stoics, the Epicureans,
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  there were all there in Paul's audience.
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  But Paul doesn't offer a new philosophy of ethics or a new
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  theory of the cosmos. He offers a witness to an event.
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  The Resurrection. The resurrection, First
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  Corinthians 15 is the key here. He says the gospel is that
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  Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, and that he was
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  raised on the third day, and then he lists the witnesses he
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  appeared to Cephas, then the 12, then to more than 500 brothers
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  at one time. He's citing witnesses.
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  He's essentially saying go check my sources, these people are
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  still alive. Right.
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  Christianity is falsifiable in a way that the Cult of Demeter at
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  Aleucis wasn't. The mystery cult offered secret
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  internal experiences. You go into a cave, you see a
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  light, you have a vision, you feel something.
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  It's private. And you can't really argue with
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  a feeling. You can't.
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  But Paul says no, this didn't happen in a secret cave.
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  This happened under Pontius Pilate.
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  That little creedal phrase under Pontius Pilate is so important
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  because it anchors the Gospel in dateable secular history.
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  It's public truth, not a private experience.
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  It is public proclamation for universal judgement.
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  It's not a mystery religion for a secret club of initiates.
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  It's a summons issued to all nations based on a historical
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  fact. OK, let's shift gears to how we
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  actually relate to this God. We've established He's the
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  creator. He doesn't need us, and he has
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  revealed himself in history. But I'm still a human being.
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  I've got guilt. I got problems.
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  How do I get right with the divine in these two systems?
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  This is where the rubber really meets the road.
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  In the Pagan system, the problem isn't primarily sin and the
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  biblical sense of moral rebellion against a holy God.
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  The problem is more like disfavor or ritual impurity.
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  You've made a powerful being angry with you, yes.
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  You stepped on a crack, you forgot a festival, you said the
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  wrong word in a prayer. Or maybe the stars are just
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  against you. It's often external.
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  So the solution is also external.
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  It's about ritual correctness. Correct.
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  You manage the relationship. You offer the right sacrifice to
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  appease the anger or to buy the favor.
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  It's a transaction to fix a transaction that went wrong.
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  You don't necessarily need to be a morally good person to get
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  Poseidon's help on your sea voyage.
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  You just need to have offered the right sacrifice.
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  Right, You just need to offer the right hecatum.
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  That's a sacrifice of 100 cattle.
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  It's about performing the correct ritual action.
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  But Paul comes in with a message that's rooted in, well, the
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  Reformed doctrine of total depravity.
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  He identifies A fundamentally different problem.
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  The problem isn't that you forgot a ritual.
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  The problem is that you are a moral rebel against it's a holy
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  judge. Your very nature is bent away
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  from God. Your conscience condemns you
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  and. No amount of goat blood can
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  clean a guilty conscience. Exactly.
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  Rituals can't fix a broken heart or rebellious will.
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  You can't fix an internal problem with an external
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  solution. So if rituals can't fix it, what
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  does? A mediator.
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  This is where the gospel become so radical.
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  Paul writes in First Timothy 2.5.
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  For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and
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  men, the man Christ Jesus. Not 1000 mediators for 1000
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  problems 1. The sources call this an
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  inversion of the whole direction of religion.
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  Yes, I think that's a great way to put it.
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  In religion that is in human made religion, man moves up to
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  God with gifts. Here God, take this money, take
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  this animal, take my good works and be nice to me.
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  It's an upward movement. We initiate the transaction.
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  We do, but in the Gospel, God moves down to man.
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  In Christ, God initiates, God comes to us.
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  And God provides the sacrifice. That is the doctrine of
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  propitiation and it is is a game changer.
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  In Romans 3, Paul says God put forward Christ as a propitiation
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  by his blood. In paganism, the worshipper
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  provides the propitiation to appease the God.
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  In Christianity, the judge provides the propitiation to
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  satisfy his own justice. The offended party pays the
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  price, yes. Which is just it's unthinkable
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  in any other religious system. That changes everything.
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  You aren't negotiating anymore. You can't negotiate.
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  You don't bargain with the creator who has a Sadie.
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  You can only to render to the Redeemer.
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  It ends the crippling anxiety of did I do enough?
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  Was my sacrifice good enough? Because Christ has done enough.
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  Now you would think people would hear this and say great free
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  grace, no more expensive sacrifices, count me in.
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  But that's not what happened. Everywhere Paul went, there was
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  trouble. Trouble is putting it mildly.
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  He was beaten, stoned in prison, chased out of town.
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  Why? If it's just a theological
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  disagreement, why the violence? The sources bring up that simple
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  phrase. Jesus is Lord curiosiasis.
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  Why was that a war cry? Because of its its radical
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  exclusivity, the Roman world was in its own way a pluralistic
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  masterpiece. They were synchronous.
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  They were very happy to accept Jesus.
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  If you wanted to build a statue of Jesus and put it right next
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  to Apollo and the emperor and the pantheon, the Romans would
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  say wonderful, another God for the collection.
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  They were fine with Jesus and. Bread, Jesus and Caesar, Jesus
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  and Artemis, Jesus and the local gods of whatever city you're in.
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  But Paul preached Jesus only, and that only is what tore the
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  fabric of society. Because if Jesus is Lord.
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  Then Caesar is not, or at least Caesar's authority is, relative
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  and derivative, not ultimate. In the Roman mind, refusing to
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  offer a pinch of incense to the genius of the emperor or
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  sacrifice to the city gods was seen as atheism.
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  Which is so ironic. The Christians were called
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  atheists. Because they denied all the
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  other gods, it was viewed as treason.
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  You are opting out of the spiritual protection system of
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  the Empire. You were a bad citizen.
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  So it wasn't just, oh, you have a different religion, it was you
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  were endangering our collective safety.
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  Yes, 100%. If the gods get angry because
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  the Christians are neglecting them and an earthquake hits or a
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  plague breaks out, whose fault is it?
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  It's a Christian's fault. They become the scapegoats for
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  every disaster. And I wasn't just safety, it was
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  money. This brings us to the riot in
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  Ephesus in Acts 19. I love this story because it
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  feels so modern. It is incredibly modern.
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  You have this character Demetrius, A silversmith, and he
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  makes silver shrines of Artemis. You have to understand Ephesus
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  was the home of the great temple of Artemis, one of the Seven
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  Wonders of the ancient world. It was a massive tourist
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  attraction and a pilgrimage site.
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  So this was big business. Think T-shirts and souvenirs had
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  a major attraction. Huge business and Paul comes to
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  town and starts telling people that God's made with hands or no
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  gods at all and people start listening.
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  They become Christians and they stop buying the little silver or
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  shrines. So Demetrius checks his sales
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  figures for the quarter. And they're tanking.
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  So he gathers the whole Guild of Craftsman, and he gives this
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  speech, and he's brutally honest.
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  He doesn't start with theology, he starts with economics.
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  He says, man, you know that from this business.
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  We have our wealth. He lays it right out there.
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  This is hitting us in the wallet.
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  And then after he establishes the financial threat, he brings
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  in the piety. And not only is there a danger
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  that this trade of ours may come into disrepute, but also the but
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  the temple of the great goddess Artemis may be counted as
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  nothing. He's connecting their prophet to
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  their piety. And the city goes crazy.
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  They start shouting. Great is Artemis of the
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  Ephesians for two hours straight.
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  You see how it's all tied together?
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  Religion, commerce, and social order.
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  Paul's gospel cut the link between religion and prophet,
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  and the system violently rejected it.
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  The sources also mentioned the burning of the magic books in
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  Ephesus. That's another economic hit, but
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  also a spiritual one. A massive 1.
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  The text says they calculated the value and it came to 50,000
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  pieces of silver. I mean, that's millions of
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  dollars in today's money. And this connects to what we can
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  call power, religion. Magic was pragmatic.
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  It was a technology. You used spells and incantations
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  to manipulate spiritual forces to get what you wanted.
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  Love, money, revenge, health. And the new Christians burn
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  their spellbooks. They publicly renounce all
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  spiritual manipulation. They are making a statement.
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  We don't use Jesus as a technique.
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  There's that fascinating story right before it in Acts 19 about
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  the sons of Sava. Oh, the Jewish exorcist.
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  Right, they see Paul casting out demons and they think, hey,
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  that's a good trick. So they try to use the name of
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  Jesus like a magic spell they say to a demon.
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  I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.
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  And the demon speaks back, which must have been.
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  Terrifying, it says. Jesus I know and Paul I
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  recognize, but who are you? And the man with the evil spirit
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  then beats them all up, and they run out of the house naked and
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  wounded. It's almost comical, but the
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  point is deadly serious. The.
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  Point is crystal clear, you cannot use the name of the Lord
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  as a tool for your own power. The Gospel kills the pragmatic,
• 18:29
  manipulative approach to spirituality.
• 18:32
  So we have a theological clash, an economic clash.
• 18:34
  And now let's talk about the aesthetic clash.
• 18:36
  Worship. If I walked into a Pagan temple
• 18:39
  in the 1st century, it would be a sensory overload.
• 18:43
  Gold incense, huge statues, processions.
• 18:46
  It was a spectacle. It was designed to impress and
• 18:49
  overwhelm you. The statue of Athena in the
• 18:51
  Parthenon was 40 feet tall, made of ivory and gold.
• 18:55
  The whole system was visible, tangible, beautiful in its own
• 18:59
  way and. Then I walk into a Christian
• 19:01
  gathering in Corinth. And you are probably in the
• 19:03
  atrium of a private home, maybe a rented hall.
• 19:07
  There are no statues, there is no incense.
• 19:09
  There is no altar with a smoking sacrifice of an animal.
• 19:13
  To a Pagan observer, it would look incredibly bare, maybe even
• 19:16
  empty or impoverished. Imageless worship, which would
• 19:19
  have been very strange to them. Very.
• 19:20
  They centered on things. You couldn't see the Word in
• 19:23
  sacrament. They read letters from the
• 19:24
  apostles, they preached, they prayed, and they shared a simple
• 19:27
  meal of bread and wine. It was a worship of the ear, not
• 19:30
  the eye. The sources talk about a major
• 19:32
  theological shift here regarding the concept of temple.
• 19:35
  We mentioned earlier that Paul says God doesn't live in temples
• 19:38
  made by hands, but Paul does say there is a temple.
• 19:41
  Yes, but the temple is the people.
• 19:44
  He writes to the Corinthians in First Corinthians 3.16.
• 19:47
  Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's
• 19:50
  Spirit dwells in you? This is just, it's radical.
• 19:54
  It's what some have called the desacralization of geography.
• 19:58
  Unpack that desacralization of geography.
• 20:00
  It means holy space is no longer Agps coordinate.
• 20:03
  It's not about being on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem or on
• 20:06
  the Acropolis in Athens. Holy space is now defined as
• 20:09
  wherever the covenant family gathers in the name of Jesus,
• 20:13
  the Spirit dwells in the believer, not in a building.
• 20:16
  This must have been baffling to the pagans.
• 20:18
  So where's your God? Well, he's in US.
• 20:20
  It completely redefined holiness.
• 20:22
  Holiness wasn't about being in a sacred zone or avoiding ritual
• 20:25
  impurity. It was about the moral condition
• 20:27
  of the community and the individual believer.
• 20:30
  Which brings us to ethics, moral formation.
• 20:32
  Let me ask this was paganism just totally immoral?
• 20:35
  Were they just hedonists? No, not entirely.
• 20:37
  That's a caricature. They had virtues.
• 20:40
  They valued courage, honor, justice, duty to the state.
• 20:44
  But their ethics were often variable.
• 20:46
  It depended on your class, your gender, and which city you were
• 20:48
  in. And very often religion and
• 20:50
  ethics were in separate compartments.
• 20:53
  You could be very pious ritually you do all the sacrifices but at
• 20:56
  the same time visit temple prostitutes or cheat in your
• 20:59
  business dealings. As long as you didn't break a
• 21:02
  contract or offend a specific God related to that contract, it
• 21:06
  was often seen as fine. Your piety didn't necessarily
• 21:09
  have to shape your personal morality.
• 21:11
  Paul's ethics, however, seemed to flow from a completely
• 21:14
  different source. Paul's ethics flow directly from
• 21:17
  union with Christ. This is the key Reformed
• 21:19
  doctrine here. We are mystically spiritually
• 21:22
  united to Jesus in his death and resurrection.
• 21:25
  Therefore, our behavior must match his life.
• 21:27
  It's not about following a rule book.
• 21:29
  It's about living out a new identity.
• 21:30
  The sexual ethics is the big flashpoint, right?
• 21:33
  Especially in place like Corinth, First Corinthians 6.
• 21:35
  It is. Corinth was a port city famous
• 21:38
  for its sexual looseness. The argument Paul uses against a
• 21:42
  Christian man visiting a prostitute is fascinating.
• 21:45
  He doesn't just say it's against rule #7 he says, do you not know
• 21:49
  that your bodies are members of Christ?
• 21:51
  Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of
• 21:54
  a prostitute? That's a heavy argument.
• 21:56
  It's not just behavioral, it's ontologic.
• 21:58
  It's about who you are. Correct, He goes on to say you
• 22:02
  were bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your
• 22:05
  body. Sexual immorality contradicts
• 22:07
  the reality of your new identity.
• 22:09
  If you are united to the Holy 1, you cannot be 1 flesh with a
• 22:13
  prostitute. It's a contradiction in being.
• 22:15
  The sources mentioned the third use of the law here.
• 22:18
  Can you explain that? Right.
• 22:20
  In Reformed theology, we talk about 3 uses of God's moral law.
• 22:24
  The first use is like a mirror. It shows us our sin and drives
• 22:27
  us to Christ. The second use is like a fence.
• 22:29
  It restrains evil in society. But the third use is the one for
• 22:33
  the believer. It's a guide for a life of
• 22:35
  gratitude. So we obey not to get saved.
• 22:37
  Which would be the old Pagan transaction trap.
• 22:39
  Right. We obey because we are saved.
• 22:42
  Yes, we obey out of gratitude and because this is the shape of
• 22:47
  our new identity in Christ. The Pagan says I obey to get the
• 22:50
  gods to like me. The Christian says God loves me
• 22:53
  in Christ, therefore I want to live a life that pleases him.
• 22:57
  It completely shifts the motive from fear and manipulation to
• 23:01
  love and gratitude. OK, let's look at the future
• 23:04
  eschatology. We're all going to die.
• 23:06
  What did the average Greek on the street think happened next?
• 23:09
  It was a pretty mixed bag, but generally it was bleak.
• 23:13
  The Epicureans, for instance, believed in extinction,
• 23:15
  annihilation. Your atoms just disperse, lights
• 23:19
  out. So, you know, fear of judgement,
• 23:20
  but also no hope. And the Stoics they were in
• 23:23
  Paul's audience, too. For the Stoics, you might get
• 23:25
  reabsorbed into the cosmos. The divine spark in you, the
• 23:28
  Logos, goes back to the universal fire.
• 23:30
  You lose your personal identity, you just dissolve back into the
• 23:33
  hole and. Then you have the Platonists,
• 23:34
  which I think is the view that is most influenced a lot of folk
• 23:38
  Christianity. Absolutely.
• 23:39
  The Platonists believed the body was a prison.
• 23:42
  There's a Greek phrase somasima. The body is a tomb.
• 23:46
  The goal was for the immortal soul to escape the messy,
• 23:49
  decaying material world and ascend to a pure, spiritual,
• 23:53
  disembodied realm. So into that mix enter Paul,
• 23:57
  preaching the resurrection of the body.
• 23:59
  And you can see why they mocked him in Acts 17, the text says.
• 24:02
  When he mentioned the resurrection of the dead, some
• 24:04
  of them sneered. To a philosophically minded
• 24:07
  Greek, the idea that you would want your body back was
• 24:09
  disgusting. It's like telling a prisoner who
• 24:12
  just got paroled good news. When you get out, you get to
• 24:14
  take your prison bars with you. But Paul, in all of
• 24:17
  Christianity, insists on it. Why is the body so important?
• 24:21
  Because God created the material world and called it good.
• 24:24
  The biblical worldview is not that matter is evil and spirit
• 24:27
  is good. It's that God redeems the whole
• 24:29
  person, body and soul. Christ's resurrection body is
• 24:33
  the prototype, the first fruits he ate, fish He could be
• 24:35
  touched, but he was also glorified.
• 24:38
  God isn't going to scrap his creation, He's going to renew
• 24:40
  it. This also connects to Judgement.
• 24:43
  Acts 17, verse 31. He has fixed a day on which he
• 24:46
  will judge the world in righteousness.
• 24:48
  This is another shock to their system.
• 24:50
  The Greek view of history was often cyclical.
• 24:52
  Nature goes in circles, The seasons, death, rebirth.
• 24:56
  Everything repeats. There's no ultimate destination.
• 24:58
  But Paul says history is linear. It's an arrow, not a wheel.
• 25:02
  It is heading somewhere very specific.
• 25:04
  There is a fixed day, a final appointment.
• 25:08
  History isn't just wandering aimlessly.
• 25:10
  It is moving toward a judgment seat.
• 25:13
  That adds a layer of unmistakable urgency to
• 25:15
  everything. Absolute urgency.
• 25:17
  If history is just a cycle, you can relax.
• 25:20
  What goes around comes around, but if there is a court date set
• 25:23
  on the calendar of the universe and the judge is the man who
• 25:26
  rose from the dead, well, you need to get your case in order.
• 25:29
  And our lawyer is. The judge himself, if we are in
• 25:31
  him by faith. This is where the command to
• 25:33
  repent comes in. It's not a polite suggestion.
• 25:36
  It's a summons. Paul doesn't say.
• 25:38
  I'd like to invite you all to consider a new spiritual path
• 25:41
  that might work for you. He says the times of ignorance
• 25:44
  God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere
• 25:47
  to repent because the King is coming and his appointment is
• 25:49
  set. OK, let's bring this home to the
• 25:51
  listener. We're thinking about our learner
• 25:54
  profile. We don't have temples to Artemis
• 25:56
  in downtown New York or London. We don't sacrifice bulls.
• 26:00
  Why does this deep dive into ancient paganism matter today?
• 26:04
  Because, as John Calvin said, the human heart is a perpetual
• 26:07
  idol factory. We may not have stone statues in
• 26:11
  our living rooms, but we have idols of the heart, as the
• 26:14
  prophet Ezekiel puts it. Give me some modern examples.
• 26:16
  What does that look like? We treat things like career,
• 26:19
  political power, romance, or financial security in exactly
• 26:24
  the same way the Greeks treated their gods.
• 26:26
  We look to them for our ultimate security.
• 26:28
  We look to them for our significance and identity, and
• 26:31
  we make sacrifices to them. That's a good point.
• 26:34
  People sacrifice their families on the altar of career.
• 26:37
  They sacrifice their integrity on the altar of political
• 26:40
  acceptance. All the time and we still try to
• 26:42
  transact with God even as Christians.
• 26:44
  You do, don't we? It's subtle.
• 26:45
  It's very subtle. It sounds like this.
• 26:47
  God, I went to church 3 weeks in a row.
• 26:49
  I gave money to that charity. I was a generally good person.
• 26:52
  Why did I get this cancer diagnosis?
• 26:53
  You owe me. That is the voice of the Pagan
• 26:56
  Areopagus. That is the transactional logic
• 26:59
  of the Otes. And the answer to that way of
• 27:01
  thinking is. The answer is sovereignty and
• 27:03
  grace. We need to recover a robust
• 27:06
  doctrine of the God who determines boundaries.
• 27:08
  As Paul says in that same sermon, we don't manage God.
• 27:11
  We submit to his wise and good Providence even when it's
• 27:13
  painful. And we need to know that our
• 27:16
  standing with Him is never based on our performance, but solely
• 27:19
  on Christ's perfect performance on our behalf.
• 27:21
  The sources use that head, heart, hands framework to alley
• 27:25
  this. Let's walk through that.
• 27:27
  Yes. So for the head we need to
• 27:29
  reclaim the doctrine of the creator creature distinction.
• 27:32
  God is not just a bigger, better version of us.
• 27:34
  He is wholly other self-sufficient.
• 27:37
  He's not our cosmic buddy. OK, head, what about heart?
• 27:40
  For the heart, we need to be provoked by the idolatry around
• 27:44
  us and more importantly, in us. We shouldn't just casually
• 27:47
  accept it or accommodate it. We need some of that holy
• 27:51
  covenantal jealousy for God's glory.
• 27:53
  Enhance how we live. For the hands we need to live
• 27:56
  ethically distinct lives. We can't be synchronous.
• 27:59
  You know, Christians on Sunday and secular pragmatists who
• 28:02
  worship money and success from Monday to Saturday.
• 28:05
  The Lordship of Christ has to extend to our it's our
• 28:07
  relationships, our politics, everything.
• 28:09
  That antithesis, that distinction, seems to be the
• 28:13
  main take away for me from all of this.
• 28:15
  Paul didn't try to blend in. He didn't look for common ground
• 28:18
  just for the sake of it. He drew a line in the sand, and
• 28:21
  that is deeply uncomfortable for us.
• 28:23
  We live in a world that values tolerance and inclusivity above
• 28:26
  almost everything else. The gospel is wonderfully
• 28:29
  inclusive in that it is for all nations, but it is fiercely
• 28:32
  exclusive in that it demands 1 Lord.
• 28:35
  It's a clash between a self-sufficient, sovereign God
• 28:37
  and a whole system of human projection.
• 28:40
  Perfectly put. We want a God we can project our
• 28:43
  desires onto, A God who agrees with our politics, who affirms
• 28:47
  our lifestyle. A God we can manage, but the God
• 28:50
  of Acts 17 is the God who made us and who commands us to
• 28:54
  change, to be conformed to his image, not the other way around.
• 28:58
  And that shift is from the unknown God, that vague fuzzy
• 29:02
  spirituality, to the known Savior.
• 29:05
  The man whom God has appointed Jesus, the historical
• 29:09
  resurrected, reigning Lord. You know what's really sticking
• 29:12
  with me is that idea that Paul didn't use philosophy to prove
• 29:15
  God's existence. He used the resurrection.
• 29:17
  That's the anchor. He doesn't say let's reason our
• 29:20
  way from logic to a prime mover. He says look at the empty tomb.
• 29:23
  God has given proof to all men by raising him from the dead.
• 29:27
  It's an external public fact, not a private internal feeling.
• 29:31
  So as we wrap up, I'm thinking about the listener who might be
• 29:33
  feeling that pension right now. Maybe they've been treating God
• 29:36
  like a cosmic vending machine, put a good deeds, get out
• 29:38
  blessings. Or maybe they've been trying to
• 29:40
  keep Jesus as just one item on their spiritual shelf next to a
• 29:43
  few other things. The challenge of this whole deep
• 29:46
  dive, I think comes down to this is Jesus Lord, Because if he is,
• 29:50
  he doesn't just get a spot on the shelf.
• 29:52
  He takes over the whole shelf. He takes over the whole house,
• 29:55
  he desacralizes the world by stripping power from the idols,
• 29:58
  but then he re sacralizes your life by making you his temple.
• 30:03
  That is a beautiful thought, but also a terrifying one.
• 30:06
  It cost you everything. As CS Lewis famously said, he is
• 30:09
  not a tame lion, but he is good. I want to leave you, the
• 30:14
  listener, with this final provocative thought from our
• 30:16
  sources. You mentioned earlier that Paul
• 30:18
  didn't try to make the gospel palatable to the Athenians.
• 30:21
  No, he didn't. He didn't sand down the edges.
• 30:23
  And here's the question for us today, in a world of spiritual
• 30:27
  but not religious pluralism. Are we bold enough to claim that
• 30:31
  there is only one man whom God has appointed to judge the
• 30:33
  world? Or are we secretly building our
• 30:36
  own little altars to unknown gods just to keep our neighbors,
• 30:39
  our colleagues, or our culture happy?
• 30:41
  Are we willing to be seen as fools?
• 30:43
  Paul is willing to be looked at as a fool and a disruptor to
• 30:46
  tell the truth. The question is, are we?
• 30:48
  That is definitely something to chew on.
• 30:50
  Thanks for diving deep with us. It was a pleasure.
• 30:52
  We'll see you next time on reformed thinking.