Becoming a Friend of God

Today's sermon is a sermon about God. I'm going to talk with you about God this morning. How well you may know God, how you approach God, your questions to ask and to consider for every one of us when it comes to our relationship with God. Do you know Him? Do you love Him?

Are you a friend of God? The Bible talks about Abraham being a friend of God. If you will, turn over to James 2. James 2. Verse 23. And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. The friend of God.

David is called a man after God's own heart in the Bible, but Abraham, it seems, is the only one with this particular title, a friend of God, the friend of God. I've often thought about that and not had the courage to think about it in terms of, am I a friend of God? But lately I've had the courage to ask myself that and to consider it. Am I a friend of God? What does it take to be a friend of God? What does that mean?

You look at the life of Abraham and we can study it. It's a life of faith, a life of obedience. God said to Abraham, get out from the land that you are in to a place that I will show you, that I will make of you a great people. And Abraham, it says, went and started a relationship that had its ups and downs, but a life of faith.

And he gets to be called the friend of God. Many lessons we can learn from Abraham's life in that way up against ours. And it can teach us a great deal. If you look at Abraham's life, it was not a perfect life. He got caught in a lie. He took a concubine to himself, had a child, set up a whole new family dynamic that continues to even impact the world today. But out of it all, he became a man of faith. And faith is not always built just through completely righteous works. We sin and must repent and through the process we learn and faith is built as a result of that.

But he became a friend of God. I did a television program recently, just a couple of weeks ago, that will air probably in about six weeks. And it was talking about the concept of whether or not we are fighting against God. It was a more direct appeal to the audience to challenge their thinking that perhaps our lives could be one where we, without realizing it, are fighting against God. In Matthew 7, there is a scripture there that I used to think about exactly what that means and to challenge ourselves in this regard.

Matthew 7 and 21. Jesus says this, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name.

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you, depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. It's quite a startling and a challenging statement that not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, calls on the name of God and who even claims to be righteous shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

We can have prophesied, cast out demons in his name. One can do many wonders in God's name. And God might say that I never knew you. In other words, a life and actions can be defined as being against God and never bringing us to a relationship where we truly do know God as a friend, walking with God or loving God with all of our heart. You read words like that, they can present a challenge to each one of us, no matter how well we may be at keeping the commandments and the way of God.

There comes a point where we realize that we've got to go a bit deeper into that understanding if we're going to truly appreciate a relationship with God and come to know God as we should. And becoming a friend of God is tantamount to coming to a point where we actually walk with him and we truly love God with all of our heart. Here in Matthew 22 and verse 37, Jesus defines this as among the great commandments in the law.

He's asking, verse 36, Matthew 22, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. He's quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 13 there. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. There's a second great commandment that's to love your neighbor as yourself. And on these two commandments, he says, hang all the law and the prophets. But for my sermon this morning, I just want to focus on the first commandment.

To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. There's a triple emphasis there. Heart, mind, and soul, as if one's not enough. And he is speaking to a totality and a completeness of being and actually covering every aspect of our life. The innermost thoughts, intent, the heart, all of our mind and thought that lead to the actions that are there. The deepest matters of our life should reflect a love for God that then translates into the actions, the feelings, the words, and a whole life of faith that would define us along the same lines as Abraham as being a friend of God.

Now we might feel that we live up to this command as best we can. Any of us that are going to be honest will also have to admit that there's always room for improvement and that we can do better and we can go deeper into this. As we look at our life and the seasons that come and go and the challenges that life presents to us, how we react to trials, how we react to blessings, how we hold up to all of this will tell us a great deal about how much we love God.

You know, when bad things happen, we may question God, we may question ourselves, we may question the Bible and question faith. We may not always love God as we should, as we may think that we do when things are going quite well for us. And then on the other hand, when things are going quite well for us, there's the all-too-human tendency to not remember God and to think we're doing okay.

Health is in good shape, bank accounts full, sunshining, and life is good, and we can forget God. That's one of the matters that God warned Israel about and warns us about, that when life is good, that we will forget the source of our blessings, we will let down certain things, and we may forget God. And then when things happen, we scramble back to that, and if things don't turn around quite as quickly as we think they should, healing, a job, something else that we may be struggling with, then we can be tempted to blame God and question any aspect of our calling to the point of even, you know, does God exist.

As the years go by, we are all challenged on that to one degree or the other.

I've come to personally reflect and think back on it that before our lives come to their completion, the last sentence is written in our life, God will know if we indeed do love Him.

And He will know, as He did with Abraham, when He even challenged Abraham in his faith, and after He was willing to go to the furthest, most extreme point in that team, was willing to offer His Son Isaac, and then He said, now I know, now I know about that whole situation. You and I both would never ever want to be put to that test, and don't even try to understand why would God say, sacrifice your Son. Be glad that He doesn't put us to that. But He puts us to tests in other ways that will max us out in faith just as Abraham was maxed out. Make no doubt about that. And He will know whether or not we will obey Him.

And that's where we are as we think about that. It's easy to trivialize God and to think that He's not involved in every detail of our life, but He is, wants to be, and He can be. In Colossians chapter 3, the apostle Paul wrote something about Christ that shows something for us to think about. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 11.

He talks about the new man that we are to put on, verse 10, that is renewed in the knowledge of Him according to the image of Him who created Him, where there is neither Greek nor Jude circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and in all. He is all and He is in all. He is everything.

There is no part of our life that God and Christ is not part of and should not be a part of.

Is God our all? Is He your all? Is He everything to us? We learn to walk every day in our life in such a matter that we become friends with God, like Abraham became friends with God, and walked in faith with Him. I think part of the answer to that comes by understanding and asking ourselves how we look at God. How do we see God? How do we react to God? To be a friend of God requires that we look upon God as a friend and treat God with the respect that we would any of our friends, any friendship, any relationship. Any of you that have kept a friendship going over multiple years, you know that it takes work to do that. Friendships, relationships, whether your best friend is your mate or some other individual, another woman, another man that you've had a friendship with for years, it takes work to keep that up. There has to be a respect for the shared relationship, whatever formed it to begin with, and it takes time, work to be together. Sometimes you have to sacrifice and drive an extra two hours out of your way, or hold yourself over a day, or spend the money to go for the wedding, for the special event in life. You have to work at it.

I have worked at friendships that I still have, and I have failed to work at certain friendships that I no longer have in all my years in life. Okay, so I've learned this, and I don't know how it is, and you just have to do the best you can. I had a 98-year-old uncle die a week ago that he and his wife, who's my dad's sister, one of my dad's sisters, they were my favorite aunt and uncle. We used to live next door to each other when I was growing up for a few years, and they're two boys, myself, close to age, and we just went back and forth, as family will do when they physically are right next door to each other. We drifted apart as the years went by for several reasons, but about 15, well more than 20 years ago, I made the effort to reconnect with them when I would go back to my hometown. And I made sure that I went to my uncle Roy and aunt Carrie's house, and stopped in for a few minutes, and would always do that, and just kept doing it through the years. Last time I saw them was last summer, for just a few hours one afternoon, and then he was 98 when he died last week, and she has dementia. And I called their son, my cousin, to see whether, you know, just to express my condolences. And I decided I just didn't want, I couldn't go back, I would have had to rearrange my schedule into a lot of that, and to go back for the funeral, which was last Monday, and I just made the decision after talking to him that, well, I'm glad I saw him last summer. And perhaps this summer I may get through back through there and see my aunt if she remembers me. But the point is you have to work at, you know, even rekindling relationships. And you have to respect those relationships. And that's how it is, I think, is perhaps one of the foundational points about God, to bring it back to that subject of how we develop a friendship with God and walk a walk with God.

We've got to look at how we respect God. Do we respect Him as we would a friend? And understand that we have to put in the time to build that relationship, and we have to have a respect for Him, and as well as an understanding of commandments and a way of life and what He tells us to do, but it goes even deeper than that. It goes deeper than the point of obeying the law.

It's the reason behind the law. And we respect that in the person of the individual. You will obey what your parents teach you and tell you to do. You will obey what somebody sets down as a policy. You will obey that, and you will obey that with respect, and you will hold that tradition, teaching, command, instruction up because you understand that that person has the deepest regard for you. And that the reason they have set the policy, whatever it might be, is because of the high regard that they have for you and who they are and what they're doing.

In the ABC class, some of them are struggling with me right now because, first of all, I said, in my class, we're going to turn the internet off. They have wireless internet. A few weeks ago, I said, it's off because some of them were not looking at their Bible. They were on Facebook and this and that. I said, it's off. You better either get you one of these old-fashioned Bibles or download to your computer something you can use offline. I said, it's off in my class. And then a few days ago, I came in and I held up my smartphone and I said, go to your go to your mailbox in the classroom down the hall. Put your smartphones in there.

I don't want to see them in my class anymore because I could see some under the desks doing this. I said, that's my rule for my class. You could immediately see. Some of them didn't like it and they're still not happy with me, but I don't care.

The reason is because I'm teaching this Bible. I'm teaching the Word of God.

And for my time and for their time and for what they've invested and said they want to do when they come here, we're going to do what they better be listening. And if they want the distractions, I've invited them to even go someplace else. Go down the library for the for the class period. And you thought I'd mellowed.

I have, but I'm teaching the Word of God here. And the reason for the rule is because of the Word and for the importance of what's being presented. And if that needs to be sent, you know, to help some get over a hurdle and perhaps just think about it, they may be upset for a while. I hope that in time they'll realize that it as to the why of the policy.

And that's what I'm saying in terms of relationships and especially a relationship with God. We've got to go deeper to have that friendship with God that we understand why He tells us to keep the Sabbath, why He tells us to put Him first above all other gods and not worship a graven image and do all the other commandments that He tells us to do. There are deep reasons of love that build a relationship behind those laws and commandments as to then why we do it. And when we truly get to that point, we are at a point of having a relationship with God that is much, much deeper and unbreakable and truly, I think, on the level of being a friend of God.

Now there's one example that I just jumped out at me recently that helps, perhaps, bring this together in a concrete example in the Scripture. And it's back in Acts 17. I'd like for you to go back there. In Acts 17, the Apostle Paul finds himself in the city of Athens. And he's by himself. He's been run out of town in a place called Thessalonica in this chapter. He created a riot and they had to let him down at night and get him out of town. He went to Berea and some followed him along there, and he had to scoot on out of Berea too soon. And he left behind his traveling companions, Timothy and Silas and Luke, along the road there and these other places. And in chapter 17, verse 16, he finds himself in Athens, the capital of Greek culture then and for what's left of it now, the great city of Athens, the center of the former empire of Greece. And he's by himself.

And Paul's reaction and what he does here is one of the most interesting sections of certainly of the book of Acts and this whole story of the church here. I get to take the kids through the book of Acts every year in ABC and it's, to me at least, fascinating. I always learn something different every time I go through it. I think everybody, I keep telling the kids once a year, maybe every 18 months, everybody ought to read the book of Acts. It's like going over here to the wall and sticking your finger into an electrical socket. It just kind of, to me at least, it just wakes me up and realizes a lot of things about the church and the life of the church, preaching the gospel and about God that these people had that allowed them to do great acts which we find in the story here. So I tell them, you know, read it once a year and kind of get a jolt, get reoriented on this. Well, here in this story, we find Paul in Athens and let's look at what he is involved with here and go through these verses down through the end of the chapter and learn a few things about a relationship with God, walking with God, and how we see it translated in Paul's reaction to his, you know, everyday life. Now, I said he's he's a lone and he's in a big city. Anybody here ever been to Athens? Okay, one person. I'll raise my hand. Two of us have been to Athens.

Go to Athens today. Basically, what you see, what you want to see are the ruins of this culture in its heyday back in the ancient world of, actually even before Paul. Unfortunately, Athens and Greece today is living off of millennia-old buildings that are crumbling and represent the past. They're a basket case economically today and they have big Greek weddings and I love Greek food, but Greece is no longer a major influence and player in world affairs and you go there and basically you're looking at thousands of your old buildings like the Parthenon and whatever else is left and that's what you go to see and that's kind of sad.

Now, they were old when Paul was there, but they were still used as pagan temples and what Paul did was he began to walk around the streets, but he was a little different than you and I. You and I would walk around the streets of Athens or some big city, great city of the world today like Paris and we've got a little guidebook. Maybe we're in a tour group and we've got a guidebook. We're looking at these buildings and what all the history behind them. We become tourists.

Paul didn't become a tourist. He walked the streets of Athens and what he saw moved into indignation. He wasn't on an excursion. Verse 1, it says, he waited for them, his companions, Timothy and Silas, he waited for them at Athens. While he did, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.

Now, they say that in Athens there were more idols than there were men.

The city was given completely over to idolatry, statues, stone statues, and images of Greek gods and goddesses. The Parthenon was dedicated to the goddess Athena. And multiple other temples were active temples with priests and prostitutes and offerings and people coming and going within them. They were working places and there were idols and shrines throughout the city.

That's why he says the city was given completely over to them and to the various deities.

And his spirit was provoked. All right, just pause on that for a moment because the word here actually means that he was greatly distressed, irritated, he was roused to anger, is what the word means. You know, have you ever been as a parent? You know, the irritating behavior of your children kind of in the background, all right, at first it's an annoyance. But then they keep doing it, maybe the noise level goes up, and then it gets to an irritation. But it still keeps going and squabbling and things start flying and finally you boil over. Just kind of like that water pot that begins to bubble and bubble and then boil and boil and then it boils over and you explode. It's kind of like what Paul did as he walked the streets and he saw this and he was provoked within himself. He was doing a slow burn and he couldn't contain himself to see the city just swamped with the various idolatries. And it created within him a jealousy about God, the God that he knew, the God that he had had an interaction with on the road to Damascus when he was struck blind for three days and nights after he was persecuting Christians, the God who had appeared to him at various times and gave him encouragement, the God that he had truly come to know and the resurrected Jesus Christ. And he knew God and he loved God. So much so that when he saw the incessant idolatry of Athens, he didn't look at it as a quaint piece of art. He saw it as an affront to God, his God, whom he knew, whom he loved, whom he walked with, and whom he loved.

And he was jealous and he was going to do a defense and he was going to go to work for God.

And it built within him to where then he felt this strong urge and he did something about it and he began to talk about it. And he began to engage people. Verse 17 tells us, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the gentile worshippers. Synagogues had gentile worshippers, people who had attached themselves to Judaism. They were being liked to the Jews even though they were not ethnically Jewish. And he reasoned with them in the synagogue. Paul, as any Jewish man, could walk into a synagogue during a service and people would be invited to stand up and read.

And he would take advantage of that. And so he would begin to talk to them about God and the God that he worshipped, which was the God of Abraham, and he would begin to talk about it.

Then it says in verse 17 that he did so he reasoned in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. He went into the marketplace and there he reasoned with people.

He engaged people on the street, if you will, probably and most likely then, you know, the open-air type of market where the the business of the city in many different ways was carried on. And he could gather a crowd around him and he could get a handful of people or even more and he could talk to them. He didn't just let it lay. And this shows you that he couldn't take a holiday, couldn't take a break. He saw what had to be done and he did it.

Now, you know, we have a different model today. You don't go down here to Meijer and as you're checking out, start to talk to the check-out gals about God, do you?

I don't either. You don't do it at Kroger. You still have Scots around here? No, Scots is gone. Okay, you got all the various places. You don't go into the synagogue and you don't go into the Catholic Church. You don't go into the Methodist Church down the street and you don't do that. We have a different world than what Paul walked around in.

Although we do have idolatry in many different forms. We don't have stone statues necessarily on the corners. They'll be in certain churches, yes. There'll be lots of idolatry there in imagery, but we have different forms of idolatry today. We have whole showrooms full of glossy, glamorous automobiles that can be an idol for somebody. We can have whole marketplaces of clothing and movie cinemas with people and various things that represent and portray sin and even idolatry in different ways. We can have a bank, a marketplace, and that can be a place of idolatry too, because money can be an idol. As well as things or some big palatial house on one of the newest, biggest, brightest developments here in Fort Wayne. Whatever that might be. I've been gone so long, I don't even know what they're called around here anymore. We have different forms of idolatry today.

Money, culture, status, self, celebrity. Those are the modern forms of idolatry that we have. And as we walk around, what do we see? And how does it impact us? How do we, are we motivated to desire that more than a relationship with God? Not that, you know, good things, nice things, and good experiences are wrong. That's not my point. But how does it impact us? How do we think about it? Do we, are we motivated to the point where we want to do something within the means that we can do it with us today? This is, I think, quite frankly, a profound challenge for the Church of God today to move forward. We have had a culture of preaching the gospel in a particular way, and we leave it to headquarters. We leave it to the home office. We leave it to a man. We leave it to three men. We leave it to a group of ministers to preach the gospel. And we think that perhaps that's all there that there is to it. And we somehow get a detachment from some of the things that I think some of the sincerity and some of the depth of what we see here in Scripture. And I'm not saying that you need to go down here to Glenbrook Mall and stand in the entryway necessarily, or at the door just off the property of the big Catholic Church downtown here tomorrow and engage people as they come out. That's not what I'm saying. We have a different culture and world today that, frankly, it would put off more. But we do, there are ways by which we can engage in the marketplace of the daily marketplace of our world today. And we do use those social media and other media forms to do that. And while I know that you and I are not necessarily going to do certain things that we see Paul doing, as I read it from my point of view and what I am daily engaged in, I see the passion for God that he had. And I think that's what I'm wanting to pass along to you to think about. Do you have a passion for God? Do you love God?

Do you love God to engage the culture and the world where you are and have a reaction that mirrors, to a degree in your life, the reaction that Paul had? Certainly in your heart and your relation to God. He took what he saw as an affront to God, and it moved him to do something.

Your reaction and mine are going to be different than what Paul did, necessarily.

But in terms of what he did, the passion and the provocation that verse 16 talks about, being stirred within, we're fully capable of doing because that is what will be based upon the love of God. That will be based upon a relationship with God where we're going to do what we can do and should do. And if it's your next door neighbor over the back fence where an opportunity might present itself to express what you are, what you believe, not in an obnoxious, offensive way that will push people away, but you can give an answer for the hope that lies within you and to the point that someone knows that you are a believer, that you do love God, that you are a Christian, and that you are a person of faith because you don't hide it. Neither do you push it into their face, and neither do you flaunt it, and you're not a hypocrite, but you do have a passion for God.

You do have a passion for righteousness, and it's known. There are many, many levels of our engagement in our world, and it begins with having an approach and being able to walk the streets of our world and see it for what it is, just as Paul walked the streets of Athens and saw it for what it was and was provoked to the point where he engaged at the level that he could engage and was his role to engage, and it got a reaction. That's what I'm talking about. Now, it goes on here in verse 18, as he did this, certain intellectual people, these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, encountered him, and some said to him, what does this babbler want to say? Now, these were intellectuals. He got their attention, and they engaged him. And they said, what does this babbler want to say? Others said, he seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection, that Jesus was killed, raised to life, and was alive at the right hand of God.

Now, the phrase babbler here in verse 18 refers to a seed picker. It's derived from a word that means, it's like a little seed picker, a little bird. You ever watch your birds?

Talking with the schwalucks, they have a bird feeder off their back patio. I've got one off my backyard. You watch a bird wherever they may be working, and they'll jump along the ground, picking up seeds, whatever they can find. Little seed pickers. And that's what they're calling Paul. He's a seed picker. They say, he picks an idea from this philosophy, picks an idea from this other philosophy, and he's put it together in a package of theology and teaching that's different. They were calling him a seed picker, like a little bird gathering scraps of ideas that was rolled out in a new lump of dough, and they're thinking, proclaiming foreign gods and the idea of the resurrection. They were probably accusing him of a little bit of Jewishness, a little bit of Zoroastrian myth, and perhaps some Egyptian ideas rolled in with a few Babylonian myths, and whatever else might have been of the day and other pagan beliefs. They were saying, well, he's come up with something from all these other philosophies, and that's where he got it.

And they engaged him on that way. Well, verse 19, they took him, and they brought him to the Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak, for you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore, we want to know what these things mean.

And so, they gathered him into a bit more of a formal setting, because it was the nature of the Athenians in verse 21, as it says, and the foreigners there, that they spent their time and nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. They wanted to hear something new. This was their bent on philosophy and life. And they, for a time, were intrigued by this new idea that they were hearing from Paul, and were willing to convene a meeting to allow him to explain more fully what it was that he was talking about.

And what Paul was going to lay out to them, indeed, was new to their ears.

It was among the oldest of truths from the Scriptures, but it was new to them.

And he's got now a challenge to present God to them in a way that they could understand it.

So in verse 22, Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and he said, Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious.

Notice he didn't say, he didn't pull out the p-word. You know what the p-word is?

Pagans. He didn't say, in all things I perceive that you're a bunch of pagans. Sometimes we love to use the word pagan. You're pagan.

For doing this, for doing that. And that's really the way to win friends and influence people.

Now, okay, their particular practice certainly will have pagan overtones and roots in paganism. But if you want to engage them, take a different approach. I'll be real blunt. When we talk about Christmas on Beyond Today, the last couple of years, we're taking a different approach. Not that we're watering anything down, but to be real blunt, the world today, they don't want to hear the word pagan. All right? Now, it's full of pagan ideas and pagan teachings, yes. But if we're going to reach people today, we're not going to beat them over the head with pagans. The pagan word and calling them pagan. We'll take a different approach and teach them the same thing and let God do his work just as he did with you and me. But that's the age we live in. And Paul understood that. He said, you're very religious. You've got all these temples and cults and various forms of religion. He said, as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription to the Unknown God. Now, the Greeks were almost as if they had so many different temples to the various specific gods and goddesses. They didn't want to offend one that they might not know, so they created an altar to the Unknown God. And this was a common practice throughout the world, the ancient world. They have been found many different altars to the Unknown God in various places. So this was a common practice. It's more likely rooted in the idea that, kind of a Gnostic idea, that God cannot be known. That the real God is so far removed from this physical world of pain and sorrow that he cannot be known. And that God is so far off, he can't be known. If you saw the movie Noah, which I hope you didn't see, but if you did see the movie Noah, the creator, as they portrayed it there, was more like an Unknown God than anything else. But he said he saw this altar with this inscription, therefore, the one to whom you worship without knowing him I proclaim to you.

I will proclaim him to you. And so he took this object then as the starting point for his message.

You claim to worship this God. No name. Let me give you his name. Let me tell you about him.

Let me tell you about the God that I know and that you can know. You think he's unknown. Let me proclaim him and explain him to you. And he begins in verse 24 by doing that. He says, God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. And he was in the shadow of the great Parthenon, even as he spoke these words that had an image to Athena within it. And he said, God of heaven and earth does not dwell in temples made with hands.

Paul was probably echoing the words of Stephen back in Acts 8, when he was stoned. Paul was holding the cloak of the men who stoned him. And Stephen got himself in that situation because he said the very same thing to the Jews that in the shadow of the great temple, they are in Jerusalem. He said, God does not dwell in temples made with hands. Stephen said that to the Jews, and they stoned him. Paul is now in Athens, and he says the same thing to the Athenians.

He doesn't need a building. He doesn't need an image and a shape to have him expressed. Nor is he worshiped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things. He doesn't need any of that. And there were again stone statues, carvings of all the various gods and goddesses of the Greek mythology, throughout the city. And he, in two sentences, slays it all. No need for a building, no need for an image that has been shaped by man's hands. He doesn't need any of that, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things. And in that sentence, he revealed to them a personal, caring, loving God, who's not lifeless in stone, not enshrined in some building, distant and apart from mankind, but a God who is near, a God who can be accessed, a God who is lovable, who gives us life and breath and everything. He's a personal God.

This is the unknown God that he begins to explain, because he cares enough about them that he wants them to know about the God that he knows, that he loves, and that he has a relationship with.

Because, whether he was called that or not, Paul was indeed a friend of God, every bit as much as Abraham was. And he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. And so, this God has created the various nations of men of one blood. And that's a powerful statement in and of itself. We don't have time to go into it. He's determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, and the Greeks had their appointed time when they rode the high places of the earth, just as the Egyptians had their appointed time in the Babylonians. And the Romans, in Paul's day, were having their moment, their boundaries, and all of that has been determined by God.

History, culture, civilizations that have come and gone, where they've lived, what they have done is not by chance. It is by the plan of God and within that overall determination that He has appointed. And this is what Paul says. He gives a geopolitical lesson, again, in one sentence.

History and everything else wrapped up right there. But he's done so, he says, so that they should seek the Lord, that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He's not far from each one of us. The God that Paul walked with was one who could be known. He was not unknown.

Then Paul does an interesting thing. He says, in Him we live and move and have our being as some of our own poet, some of your own poets have said. Then he quotes a poet here of about 300 years from earlier than his time. He quotes from a poet who is a pagan poet. He says, we are also his offspring. That's a very small quote. And therefore, since we are his offspring, of God, we ought not to think the divine nature is like gold, silver, or stone, or something shaped by art and by man's devising. And so Paul quotes a poet. And at the same time, he quotes Stephen. Verse 29 is another we are the offspring of God. We ought not to think that God's nature is like gold or silver. It's another idea from Stephen. Paul understood that the pagan poets could not make the connection to the true God, but he was not beyond using a quote from them and turning it to make a point of truth.

I always tell the students, I said, you know, you read through Paul here and other of his epistles, you see that Paul was well acquainted with the literature of his day and poets from hundreds of years before. And I think we should be. I think we, I think it's always important that a person be able to have a working knowledge of the great big themes of literature and even what other writers say about God, religion, and all these things, they may not be able to connect all the dots, but we should be able to. And Paul had studied them, and he was able to relate to an audience from one of their own pagan writers, their own previous poets, but pull a quote out and turn it to a point of truth. And at the same time, he brings in another part of Scripture. He says, truly in verse 30, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained. And he has given assurance of this to all by raising him from the dead. And when he brings it down to Christ and the resurrection, that's where they turn their minds off. Because in verse 32, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked while others said, we will hear you again in this manner. They could not get their mind wrapped around the idea that God had resurrected a man from the dead, and that he had ascended to the heavens. You know, the resurrection was not so hard in and of itself.

The Bible shows us that at Christ's death, people walked out of tombs.

And there were miracles performed both by Christ and the apostles of raising people from the dead, Lazarus and others. That had happened. People saw it with their own eyes.

With Christ, he was the only one that ascended. Those others that had been resurrected were back to a physical life, but they died again. Only Jesus ascended to heaven.

And was preached by the apostles as being alive at that time. And that's what they couldn't get their mind around. On top of the idea of a resurrection, but that he was still alive as a spirit being. And they mocked him and said, we'll hear you again, but they didn't really want to hear anymore. And Paul departed from them. He had done what he could do. He had a few people then that followed afterwards. Some men joined him and believed, among them the Onnesias, and a woman named Damaris, and a few others. He didn't have a lot of working, a lot of converts there, which is why you don't have in the New Testament first or second Athenians.

Yeah, first and second Corinthians, but not first and second Athenians.

But Paul went through this whole exercise because he loved God. And he was moved to indignation by the fact that a city was given completely over to idolatry. And he engaged his world, his time, and his place. And so to bring it back to walking with God, loving God, to the point where we have a relationship that looks at God as being a friend of God, forces us to ask ourselves, what might we learn from Paul here? First of all, as I said, he considered this. He was not a tourist gawking at his world. He was provoked by what he saw.

When he walked through his world, he saw it through the eyes of God. I think that is a big takeaway. And he was engaged. So much so that he accomplished what we read over here in 1 John.