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October 2, 2005
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Communication II
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"To An Unknown God"
Acts 17: 16-34
(pray)
Brian: We are on Paul's second missionary journey, he has visited and been jailed in Philippi, come through Thessalonica and Berea and has arrived in Athens, a place filled with idols nearly 2000 years ago…
John: Brian, Brian, a travelogue? Is that what you are doing a travelogue? (to congregation) Some of you may not know that Brian used to be a travel agent. I think today he is reverting to his old job and taking us on a tour of Athens!
Brian: John, no, not today, don't interrupt today. Look. (whispered) The DS is here!
John: Oh, really? Where is she?
Brian: Right over there.
John: Oh Hi! I hear she is a very nice lady and I am certain she would not mind if I straightened you out a bit.
Brian: Well, she may not mind, but I might!
John: But again, what are you doing? What does Athens 2000 years ago have to do with my life today? I mean, who cares Paul visited Athens? Should we have a slide show?
Brian: Well it is world communion Sunday a day to remember we are connected to Christians all around the world, and this was the beginning of the church of Athens. So, it does us well to think of another part of the world. But, no I am not doing a travelogue. Actually I see many similarities between Athens 2,000 years ago and Banks or Forest Grove or Portland today.
John: Really? Okay, I'm looking around and see no idols. Paul was surrounded by idols, right? Did anyone bring your idol with you today?
Right, idolatry then was statues sold in marketplace and displayed on street corners. The idols represented religious beliefs in various gods. Gods then were believed to be territorial. No one god was big enough to cover it all. This is why the gift of God's revelation of Himself is so immense.
John: Hmmm. Brian, I have a confession.
Brian: A confession? Wouldn't you rather do this in private somewhere?
John: No, well, you see, I have an idol. I was making a camp toilet and had some wood left over so I carved a little idol for myself. I call him Bennie the Benign God. He is a great God, rides in my pocket, and best is he lets me do anything I want to do and still guarantees heaven.
Brian: There is just one problem.
John: What's that?
Brian: Well, just that you believe in Bennie does not mean he is real.
John: What do you mean not real? I believe in him, I pray to him, I ask him questions, he is with me always, I feel very close to Bennie.
Brian: But, John, can this Bennie talk even though he has a mouth? Can he walk around?
John: Well, he can in my pocket.
Brian: Can he see?
John: Well, not much, being in my pocket and all.
Brian: John, john, john. Can't you see this is just like the gods of Athens? This Bennie is no more God than their idols represented true gods. Paul just used the idol to the unknown god to get their attention and help them place faith in the living God.
John: Well, Bennie, I'll put you away for a while. Brian, you are not saying that some of the people worshiping world religions are not worshiping the true God? I mean, what about the Muslims. They certainly are worshiping the same God, aren't they? He's the God of Abraham, the same God we have.
Brian: John, the name "God" or even the "God of Abraham" does not mean the same God.
John: Wait, don't the big TV preachers all pray with Muslims to the same God and performers claim he is the same?
Brian: That may be, but that does not mean they are the same. Take the God of Abraham name, and look with me at Abraham. Abraham clearly had relationship with the God described in Genesis. This God called him out of Ur, spoke to Him, called him to worship, directed him, and promised of him he would build a people who would be a light to the gentiles. This is a God of relationship. If anything Allah is a remote judge not a near Redeemer.
John: Well, what about Jesus? Don't the Muslims also believe in Jesus?
Brian: As a great prophet, but not equal to Mohammed, and as a teacher but not as God. The Koran itself says the Allah never has begotten a Son. And what did Jesus say of Himself in John 14:6?
John: You mean that verse that talks about him as the only way to the Father, the Way, the Truth and the Life?
Brian: Yes. You see to say that Jesus was a great teacher and have that teacher claiming to be God, would not make that teacher appear great in most listeners' eyes. He would appear like a lunatic. Yet Jesus never claimed prophetic status but claimed something much greater, that he was God.
This is a God of relationship, intimate, transforming relationship that we have in the Living God. Ask any true Muslim if Muslims and Christians worship the same God and they will say no, emphatically. And ask anyone who has converted from Islam and you will find they have finally met the living God.
Ask the Pakistani woman who converted a number of years ago now. She said when she came to faith in Jesus Christ, her first response was to lift her heart and say, "Father," and the moment she uttered the word, she fell on the floor in absolute terror of being killed for her impertinence. But instead, the heavenly Father came to her in all His love and compassion and she heard one word; "Daughter." She recalled: "I wept uncontrollably at the reality that God in His sovereignty and greatness could belong to me in that kind of relationship"
(from Dennis Kinlaw This Day with the Master, February 8, Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, c'02, ubp).
She discovered a living God, a God of relationship.
John: Well, that may be fine for the Muslims but I have a friend who is Mormon and he says he worships Jesus, and prays to Jesus and has a personal relationship with Jesus. What do you say to that?
Brian: Well, first I would like you to smell this rose (holding a flower). Isn't it beautiful and its scent lovely? Now smell this rose (holding a rock). Isn't its scent lovely too?
John: Brian, what are you thinking that that rock is a flower? I think you need to talk to someone.
Brian: This one (the rock) is not a flower at all even if I claim it is. In fact my description of the one could not match the other. Well the same is true of Jesus. If you have Jesus, what you say about him must match what He says of himself. The Mormon faith is based upon the idea that Jesus is Lucifer's brother, that his atoning work on the cross was inadequate for salvation, and therefore that all believers must work to be atoned, to be saved. This is not the same Jesus. Now, that does not mean that the real Jesus cannot reach through the Bible, if this Mormon is reading it, and reach his heart. But most Mormons when that has happened find a place to worship where Jesus Christ is truly honored. No, you do not have the same Jesus in Mormonism.
John: So we have a lot of false gods around, a lot of people are not worshiping the true God, so to them God is unknown. Ah, I get it.
Brian: That is what Paul is preaching in Athens, because he found himself surrounded by people who needed to know the living God and did not know Him. The true God had been lost in the multiplicity of idols everywhere. These were gods that fit in people's pockets, gods that could not alter their lives, and in ignorance they were lost. Paul's heart went out to them and he began to speak about the true God. He desires nothing more than for them to know the living God. So he tells them just how incredibly big God is. This is not a manageable God Paul describes.
This God created everything, the world, all things in the world, and each of them, giving them life and breath and all things. So, God is not one that they can create. You cannot make an idol and name it god and have it be god. God is creator over all.
And this God is Lord over all the heavens and the earth. Remember they had never heard of such a god. Theirs were just local deities. But this God Paul proclaims, made and rules over everything, even all nations, making them from one man he says.
More than this, this God is not localized in one temple, but is so ubiquitous that it is in this God we live and move and have our being.
John: Ub-what-ti-ous? Where do you get these words?
Brian: Ubiquitous. Like water to a fish, everywhere. Like air molecules to us.
John: Oh, like cell phones!
Brian: You got it. God is as ubiquitous as cell phones. It works for through that cell phone we relate to someone. And in that God is never far from any one of us, we can always have relationship with this God who is bigger than anything we describe as Big.
And relationship is the key. This is the God in whom we can participate. It is in this God that I live - find true life, I move, all actions become expressions of the greatness of this God, and have my being.
As we are people who love relationships, so this is the God of relationship. What a contrast to their gods of stone and wood and gold. This God lives in relationship - the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit constantly filled with outgoing love for the other members of Trinity and constantly inviting others into relationship. As Paul says, God wants people to seek and find Him.
Certainly you may be able to carry the idol around with you, but you can never be known by the idol nor relate to it.
John: hey, speaking of my idol, I have decided to call him Jesus instead.
Brian: John that is not an improvement. That makes it worse. God warned us not to create an idol. It is blasphemy!
John: Oh, then I don't want it. You take it.
Brian: I don't want it. Throw it away!
John: So I guess Athens has something to do with us afterall.
Brian: Well, does that calm you down so that I can go on with the sermon?
John: Brian, go on with the sermon? Your sermon time is used up. You used it all talking to me.
Brian: Not again! You are kidding. Used up? How is Kate going to hear me preach?
John: She'll have to come back, but it is your own fault you know.
Brian: My fault? Who interrupted whom?
John: If you wouldn't upset me I wouldn't interrupt.
Brian: Well, I guess this is the God of this day, a God who invites us into a radical life change, a God who is bigger than anything in our lives, even our attempts to make God in our image, and a God who invites us not only into relationship, but into participating in the ministry of God in the lives of those around us.
Perhaps we can pray to this God…
John: I think I'll go sit down.
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Brian: John, Fatherhood speaks of a relationship within the very nature of God that was there before He spoke anything into existence. In the bosom of eternity, before there was time or space or humanity, the second person of the triune Godhead called the first person of the Trinity not Lord, but Father. (from Dennis Kinlaw This Day with the Master, February 6 Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, c'02, ubp).
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