So I would like to take a poll here. How many people have completely lost their sense of smell? It’s an odd thing isn’t it. So due to Covid, I lost my smell, twice actually. Chelsey did too.
Chelsey got her smell back before I did and she would come into the house and whoa what is that? And it wasn’t always the baby. She has told me gently that some people just have stronger body odor than others. And I happen to be of that stronger kind. So to avoid being that stinky person, before we go somewhere I always walk up to her and lift my arm up to get a thumbs up or not.
I may have the stronger type of odor but listen, we all stink. There’s no way around it. The problem is, whether we can smell it or not, and how we respond to it.
In Luke 5:30 Jesus says that He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And in Romans 3, Paul is quoting Psalms 14 when he says none are righteous, no not one.
We are all sinners, its just whether we recognize it or not. We’ve covered this the past few Sundays. The idea of smell. To quote Pastor John Macarthur, the church is not made up of people who are good, it is made up of people who know they are not. That sounds horrible though right? A bunch of people moping around cause they know they are no good. Ahh I see the tigers lost again, maybe the lions will win a few games this year. Sorry when I say moping I immediately think of Detroit sports. Not for the Christian, that’s not how it works for us. Repentance is taking this realization, bowing the knee to a God who is greater and asking him to have mercy on you. He will bring transformation.
Today we are going to continue our series on evangelism and specifically, dealing with repentance.
We are going to be studying out of the book of Acts. Paul was on the missions field in Athens and found himself in the middle of the Areopagus delivering a sermon which we can now read in chapter 17 verses 22-31 if you could turn there with me.
Just to give a brief background. Areopagus is two Greek words, god of war or aeries, and rock. So Aeries’s rock. It was a place where leaders and thinkers would gather and discuss ideas and philosophies, maybe like our house of representaitves, or like it used to be. Anyways they would mostly defend the Greek concept of “the gods”. The people of Athens were spiritual, but not Christian nor Jew. They believed in the supernatural powers that intervened in the course of natural laws. They acknowledged the existence of a creator that was beyond their ability to comprehend. They got word of Paul and his message and invited him to Areopagus to discuss his philosophy. So Acts 17:22-31.
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
I would just like to point out a few things in Pauls approach here before we focus in on verses 30 and 31.
- Paul got to know the people of Athens. He didn’t go in blind, waving signs and yelling. He studied them, learned their culture, what they believed, he listened. Verse 22 Paul says People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god.
This was his window. He brought himself into their world. In verse 28 he even quoted one of their own poets. He built a foundation with the people that he could stand on.
There are a couple of points I hope you recognize from our current series.
verse 24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth.” — This is a God to be worshipped. KING JESUS
In verse 31, For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” RESURRECTION
This brings me to our focus today on verses 30 and 31. Maybe lets read 29-31. 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
But now He commands all people everywhere to repent. That’s a tough statement to brush over isn’t it? It pretty clearly is a command and pretty clearly part of our symphonic evangelism.
I have a few observations to go through and we will move on to application. The first is
- God was patient with the ignorant.
Verse 30: In the past God overlooked such ignorance.
Last fall we had an internet cable ran to our new house. Well the company was way behind on trenching so they just laid the cable on top of the ground until they could get around to trenching it. Well one day my two boys age 2 and 4 were out in the garage with me and they came up and said Dad, we wanna go and do some loggin can we use your chainsaw? So I sharpened it up put some gas in it and… kidding. To the raised eyebrows of my wife, I gave them each a pair of pruning shears. I know harmless right. Well they went out felling ferns and raspberry bushes so I continued with my project in the garage. Well I’m walking around the corner of the house and see a freshly severed internet cable with a pair of pruning shears abandoned nearby. Now, I couldn’t really be too hard on them because I am the one who gave a 2 and a 4 year old pruning shears. But aside from that, the job of burying the cable wasn’t finished.
God would have been fully justified in destroying the human race after the fall of Adam. But He didn’t, because the job wasn’t finished, the story wasn’t over. What Paul was getting at is that God buried the cable through the coming of His son Jesus Christ. If you could turn with me to Mark 1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God and saying “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel!”
This brings me to my second observation.
- God commands Repentance.
Continuing in verse 30, In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands repentance.
Mark 1 The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
What does repentance take? Well like we talked about earlier it takes a realization that we are sinners first. Now before Covid, most people hadn’t completely lost their sense of smell before, at least not for a prolonged period of time. Most people can smell at least something. In verse 27 Paul says God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[b]
God has put into every man and woman an awareness of Himself. If you could turn with me to Romans 1:18. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
There are two things that any person has innately in them. The awareness of a creator, and a conscience. It is extraordinarily rare for somebody to outright deny the existence of some kind of a supernatural power. Even in todays age. Many question but it is very very rare to find somebody who outright denies it. Pew research shows that 4% of Americans say they are atheists, and roughly 1 in 5 atheists say they do believe in some kind of a higher power, just not a personal God. So less than 4% of Americans, rare. This is because this belief is inside of us. For in him we live and move and have our being.
Next is conscience. I don’t know that anybody can deny conscience. Again this is the idea of smell right. When we do something “bad” we feel regret, remorse. All of us do, believers and non-believers except maybe a few rare cases. I tried getting some “scientific studies” on conscience and honestly most of the ideas are just too wild to share. Websters defines it as an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior….. Without God, it causes some problems for non-believers.
I would like to present the stink scale.
This end is atheism, or post-covid, not smelling a thing. This end is the mature Christian, or drug dog, or bear, or pregnant woman. Remember God gave us the Law so that we would turn to Him. So lets take a sin. Say John Doe had an affair. The atheist John justifies it as, who cares, I’m better off. The in-between John says I shouldn’t have done that and lives with guilt. The Christian John says, Lord forgive me for I have sinned against you and my wife and he changes course in his life, he repents.
verse 30, In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands repentance.
Repentance is the act of changing ones mind or direction. It isn’t just feeling bad or regret or remorse. It is Metanoia which Ill quickly hit as four points.
- An awareness of your sin – smelling the stink
- Asking God to have mercy on you for it – bowing the knee
- A hatred of your sin. Keen smell doesn’t want garbage laying around.
- A radical and persistent pursuit of holiness. – A change of direction.
- God commands repentance because the judgement is coming
Now say you are heading on a vacation to Florida. You have a VRBO beach house all booked up, maybe a fishing trip planned. Some guy is standing in the road and stops you. He says hey Florida I’m sure is just fine but you should really go to Texas instead. It has great food and open spaces, massage parlors. I mean again, Florida is fine, but Texas is AWESOME. Are you going to abandon your plans to go to Florida? Of course not. It would take quite an event to change complete direction. But what if he says hey man, Florida fell into the ocean. The road up ahead, it falls off of a cliff. But if you hang a right, it’ll take you to Texas and you can stay at my place. Definitely going to at least consider it right?
It almost seems sometimes we have become afraid to proclaim the coming judgement. You can evangelize, just don’t say sin or hell. Don’t want to offend anybody, but lets look at the text. What did Paul say?
The times of ignorance God overlooked. What was this ignorance Paul was referring to? Lets jump back a verse. Verse 29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.
Why though? Why did Paul point out their sin and tell them to repent? Verse 31. Because the judgment is coming. That is the reason. Not a new TV, not to heal their leg, or dissolve their anxiety. It is because the judgment is coming and they are guilty. That is why. It is easy to tell somebody there is a better life with Jesus, you’re not lying. It is true. Remember the parachute analogy? If we are wearing it for a better ride, it wont last, we’ll take it off. But if we are wearing it to save your life when you jump from the plane, it will stick. The parachute sticking truth, is that we are guilty of sin and have received the death sentence. And there is only one way to Salvation, and that is through Jesus Christ.
My Grandpa had a sign on his barn that read “Hell Ain’t Cool”. I can remember reading that when I was a young Thundercat, fearless, reckless. It made me stop. My Grandpa, he loved us kids. I knew that. He came to our baseball games. Spent time with us. I had the utmost respect for him. So when I read that, at his house. I felt a little uneasy, maybe a little fear. So why did he have that sign up? It was a call to repentance. He was warning us kids that there is a cliff ahead. Not a bumpy road, but a cliff. It required a change of direction, repentance. There is a decision to be made. Jesus said there is only one way to the Father, and that is through Him. To repent of our sins, and believe it. Maybe someone believes in God, maybe they even agree with what Jesus had to say, is that it? Have you ever left off there with somebody? I have, too many times. I shouldn’t. At that point I am just pointing them in the direction of the cliff saying you are all good. He is the Lord of the Universe and He commands us to repent and believe. That is the truth. Does God want anybody to go to hell? 2 Peter 3:9 says He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
But folks love their sin more than they fear the coming of the Lord so they go back into the darkness that they have grown to love.
Now I hope I you are not mistaking me for being a legalistic hell preacher. If you think that save it for the Apostle Paul when you meet him. Remember Paul had a relationship with these people. They knew him. Most of us might better off work on becoming somebody who’s word will have some meaning when we speak rather than spewing off about hell all the time. But If we are nurturing relationships with folks and we are not telling them the whole truth we are doing them an injustice.
So what can we do about it.
Symphonic Evangelism. Lets run a few quick points of application.
Whats the first?
- Nothing happens without God. Nothing. Don’t try lifting a pillar, it takes a crane. Pray.
- BE PATIENT. 2 Timothy 2 23 Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. 24 And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. 25 Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.
God grants us repentance through sovereign grace.
- Be Bold: Preach God’s word whether it is offensive or not. Paul got to know the Athenians, he learned their ways and lived in their city but when it came to his message, he was uncompromising. He was steadfast to the truth of the gospel. It is our duty to tell the truth, God changes hearts.
- IT IS WORTH IT
You know they murdered Paul for proclaiming the truth of the gospel right? The Romans beheaded him, historians say around 62 AD. So why did he continue to proclaim something he knew would eventually kill him? Because he knew the truth. He knew it. And he had to tell the world. 2 Corinthians 7:9-11.
Yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. 10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death. 11 See what this godly sorrow has produced in you: what earnestness, what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what alarm, what longing, what concern, what readiness to see justice done. At every point you have proved yourselves to be innocent in this matter.
If you are hearing this today and you don’t smell a thing. You are only fooling yourself. Sniff harder.
If you are here smelling the friers turn on at the Mobile Mart for lunch and have already called Jesus. Rejoice, Pray, Be patient, Be bold.
If you are hearing this today and you smell the stench, you have found yourself guilty and awaiting the death sentence. I tell you the truth. There is one who is waiting for you. His name is Jesus and He has open arms. Come to Him as you are, lay your guilt at His feet and repent of your sins. He has done the work so that He may say to you, NOT GUILTY, YOU ARE FREE TO GO.