"Return to an Unknown God"

April 20, 2003 The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower

Let's pray together, shall we?

Just as we are and waiting not

to rid our souls of one dark blot,

to you, whose blood can cleanse each spot,

O Lamb of God, we come. Amen.

 

One of our texts for this morning is 1 Timothy 2:5 where Paul says there is one God and there is one mediator between God and us. And this morning we're going to look at the way Paul announces that in a very sophisticated and very skeptical context--to an audience, to a set of listeners, who were not predisposed to accept that. And then we're going to ask how that might apply to us today because we gather on Easter and we may have some troubles with Easter today. We live in world, in a culture, in a society, that really does not help us remember the importance of Easter and understand what Easter is all about, what we celebrate this morning.

I remember--this was a long time ago, this would have been back in the--I would say back in the early seventies. I was watching the Johnny Carson Show on television. Some of us . . . don't know who that is . . . He used to be a person on television where Jay Leno is right now . . . But this was Monday night (because Johnny always had Mondays off) and so Don Rickles was the guest host on this particular evening. Don Rickles is still around. He does kitchen trash bag advertisements . . . So next time you see that, I want you to know that this is the one.

He was the guest host. And out came one of the Hollywood celebrities, one of the blond Hollywood celebrities at the time. It might have been Connie Stevens . . . it might have been Stella Stevens . . . it might have been Elkie Sommer, or Angie Dickinson, or Joey Heatherton . . . One of those. She was talking about being down in Mexico for a film shoot and she referred to the Catholic Church and the influence of the Catholic Church in Mexico in this village where they were shooting this movie. And Don Rickles said, "Oh. Are you a Catholic?" And she said, "Oh, well, yes, I'm a Catholic, but I'm not a practicing Catholic." Then she went on. She was talking about while they were there, the people that lived in this village were having one of their religious ceremonies and she was trying to remember the name of it. "You know, it's a ceremony that they have . . . and, um . . ."

So Don Rickles is trying to be helpful and said, "Festival of the Virgin of Guadalupe?"

"Oh, no. It was that one every spring . . ."

And Don Rickles turns to the camera and he goes, "Do you mean Easter?"

And she goes, "Yes! Yes! That's the one. Easter."

And so he goes, "Oh, I see. You're not a practicing Catholic."

Well, that's the society that we live in--a society that doesn't help us remember things like the name of Easter, and especially not the true meaning of Easter. And we ourselves are tempted to sort of forget about some of these things, so I want us to look at our Acts passage (this is going to be in the middle of Acts chapter 17) and say, "Can we remind ourselves about what's at stake, given that if we're not able to remind ourselves, then we're going to forget?"

Acts 17. We begin in verse 22. What has happened prior to this is Paul has gone to Athens, which had been the city of the ancient Near East, probably somewhat in decline now at the present time, but still with its reputation intact. And he has been preaching the gospel in the marketplace. He has been invited to come and share his message in the Areopagus, which is sort of like the formal gathering place. In verse 21 Luke makes this observation: "Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new." Now that's the context as we begin in verse 22:

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is He served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each of us. For 'In him we live and move and have our being'; as even some of your own poets have said,

'For we too are his offspring.'

"Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has even given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."

When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, "We will hear you again about this." At that point Paul left them. But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Aeropagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

 

Now, this is how the gospel was presented in a Greek, in a cosmopolitan Greek, context. And what we want to understand is that in ancient times the pagan Greeks, though they were very, very religious and had many, many shrines (and as a matter of fact, Paul takes advantage of that when he says, "You know, I've noticed that you have amongst all of your religious shrines one over here that says, 'To an unknown god.' Now that's what I'm going to tell you about." You know, that's a profoundly important beginning place that we want to come back to in just a minute. Though they were religious, their religion had a chasm separating the spiritual world and the natural world. And so the idea that there would be a resurrection within the natural world, within the material world, was something that their worldview did not allow for. What is more, their worldview did not allow that there would be something new under the sun, something unprecedented, that something would take place that had never taken place before, because their view was completely cyclical: "Anything that's happening now will happen again and has happened before." The idea that there would be one utterly miraculous occurrence in the middle of the cycle of history, the idea that it would be an appearance in the material realm of a spiritual miracle--a resurrection from the dead--their worldview did not allow for that. So they were very, very religious, but their religious views don't allow for the very thing that Paul wants to say.

Now, how is the gospel going to be presented in a context like that? Well, Paul noticed--this is a wonderfully profound thing for us to bear in mind--Paul begins at the point where their religions run out of answers. He doesn't begin with the resurrection of Jesus. He begins where they are, but he's not going to leave them where they are. He begins where they are. He starts saying, "I'm going to tell you about the 'unknown god' that you have."

Now, why was that shrine there in Athens? It was because the Greeks saw themselves as very cosmopolitan, very sophisticated, and desired that there would be a shrine, a point of worship, for every god on the face of the earth. Now in their day, that was quite a few. But when they were all done, they had to say, "Maybe we missed one. That would be bad. That would be bad if we had shrines to all of the other gods, but we missed one. So tell you what: Just to be on the safe side, we'll have a shrine 'To the unknown god.' "

What Paul knows is that that demonstrates the fact that they know that their religiousness does not completely cover everything. They're aware that there are some questions that they don't have answers for. They're aware that there are some bases they haven't covered. So he begins with that. He says, "Let's talk about the God that you know might be out there, but you don't know who it is." Then he launches in and begins talking about the God who made heaven and earth and says, "That God doesn't live in shrines made by human hands. That God doesn't need anything from us because that God is the source of all things." As he is speaking, some in the audience are getting in touch with what their own consciences, their own hearts, are telling them, which is, "Yes, that's right. There is that God who made everything that I have not been able to connect with at this shine or that shrine. I haven't been able to connect with all of them." And Paul says that that God has made Himself available, has revealed Himself, in Jesus Christ and proved that by the resurrection of the dead.

Well, at that point there were some in the audience who were with him and were able to say, "You know what? I've got this new message and I've got my worldview. I'm going to set the worldview aside and go with this new message." And there were others who were saying, "No, I'm sorry. No. Don't bother me with that. My mind is made up." But the point is, Paul was able to preach to an audience that did not know the Jewish Scriptures, that did not have a background in any of these things to prepare them. He was able to sort of begin with them where they were, with their unanswered questions, and take them in a way convincing many of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now, on your outline--I have a little "Brief History of Religions" that I want to use to bring us up to where we are right now.

I. 1 Timothy 2:2-6 One God and one Mediator

II. Acts 17:22-34 Presenting the gospel to the cosmopolitan Greeks

A. From that point where Greek religion runs out of answers

1. Paul starts where they are

2. But he doesn't stay where they are

B. The answer given in the resurrection of Jesus Christ

III. A brief history of religions

A. Pagan polytheism

B. Jewish monotheism

C. Christian monotheism

D. Contemporary polytheophanism

IV. Presenting the gospel to the cosmopolitan Americans

Pagan polytheism. I simply mean by that the ancient Near Eastern cultures, of which Athens was one, where there was an awareness of "many gods for many nations." Now, at that same time, the chief rival prior to this day when Paul arrives in Athens, would have been Jewish monotheism. Pagan polytheism is many nations and many gods. Jewish monotheism was a definite improvement: One God. The problem is, you had to be a member of the Hebrew nation in order to get in on that one God. What Christianity offered, what Paul brought to Athens and throughout the world of the ancient Near East, and one of the reasons why there were so many converts to Christianity, is it was not "many nations and many gods," not "one God, but only one nation." It was "for many nations--for all of the nations--one God." It was a way for a person to not have to abandon his or her own nationality in order to get in on a single God.

Now, that's been Western Civilization for almost two thousand years. But I don't think Christian monotheism is really the worldview operating in America and in Europe at the present time, and so I've made up a phrase. It's unfortunately the longest of the phrases on the outline: "Contemporary polytheophanism." A "theophany" is an appearance of God. And I would say that within the nations of the West, the mindset that is ruling and reigning at the present time is polytheophanism, by which I just mean there's a belief in one God, but many appearances of that one God so that "Oh, yeah, Christianity has an appearance of God, but so does Judaism, so does Islam, so does Buddhism . . ." and on and on. We're in a culture today where they're all equally valid: "Oh, yeah, Jesus--that's good for the Christians. And Judaism--that's good for the Jews. And it's all good." The problem is, I ask you: If that's where we are as a culture, are we any better off than the pagan polytheists were, who believed in many gods? I don't think we are.

I suspect that the ancient Greeks may have been shrewder in saying, "You know what? Be kind to everyone and for each of these religions there's a different god." That may be more sophisticated than our very blithe, very naive approach that says, "Oh, yeah, it's all good, and behind anything and everything is the one God." Well, does our approach leave us--the approach of Western Civilization at the present time--does our approach leave us with any unanswered questions? Are there any things that can't be explained by "it's all good"? If there are unanswered questions that remain for us today, that's actually a very good thing, because Paul knew how to present the gospel to a society a heck of a lot like ours is today.

And you know what? Present-day America is probably more like ancient Athens than any society that we have seen in the last two thousand years--which means the Bible knows how to bring hope to you and to me. Jesus Christ knows how to offer salvation to you and to me. The only issue is, do we have any questions we haven't been able to answer for ourselves? Do we have any bases that we haven't been able to cover? Do we have any relationships that we haven't been able to fix? Do we have any sins that we haven't been able to erase from our lives?

If we've got all the answers we need, if we've got all the bases covered, then we may be in trouble. But if you and I can say, "No, as a matter of fact, I don't have all the answers. I don't have all the bases covered. I don't have all my relationships fixed." That's a very, very good thing, because Jesus knows how to save people just like you, just like me. He's always known how. He knows how today. Let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that we can find in your Word a gospel preached to people just like us. People, Lord, who if we're not careful, will forget the meaning of Easter. Lord, we ask that your Word would enter our lives, and illumine our hearts, and grant us answers to those questions that we have not been able to answer ourselves. And it's in the strong name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

The Rev. Dr. Will Eisenhower

Interim Pastor

Faith Presbyterian Church

Minnetonka, Minnesota

[Transcribed from an audiotape of the worship service on April 20, 2003.]