Needing God, Part 1
Acts 17:22-25
As I mentioned to you this morning, tonight I want to draw your attention to the 17th Chapter of the Book of Acts. And if you want to open your Bible to Act 17, particularly in Verse 22, we here find the Apostle Paul in the midst of the Areopagus. And he says in Verse 22, "Men of Athens, I observe that you're very religious in all respects. But while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription to an unknown god, 'What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.'"
Anybody who doesn't know God is in a desperate condition. Paul recognized that. And in fact, you man worship other than the true God. You may worship many gods. But if you do not worship the true God, you really are an atheist in the end. That's just how it works out. And if you do not worship the true God, you have cut yourself off from the very most important thing in all of life.
We live in a society that intellectually or ethically or pragmatically rejects God. There are religious societies that worship all kinds of non-gods, but not the true God. And theirs is another kind of religious atheism where they, too, are without the knowledge of God. The effect of this pervasive atheism is devastating, as we shall note in this introduction.
Let me begin with an account that comes out of a book entitled A Shattered Visage. It's a book written by Ravi Zacharias, who is a noted Christian apologist. Listen to how he begins the book: "On August 7, 1961, 26‑year-old, Major Garmon Titof became the second Soviet Cosmonaut to orbit the earth and return safely, climaxing a monumental feat for mankind. Some time later, speaking at the World's Fair and savoring his moment of glory, he recounted this experience, vouchsafed to a privileged few. In a rather pre-textual pronouncement on a triumphilist note, he let it be known that on his excursion into space, he hadn't seen God.
"Upon hearing of his exuberant argument from silence, someone quipped, 'Had he stepped out of his space suit, he would have.'" (Laughter) "Evidently, reluctant to restrict the immediate gains of the moment to the disciplines directly involved in that endeavor, Titof attempted to draw theological blood. Thus, one great step for science became for him an immensely greater leap in philosophy.
"On Christmas Day, 1968, three American astronauts were the first human beings to go around the dark side of the moon away from the earth. Having fired their rockets, they were homebound on Apollo 8 and beheld our planet in a way that human eyes had never witnessed before. They saw earthrise over the horizon of the moon, draped in a beauteous mixture of white and blue, bordered by the glistening light of the sun against the black void of space.
"And in the throws of this awe-inspiring experience, they opened the pages of the Book of Genesis and read for the world to hear, 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'"
Writes Zacharias, "Two similar experiences of awe and exhilaration. Two diametrically opposed conclusions about the nature of the world. Such a chasm is quite understandable, for these two incidents carried into space the most fundamentally debated question on earth, 'Does God exist? Has God created man? Or has man created God? Is God indispensable to any cosmological explanation? Or is He only a psychological necessary of men? Theism or atheism?'"
Well, unfortunately, our culture is controlled by atheistic thinking. Several years ago, Encyclopedia Britannica published a 55‑volume series entitled The Great Books of the Western World. Mortimer Adler, a very noted philosopher and legal scholar, was the co‑editor of that series. And the series itself marshaled the most imminent thinkers of the Western World, and their writings on the most important ideas that had been studied and investigated over the centuries.
This includes ideas about law, science, philosophy, history, theology, and love that have shaped the minds and the destinies of people -- fifty-five volumes to assemble all of this for comparison and contrast. And very striking to anyone who observes these volumes is that the longest essay in all 55 volumes is under the title God.
When Mr. Adler was asked by a reviewer why this theme merited such protracted coverage, his answer was uncompromising, "It is because," he said, "more consequences for life follow from that one issue than from any other," end quote. Nothing has more direct impact on life. Nothing has more direct effect on life than belief or disbelief in God. Whether we're talking about personal life, family life, national life, or cultural destinies, everything in the human realm is bound up by whether we believe or do not believe in the true God.
And frankly, belief in the true God, who is creator and sustainer and lawgiver and judge and Savior and King, is essential to the wellbeing of humanity. And even believing in false gods, gods of man's on making is only a form of atheism, because those gods do not exist and cannot have any meaning.
Our culture, as I said to you last week, is dominated by intellectual atheism at high levels, and by moral atheism at low levels. GK Chesterton was right when he said, and I quote, "God is like the sun. You cannot look at it. But without it, you cannot look at anything else."
We are in profound trouble without God. The atheism of our time really goes back to evolution. It was when Charles Darwin and those who followed him designed the concept of evolution that atheism took on a reasonableness. Although it is in every sense irrational and unreasonable, it has the façade of reason.
Henry Morris has written a very excellent book called The Long War Against God. Henry Morris, of the Institution of Creation and Research, noted scientist, who came out of the scientific world and has written perhaps more than anyone arguing against evolution, writes this: "Modern astrophysicists are currently speculating that the universe itself spontaneously evolved out of nothing."
Well, at least they're honest enough to admit that's the only option, as irrational as it is. "Further," writes Morris, "in this picture the universe came into existence," this sounds very scientific, "as a fluctuation in the quantum mechanical vacuum." (Laughter) "Such a hypothesis leads to a view of creation in which the entire universe is an accident."
In the words of one writer, named Trion, and I quote -- a scientific writer, writing in the Science Digest, June 1984, "Our universe is simply one of those things that happened from time to time." (Laughter) Well, that explains it. (Laughter)
This evolutionary lie, this elimination of God permeated everything. It permeates education. It permeates law, the courts, government, politics, sociology, morality, all areas of human life and endeavor, all areas of human relationship are polluted by the evolutionary lie. And evolution led almost sequentially to the worst in human life.
If you go back to the worst in human life, the worst from a sociological standpoint, you have to go back to Karl Marx and the writing of Das Kapital, atheistic communism's birthing philosophy. And you might not know it, but it is true that Karl Marx sought to dedicate Das Kapital to Charles Darwin.
When you go back to Sigmund Freud, you go back to a man who was so enamored with evolution he believed he had found the reality he needed, that man had to solve his own problems within himself because there was nobody outside. There was no God. Freud took the evolutionary concepts of Darwin and developed psychology from them.
Arrogant pseudo intellectual behaviorists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers who have come from Freud and Marx and their disciples have given us the world we have today; psychologists and psychiatrists and philosopher who have far more personal problems than is even reasonable for any single group. They even recognize how messed up they are, how corrupt they are, and how crippled they are.
Peter Brigen is a psychiatrist in the Humanist Journal November/December 1987; he wrote an article called Mental Health and Religion. This is what he said -- he is a psychiatrist: "The average psychiatrist has more power to do harm in the lives of individuals than most religious leaders on earth. Moreover, it would be hard to find a more unhappy lot than those clustered in the mental health field.
"Especially among psychiatrists, suicide, depression, drug addiction, and alcoholism are notoriously rife. Among non-medical mental health professionals," that would be psychologists and counselors, et cetera, "the situation doesn't seem much better. Not only are many mental health professionals unhappy, but they do not live ethically inspired lives. Too many, for example, prostrate themselves before the psychiatric establishment," end quote.
And yet, these same psychologists who are unhappy, embittered people who can't solve the problems of their own lives, yet the lives of others who are following this evolutionary Freudian union model are sure that the answer is not in Christianity.
Dr. Edward Wilson of Harvard, former southern Baptist in his early years, now having rejected all of that, also wrote an article in The Humanist Journal called The Relation of Science to Theology. And in it, Dr. Wilson said this, and I quote, "Bitter experience has taught us that fundamentalist religion," that means Christianity as we know it, "in its aggressive form is one of the unmitigated evils of the world," end quote.
They have not only rejected God and rejected religion and rejected fundamentalist Christianity, but they see it as a serious threat.
In another strain, you can go back to the philosopher, Nietzsche, who coined the idea that God is dead. Nietzsche was the one who, more than anybody else, influenced Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, and Benito Mussolini. For example, Adolph Hitler took Nietzsche and ran the philosophy of Nietzsche to its logical conclusion. He drove the atheistic worldview to the very brink.
And Hitler said this, and I quote, "I have freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality."
Dostoyevsky, the Great Russian writer, was exactly accurate when he said, "If God is dead, everything is justifiable." There's no right and there's no wrong. There's no explanation for the universe, because it doesn't need one. It is just one of those things that happen from time to time. There is no hope. There is no meaning.
An English journalist by the name of Steve Turner sums it up in a very clever way. Listen to what he wrote. "We believe in Marx, Freud, and Darwin. We believe everything is okay as long as you don't hurt anyone, to the best of your definition of hurt, and to the best of your knowledge. We believe in sex before, during, and after marriage.
"We believe in the therapy of sin. We believe that adultery is fun. We believe that sodomy's okay. We believe that taboos are taboo. We believe that everything's getting better despite evidence to the contrary. The evidence must be investigated, and you can prove anything with evidence. We believe there's something in horoscopes, UFOs, and bent spoons. Jesus was a good man, like Buddha, Mohammad, and ourselves.
"He was a good moral teacher, although we think His good morals were bad. We believe that all religions are basically the same, at least the one that we read was. They all believe in love and goodness. They only differ on unimportant matters like creation, sin, Heaven, Hell, God, and salvation." (Laughter)
"We believe that after death comes nothing, because when you ask the dead what happens, they say nothing." (Laughter) "If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it's compulsory Heaven for everybody except perhaps Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan. We believe in Masters and Johnson. What's selected is average. What's average is normal. What's normal is good. We believe in total disarmament. We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed." That's deep. (Laughter)
"Americans should beat their guns into tractors, and everybody else would be sure to follow. We believe that man is essentially good. It's only his behavior that lets him down." (Laughter) "This is the fault of society. Society is the fault of conditions. Conditions are the fault of society. We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly.
"The universe will readjust. History will alter. We believe there is no absolute truth, excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth. We believe in the rejection of creeds, and the flowering of individual thought."
He then concluded with a postscript. He called it Chance. This is what it says: "If chance be the father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear, 'State of emergency. Sniper kills ten. Troopers on rampage. Whites go looting. Bomb blasts school,' it's but the sound of man worshiping his maker." Very true. If you don't have God, you don't have anything.
As Pascal said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum in man that only He can fill." And apart from God, there's no sense to anything. There's no life. There's no hope. There's no goodness. There's no meaning. There's no truth. There's no rules.
Well, moving into a little more familiar domain, on January 7, 1855, Charles Haddon Spurgeon addressed his congregation at New Park Street Church. This is what he said: "Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the godhead's deepest sea. Be lost in the immensity and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief, so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout faith in God."
We need God in our society and in our lives. Today we're gonna hear about God from a far greater preacher than Spurgeon or me, from the Apostle Paul himself. And that brings us to Act 17. This is a message about God, that men must know and can know God. That's what it's about. How important is it?
John 17:3 sums it up. Listen to these words. "And this is life eternal that they may know Thee, the only true God." Knowing God is the way to eternal life. How important is knowing God? It is the only way to eternal life. It is the only escape from eternal death.
What is the best thing in life? What is the most comforting thing in life? What is the most securing thing in life? What is the most hope-producing thing in life? What is the profoundest truth in life? What is the greatest source of courage in life wherein lies the standard for living, for knowing what is right and what is wrong? All of it is in the knowledge of God.
In Jeremiah 9, it is wonderfully summed up. Listen to Verses 23 and 24 of Jeremiah 9: "Thus says the Lord, 'Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches. But let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me," what a great statement, "that I am the Lord who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,' declares the Lord."
If you're gonna boast, you don't boast about your wisdom. You don't boast about your power. You don't boast about your riches. You boast in one thing, that you understand and know God.
I will never forget as long as I live, I'm sure, sitting on that airplane -- and I told you about this months ago -- flying down to El Paso, Texas, starting up a conversation with a Muslim Arab from the Middle East. And he started asking me questions. And I said to him, "I know God," and it blew his mind. He said, "You know the God personally?"
Why would you boast of your human might and your human achievement and your human wisdom and your earthly riches, when you can boast that you know the God of the universe personally? And He provides the structure for all that you believe and know to be true. What pleases God most? He delights that we know Him.
Hosea 6:6: "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." And what is the purpose of man? To know God, to glorify God, to enjoy Him. Paul knew well the plight of the Pagans. They didn't know God. Though they were religious, they didn't know God. Theirs was not technically a world of atheism. Theirs was not a world of evolution. They believed in gods all over the place, but not the true God.
As we find the Apostle Paul in Acts 17, he's on his second tour from the church in Antioch where he was a pastor -- Antioch in the country of Syria. He has come to Macedonia and he's come there to found those churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. But in each case, while he was establishing churches in those cities, great opposition broke out. And every time, he had to run to save his own life because the false religious establishment and, of course, that included the Jews and the Pagans, were threatened so severely by the establishment of the Gospel and the church that Paul had to run for his life.
From Berea, which was the last of those three stops in Macedonia, he had been brought to Athens. And he came to Athens alone, waiting until Timothy and Silas, his companions on this missionary tour, could join him. So there he is in Athens. And I suppose it was everybody's intent that he would rest because he had been so embattled that he would get some refreshment and find some comfort and some quiet. But he didn't.
In fact, as soon as he got to Athens, he confronted a city completely given over to idolatry, and the consequent inequity that came with it. He was impressed that the city was full of idols, but without God. It was atheism couched as polytheism. He was all alone. How could he have an impact on that place?
Well, the way things worked in ancient times, there was an agura, a marketplace. And there would be a gathering of the populace of the people in that marketplace. And part of that gathering city center would be a place given over to the articulation of philosophy and religion. And so that's where Paul went.
The discussion of philosophy and theology and religion was in the public forum. It wasn't tucked into neat books and stuck on shelves somewhere. It didn't take place in private debates on television or radio; it was public. And so he went to the public place where he could meet the philosophers.
He stood in the middle of the Areopagus. That probably means "the council." They would be the supreme court of Athens. He went there and asked for a hearing. And by the way, that is the very court, the supreme court of Athens, called the Areopagus, that tried Socrates and condemned him about four centuries before.
Paul comes back to that very familiar place, to the inhabitants of Athens, where much had been argued and debated through the centuries, since Socrates. He is not there to defend a personal philosophy. He's not there to get in line with all the rest of the philosophers. He is there to introduce the Pagans to God, to the only true God whom they do not know.
And he has to start by finding some way to enter the subject. And so he says, "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects." And there's a certain amount of condescension in that, a certain amount of bridge building in that. "For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God." How perfectly suited that oblique, obscure, nondescript altar to nobody was in becoming the entry point for Paul to make his great sermon.
The title of his sermon might be Getting to Know the Unknown God. Now there are three things that must be known if we're to know God. One, we have to know that God is. Two, we have to know who God is; and three, what God requires. If we're gonna know Him, we have to know that He is, know who He is, and what He requires for those who would know Him.
So in Verses 22 and 23, Paul essentially says, "I'm going to introduce to this God." Hebrew 11:6 says, "He that comes to God must believe that He is." let me tell you something, folks, as long as people are atheistic, intellectual atheists, materialistic atheists, naturalist atheists, humanistic atheists, and will not acknowledge that God is, they cannot know Him at all.
The paper fortresses of atheism, the paper fortress of atheism have to be torn down. They can be torn down. From the intellectual standpoint, it is reasonable to believe in God. Romans 1. But even more importantly, they can be torn down by the revelational argument of Scripture. Let the Scripture do its powerful, powerful work.
In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul says, "We do not war according to the flesh." Now we're gonna do battle in an atheistic environment and an atheistic culture. And if you're on a university campus, it's even more heightened there. But we don't do battle according to the flesh. We're not just using human reason and human arguments and human debate, because the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of the paper fortresses of atheism.
How are you gonna tear down these paper castles, these paper fortresses? How are you gonna destroy speculation and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God? How are you going to do that and then bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ? The only way you can do that is with a spiritual weapon. And the only spiritual weapon we have is the Word of God.
That is why I am much more concerned with confronting the atheistic culture with the Scripture than I am with rational arguments. There's a place for that. But in the end, the spiritual weapon that rips down their fortresses is the Word of the Living God, energized by the Spirit of God.
In Psalm 14:1, familiar words, "The fool has said in his heart," what? "There is no God." The word "fool," by the way, could also be translated wicked, or even vicious. The root of that word, "fool," can refer to a plant that has lost all of its juice. So it could even be translated, "lifeless, drying, dry." The lifeless one, the wicked, vicious, foolish, lifeless one, shriveled up, dried up, is the one who says in his heart, "There is no God."
He says it in his heart. He's convinced himself inside. And I just remind you that men don't do that because it is intellectually reasonable. They do it because they love their sin. And if they acknowledge God, then they have to acknowledge morality, and then have to feel guilty because they violate it. They don't want that. They want to eliminate the guilt. They want to be free to sin as they will. And so they just eliminate God. They love sin. They shun accountability to a divine law.
And Athens, like the people of the Psalmists time, and like people today, it was full of fools who ran around saying, "There's no God." Athens had created all kinds of gods to accommodate their inequity, but not the true God. Rejection of the true God is not a result of superior intellect. It is not a result of scientific investigation. It is a result of stupidity. And more than that, it is a result of the love of inequity.
And it is summed up in Romans 1 where it says, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." God planted the knowledge of His existence in creation. God planted the knowledge of His existence reason. the knowledge of Law is planted in thought and in conscience so that even Pagans, who have no written Scripture can discern that God exists, that God is powerful, that God is supernatural, that God has established a Law and judgment.
&nbs