A God-broken heart is evidenced by a deep concern for lost people, as exemplified by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17. This concern compels believers to get involved in the lives of those around them, to become informed about their beliefs and perspectives, and to gain wisdom in communicating the gospel effectively. Furthermore, a God-broken heart motivates engagement in spiritual battles, even when it leads to criticism, and ultimately seeks to share the core message of Christ's resurrection and the call to repentance. The sermon encourages listeners to cultivate this compassionate and proactive approach to evangelism, mirroring Paul's example in Athens.
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And the real question is, are we ready to meet the Lord and ready to wrap up, as it were, all that we've sought to do for him in this life, recognizing that we will not have further opportunity to obey him in this life. And that gives us pause time to think, doesn't it, that we need to be investing each day, as it were, in the things of the Lord's. Let me invite you to take your Bibles, please, and turn to Acts chapter seventeen. I'm going to finish up this message I began last Lord's Day on five evidences of a God-broken heart. As we look at the Apostle Paul in Acts chapter seventeen, as he lives out his life in light of that day, that coming day, he demonstrates how God had broken his heart, especially with respect to lost people.
Acts chapter seventeen, let me read verses sixteen through eighteen and summarize a few of the points that we saw there. Acts chapter seventeen beginning at verse sixteen. While Paul was waiting for them, that is, Silas and Timothy in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he leads in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks. as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happen to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, what is this babbler trying to say?
Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign God. They said this because Paul was preaching through media and a reverence. Let's pray together, shall we? Father, again, we bow in your presence. We're thankful for the reminder we've had this morning of that day. We do not know when that day will come. But, Lord, we pray that we may be prepared. We think of the many parables of the Lord Jesus about being wise, about investing the talents that you've given to us, about being occupied and looking forward to your second coming. Lord, may we take those things to heart. And as we look around us, Father, on a world that is lost in sin and lost without Jesus Christ, Father, would you break our hearts with the things that break your heart that indeed we would be involved and we would be those kinds of Christians that share our faith and pray for others and befriend others for the sake of Christ.
Lord, we pray you might encourage us now if we think about this important passage that your spirit might challenge us in those areas where we need to be challenged. We pray you might encourage us now in Jesus' name. Amen. Somebody has said that a good preacher or a good pastor is someone who can comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. And I know there are times in my life when I need to be comforted, when I need the Word of God taught to me or shared with me, or I need Christians praying for me in order to bring me some measure of godly comfort. But there are other times when I simply need to be afflicted. When my comfort level is such that it has made me, in a sense, insulated against the world around me.
and has kept me from having the kind of heart or the kind of concern that honors God as we live in this world. One of the things that God has been teaching me recently is this issue of sharing my faith with others, of looking for opportunities to simply say a word for the Lord Jesus. The other day, I got a phone call. You get phone calls at home too. Telemarketers. Will any telemarketers be in heaven? I don't know. I used to be a telemarketer when I was going through school. So I have some sympathy for them. But this one lady called me and she said, I'm working for such and such heating and air conditioning company. Happens to be the one that we have a maintenance agreement with. And she said, we're giving free estimates on brand new systems for your home.
Can I schedule an appointment? And I said, why not? Let the man come. So he showed up, I think it was last Wednesday or so, and looked at our system about sixteen years old or whatever, and sat down at the table and began writing out an estimate what a brand new system would call. You know, you can get a brand new system for six, seven thousand dollars. You know that? I was amazed. I wanted to buy two of them right there. I wanted to have another empty house, just add another system to it. But we sat there talking for a little while. And I was asking him a few questions about himself. I never know how these things actually happened. But before I knew it, he had already shared with me that he was going through an enormously bitter divorce. Not only that, but his wife had him thrown in jail for spousal abuse.
And he said this to me. I don't know who was right and who was wrong, but he said this to me. He said, you know that in South Carolina... All a wife has to do, I should not say this probably, give you wives ideas. He says, all a wife has to do is call Sheriff Leon Lott and say, my husband physically abused me. And he says, the police will come to your door, the Richland County Sheriff. Are we in Richland County? We're not, are we? They won't come to your door. They'll come to my door. They'll have your spouse complain. But they'll come to your door. They will arrest you as a man. They will keep you in jail for at least twenty-four hours. And you're nothing you can do. That's what he told us. I didn't ask him if he'd actually physically abused his wife. I figured I would just accept his word. But he started telling me about this, and he's going through a terrible time, terrible time, going through divorce and property settlement, all this kind of stuff.
And as he's telling me these things, I start telling him a little bit about the Lord. And I find it fascinating how I get into those kind of conversations. Maybe that happens with you. Sometimes I think people are right on the edge And if we show any kind of interest at all, they will unburden their heart. It'll be like a geyser just erupting as they begin to share with us the things they're going through. I wonder how many non-Christians you and I rub shoulders with each and every day that are right there on the edge if we only show interest in them and only ask them some things about their lives. To make a long story short, I basically said to this fellow, I said, if this house were your house, would you get one of those new six, seven thousand dollar air conditioning heating units?
He says, not on your life. He was honest with me. Oh, that was great. So bringing that spiritual thing can get contractors to be honest with you. That's another good reason to share his faith. And as he was leaving, he made some kind of comment to me. He said something like, he said, I hope, I hope I see you in heaven. Something like that. And I said to him, I said, see, you don't have to hope. You can know for sure that you're going to heaven when you die. And I witnessed a little bit more to him on the front porch. I thank the Lord for that opportunity. That doesn't happen a whole lot with me, but I wish it happened more. I wish that I would have the courage and God would give me the wisdom to simply express an interest in lost people.
That's what the Apostle Paul is doing here in Acts chapter seventeen. And last week, as we looked at this, we noticed the first two of the five evidences of a God-broken heart. The first evidence, verse sixteen, is that Paul cared enough to get involved. Paul cared enough to get involved. As he's waiting for Silas and Timothy, he is not simply waiting around. He is not simply wasting time. Verse sixteen says his spirit was greatly distressed. It was provoked within him, aroused within him. He was not indifferent to the idolatry that he saw around him. And he began to be concerned and he got involved.
And we noticed last week, verses seventeen and eighteen, that not only did he care enough to get involved, he cared enough to get informed. He cared enough to get informed. Verses seventeen and eighteen, it's where Paul could debate with Jewish thinkers, with Greek proselytes, with the intellectual loiterers of the day. He knew how to talk to people that were esoterian or stoic in philosophy. And verse eighteen says that he preached the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Can we talk? I think part of our problem as Christians sometimes is we simply don't want to be bothered to find out how to communicate with people who are not already Christians.
Because they believe radically different things than we do, we sometimes think all we need to do is proclaim the gospel and that will be good enough. Not the apostle Paul. He took the time to study what Epicurean philosophy was. He knew what Stoic philosophy was. He knew how to deal with Jewish individuals who had rejected Jesus Christ as Messiah. He knew how to deal with Greek or pagan individuals who had become Jewish, thinking that they would be saved by becoming Jewish. Paul expended effort. in finding out how to speak to the people of his day. And so must you and I. If I really want to have a God-broken heart, that means I need to have non-Christians who are my friends.
And that means that I need to understand where they're coming from so I can speak the gospel of Jesus Christ to them in terms that they can understand. But as I look at my heart and maybe you can identify with this, sometimes I find that my problem is that I'm flat out lazy. I'm intellectually lazy. I don't take the time to find out what they believe so I can speak the gospel to them in terms they can understand. Heard about one office worker who said to another, he said, I was relaxing in my favorite chair on Sunday, reading the newspaper, watching a ball game on TV and listening to another game on the radio. I was eating the snack and scratching the dog with my foot, and my wife has the nerve to accuse me of just sitting there doing nothing.
Sometimes we're afraid to admit that we're lazy, intellectually lazy. because it demands effort and work on our part. Scripture has a lot to say about laziness. Proverbs nineteen fifteen, laziness brings on deep sleep and the shiftless man goes hungry. Proverbs nineteen twenty four, the sluggard buries his hand in the dish, he will not even bring it back to his mouth. And my favorite, Proverbs twenty-four, thirty-four says, a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a bandit, and scarcity like an armed man.
We need rest, absolutely. But we do not need to be intellectually lazy. Paul cared enough about the people around him that he would find out what they believed so he could speak to them in terms that they could understand. There's a pastor in a church who tells the following story. He said an old country farmer was sitting on the porch of his house when a stranger came by and asked how things tolerable, came the reply from the old farmer. He continued, two weeks ago a cyclone came along and knocked down all the trees that I had to chop down for this winter's firewood.
Then last week, lightning struck the bush I had to burn to clear the fields for planting. Stranger responded, that's remarkable. What are you doing now? The farmer answered, waiting for an earthquake to come along and shake the tater out of the ground. Yeah, sometimes that characterizes me. Sometimes I wonder if I expect God to do a miracle when God is waiting on me to do some homework, to find out what people think, to read what people read, to listen or even to watch what people listen to or watch, that I can understand where they're coming from so I can speak to them, so I can get involved, and so I can get informed.
Let's move on to a third evidence of a God-broken heart. How are you doing so far? Do you keep this list? Can you say, yeah, I care enough. I care enough to get involved. I care enough to get informed. I hope you can. The third evidence of a God-broken heart comes out in verses nineteen through twenty-three. And it's simply this. Paul cared enough to get wise. He cared enough to get wise. Please notice what Paul does in verses nineteen through twenty-three. Verse nineteen... Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus where they said to him, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting. You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we want to know what they mean.
All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. 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. Now what you worship is something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. Paul cared enough to get involved, to get informed, and thirdly, he cared enough to get wise. Notice what happens in verses nineteen through twenty-three.
They take Paul to this formal kind of meeting called the Areopagus. And in verse nineteen, they say to him, we want you to explain this new teaching that you are presenting. Verse twenty, you're bringing some strange ideas to our ears and we want to know what they mean. Verse twenty-one is Luke's commentary on what's going on. Luke says, Terence and the Queen, verse twenty-one, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there, spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. Again, the idea of the intellectual loiterer. They showed up to simply chew the fat, to simply talk about things, to simply bandy about the recent and the new ideas of the day, to philosophize, to discuss, to debate.
There's nothing wrong with that, friends. In fact, I wish we Christians did more of that. I wish there were more opportunities for us to have give and take. Do you see what we're doing right now, even as I'm speaking? What are we doing? There's one person talking, and there's at least two or three of you listening. It's a curious kind of thing how we do that. I've taught courses on the history of preaching, and the way that we do things right now is not the way things have always been done. Did you know that? Look at the days of Jesus when he preached. What did he do? Well, he sat down and the people stood and listened to him. He taught from the boat and they listened. But I doubt many of his sermons were more than about five or ten minutes long.
In fact, most of them, it seems he had a dialogue with people. They were able to ask questions. He was able to respond. He could tell them a story. They could say, we don't get it. Help us understand the moral of that story. You follow what I'm saying? And in our modern culture and contemporary America, we have one person standing behind a wooden pulpit with a wireless mic and everybody else sitting down and listening. Now that may be a good way to disseminate information. I'm not sure it's the best way to learn things because dialogue and discussing things can be very helpful. Verse twenty-one says the Athenians and the foreigners used to meet together in the Areopagus and they would talk about things. They'd talk about ideas.
They would discuss. philosophy and they bring Paul into that kind of environment. They invite him in and they say you're proclaiming some new, some strange ideas we want you to explain. Wouldn't it be wonderful if that were the kind of situation you and I experienced every day where people gather to talk about things they would invite you or invite me as a Christian and say we've heard you state some strange ideas. Could you explain those things to us? My family and I live here. And I've got some great friends in Canada.
It was a wonderful period of time for us, but I do not miss the winter days of forty below zero. It should be illegal to have temperatures that low. But we were there for nine years, almost ten years, and a lot of really good memories. Some very fine Christians. Our children basically grew up in the rural, flat country of Manitoba, Canada. But one of the phenomena that I will never forget is the phenomena there of the coffee shop. They have coffee shops. We have coffee shops. So there's a little bit different, a very small restaurant, especially where the farmers will go in the morning and have a little bit of breakfast or have a cup of coffee, and they will talk and they will share ideas and talk about farming and families and all the rest.
The curious thing in Manitoba is everybody's related to everybody else. In that part of that province, most of them are of a Mennonite background, so they know everybody else. Are you with me in my story? It's almost over, okay? Because I was not from the province of Manitoba, and my background is not Mennonite. Whenever I'd walk into one of those coffee shops, every head would stop their conversation and look up and stare at me. It was very, very funny. I mean, they really would. They'd all just pop up. Because they want to know who I am. This was a strange thing. And they wouldn't know me, and I'd go sit down by myself or sit down with whoever I happen to walk into the restaurant, and finally dawned on me that I should do something that would be entertaining for me and thoroughly confusing for them.
So the next time I went to a coffee shop and every head popped up, I'd look at one of them and I'd say, hey, how you doing? Didn't see you. Well, that threw him into such a tither. He would not believe it. But the next hour, he'd sit there saying, Is that my second cousin from Ruth's side? I don't know who that is. Just confuse him to no end. The coffee shop in Manitoba were the gathering places for people to talk about things, to talk about their crops, to talk about the Lord, to talk about church, to talk about people. Where are the gathering places in our culture? You know, part of the problem is they're being lost.
People are so individualistic, people don't gather, it seems, much anymore. What happens in verse twenty-one is Paul is brought to the primary gathering place, and he's asked to explain this new teaching that he has been talking about. Notice what he does in verse twenty-two. He stands up in the meeting of this Areopagus, and he says, Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious, verse twenty-three, for if I walk around and look at all your idols of worship, those idols will take you to hell, and you need to repent. Do you see it? Verse twenty-three. Do you see that in your Bible?
Did you bring a Bible to verse ten? Doesn't verse twenty-three say that? He said, I see all these idols, and those idols are going to condemn you to a lost eternity. You need to repent. It blew me away the first time I really looked at verse twenty-three. That's not what Paul says at all. What does he say? Men of Athens, verse twenty-two, I see that in every way you're very religious, for if I walked around, I looked carefully at your objects of worship. I even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. Can you see what he's doing? He is complimenting He's complimenting the Athenians for their high religious character. He's complimenting them.
He's saying in verse twenty-two, I see that you are very religious. And then he says in verse twenty-three, I think with a twinkle in his eye, he says, I see all these idols and you people are so smart, you've covered all your bases, you even have an idol with the inscription to an unknown God. I don't think he's putting them down. By the way, he's also not saying to them, if you will only be religious, you'll make it to heaven. He's not saying that. He's not affirming their religious ways. He's simply complimenting them. You're very religious. I can see that you're very religious. And then notice what he does at the end of verse twenty-three. And this is why I say Paul cared enough to get wise. Paul not only compliments them on their religiosity, But he says, you even have an idol with the inscription.
Stop right there. What does that mean? Paul is waiting in Athens. He's waiting in Athens for Silas and Timothy. But, friends, he's not just standing around. What's he been doing? Reading inscriptions. Reading inscriptions. He's going around, looking at all these idols, and he's reading the inscriptions. He's becoming culturally literate. He's finding out about the people. And then he gets to that one idol, and he reads the inscription, and it says, to an unknown God. And then Paul says in verse twenty-three, that's the one that I come to tell you about.
Isn't that brilliant? You see that? You see the logic of that? I know my tendency, and maybe some of you can identify with this, my tendency is is first of all to ignore the idolatry around me, instead of letting my heart be broken by it. But secondly, when my heart gets broken by it, it's to condemn it. It's to speak in words of judgment and condemnation. That is not what Paul does in verse twenty-three. What he does is he pays them a compliment and then he uses their circumstance as a contact point to say, that's the God I'm going to tell you about. Isn't that brilliant? My wife, Linda, and I served in Germany for a few years as short-term missionaries.
We were there for two years. The Germans have a wonderful word here. It's the word unkunufung-punk. Anybody know German? An unkunufung-punk is a contact point. That's what Paul does in verse twenty-three. He says, you even have an idol that has the inscription to an unknown God. That's the God I'm going to tell you that. So he makes a transition to them as he begins his journey. Paul cared enough to get why. Question. Of the non-Christians that you know, are there any areas in which you can complement the non-Christians that you know?
What a strange question. No, it isn't a strange question. I think that in my own heart for many years, I thought that my primary job toward the non-Christian is to help them see how really condemned and lost they are. That is part of my job. So I think it's the Holy Spirit that brings that truth to bear. But does that mean I can never say anything positive to a non-Christian? Does that mean that I can never say to a non-Christian, I really admire the way that you treat your family? Or I really appreciate the way you're such a good neighbor? or I'm really thankful for the things that you did for me and for my family when so-and-so was in the hospital. My point is this, everybody loves to be complimented.
And sometimes a compliment can actually establish a bridge of communication to begin to share the gospel with someone else. One writer put it this way, she said one of the commodities in life that most people can't get enough of is compliments. The ego is never so intact that one can't find a hole in which to plug a little prey. But compliments by their nature are highly biodegradable and tend to dissolve hours or days after we first receive them, which is why we can always use another. This may be a new thought for you, but I ask you to at least consider it this week.
As you rub shoulders with non-Christians, May God give you wisdom and insight to find something in that non-Christmas life that you can complement. And I don't mean that you're saying to them, if you just say a nice person, you'll make it to glory. Not at all. But part of establishing relationships is saying honest and nice things about each other. We do not have to be people who are always negative, who are always condemning, who are always looking to say the harsh things of the gospel. Now it's important that we move on to this passage because if we stop there you might think that Paul is not being very faithful to the gospel. Paul cared enough to get involved, he cared enough to get informed, he cared enough to get wise.
Now fourthly, and there are five of these if you're counting, Paul cared enough to get in the battle. Verses twenty-four through thirty-one. Let me read those verses again quickly and then we'll see how Paul gets in the battle. Here is Paul speaking about this unknown God And at their invitation, verse twenty-four, 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 hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As some of your own poets have said, we are its offspring. 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 man's design and skill. In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. 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 all men by raising Him from the dead. Isn't that a powerful section? Paul is standing there in the Areopagus. He is by invitation being given the opportunity to explain this new teaching. And in order to do that, he first of all compliments them and says, I can see that you're very religious. You even have an idol with the inscription to an unknown God. That's the God that I want to tell you about, that unknown God. And then notice what he does in verses twenty-four through thirty-one. He begins to talk about not... and unknown God. Listen, but be one and only God. That's what he does. He makes a subtle shift there, doesn't he?
And he says in verse twenty four, be God who made the world and everything in it. What's Paul saying? There is only one God. He is the creator. He has made everything that is in the world. He is verse twenty four, the Lord of heaven and earth. He is not a God who lives in temples built by hands. I think Paul is thinking back to First Kings eight there. After Solomon, by God's direction and the help of all the people, had built this magnificent temple, Solomon says, Lord, not even the heaven of heaven can continue, much less this building that I have made. You see, for the Athenians, they thought that God dwelt, the God dwelt in temples made by men's hands.
Paul says, no, this is a God who has an independent existence. Verse twenty-five, he's not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. Have you ever had a non-Christian treat you in the following way? This has happened to me. Maybe it's happened to you. You share your faith with them. You tell them about Jesus Christ. You talk about the Bible. You explain the gospel of them. And they look at you and they go, you poor thing. You need that, don't you? And you say, what are you saying? You need to believe in a God, right? And you say, well, yeah. And then they say, well, well, you've invented that God. And you say, well, no, I haven't.
How foolish for anybody to charge the Christian with inventing the Christian God. Why? Because if I were going to invent a God, he certainly wouldn't be the God of the Bible. Holy, righteous, just, jealous, would you? I'd invent a much easier God to live with. But anyway, the non-Christian looks at you and says, you poor thing. You've invented this whole thing about God. You've created all that. When I've been treated that way, it hasn't happened a lot. Maybe it ought to happen more than it does. I've been tempted to kind of grab that non-Christian by the lapel. I've never done that, but I've been tempted. Kind of grabbing by lapel, shake them just a little, not the rattle will break, shake them just a little and say to them, listen, friend, I didn't invent this God.
And in fact, this God that you think I invented, he is the God who gives you your very next lungful of air. Take them a little bit more. And friend, the next beat of your heart, that's a gift from the God that I've been privileged to come to know. I didn't invent this. And whether you believe it or not, it's still true. This is the God, as Paul says there in verse twenty-five. He's not served by human hands as if he needed anything. He himself, you see it in verse twenty-five, he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. I might be tempted to shake him just a third time and say, do you know your breath and your life and everything is a gift of this God that you're mocking like.
You ever been tempted to do that? Be honest. Come on. Come on. May God tempt us. He doesn't tempt us. But may He give us the opportunity where we're tempted, in a sense, to do that. To be a bit more aggressive than our witness, to be a bit more honest and to say, look, I didn't invent this. This is not a God of my imagination. This is the God who gives all men life and breath and everything else. Now, I'll tell you one thing that really surprises me. It's what Paul does in verse twenty-eighth. Verse twenty-eighth. As you look at verse twenty eight, does your Bible have quotation marks around the statement, for in him we live and move and have our being? If it doesn't, throw your Bible away, get a new one.
Not really. But some of the newer Bibles do have quotation marks there, for in him we live and move and have our being. Because the verse goes on to say, as some of your own poets have said, we are his offspring. Now, you're not going to believe this, but you need to. When Paul says, in him we live and move and have our being, he is quoting a Greek poet, Epaminides, his work, Kratica. What? And when Paul quotes in verse twenty-eight, we are his offspring, he is quoting the Seleucidian poet, Eratus, in his Sonomina, as well as Cleances, in his hymn to Zeus.
Can you share with me this morning? Don't leave me yet. I've got about ten minutes to make this thing. Okay? Paul is quoting pagan literature in verse twenty-eight. He's not quoting scriptures. He's not quoting the Old Testament. He's quoting Epaminidae, a Greek poet. He is quoting Eratus, a Cilician poet. He's quoting Cleansus, a man who wrote a work called Hymn to Zeus. Do you see that? Why is that important? Here's why it's important. Listen to me very carefully. If all you know is the Word of God, you do not know enough.
Wait a minute. I'm not sure about that. All I know is the Word of God. I don't know enough. If Paul in Acts is being given as an illustration or an example to us, listen, Paul knew more than the Old Testament Scripture. I'm not saying we should know the Word of God. You know me better than that. It is our absolute foundation. But listen, doesn't it make sense that if all I know is the Bible, then I can only talk to people who only know the Bible? Can I hear an amen? It would make me feel a lot more comfortable here, okay? Does that make sense to you? But if I'm trying to reach lost people who don't know the Bible, I need to know what they know so I can share with them from the Bible.
Here's what Paul is doing. He's quoting Greek pagan literature in order to say some of your own poets have said something true. Some of your own poets, verse twenty-eight, have said, we are his offspring. And notice what Paul does in verse twenty-nine. Do you see it? He says, therefore, since we are God's offspring. I love that part. Not only is he saying, this is what your Greek poets have said, but they were right. We are God's offspring. Now be careful here. He doesn't mean that in a salvation sense. He means it in a creitorial sense, in a creation sense. Are all human beings creatures of God?
some of your pausing before answering. They are, aren't they? Every human being has been created by God, right? We can say we are creatures of God. That doesn't save us. That doesn't save us. We're not saved by being created. We're saved by being recreated, by being reborn, right? Paul quotes pagan literature in order to say from their own text things your poets and dramatists have said is truth. And he says in verse twenty nine, since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone. Here he's slamming their idolatry, isn't he? Here he's saying God is not an idol.
He's not an image made of gold or silver or stone. And in verse thirty, Paul says, God have overlooked that ignorance and time passed, but now he is demanding everybody everywhere to repent. You see what he's doing? I believe that God is using Paul here as Paul gets in the battle. Now, if you doubt what I've said, and I can't imagine why you would, I would never tell you anything other than the truth, but if you doubt what I've said, there are two other places in Paul's writings where he quotes Greek or pagan literature. I'm not going to tell you where they are. That's your homework assumption. I'm a teacher.
We live for homework. There are two other texts Pauling text where Paul quotes Greek or pagan literature. And you may think I'm kidding, but if when you and I meet each other in glory, don't expect me to walk up and say, isn't heaven wonderful? I'm going to say, name those two other passages. Okay, what are they? So you've got a little bit of homework there. But two other times, Paul quotes pagan literature. Very fascinating how he does that. Paul cared enough to get in the battle. And getting in the battle means reading when other people read. It means even quoting some of that back to them so that they can see the truth of the gospel, even as it is connected with things that people are reading.
Chuck Colson in his book, Who Seeks for God, says the battle is raging today all around, but many are perishing because we Christians have failed to engage the enemy at the point of attack. We not only flinch, for the most part, we're not even looking in the right direction. Let's notice the fifth evidence of a God-broken heart. Paul cared enough to get involved, to get informed, to get wise, to get in the battle. Fifthly and finally, Paul cared enough to get criticized. Paul cared enough to get criticized. Notice verses thirty-two through thirty-four. When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, We want to hear you again on this subject. At that, Paul left the council.
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Amaris, and a number of others. Paul gets criticized. Verse thirty-two, some of them sneered. You ever had anybody sneer at you? It's not a happy occasion. Look back to verse eighteen. Verse eighteen. When Paul was first speaking, there are some who say, what is this babbler trying to say? That word babbler is used only one time here in the New Testament, and it literally means seed picker, one who makes his living by picking up scraps. They're insulting Paul.
They're saying, you're a babbler, you're a seed picker, you just grabbed this idea and that idea, which is exactly what they were doing too. But they criticized him as an outsider. Do you care enough to get criticized? If you and our bold and our witness for Jesus Christ, we will get criticized. One preacher puts it this way. He says, if pagans never get mad at you for sharing the gospel, either you didn't say it right or they were not listening. Say it again. If pagans never get angry at you or me for sharing the gospel, either you or I didn't say it right or they were not listening. That doesn't mean we go out of our way to anger pagans. but it's got to produce some kind of reaction.
And here Paul gets criticized. They say of his ideas in verse twenty that they are strange ideas. Well, we know what criticism is like, don't we? And the thing that surprises me is that sometimes in Christian circles, the ones who criticize those who are seeking to share the gospel with others are not so much the ones to whom the gospel is being shared. What other Christians? You notice that? Sometimes our harshest criticism is leveled at our brothers and sisters in Christ. That's a sad thing. I'm reminded of the story about Mel Brooks, the movie director who was once asked the question, what do you believe about critics?
Mr. Brooks said, well, they're noisy at night in the country and you can't sleep because of them. And the interviewer said, no, Mr. Brooks, I didn't say cricket. I said critics. And he says, oh, well, they're not any good either. They can't even make music by rubbing their hind legs together. Friends, there is no end of critical people. And unfortunately, some of them are members of God's family. But it comes with a territory. If you and I see ourselves and strive to have God's broken heart, we will simply get involved. We will seek to get in forward. We will seek to get wise.
We will get in the battle, and we will get criticized. By the way, I've got to take thirty seconds to deal with an objection to Acts seventeen. Maybe you've heard it. There were actually some of the early Brethren writers that criticized Paul in Acts seventeen. that actually say in their commentaries that Paul was wrong to revert to philosophy in presenting Jesus Christ and that what he does in Acts XVII contradicts his statement in the early chapter at the First Corinthians where Paul says, I know nothing among you but Christ and him crucified. I think that criticism is unfounded and it's sad. I believe Acts XVII is given as an example to us of how to share the gospel with people whose background is not Jewish, who do not know the Old Testament system.
And sometimes that criticism has come in the form of saying only a few people get saved in Acts. Right? DeMarus gets saved. A member of the Areopagus gets saved. A few others follow Paul. Since when are results the test of a validity of a method? That's just wrong. And we have no verse in Acts chapter seventeen that says, and God was greatly displeased with the method Paul used that he followed. Paul was not out of the will of Donald, but rather he is letting God break his heart and use him to share the gospel in any way that he can, knowing that in order to do that, it was going to involve death to his own lazy, that he might get to know what other people think and not pray from the gospel, but preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, the resurrection from the dead, the importance of returning, all those gospel elements are lazy.
Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your love to us today. Thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you for the power of the gospel. Father, give us wisdom as we seek to serve you in this lost and dark world. We need wisdom, Father, not only about the world around us, but also about ourselves and how sometimes, indeed, we can be intellectually lazy and we can pray for lost people but not study in order to reach lost people. Lord, encourage us. Pray that even in this week, it lead us to one unsafe person to whom we can share the gospel, a person that we can be friends, perhaps someone we can compliment, but someone that we would have the opportunity to tell them a little bit about Jesus Christ.
Lord, give us that opportunity, pray. Bless this group of your people, Lord, in order that each of us might be a blessing to others. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. all the time.