Ep 888 | Phil Pines over Miss Kay’s Extended Absence & Jase Sticks His Head into a Beaver Dam
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I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. We're super excited today. We've got a lot of firsts going on today, Jace. This is a technological marvel. We have three remote locations, and you and Dad are in the studio. We have, of course, Zach coming in from North Carolina. I guess that's the eastern layer.

And we have the man, the legend, the fireman turned fire starter for Jesus, Larry Bowles, who we've been missing, Larry. Welcome from Oklahoma. Oh, thank you. Good to be back with you. Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. So I'm glad.

So you had a knee surgery. Yeah. We'll start with that one. You had a knee surgery. You're doing well. I got you on the preaching schedule. You're coming in. You're studying Hebrews. You're going to kick us off. I'm super excited. And all of a sudden, I hear that you took a tumble. So what happened? I was in the hospital. So, yeah, I fell. And so, you know, when you get to the hospital, they say, what is the cause of the accident? And just surprise.

stupidity, clumsiness, you know, that sort of thing. So yeah, when I, when I fell, um, you know, the scripture says to do everything that you do to the glory of God and man, I destroyed my knee with the, you know, the utmost, uh, effort, but, uh, yeah, it was, it, uh, it did not go well. So, uh, we're in the sixth week of recovery now. And, uh,

But gaining strength every day. I guess when you cut into a knee and do a surgical procedure, it's not as bad as when you rip a knee apart by force. So there was a lot more muscular and tendon ligament involvement. So you're now, they say, with the elderly man. An elderly man took a fall. Exactly. I'm in there. And the bigger they are,

the harder they fall. So I'm hip. I'm hip to that. Well, we are glad you're with us today. Oh, it's good to be good to be here. We have a new sign in our kitchen. You know, have you ever been in a shop and it said this workplace has been accident free for X number of days? I've got one of those in my kitchen now. So we just, what's crazy is when you came on, uh, Al said, Larry, you look like you've lost weight. And then when Zach entered, cause we were worried about Zach for a while, uh,

He was fashionably late. He said, Larry, you look like you've lost weight. And then it occurred to me the cause of this accident because you said, I don't think I've lost weight because I thought that doesn't make any sense. If you tear your knee, you would think that you're just sitting in a recliner a lot. You would think you would gain weight. And then it hit me that when you reach a certain age, the weight shifts. Yeah.

to various locations. And that might've been the root cause of the tumble. Oh, gravity. Yeah. It's it's, it will get you. Gravity and entropy working together. No, but it's all good. And, uh, I'm on the road. I'm looking up with my wife, miss Kay. Uh,

Speaking of entropy. She's kind of going through the same thing you're going through. Basically, it was just, she's got 70, what, 73 years under her belt. But she just got weak, weakened. They did an operation there. She had to, you know, barfing up something black. I don't know what it was, blood, I guess. But we got her in the hospital. She'd been in there.

I haven't had a woman with me, Miss Kay, in about two months now. So Jersey Joe is doing all my cooking, and he delivers it. So he's the one that I haven't cooked but one meal.

I think that was a nice way to say you miss mom. He misses Kay. Yeah. She actually came down for a day trip yesterday, I heard. Was that nice, Dad, having her back in the house for a day? Oh, yeah. She did. We're working out some more outings. It's a lot like our man here. These falls, when you rip the tendons and all that, it's a bone to be chewed.

Yeah, it's just you don't bounce back quite as fast. So, Jace, what was your definition for entropy? You know, it was a good word. I think I'm going to incorporate that into my vocabulary. Gradual decline into disorder.

It's the second law of thermodynamics. Yeah, I left that part out. They tear up. A thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system's thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work.

Why would you define something with something that needs multiple definitions? Because that's what guys like Zach do. But here's the warning, Larry. Don't let your entropy wind up intersecting with your apathy. Okay, yes. You put those two together, you got serious trouble. Am I the only person on the planet that reads a definition and tries to find...

A bumper sticker phrase that I can say, okay, a gradual decline in the disorder. Okay. Why didn't you just say that? Don't put that as number two. Put that as number one, because number one, I just read to you. And what did that all mean?

Only Zach would know. Larry knows. A little about thermodynamics being in the fire science area. He is a fireman for crying out loud. What you just described, have you ever seen a grass fire and then all of a sudden it'll spin up into a funnel, kind of like a water spout over a lake? I have seen that. A firestorm like that, it creates its own wind. And the definition you described is,

is exactly what's happening in that scenario. It's a thermodynamic process by which it manifests itself in a physical rotation. So in Acts 2, when the spirit fell and fire was on top of the heads, we had a thermodynamic process.

Yeah, because the first law of thermodynamics is that matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred. But that was probably a miraculous creation of new fire energy.

my opinion, but I would think it was probably. There were actually three, three miracles that occurred. And the very first one of those was a sound of a rushing wind. Thank you very much. Yeah. Then came the tongues of fire and then the ability to, to speak in, in their languages. So when you read that as a fireman, you went, Oh,

Okay. Now we're talking. Here comes the wind. That's a fire Larry didn't want to put out there. No. That's the kind of fire Larry's starting. No, I mean, you know, when Jesus said, you know, I'll not flood the earth again, but it'll be destroyed by fire. I thought, well, great, you know, and I'll be on duty that day. But

You don't think all that, Larry. Job security. That's exactly right. That's what I thought when Al had this idea, because this is breaking news. This was almost a simultaneous idea, Jay. Yeah, we did, because I had the same thought since Larry and I visited Athens together and Corinth.

And I thought that the last podcast, I thought it'd be good because we're fixing to get into that section, Acts 17 and 18. And we had quite the stories to tell from that. But then Al sent me a text that says a podcast, and he had the same idea. And I was like, that's weird. Well, this has never been done before. These are the five main contributors to this podcast altogether.

Y'all look like the Brady Bunch. Me and Phil looks like we're comfortable. There's a story of a man named Larry. But it made me think, you know, how different we all are. Because I was thinking, this is like we need introductions. You know, you have Larry, the kind of old school orator. You know, it's like somebody pushes a button when you speak. And it's just...

Wham! You're like, wow. But he's a fireman and you look at his life, it's like old school brought into this dynamic ministry across the world. Then you have Zach who has this apologetic, all these new ideas he's open to thinking outside the box thing.

So you push the button here and my eyes glaze over and I'm like, it sounds right. I'm trying to figure out if, are you complimenting us? Larry, is he complimenting us? Or I can't, I'm trying to, you're old school. I was trying to get the, just like, how do we all come together? Cause you have Al who's like the coat of many colors, uh,

And no matter what happens, and he's like this button of information that I never could retain from the old testament. He's all things to all people. He absolutely is. Then you have Phil, the ball-peen hammer. It's like, just cut to the Phil. Phil.

Bam! I simply read text. Pull your mic up, Phil. By the way, after all this things were happening and the jailers were converted. Enter Paul P. Paul and Silas, they're trying to say, well, good night. They cut us some slack to get out of here. After Paul and Silas came out of prison,

They went to Lydia's house. Well, that was the chick that was down on the river. Yeah. Lydia. So somehow or another, she just stayed with them. And they met with Lydia where they met with the brothers. They formed a relationship. They went back. Yeah. I thought that was a point that I never hear anybody say anything about. True. Well, then I got to me and I couldn't describe myself, which is, I don't know if that's troubling or...

Or good. But I thought crickets. It's just crickets. I'll describe you, Jace. Okay, I thought I would. Let me describe you. I got thick skin. You're not going to hurt my feelings. No, you, Jace, is the thought or the idea that nobody has thought of. It's the unique...

look at something that you're like, hmm, I never saw that. And so I'd say that is your major contribution to both your Bible study, but also to our podcast. Well, that's good. I mean, you come up with stuff all the time. I really had nothing. Is that not true, Zach? I mean, Jace always has a take that I haven't thought of before. And right or wrong, it's a take I hadn't thought of. It's hard to have a unique thought. Fair enough. And Jace has a way of...

this is my backhand compliment, but it actually is a compliment. He'll start down a road. He did this when he used to preach when I was younger and I always loved it about him. I never knew where he was going until he got to the end. And then, and it's like, which he keeps you involved in the thing, but you're like, where is this going? And then you tie it up nicely at the end. So you have a way of, of keeping people hanging on to the conversation. His style is more inductive than deductive. That's correct. It is. And he, he, he,

He is able to maintain a line of thought, a course of thought, and tie them together at the end, like you're saying, Zach. But I get lost if I get down a rabbit hole, and he can go down any rabbit hole, come right back out. Oh, definitely. What's a rabbit hole, though? Rabbit holes were made for Jace. There's no doubt about it. That's why they're there. Well, I spend a lot of time in the woods, and I've seen a lot of holes in the ground. Yeah.

So I did stick my head in a beaver, the biggest beaver house that I've ever been in proximity to. And I had seen that movie with Robert Redford when he hid in the beaver house. And I thought, I want to try that.

But when I popped my head up, because I could not get my head in unless I went under the water and went through their hole. When I popped my head up, which I don't know what I was thinking, what did I think I was going to find in there? I would think you'd run up on some beavers. A lot of angry beavers saying, you don't look like the rest of us. So that was a two-second move.

You got to remember they have teeth that they can cut trees down. Yeah. So you don't want to get that on your arm or your leg. I could have died, Phil. But it was interesting. So I don't know. I was just making the point that there's something unique that you have to attribute to God bringing people together.

It is. It is really cool. I've pointed this out to you, Jace, before, but when we're together, I'm the second oldest guy in this room. You know what I mean? It just kind of blows my mind. Well, that makes me feel better. I appreciate the old school reference. That's good. Yeah, and I meant that as the backhanded compliment because it reminds me of

a lot of, you know, when Phil was first converted and we would go to these small type churches and the guy would get up, you know, and he, and I just, he was passionate and it was just a withering barrage of verses. But to a young person who didn't have

any kind of background. It just, it was over my head, you know, but it was like, then we all left, but I thought, whoa, what just happened here? But you're unique in that

you know when i hear you speak uh when i say old school it's just uh it's kind of what i tried to do because they had me fill in for you because you were going to give the overview of hebrews and so in the spirit of larry bowles i just did the overview of the entire bible i thought you'd appreciate that the gospel according to scripture i call it yeah

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So the first time, Jace, it's interesting. I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast, but this will kind of get us set towards the book of Acts, which is why I really wanted Larry to come on. You and I heard Larry the first time together. We were sitting next to each other at WFR, and someone had asked you, Larry, to speak, do a Bible class, a combined Bible class on the deity of Jesus.

And I had not met you. I knew that you were one of our One Kingdom guys. And I knew a little bit about your work, but I had not met you. So I'm sitting there next to Jace and you start into the deity of Jesus. And about five minutes in, I get my notebook out, start taking notes, which for me means that I'm highly motivated.

interested in what's going on. If I'm taking notes, that means that you're scratching the itch. So first time I heard you, I looked over at Jason. I said, who is this guy? Well, look, while you were scratching notes on your notebook, I leaned over and this is the only time in the history of my Christian life I've done this.

Because every time a missionary would get up, I would think, oh, no. And it's not what you think. I'm not anti-missionary. I love missionaries. But I always was disappointed that they would get up and tell about their ministry.

And I'm like, well, you could have just sent me a flyer and I could have read that. Because I think when you get up, I want to hear what you're preaching. I want to hear a sermon. And Larry got up as a missionary and said, yeah, he spent 60 seconds talking about what he does. Spent zero seconds asking for money. Never asked. And spent an hour and 20 minutes talking about Jesus. No, I'm sorry, Larry. Yeah.

My sharmans get longer every time I come on here. So while Al was writing, I told Missy, I said, give me a check. And she said, what are you doing? I said, I'm fixing to contribute to this guy's mission. And she said, well, they're not asking for money. I said, I know it. That's why I'm going to do it. And you remember, I came down.

And as soon as you finished preaching, I just came down and sat beside him, handed him that check. And you were like, well, we weren't. I wasn't asking for money. I said, I know it. If you're preaching that, I'm in. Okay. True story. And about three years later, here you come in person. So that was awesome. I did.

I did. So so that's for the audience. You know how much we love Larry. But and I've been missing Larry. So I was thinking, man, we're at this text point in the text. And this is such a a fantastic Larry. We've been saying leading up to this because we've been trying to jump to it for the last two or three podcasts. It's one of the most amazing orations, I guess, or, you know, oratory, you know, that you see in the whole New Testament.

especially in the book of Acts. And so I thought you being, you know, working so intimately in Athens, and of course, a lot of this, we're talking about this philosophical background. And even I've heard you talk about Corinth, which is up next. So I kind of wanted your expertise in, is a part of this discussion. So that's, that's what got us all here today. Can I set you up with this, Larry? Cause here's what it hit me last night when I was reading this, I thought, you know, it seems like, cause you don't want to miss the overview of Acts.

But it seems like it all starts with Jesus versus the old way of thinking in Judaism. And that seems to be the main argument that the apostles, the witnesses of the resurrection are up against. And then when you get to Acts 10, you then get into this. Well, the Gentiles are in. So then this this big fundamental second argument is is fascinating.

kind of a political argument against Rome, against the Gentile world with these other gods. And then when you get to Acts 17, it's like philosophy. It's the philosophy angle from every conceivable idea under the sun, Jew and Gentile. As you think about it, it's a series of godly acts.

Things that happened. Things that happened. Things that had happened. Pointing the way for Jesus. I mean, there are... But that's my point. And the arguments there seem to be that are coming up. And even riots are happening. And you read that, but that doesn't come to life. I mean, you see riots on TV now. I mean, riots are scary. I mean, vandalism. They're tearing things down. They're wanting somebody's blood. And this is all in the name of Jesus, what they're up against.

at each turn. But what do you think about that idea as far as the opposition that's arising where we're at? Absolutely. It starts in, of course, in Jerusalem. And even though these people have gathered from all over the place, Judaism is still the issue. And as Acts goes through, especially when you get to chapter 17, you see Paul

kind of exit a totally Jewish environment and now enter into a Greek environment when he gets to Thessalonica, to Berea, and then on into Athens and then over to Corinth. And Luke gives us such incredible insight on how the culture changes. And, you know, if you're not careful, you can miss it.

just reading the text. But then you get to Thessalonica and you see that women are now prominent in these cities to where in these Jewish cities, the women were never prominent. And so it's kind of an upside down reversal of things. But the thing that shapes the book of Acts, I think more for me than anything else, is what Paul is trying to combat here.

And it's not just Judaism. It's not just keeping the old law and that that's where he begins. But then there are about five different Greek philosophy ideas. And so I can I can kind of share that if you want to.

Yeah, share them. What's interesting is they're still alive and well today, especially in movies and just cultures. Yeah.

He said, you know, after because I'd sent out some notes, a little bit of what Larry's about to share. And from his perspective, too. And that was like, oh, it looks a lot like what I'm seeing today. Like, well, dad, these these ideas and especially the early Greek ideas. I mean, they have they have stood the test of time. You still see a lot of it just kind of plays itself out in a different way.

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And so right at the beginning of chapter 17, it says, as was his custom, Paul, when he gets to Thessalonica, where's the first place he goes? To the synagogue. And what does he do? He spends three Sabbath days there, and he reasons with the Jews from scriptures explaining and proving that Jesus is the Messiah, how he had to suffer and rise from the dead. And he said, this Jesus I'm proclaiming to you is the Messiah.

And some of the Jews were persuaded. Some joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women. And so this is a different culture.

And but he does that again in Berea. He does it again in Athens. And then when he leaves, he does it when he gets to Corinth, when he leaves Corinth and he gets to Syria. First place he goes is to a Jewish synagogue. But in chapter 18, he has had it like up to here with the whole Judaism thing. And he even says, you know, you're.

The blood's on your own heads. You know, this is not my hands are clean. I've preached the gospel and I'm now I'm going to the Gentiles. And even after that, he goes back to the Jewish synagogues because he's got a heart for these people. But when it comes to philosophical ideas, it's just amazing how.

in the way that that the way people thought. And this is stuff that had been around a long, long time. And religion has always been a mixture of things. This is why Christianity, the worst, worst religion in the world is Christianity. You know why? It's not a religion.

And when we take the gospel of Christ and we turn it into a religion, then it becomes corrupted just like everything else. To your point, later Christianity was deemed, you know, by Rome in the early days as atheism because they didn't believe in all the gods. But you got to remember, they're Epicureans. Free will shapes your life and pleasure should replace suffering.

To gain what you can from life. That's from 1718 when he was an athlete. What about a belief system? I mean, you're like, come on. Well, just to give our listeners the context. So when he ran upon a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, they began to dispute with him.

which I'm sure you can help us understand that. Absolutely. So they're basically, and I'm just going to run these down in real short order, but there's five primary ideas in the Greek world or at the time that Jesus was in the world, at the time that Paul was in these places.

And the first one was empiricism. And this is Aristotle. He lived from 384 to 322 BC. And he has based all of his stuff on the idea that we can know everything that we need to know in the universe and about science and about everything else from our five physical senses.

And so this was empiricism. This is the word that we use when we talk about empirical evidence. Everything's got to be proven by fact. And so 90% of the world thought this way about the universe, about stars, about science and everything else. And this was the basis of that.

Well, he had a teacher named Plato who lived about 50 years earlier than he did. Aristotle's teacher was Plato, and he believed that, yes, we could know some things by our physical world and those pointed to other things, but there was a reality apart from that. There was a reality out there, and that true reality was represented in this unseeable spiritual realm.

and that we would transcend the physical, become enlightened intellectually and spiritually. And then he would come back down here in the muck with the rest of us and teach us how to be enlightened. And so that was rationalism. And so then a few years later, a guy named Epicurus,

came along and he developed a thought process, a school of thought called Epicureanism, kind of named it after himself. And Epicurus believed that humanity had already become enlightened.

And it was time to move past pleasing all of these various gods and get on with the business of pleasure. That there's nothing after this life. There is no resurrection. And we're just going to get it while we can get it. And, you know, just as much pleasure, as much hedonism that we can do. And so much of what the Greek hedonistic culture was known for came out of this line of thought.

But he had a rival by the name of Zeno who developed a thing called stoicism. And he's like, what are you talking about, man? He said the idea is restraint because there is an afterlife and everything that we do in this life has bearing on the next life.

And and so these opposing philosophies are just diametrically opposed. They're 180 from one another. And so this is the arena that Paul steps into in the idea of pure hedonism. Get it while you can to the idea that I'm going to deny myself everything in this life. And what you see in in this.

Well, I mean, there's one more, too. And another thing, this was more prominent probably at Corinth as we go into 18, was dualism. And this was Eastern thought. This is what Buddhism and Hinduism thought.

is based on everything can be explained by tensions in the universe, you know, light and dark and good and evil and physical and spiritual, the yin yang, all of that sort of thing. And so this is also the core of Gnosticism, which is helpful to understand when you start reading the Gospel of John or 1st, 2nd, 3rd John of what he's pushing back against.

And so all of these five ideas are in play. Every time I see Paul engaging in conversation with people throughout the missionary journeys, this is what he's encountering. And it's never just I'm this or I'm that. It's always a mixture of beliefs. And so I tell my students, be careful what you believe, because your beliefs rule over you. You don't rule your beliefs.

And so if we if we have our faith is based on nothing more than religious thoughts and ideas, then it's going to fall apart. The only person that's going to be solid in this is the person who has Christ's life in them.

Everything else is just religion. And this is why Christianity is not a religion. So did all of these philosophies believe in multiple gods then? Yeah. Or, I mean, when you get into Epicureanism, he believed that there was gods, but he was like, I'm so past trying to please them. I'm going to please myself. Yeah. I read that at the Epicurean, it was like, there's gods, but they're way off, you know, which is why he said, well,

in acts 17 24 he is not far from us because it's like their their thought was he doesn't or or they i was wondering about if they all believed in multiple gods just because jesus seemed to emphatically you know mark 12 where he said there is one god and then he famously said love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and street and love your neighbor as yourself you know

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Yeah, I looked at the same thing, Jace. And again, I didn't do a deep dive into this, but it looked like a lot of these philosophers, especially what Larry's describing when we get to Acts 17, they had a tip of the cap to the Greek God system that the public embraced. But they were thinking kind of outside of that box as well. I mean, like this to them was something new.

And so I think maybe that's why Paul intrigued them, you know, because as Larry said, he first goes to the synagogue, which is his normal thing. But now he's in the Agora. I mean, he's there in the marketplace and he's just sharing now with anybody that'll listen. And so they hear this guy, they're listening to Paul and they're thinking their interest is piqued because he's advocating something they've never thought about. And then he even says the words in verse 18, he seems to be advocating foreign gods.

So it's like, you know, it's something beyond their experiences, which, of course, gets an invitation to go beyond this idea. And certainly the two concepts I think they're going to blow their minds are this idea of repentance and the resurrection.

Because in their system and way of thinking, these two thoughts are nowhere near anything they've ever heard before. So I think that's what was sort of what piqued their interest, at least in my view of it. And so even when Zeno in Stoicism is saying there's an afterlife, he doesn't know what that means. Right.

And so everybody, I made a trip to Central America one time, and you just see people, they're wearing a cross and they're wearing a chicken foot and they're wearing some kind of, you know, they're trying to cover all the religious bases, you know, between voodoo and Christ and everything else. And I think when I'm talking about that religiosity has a place.

has a tendency to pick and choose, to triage things. I want to believe this. I reject that. I want to believe this. I reject that. And so when you what bears this out for me is when in 1 Corinthians 13, when Paul is writing Corinth. OK, this is after all of the stuff that has gone on.

He's talking to the Christians at Corinth, and he says, now I'm going to show you the most excellent way. And he says, if I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but I have not love.

Well, what he's addressing there is the philosophy that we are to transcend this and get in touch with the spiritual. And so in Corinth, they would mix opiates with the wine and go into this thing and begin this ecstatic speech thing. And so Paul is addressing that. And he says, you know, if I have the gift of prophecy in verse two and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,

And who's he talking to there? He's talking to the these philosophers and the ideas that I know something that you don't, you know, and because I'm enlightened and you're not. And so all of these things are at play. And he takes a kind of a swipe at the Jews here as well. If I have faith that can move mountains, you know.

And that was their thing. Or if I give all I possess to the poor and I submit my body to hardship that I may boast, that's that stoic idea that Zeno says, I'm going to deny myself. I'm going to cut myself from any earthly pleasure. And so he's addressing all of these things.

religious ideas as he goes through this, these missionary journeys and ultimately into Corinth and then on into Syria. One of the things you can look at too, I think is kind of a key point of what Paul's trying to accomplish here. I think he does accomplish it.

If you think about the different philosophical threads that may have been running through the conversations of those at the Areopagus, the one thing I'm trying to think, like, what is the one thing they had in common? You know, because this is still very similar to today. I mean, you could probably take the the five I think you mentioned five different philosophies and.

You could probably find whatever the philosophy that's prevailing in our current cultural moment or any cultural moment would probably fit into one of those five categories. And what I think the vein is, the common thread is that they lack –

the intention of a personal God, a God who does not begin with themselves, but God as a person or as three persons, for that matter, in one being. Because what he says here, he sees that they're religious, but notice the juxtaposition here is, for as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship,

So he said that he said, you have objects of worships of worship. And I'm coming and I'm going to tell you, that's not an object. It's a person.

You know, God doesn't live in temples that are built by your hands, which is interesting that he's saying this to Gentiles, because that was also the same sin that the Jewish people were falling into, which is why I went to the synagogues, is that God's not in your temple. You know, it's not in your man-made structures. But that's the big, that's the juxtaposition. And it's the same thing today. Is God in the things that we make? Is he in our man-made philosophies, our man-made structures, our man-made rationality?

Or is God outside of ourselves? And is he personal? Is he an actual person? I think that's the one thing that Paul is really overarching trying to get these guys to see. And some of them got it. Some of them laughed him out of the room. Well, I just had the same thought as that because I was thinking you look at today, which is why I brought up the one God thing that Jesus said.

Because they had all these gods, and it was like they got along. I mean, they actually unified more probably for the first time against what he was saying because it's kind of like our culture today. It's like it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you don't hurt anybody.

And so you have some people going after extreme pleasure. You have some people going after extreme discipline. But it's like you do your thing, we'll do ours. But when you come in and say, look, there's one God and he cares about what's going on, well, then the conflict starts.

comes up because it's like, well, wait a minute, you can't do that. And what I was going to read to add to what Zach said, because I was thinking exactly like Zach about the different philosophies, the different gods, but they also in verse 16 of 17, when he, when he waited for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols and

And even this statue that he sees, this idol that says, to an unknown God, it was like they were even covering their bases. We believe in all the gods, even the God that we haven't discovered yet.

We're going to give him an idol. And it made me think, because you know their lives were not representing the character of the true God, because in these philosophies, you had some of them saying that the gods are saying just life is all about pleasure. And it made me think, what came first, the idol or the sin? Because really, you know why the philosophy came up about pleasure is the meaning of life. That was just a...

nice way to rationalize going out there and doing what your nature wanted to do that that that was a violation of your conscience and so i even thought about the garden because y'all listened a lot of nt wright stuff about the temple because i think he's got it right about how

God replaced the actual physical temple, just like what he said, God doesn't live in temples built by hands, with human beings housing the Holy Spirit, rising together, becoming the temple dwelling place of God. So in that vein, I thought, what came first, the idol or the sin? Because even in the garden, we always say, well, they sinned. But I thought that tree...

is what became the idol. Because don't you know that they kept staring at that tree saying, why wouldn't he let us eat of that tree? Because that's all he said. Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in a practical way, me being simple-minded, I thought that became an idol because they thought, why can't we do that? I really want to do that. You're left with

A situation, do I trust God because we're living together, living forever? Do I trust God or do I, do I, based on curiosity? I find it interesting, you know, when in John 3 and verse 14, Jesus says, just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the son of man must be lifted up.

And that whole scenario in Numbers 21, where God has had it with people and he sends poisonous snakes and they're biting him and dying. And they come to Moses and said, you know, we're sorry we grumbled against you and against God. Pray to God. And Moses does. And he said, stop the snakes. And he said, no, I'm not stopping the snakes. You're

You're going to have one way out of that, and that is faith. If you look on that snake and believe, you know, well, you get into 2 Kings, and what they're doing with that Asherah pole, the same one, is they're worshiping it and burning incense to it.

And one of the kings, you know, chops down the Asherah pole and God says, good, you know, that was a good thing. We turn our eyes off of God, off of Christ and put them on physical things. And that's a true mark of religion. And this is exactly what Paul is saying here in verse 22 and 17, is that I see your eyes.

You're religious in every conceivable way there is to be religious. You'll believe anything, but their idea of God was not that God is a God of love.

But gods are something that has to be obligated, that has to be pleased. You know, I'm throwing, you know, women in a volcano or I'm building a temple. Whatever more magnificent structure is going to get that God to give me what I want.

And Paul is saying, no, you're missing this entirely, is that the creator of heaven and earth stepped into his own creation and he came and he said, come to me. And he said, you want to see God? You're looking at him, you know? And this is such a...

Even today, as we're talking about, as people are looking for God and here's Jesus says, no, I'm the way, I'm the truth, I'm the life. There is no way to God except through me. You can't go over me. You can't go around me. There's not, you know, I'm not the best of many ways. I'm the only way. And so I love this narrative in Acts 17 because Paul does something in this moment

where he is in, this is the philosophy and education center of the world. There is nowhere on earth where people are more studied and think they know more than the Areopagus here in Athens. And what he says here in verse 23, he says, you're talking about this unknown God. He said, so you're ignorant.

of the very thing you're trying to worship. And then he says it again in verse 30. He said, in the past, God overlooked this kind of ignorance. I mean, to drop the ignorant bomb in that crowd. Yeah, because that's what they were there is going to do their philosophies. You know, I wanted to read this for it because I know we just have a couple minutes left because it seems like

that Paul realized, and I heard an illustration about this that I think is really good. It's like you had all these philosophies under the sun, you name five of them, and I'm sure there were probably others that we don't even know, with all these gods, with all these philosophies, with all these idols to justify however you're going to live your life. And then it's like he chooses...

to play chess against everybody in one speech. And you actually see that people get so good at something, whether it's playing poker or chess, where they just take on everybody at the same time. And you're like, how in the world can they figure that out? Because they have a formula for,

that it doesn't matter what you bring. This is superior. And so I wanted to at least read the speech. Yeah, read it 22 to 31, and then we can break it down in the next podcast. Yeah. So Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, "'Men of Athens, I see that in every way you're very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I found an altar with this inscription, To an unknown God.'"

Now, what you worship as something unknown, I'm going to proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it is Lord of heaven and earth, and he doesn't live in temples or buildings built by hands. And he is not served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life, breath, and everything else.

From one man, he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth, and he determined the time set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him, 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 his offspring.

Therefore, since we are God's offspring or family, we should not think that the divine being is like gold, silver, 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 and

For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. And here is the checkmate statement. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.

And so then the response... That they couldn't do. I mean, it's one of my favorite speeches in the entire Bible. And then you see the different responses that are still just as frequent to respond today. Because you have some saying, when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some sneered. So you're always going to have the sneers. Others said, we want to hear...

You, again, on this subject, to Zach's point, it was just a subject. They still hadn't tied it with a person, but it's more positive than sneering. And then Paul, when he left the council, a few men became followers of Paul and believed. And as some of them, Dionysus, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman called Demarius, and a number of others.

So there's your three responses. And which is typical to see those same responses today. And I'll say this, dad mentioned this earlier, um,

It's the relevance today is so amazing because look at look around at our, you know, institutions of higher learning, which should be the smartest people in our culture. A lot of young people and look what they're doing to this very day by these riots and these protests and all this stuff. And again, whether they look if they're looking for some something they can believe in.

And of all the things to do it, you know, next to Israel to be your thing you're looking for. But you see this mindset and idea how insidious it is and how much people are searching for. So we're out of time for this podcast. We pick it up. We're going to break this text down a little bit more.

with our friend LB and Zach and our crew and really show the relevance, not just for that day, but also today as well. So we'll see you next time on Unashamed. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes.

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