What Wisdom Looks Like

Provoked

Have you ever been provoked? Meaning have you ever seen something around you that has produced an inner response of aggravation?

Have you ever been annoyed at something?

Or frustrated by something?

I have certain things that frustrate me, things that provoke me. (Illustration).

When my kids have dirt eye glasses

Elbows on the dinner table

Bad grammar

Interruptions

Talking too much in the morning

Bad coffee

Paul felt provoked in our passage this morning. And this is a good place to start. I think this is the right place to start. We usually don’t need wisdom when things are going well. We usually don’t ask for directions when we are lost. We need directions when we don’t know where we are. We need wisdom when we don’t have the answers.

When you are provoked, you likely don’t have the answer, yet. but also you feel the need to respond.

So we are going to see Paul as a kind of illustration of how we act wisely in the world when the world we are a part of provokes us.

And while there are always small things that provoke us, what we are looking at here are bigger things. When the state of the world, or our culture provokes us. Are you provoked this morning? Disturbed? Angry? Frustrated? Sad about something. How do we begin to act wisely in that

Look at this first verse in the passage

Acts 17:16 ESV

Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.

Paul is provoked. He is frustrated, he is angry and he is upset. He is walking around athens and he notices something. He notices that the city is full of idols. It is full of statues and icons that people hold up to as a god. They worship it as if it was a god.

This is important to see. Paul is provoked because he sees that peoples attentions are arrested on something other than God. They are giving thier time, talents and money, their very lives themselves to something that is not worthy of worship.

And that becomes all the more obvious when he stops to speak to them. He stops and talks to the philisophers, the Epicurean and Stoics. He speaks with the Jews and those who are devout.

There is not a type, kind, of person that Paul does not talk to. Here is the incredible work of the church in the first century. The early church worked to both engage with and enfold others who were unlike them. Paul would not have had any issues with dealing with a world unlike him.

He was just concerned with what they worshiped because they idols they were worshiping were not life giving.

And so he talks to these guys and he is not provoked. He is called a babbler and is not provoked. They don’t seem to understand Jesus. He is not provoked. They say what he is bringing to them is “Strange.” Still he is not provoked.

We don’t have the patience that Paul has. We would have jumped at babbler or strange, working to defend whatever rights we think we have.

Paul is provoked because he knows the grave error they are making and that, until that is corrected, nothing else will be. He is able to just slide past all the insults and misinterpretation. Notice he isn’t provoked because they disagree on cultural or ethical issues. In fact, Paul tells them that they are almost there!

We often think that Christianity is the work of correcting everyone else who thinks differently. Christianity, just so we know, is that you and I have been corrected of the rebel nature of sin. The work then of the Christian is not to get everyone to agree with you. It is to show everyone the goodness of God.

Paul does that well.

Paul stands with them, he perceives and observes

We see that Paul is in a city unlike his beliefs, unlike his culture. He is talking to people who believe differently than him.

But look at what he does and how he reacts. We are going to see that amidst new ideas, amidst idol worship, amidst name calling, amidst provocation, Paul stands in the middle of it. He is not agreeing with it but is standing amongst them.

And when he responds he does so with perception, observation, and then not until then, proclamation

Acts 17:22–23 ESV

So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

Paul is invited to speak. He is invited to talk about his teaching and what he believes. Look at how he does it though. The first thing we notice is that he is standing amongst them. He is with them. It is worthwhile raising our attention to it simply because he is able to both communicate to people and still remain particular to the Gospel.

Then he speaks and says two things right from the beginning. He says he perceives that the people are religious and that he observed the objects of that religion. We are talking about wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to gain understanding enough to act. I like this passage because it describes someone who declares the Gospel and understands the culture.

Look at what Paul says,

“I perceive that in every way you are very religious.” Then he observes why it is they are religious. He is not offering an opinion as much as he is trying to understand what is going on around him

Notice that Paul’s Provocation doesn’t turn into conflagration. It does start a fire.

Wisdom does not need to be quick to conclude something. Wisdom allows for time to observe, to pay close attention to, to ask questions about. Paul doesn’t jump into the foray in order to disrupt the culture, he wants them to understand who Christ is.

He doesn’t walk around saying, “you messed it all up!” or “better luck next time!” He looks and says, “I get what you are doing.” You are very religious. You desire something more than yourself. You pick and choose objects and make them sacred because you can’t imagine a world that is just left to ourselves. .

He meets them where they are. He meets them at the “unknown god.”

He does this because we all have them. We all have to work through them. None of us are exempt. Christ came to deliver us from unknown gods.

So

What are the unknown gods in our lives, in our world?

What are the things that provoke us, that people worship as ultimate?

What are things, in other words, that blind people to seeing the truth in Christ?

Maybe their career? It’s my career or nothing

Or even their relationships? It’s my ride or die.

Or their politics? Party as personal identity

These are our unknown gods. These are the things that we are swarmed by and surrounded by. These are the things we cling to or create and hold onto as gods. We treat them as such but they cannot deliver on god like promises.

Last night Asher and I went to see a concert in Boston. It was a band named the Oh Hellos. Now We bought tickets 6 months ago. The band hadn’t toured in 7 years. I have followed them for just as long. As soon as I saw they would be in Boston I got tickets. We made plans, cleared our calendar and looked forward to the day. 3 months, 3 weeks, 3 days. Day of. We left early, walked around Boston, got some dinner. Talked about the songs we hoped they would play (they played them all).

We waited an hour in line and then another hour for the opener to begin. Now the opener was good. But imagine that we did all that work, sat through the opener and then in between sets, as they were preparing for the main act, I looked at Asher and said, “time to go home.”

That would have been ridiculous. You line everything up to get there. Waiting for the real thing and then say, “let’s go home.”

This is what it means to stick with unknown gods. It is like leaving a concert after the opening act but before the main act.

And Paul sees that. He tells them, “wait around!” Stick around, what you have been waiting for is so much better.

Paul knows he needs to help reorient them.

And Paul meets them at their unknown gods. He meets them at strange intersections.

Wisdom is able to walk into unlikely places because people who are wise don’t take the bait.

Provocation demands a response. Wisdom waits for the right one.

Paul was able to come along side in such a way that he could walk him towards something else.

Wisdom meets people in unlike places but doesn’t keep them there

Paul Proclaims the Christ that is not far from any one of us

And Paul makes that distinction very clear

Acts 17:24–25 ESV

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

Wisdom is able to stand in the very place that provokes us but then is able to proclaim the God who is distinct from everything else.

Wisdom must recognize that Christ is the One who gives, He is the one who offers. He is not in need of anything. He needs no government, not a hand up or hand out. He is sufficient in Himself. Only the wise can begin there, to recognize He does not owe anyone anything.

This is the distinction that Paul begins to pull on. Wisdom is being able to discern what is truth and what is false. What is real and what is ultimately fake. And at some point those idols, the unknown gods, because they are dependent. Because they do not exist apart from anything, will begin to place a demand on you and I. And because that idol is dependent, it will ask something of you, not based on what is good for you but based on what is good for it.

Idols will ask you to make shortcuts. Idols will begin with polite requests to do something differently that before, or think differently. Then they will ask, then they will demand. But unknown gods demand without giving in return. Unknown gods, our idols, don’t give back. They take and take and take, because they need something from you. And they will take your character, your integrity, your morality, your relationships and not look back.

Your idols are ultimately dependent on you for life. They are parasites.

Paul realizes this. He realizes the real danger of idols. And he points it out but doesn’t stay there. He shows that the God who is holy and distinct is real and close.

Idols take and take. This is why we need a God who is distinct yet comes close.

Acts 17:26–28 ESV

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for “ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’

Even though God did not need any one thing for survival. He is complete, holy, in Himself, the miracle, Paul is saying, is that God did not stay distinct. He did not stay distant. He is holy and completely other but did not wait for us to reach up to Him. He did not wait for us to figure Him out. He did not wait for us to choose or run toward Him or vote for Him. He came to us.

Christ stood where we are, He Himself observed and perceived us. And then he stooped down. He condescended himself. He came to us.

And he began to bind all the things that we broke. He began to show us that even when we could not reach him he is more than able to reach us. Because He is close we are called to seek after Him, to look for Him and we can find Him because He has come close

But when we find Him, and this is where worlds begin colliding, we have to make a choice. Because God does not act like the other gods. God does not work with the systems of the world. God has come to put together what everyone else has promised to put back together, but with one difference: God actually does it.

Christ is the promise that He is doing what He promised. That He is doing what we hoped for and longed for. That He is doing what we had wanted those idols to do for us. And we are given the assurance in the death of Christ who instead of talking about it did something about it and in the resurrection of Christ who is the promise of God worked out in the church

This is what Paul walks his unlikely crew toward.

Paul is provoked and in his reaction he takes the unknown gods to the unlikely route to Jesus Himself.

Look at the rest of his sermon

Acts 17:29–31 ESV

Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

In a moment we will be taking communion as a remembrance of that death and resurrection. And here is the application I am asking you to think about. In a moment you will pick up the bread in one hand and the cup in another. Your hands will be full.

As you come to the table, what unknown gods are you holding onto? If you hold onto those, you can’t juggle communion. You have enough to hold the cup and the bread. You have choice to take up the cross and resurrection as the acknowledgment of Christ above every other system and idol. But you have to let all the other unknown gods go.

Ask Christ this morning to help you to let go of the unknown gods so you can fully embrace the God who has embraced you.