FROM MAR'S HILL TO CALVARY'S

From Mars to Calvary!

According to Mr. Barna, nearly two out of three American adults say that the choice of one’s faith is really irrelevant since all religions basically teach the same message. That is, it’s a smorgasbord; you can pick and choose, and it really doesn’t make all that much difference what you believe. So, Christ is just one of many options, and you can choose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ if you want. But, we live in a day of pluralism. Now, what pluralism means is, in their idea, that we’re all un-American if we don’t put our arms around them and say, “Your faith, your religion, is just as good as ours.” As a matter of fact, today even tolerance is passé. They say, “We don’t want to be tolerated. That infers we’ve done something wrong. We want to be accepted and affirmed, no matter what we practice or how we believe.”

Acts 17:16–32 NASB95

16 Now while Paul was waiting for them at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him as he was observing the city full of idols. 17 So he was reasoning in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and in the market place every day with those who happened to be present. 18 And also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers were conversing with him. Some were saying, “What would this idle babbler wish to say?” Others, “He seems to be a proclaimer of strange deities,”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. 19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is which you are proclaiming? 20 “For you are bringing some strange things to our ears; so we want to know what these things mean.” 21 (Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new.) 22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ 29 “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. 30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.”

Paul felt the pain of the people’s spiritual chains.

I. Paul became deeply CONCERNED about the people’s spiritual confusion. (v. 16, 21, 27; provoked, spurred; Matt. 16:18)

1. The God of Materialism (Mammon)

2. The God of Alcohol (Bacchus)

3. The God of Sex (Venus)

4. The God of Violence (Mars/Ares)

5. The God of Wisdom and Knowledge (Sophia)

B. Self-Righteous Orthodoxy

C. Sophisticated Philosophy

1. The Philosophy of Pleasure (Epicureanism)

2. The Philosophy of Pride (Stoicism)

A person who attempted to practice stoicism wrote this:

Stoicism teaches us to place our happiness in our own virtue. This is obvious - virtue is the only thing you can control, so why the hell would you place your happiness anywhere outside of your own control. However, my Stoic practice often made me self-frustrated, tense, etc.

Why? Because only God is perfect. Only God is fully in Control.

II. Paul CLEARLY presented Christ crucified and resurrected. (v. 18)

III. Paul Called them from Mars Hill to CLIMB to Calvary. (v. 27; 30-31)

There’s only one Person who sees your problem and offered the solution. Truth by it’s very nature