Acts 17:16-31

Introduction

“O God, if you will save me tonight I will devote the rest of my life to you”. These were the words of Cat Stevens one night when, as he was swimming at the beach, he got caught in a rip and was being taken out to sea. God heard his prayer and delivered him back onto the shore with a freak wave, but the following day he returned to his usual lifestyle as though nothing had happened at all. Let me ask you here tonight … have you ever prayed in the way that he did that night. I bet there are more than a few who have.

Well, let me say right now there are three things that I am not going to do tonight, and two things which I am going to do.

·      Firstly, I am not going to try to convince you of the existence of God, because like Cat Stevens, every one of us here knows deep down that there is a higher being, or power, of some kind, or you would not be here tonight, unless you’ll do anything for a good curry.

·      Secondly, I am not going to try to heal any old wounds you may have received from the church and carried in here tonight. I do not intend to call you to come to church, but to the head of the church - Jesus Christ himself because God does not call you to faith in the church, but to faith in His Son.

·      I am also not going to try to make you want to become a Christian. It is not my intention to somehow trick you or allure you with promises about happiness and prosperity and all the wonderful things which God will do for you if you convert. Now there are a great many blessings for the Christian, to which the non-Christian person has no access or right whatsoever, but these are all very much secondary considerations when it comes to matters of such massive importance as life and death and judgement and salvation.

·      I am however, going to give you good reasons why you should become a Christian, even if you don’t want to. My job here tonight is not to entice you, but to persuade you, which is a very different thing.

·      I am also going to preach to you. And I am going to preach to you for this reason. I do not intend tonight to deliver you a message from Gavin, but a message from God. Now if I only had some private opinions which I thought were kind of neat, I might give a talk and that would be appropriate. However, I know that you would prefer to hear from God than you would from me, so tonight I will preach the message of the Bible. You may think that this sounds very arrogant indeed, and I would agree with you completely, except that I am fully persuaded myself that this Bible is the message of God to all of us. Therefore I intend to preach it as boldly and with as much humility as I possible can.

It will take us about half an hour to work through the passage so I ask for your complete attention during this time.

And so, we begin…

The Metropolis

Before we look at the details of this account, it is important for us to understand something of the historical setting in which it took place. Athens, of course, is in Greece, and at that particular time in history it was really the pinnacle of human culture and thought. It was the home of Socrates, of Aristotle, of Plato and a host of other famous ancient philosophers. It was renowned throughout the ancient world for its sophisticated culture. Only a few hundred years before it had also been the epicentre of Western European democracy. And it continued on as the showpiece of mankind’s highest achievements - of philosophy and science, of art and architecture, of literature and colourful speech - truly it was the jewel in the crown of mankind.

On top of all this, the city was also considered as the religious epicentre of the universe. We see in verse 21 that “All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but leisurely talking about and listening to the latest ideas.” The Areopagus referred to in verse 19 and 22 was a sort of religious forum where these discussions were held and the religious diversity of the city reflected this. An ancient historian once noted that it was easier to find a god in Athens than a man. The Athenian architecture and philosophy were devoted to a plethora of various “gods” of all shapes and sizes. It was the origin of Zeus, Apollo, Hermes and who knows how many other mythical deities.

In fact, see in verse 16, Paul observed that the city was full of idols. The inference here, is that it was so full of idols that it was actually smothered in them. Drowning in a sea of statues and busts and temples and carvings and sculptures and paintings all devoted to these so called gods. And just in case they had missed one of the gods out in all their dedications, there was even the odd altar which was dedicated to an ‘unknown god’. See in verse 23 - “For as I walked around and looked at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription - TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.”

The Man

Into this picture then, stumbles the Apostle Paul - a middle aged Jew of gentle speech and poor eyesight. Now you might be expecting me to say that he was a simple, uneducated man, but that is not so. In fact he was very well educated indeed, a man of massive intellect and a master of logic and debate. I am told that some non-Christian university lecturers recommend his letters in the Bible to their students as texts for the study of logic! Later on in the passage he quotes from contemporary Greek poets and philosophers, and his other writings reveal that he had a vast knowledge of both ancient and modern literature.

Well, what happens when this man arrives at Athens? Is he captured by the beauty of their work, and the grandeur of their city? He may indeed have been moved by some of it, we are not told, but what we are told is that his exposure to Athens brought this result: verse 16 “his spirit was provoked because he saw that the city was full of idols”, and immediately he begins to reason and argue with the citizens in the Jewish synagogue and in their marketplace.

Now, I want us to consider for a moment what relevance this passage of the bible has to our society, to life in the 21st century. Someone might say that “surely we have come a very long way since those days of ancient ignorance. We have made massive technological leaps, and unrivalled social progress in these last two centuries. We have learned so much about our world of which these Athenians were ignorant. We have cars and planes and telephones and now we’ve got the Internet, we are so very different to these people, that none of this can possibly be relevant to us.”

Well look around you friends, and you will notice that nothing about mankind has really changed at all in these last two centuries except the speed at which we do things. Look carefully and you will see that every man and woman in this society of ours is a religious worshipper of something or other, just as these people of Athens were. The business executive may be a worshipper of success, the conservationist may be a worshipper of nature, most of us are just plain worshippers of ourselves, but all of us are worshippers of some thing in some way. That is because it is our very nature and design to worship. By that I mean that every man and woman on this earth is made to serve and devote themselves to the true and living God who made them, but they have all turned aside and devoted themselves to things which by nature are not God.

Go down to the Ariel bookshop in Castlereagh St, Sydney and you will find a smorgasbord of gods and philosophies and religions from which you can pick and choose according to your personal and private tastes.

Now the word ‘worship’ is actually a combination of two words - worthy and ship or worthy-ship. It means essentially that I consider this person or thing in front of me worthy of my devotion and so I submit myself to serving it or them.

Look closely at the modern objects of worship - the things which people consider worthy of their devotion (their time and thought and energy) and you will notice a very strange thing - man is still, after all these thousands of years as much in the dark as he ever was. Sure, we are much too sensible to fall down in adoration in front of little wooden statues (although this is still true in many other cultures), but look carefully and you will see that this city like Athens is full of idols, and idols of a much more illusive, seductive kind.

Let me give you some examples. Pleasure and entertainment are perhaps the most popular idols in our Australian society. Now don’t get me wrong - pleasure is a beautiful experience, and God invented it, but people will devote their whole lives to the pursuit of pleasure, even being prepared to temporarily suffer great pain, if in the long run they can see that the future holds a promise of pleasure.

Be very careful incidentally of guys like Anthony Robins and the personal ‘empowerment’ movement - unleashing the power within - these guys are, of course after just one thing - your money, and lots of it too! And in order to get your money they have got to come up with something pretty attractive, and that is exactly what they are offering - a cleverly disguised pleasure pack of titillating delusions designed to make you feel very, very pleased with yourself, but it’s all absolute rubbish.

Of course the worship of money, success and power is one of the most obvious traps into which many of our friends will fall. They will expend themselves completely in the pursuit of this little god.

There are a hundred and one other idols which I could mention - love, sex, image, self esteem, cars, music, homes, social reform, computers and so on and so on. None of these things are actually evil in themselves, but people somehow get it into their heads that these are the things that hold out to them the promise of fulfilment and so they relentlessly devote themselves to the service of such things. It may even be a complex combination of several little idols like these ones. Let me ask you this then, who or what is your god? What is it that holds your future hopes? I would ask you tonight to think very seriously about that. What consumes your thoughts and energies more than anything else in this life? And is it worthy of the worship you surrender to it?

All this is evidence of two very serious things:

1.    We too are very religious people, just like these Athenians were.

2.    Many of us are also ignorant of the true God, like these Athenian were.

Well, why is it that this happens? Why is it that people who are made to know and worship the one true God have gone after all these strange and pathetic substitutes? Why is it that at the end of all the cleverness and philosophy of man over thousands of years, he is still a fool in the most profound way possible - an absolute ignoramus about the character of God. Well, there is a straight forward answer so let me give it to you in a straight forward way, and you will find this in the Bible in Romans chapter 1:

“… although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles….. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind”

Well there it is. Quite plain and simple. Show me a scholar or a wise man. Show me a philosopher or an intellectual or anyone who claims to be wise in their own opinion and I will show you someone who for all their great learning and so called wisdom knows absolutely nothing more about the character and nature of God than the brick layer or the postman. And why not? Because everyone, that’s everyone, in this world has rejected the true knowledge of God, because they didn’t want to glorify Him as God or give thanks to Him. They have all deliberately turned away from the truth of God, and gone after blissful ignorance instead.

Well then, how can anyone know anything about God? If I can’t get to Him by advanced learning and education or philosophy, then how? Is it perhaps by some kind or mystical experience? Is it by meditation on a mountain top? These are the trendy new popular methods of trying to find God. Is it by listening to the quiet convictions of my inner heart and my so called higher self or by feeling at one with nature? No!

Friends, there is only one way to know the God of this universe - and it is by revelation from God himself.

Of course it should not surprise us at all that the only way to know God in truth is by revelation, since we all know that the only way to really know a person is if that person decides to reveal something of themselves to us. I could stand here and watch you all night long and try to work out what you are really like as a person, but the only way for me to really know you properly is if you decide to disclose something about yourself to me. Even if I were to ask a hundred pertinent questions of you, I could know nothing about you unless you decided to provide me with truthful answers. The same is true of the living God - what has he revealed to us about himself?

Well, let us move on to consider what exactly is the message that the bible has for us in the passage we are looking at. What is Paul’s message to these Athenians, and what does this passage in the Bible reveal to us about God.

The Message

We shall see that there are five truths about God which the Bible declares here:

Firstly, God is the Creator of everything

Secondly, He is the Sustainer of everything

Thirdly, He is the Ruler of our lives

Fourthly, that God is the Father of all human beings

And Lastly, that He is the Judge of this world

If we had the time, I would love to have had a closer look at these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, what they thought and the way that they would have reacted to this message, and just how common their ideas are still today. Nothing is really new in this so called new age of modern thinking, the ideas which these guys held are more prevalent now in our society than they ever were, and everything just goes around and around. Perhaps another time, but for now we will concentrate on these five declarations of the character of God.

Let’s look at each of them in more detail.

1. God is the Creator of everything

24The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands.

Make no mistake friends, God is the creator of this world - in all its beauty:

·      the magnificent and vast array of mountains and desert plains

·      the surging ocean in all its power

·      the violent thunderstorm, and the gentle summer shower

·      the ruthless power of the great white shark, and a delicate new born baby.

·      and also the things which we don’t esteem - the slithering snake and slimy slug.

These things and the infinite array of others in creation are the work of the living God of the universe. The impulse of His awesome mind. With a single phrase “Let there be light”, he littered this universe with a million suns and moons, with spinning planets and countless cosmic solar systems. There is a great hymn which describes this - “Hands that flung stars into space”.

Can you grasp the sheer and terrible power of God, his beauty and creativity? His creative work defies the imagination and the mind, He makes the greatest inventions and revolutionary developments of mankind appear like little plastic trinkets. There is no one and nothing like Him.

Further to this, not only did He create this world but He is the sustainer of it. He sustains it every second of the day. Look at verse 25:

2. God is the Sustainer of all life

25Nor is He served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because He Himself gives all men life and breath and everything else

What keeps the sun shining in this sky of ours? Where does the impulse for you to breath come from? When you sleep, who tells your lungs to breath? It is the same one true God who created everything in this world. He gave each and every one of us our lives, and it is He who sustains them.

How else can you explain what happens to a person when they die? All of the basic ingredients are still there - all of the right elements in their correct balance - the whole body is in tact, but nothing is happening - there is no longer any life, their is no spirit in the body. Well, where has it gone? No one can explain this deepest of mysteries, except by this - it was God who sustained that life and then He recalled it.

Know for certain, then, that it is He who continues to sustain our very lives! Know this too, then, that there is only one thing keeps you from the falling into your grave, it is the same one thing that stands between all of us and a sudden, abrupt collapse of the entire universe and it is this - that the God who said “Let there be light” also says “Let there continue to be light.”

Let me draw an obvious application from this - the fact that he sustains and supplies life and breath and everything to all people everywhere means that he needs nothing at all from us, because it is He who supplies everything to us. Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that God somehow needs you to acknowledge Him for His sake friends. He is not short of self-esteem or somehow insecure about Himself - the reason God wants your praise and acknowledgment is entirely for your sake, not His. Verse 25 “He himself gives all men life and breath and everything else”

And we learn more from the passage. Not that he created us and this world, and that he sustains us every second of the day, but also that He decided long ago where each and every one of us should live - in which country and state and suburb and at which time we would be born and at which time our lives will end. And this is the third thing - God is the Ruler of our lives - look at verse 26:

3. God is the Ruler of our lives

26From 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.

And why did he do this?

4… so that we might seek Him and reach out for Him

27God 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. 28'For in Him we live and move and have our being.'

He arranged our lives in each particular way for our sakes - that we would sense that there is something profoundly big going on behind the scenes, and that we would seek to find Him. Don’t you have this impression dear friends - that there is a much bigger picture behind these postage stamp lives of ours - that their is another plain, another level, beyond that which is seen and obvious? Isn’t it true that sometimes there are occurrences in this world which violate all the laws of nature and logic - like love, for example. Or like a man called Jesus Christ who rises from the dead after two days in a tomb?

There is definitely more to our lives than just the visible surface.

In your specific case, He has not only put you into this city and suburb, at this particular time, but He has also arranged it that you would meet certain people and become friends with them. Then He has arranged for them to invite you to be here tonight, and to be exposed to this revelation of the character of God from the Bible. Friends, in your case God has been very pro-active indeed. Don’t you see what is going on? Isn’t it true that He is calling you to reach out for Him? To seek Him and perhaps to find Him?

We go on to the last two things which this passage says about God. The next is that He is the Father of all human beings. Look at the second half of verse 28 and verse 29:

5. God is the Father of all people

28bAs some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.' 29"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone - something shaped by the art and thought of man.

Now let me make it clear that the Apostle is very definitely not suggesting that people are the offspring of God in the sense that the Greeks thought - the result of some kind of human and divine sexual intercourse. What he is doing is showing up their own inconsistencies. They themselves acknowledged that mankind was somehow made in the likeness of God.

They acknowledged that human beings were a reflection (however vague) of what God is like. Even though they recognised this, however, their objects of worship were inanimate, lifeless things - made of gold and silver! He points out their ignorance by quoting from their own contemporary philosophers.

I don’t have time to explain more fully what this really means - being made in the likeness of God, but let me just say for now, that it is because of this fact that we ought to realise two things:

·      First of all - because I am made in God’s image, He is obviously not like a lifeless thing - a car or a house or a vague impersonal energy source or anything else which we have conjured up or constructed.

·      and secondly, it means that we are significant creatures. Our lives and our actions are of immensely significant value. It follows that when we act in certain ways, the results are significant both to our fellow human beings, and even more so to God. If you are a robber, then you steal significantly, because you have stolen from someone who is significant to God, and your theft will be viewed with significant severity by Him.

Back to the verse, and we are looking at the fact that God is the Father of all human beings, and we should therefore not be mistaken into thinking he is like something made of gold or silver.

Now look more carefully at the verse and you will see the deeper principle behind it. It is not just physical things, but man made concepts as well - anything “shaped by the art and thought of man”. How often I have come across the God shaped by the art and thought of man. And watch out for this - the moment that anyone says to you something like “I like to think of God this way …” or “My understanding of God is this …” then you have come across a little pocket god who is really a complete fake because he has been shaped by the art and thought of that person. The true understanding of God is the one which comes from what he himself reveals about himself.

Now here I want to speak to you about one of the most profound mysteries that the world has ever seen. Almost two thousand years ago, God revealed himself to mankind in a totally incredibly way. He took on the body of a man and lived among us for thirty three years. It is almost too bizarre to comprehend - the God of the universe - the same one who created the cosmic constellations with the power of a word from His mouth was born in a stable in Bethlehem, grew up in Pallestine, and although He never wrote a book or held a position of office or official power He changed the face of the world more than any other man in its history.

A Prophet by the name of Isaiah says foretold His birth over five hundred years before He was born, saying, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel, (which means God with us). GOD WITH US!

So then, we have this very specific revelation of God in the man Jesus Christ. He is a walking, talking, living manifestation of God Himself.

Well now the rubber is about to hit the road. What should we going to do about this situation? What is God going to do about it? Well look at what verse 30 and 31 say about God and this is the last of our observations, that God is the Judge of this world, and specifically that Jesus Christ will be doing the judging.

6. God is the Judge of this world

30In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent. 31For He has set a day on which He is about to judge the world in righteousness by the man He has appointed, guaranteeing this to all by raising Him from the dead."

In many ways I love that word repent. I love it because it is so terrifying. There is no other word  that I know of which creates such hostility and turmoil inside a person. Repent! In some ways this is a good thing because we accurately understand that repenting is a painful, humiliating experience. There are a very few things in life which are so hard as to say these words, “I’m sorry, I was wrong”. But there is also quite a lot of misunderstanding about this word ‘repent’, and I will come back to this shortly. In a moment, I am going to ask you to repent, but I want to establish with you very clearly three things first:

1.    Why should you repent?

2.    What should you repent of?

3.    and How can you repent?

Well, why should anyone in this room tonight repent? Why not just carry on living exactly the way I have for all this time up until now? Friends, for this very reason alone: The Judgement of God is coming! Verse 31 - “He commands all people everywhere to repent for He has set a day when He is about to Judge the world…”

Dear friends, there is good news in the gospel of Jesus Christ and we shall get to it in a moment. But you must understand this absolute truth first. There is a day which God has appointed when He will call this entire planet into the great throne room of Heaven - anyone and everyone who has ever lived - he will gather them together to pronounce His judgement on them.

It is my duty to also inform you that the Bible nowhere to my knowledge speaks of people negotiating their way into Heaven with God. Rather, it speaks of them being called to give an account of their lives -

Romans 14:11 "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" [and] each of us will give an account of himself to God.”

Why is He going to judge this world? Why isn’t He just going to call every one straight up into heaven. Some of you may be thinking “I don’t like this God who judges people so strictly, He sounds very harsh, like some kind of big tyrant or something.” Well it is for the following reason, friends, that He will judge the world. It is because, as the Bible declares:

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5

He is holy and just and perfect, and he hates sin with all of his being. He hates the evil things that people do, their selfish lives, their pride and their self esteem. He hates it with a passion. And he will not tolerate such people forever. That is why the passage says that he will judge the world in righteousness.

If only the passage said that he would judge the world in mercy, I would present an entirely different picture to you, but it doesn’t. This judgement is one of righteousness - of perfect justice by a standard which is far above any earthly standard. And there will be no mercy shown on that day. How many of us have kept the law of the land perfectly? I know that none of us have!

Well then how can anyone expect that they will have the slightest chance of surviving the merciless judgement of God - a judgement of righteousness by the God who is righteous beyond our most terrifying nightmares.

At the time when God gave the Ten Commandments through Moses (who was a very brave man). Moses made this request of God “show me your glory”. Do you know what God’s reply to him was?

"I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. But …you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live."

That friends is why the Bible describes that day in the most horribly serious way imaginable. Because no sinner (and that includes every one of us in this room) may see his face and live. Let me quote to you just a few of the passages in the Bible which describe that day - the Day of the Lord:

·      Isaiah 13:9  See, the day of the LORD is coming - a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger - to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it.

·      Joel 2:11  The LORD thunders at the head of his army; his forces are beyond number, and mighty are those who obey his command. The day of the LORD is great; it is dreadful. Who can endure it?

·      It will be a day when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time men will see the Son of Man [that is Jesus Christ] coming in clouds with great power and glory.” Mark 13:24-26

That is why you should repent, poor sinner, for that day is coming soon - The Lord is coming! I am not ashamed to preach the old fire and brimstone in this way to you tonight - even if it is out of fashion in this terribly comfortable age of ours, the day is still coming, wether or not anyone is ready for it, or wether or it’s in vogue, the day of the Lord’s judgement is coming, bearing down on us as it were.

And if you have ever heard that God is not to be feared, for whatever reason, I tell you tonight that He is. The Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). Now some kind of fears are irrational and stupid - like the fear of mice, for example. And some fears are healthy because the danger factor is very high, like the fear of sticking your head in a meat mincer.

Now the fear of the Lord God, friends, is the healthiest of all fears, because the danger is the greatest of all dangers. No one person or thing wields the power which God does, no one person or thing holds the entire universe in His hand as God does, and no one person or thing will pass judgement on you in perfect righteousness as God will do one day soon.

Yes, yes, someone might object. “I have heard all this judgement stuff before and it still hasn’t happened yet. I’m beginning to think it’s all just a big bluff, and this judgement day which you speak of isn’t really coming at all.”

Well, you may be 100% certain that this will happen, because God has guaranteed it! How has He guaranteed it? by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. There it is in verse 31 “For He has set a day on which He is about to judge the world in righteousness by the man He has appointed, guaranteeing this to all by raising Him from the dead.”

Let that be the end of any argument about the matter. There is the unmistakable guarantee - the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Nothing in all the world’s history has shaken it’s foundations like this one event two thousand years ago. The man Jesus Christ was bodily resurrected from the dead after two days in a tomb. That, friends, is why you should repent. “For God has set a day when He is about to judge the world in righteousness by the man He has appointed (Jesus Christ), guaranteeing this to all by raising Him from the dead”.

Well, if that is why you should repent, then what is it that God is calling you to repent of tonight - it is here in verse 31 also “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent”. Ignorance! God is calling you to repent of ignorance.

Well, let me ask you this first - do you know that you have been ignorant? Surely you can see that by now. Surely there are things about God which I have declared to you tonight which you had deliberately pushed out of your mind because they were to painful and uncomfortable to think about. Don’t get me wrong here friends - if you have been made to feel uncomfortable tonight then it is a very good thing - this passage should make you feel that way because it is a confronting message.

Have a guess what I have been going through for the past two weeks as I prepared for tonight - some of the hardest and most searching times in my life. Well let me ask it again: “Have you been ignorant of God?” Look at the verse again - in the past he overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent”

That is what you need to repent of - ignorance.

Let me put it to you in the way of a personal example: This is perhaps the way a person who is in the midst or repenting might describe it:

“You know, it really never dawned on me that this God of whom you speak is so full on. That he is the creator and sustainer of my life - that he rules my life and has guided my steps through it at each and every point - that he has come into this world in the flesh through the Lord Jesus, and that He is going to judge me in righteousness one of these days soon - this is all quite amazing stuff and I have to confess that I have been completely ignorant of Him until now - but having seen this, I have changed my mind completely and I want to know more about this God. I am interested in what more the Bible has got to say to me about this one true God - I want to know more about Him, and I want to know more about Jesus Christ.”

That, I think is a good picture of a man or woman who is repenting. But, friends I would ask you to consider just one more thing with me. And that is this - it’s all very well to be convicted that God’s judgement is coming on ignorance and idolatry and “I know that I should repent of it, but how? How can I repent? And what’s the use anyway? If this judgement of God is one of perfect righteousness as you say, then I haven’t got a hope in hell!”

Well this, dear friends, is the good news which I promised to tell you about before. And I have held it back for so long that you might be able to grasp this good news in its full and glorious beauty. I have already spoken to you about the birth and life of Jesus Christ, and also about His resurrection from the dead. But what was He doing here in the first place? If He rose from the dead, and He is, as I say, God incarnate, then how could He die? And even if He could die, why would he allow himself to die anyway? It all seems like complete foolishness really! What a silly sort of God He seems to be!

Well, you all know he was crucified, let me ask you this - Why? Why do you think He allowed Himself to be crucified? Perhaps you can already see the reason.

Because He is merciful!

Yes, this one true and living God of the Universe is coming in Judgement, and this judgement is one of righteousness without mercy, but there is more. There is a whole lot more! This God who the Bible declares to you tonight is a God of mercy, he is merciful beyond you wildest dreams.

And that is why he went to the cross. He went there as a substitute for you, if you will accept it. Jesus Christ willingly went to that cross to receive in His body the judgement which I spoke of earlier - as your substitute! The judgement of God the Father - all His fury and wrath and anger and hostility, poured out onto the body of God the Son as he hung on the cross on a hill outside Jerusalem.

That cross, dear friends, is where God’s righteous judgement and His mercy met together with literally earth shattering consequences. If you remember the quote I made earlier about the coming judgement of God that “the sun would be darkened on that day”, you will appreciate this - that at midday, when Christ finally died, the sun actually stopped shining for three hours.

Why?

Because that day was the day of judgement for Christ, though he was the only innocent man who ever walked this earth. That very day, the judgement of God fell on Him, and if you will put your trust in Him, then that will be your judgement day as well. Finished! Can you see why the Christian man or woman has more confidence in the face of death than anyone else. Because their judgement day has come and gone two thousand years ago. As Jesus says himself,

John 5:24  “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”

Do you see now how God calls you to repent, how He has made it possible for you to repent? Do you now see more clearly, against this backdrop of God’s character, the true height and depth and width of the love of God - that Christ would willingly endure this hellfire judgement on your behalf.

CONCLUSION

Friends, NOW is the day of mercy, NOW is the time for salvation. There will be none shown on the day of the Lord.

So I plead with you, change your mind about Him tonight.

Repent dear friend, and I do not speak to you in a patronising way. I myself am just a maggot, and not the slightest bit better than you are on this playing field. There is nothing that anyone can boast about in repentance, it is always a humiliating experience, I know this because I do it every day. And this is what I am calling you to - a life of repentance, and trust in that cross of Jesus Christ. Not a hot headed emotional confession of remorse - but a thoughtfully considered decision to trust in Christ.

There are untold blessings on the other side, if you will cross over. There are treasures which cannot be fathomed, and gifts which cannot be priced. But unless you have come to terms with God on this ground, they are not for you to touch. And therefore I do not mention them tonight.

I only call you to this one simple thing tonight - change your mind about God, put your trust in Jesus Christ who was crucified for you, who was raised from the dead, and who will judge this world in righteousness.