Intro/Outro: Welcome to Garden Church Podcast. We're in a series called Walk with Jesus. This series is about learning to cultivate a passionate love with God. Joy.
Pete: I feel ready right now to preach the word of God. So let's go. I wanna take you back 2000 years in in your imagination, and I want you to imagine you're at the Olympic games in the Greco Roman world. And the crowds are gathering, the crowds are screaming, the athletes are performing. And let's just say one of the athletes does something truly remarkable.
Let's say I'm guessing they didn't throw the discus, but let's just imagine they they threw a a donkey jaw or something like that, whatever events they had in the Olympic games back then. And they did something so extraordinary. It felt more divine than it felt human. The crowd would go wild, and the crowd would say that performer, that athlete had a genius. Not that they were a genius, they had a genius.
Now a genius in the ancient world was a divine attending spirit that would come upon a performer and enabling them to do something beyond human. Now in Greek mythology, they would call one of these spirits a daemon, and this would happen beyond just the Olympic games if if an artist developed something, a sculpture, a painting that was just sublime, beautiful, transcendent, beyond human. It it captured something of the divine, they would say that artist had a genius, had a daemon, a spirit stirring up creativity. In other words, they would point to God as the source of inspiration. Now I want you to fast forward then to the middle ages.
We're now in Spain, And imagine you're a bullfighter, a flamenco dancer, you're in the crowd and the dancer or the bullfighter does something extraordinary, something sublime, something that feels more divine than human, the crowd would go wild, and they would chant, Ole, Ole, Ole. You can hear traces of this in football stadiums, soccer stadiums, around the globe as we chant Ole Ole Ole. There we go. Lovely. Hi.
Ole Ole Ole. There we go. Why would they chant Ole Ole Ole? What's the meaning behind that? Well, to understand the chant Ole Ole Ole, we have to go back to the 8th century, to the Moors of North Africa, where they would have these moonlit dances.
And if one of the dancers did something sublime, something so beautiful, and the crowd felt that that was more than human. That that felt like it captured something of the divine. They would begin to chant, Allah Allah Allah, the name for God. It's the name that Muslims use for God, Allah, but it's also the name that Arabic Christians use for God. It's the Arabic translation of the Hebrew term Elohim for God.
In other words, when the artist did something extraordinary, the glory didn't belong to the artist, they would look upwards and say, Allah, Allah, Allah, that was something. A little snapshot of the glory of God. Allah Allah Allah became oleh oleh oleh which became oleh oleh. Oleh oleh oleh. Oleh oleh.
Oleh oleh. There we go. When did we stop chanting the name of God? When did we start chanting the name of the individual? When did we stop saying that the artist had a genius?
And when did we start describing them as a genius? And the answer is during the enlightenment, when we displace God from the center of the story, and we put the rational autonomous self at the center of the story, and rather than looking upwards and chanting the name of God, Allah, Allah, Allah, Olee, Olee, Olee. We started chanting the name of the individual, The celebrity performer, the sports person, the comedian, the performer, the pastor, the preacher. How do we turn back the tide and start looking upwards again and start chanting the name of God? That's what this series is all about.
How do we see an awakening in the surrounding culture? And we've been looking at redemptive shifts that we wanna see in the surrounding culture, but to see them in the surrounding culture, they need to be present in our own lives, in our own hearts. So last week, we looked at this redemptive shift. The shift from extraction to service. From extracting from our culture, from Orange County, LA, Long Beach, SoCal, extracting what we need to live our dream to pursue our comfort, our convenience, and how do we flip that and say, god, I'm going to lay aside my dream, my agenda.
I want to serve what you're doing in this context. And we looked at the case study of Babylon. Well, we're gonna look at a second redemptive shift this morning from idolatry to worship. And the case study is gonna be the city of Athens. Are you ready for the journey?
Yeah. Let's go. So here let's begin here. All culture is the overflow of worship. If you wanna understand any culture, but we're zooming in on SoCal culture.
If you want to understand culture, you need to ask questions such as, who do they worship? How do they worship? Where do they worship? Because all culture is a byproduct and overflow of worship. The root word in culture is the Latin verb cultus, meaning to revere, meaning to worship.
So to understand culture, we need to explore worship. James k Smith, the theologian says this, pastors and I wanna extend that because we're all priests, a priesthood of all believers, all of us need to be ethnographers. Now ethnography, by the way, is is the study of culture, understanding culture, reading culture. So all of us need to be ethnographers, helping people name and exegete their local liturgies. Liturgies are practices of worship that we do again and again and again, and they spiritually form us.
Now think of practices that are all around us. The practice of looking at your phone multiple times every day. That's the liturgy by the way. It's a spiritual practice that spiritually forms you. If you grab your phone, is anyone else following me?
Has anyone liked my recent post? You're bowing at the altar of fame and reputation. Right? Going on the scales to weigh yourself multiple times each week, that is that is a liturgy. It is a practice of worship as we bow the altar of vanity.
Right? There are spiritual practice, things we do again and again and again that form us we need to read the culture, understand the times we are living in. Karl Barth used to say that every Christian scriptures and reading the times and essentially interpreting the culture through the lens of scripture, not the other way round. Louis Giglio puts it like this, how do you know where and what you worship? It's easy.
Painful, but easy. You simply follow the trail of your time, your affection, your energy, your money, and your loyalty. At the end of that trail, you'll find a throne. And whatever or whomever is on that throne is what's of highest value to you. On that throne is what you worship.
If you wanna understand the idols you're bowing down to, you do a number of very painful exercises. You can do this as homework off the back of this. You sit down, you get out your schedule, your diary. You say, come holy spirit. Open my eyes to see things as they really are.
And as you look at how you spend your time, you'll find a throne, and there will be something, someone sitting on that throne, Or you get out your bank accounts, you sit down, you brace yourself, you say, come Holy Spirit, open my eyes, and and you look through how you spend your money, you'll find a throne. You'll find something, someone sitting on that throne. Here's the reality. Orthodoxy leads to orthopraxia. Orthodoxy is right belief, right worship.
Doxa, the verb to believe. Doxology is a hymn of praise. So right worship, right belief is meant overflow into our behaviors, into our practices, into how we live. But this is the way idols work in our lives. Idols don't really go after your beliefs.
They go after something more visceral. They go after your desires. Idols try and get your desires, all of us, because we're desiring beings, we move in the direction of our desires. And as we desire things that aren't the kingdom, we move away from the kingdom and towards the idol, which then creates an integrity gap. A gap between what we proclaim, what we sing on Sunday, and how we live during the week.
A gap between our beliefs and our behaviors, that integrity gap is called sin. And there are 2 remedies to the integrity gap. Remedy number 1 is repentance. We basically acknowledge there is a gap because we're all hypocrites. We're all broken.
We are all sinful. There is a gap between what we believe and how we believe behave, and we recognize the gap and we confess our sins. And when we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So remedy number 1 is repentance. We get down on our knees and we say, lord have mercy, I repent.
And we try and bring our behaviors into alignment with the way of the kingdom. But there is a second remedy, which is very present in the surrounding culture and very present in the western church. Are you ready for it? Remedy number 2, if we don't wanna change our our behavior is that we decide to change our beliefs. So rather than repentance, we redefine orthodoxy.
And we basically have conversations in the church saying, I quite like the practices of the surrounding culture. I wonder if I can just stretch my belief system, stretch orthodoxy, so it includes Jesus and some of the idols. Right. I want Jesus, but I I also want comfort, and I also want my sexual fulfillment, and I also want success. I love Jesus, but I really love the idols too.
So can we stretch orthodoxy to include the idols? Because we're radically inclusive. Let's stretch orthodoxy to include the idols. These are your 2 options genuinely. Repentance, change in behavior, or redefine orthodoxy and begin to change your beliefs, because all of us want to close that gap.
Now here's a graph of the decline of the western church. Now I'm not pointing fingers here, so I've I've chosen to look at the church in England, and I've chosen one denomination, the Church of England, the Anglican Church that I'm a part of. I'm a priest in the Anglican Church. So this is the decline. It doesn't look pretty, does it?
And what's even worse is that the steepest part of the decline is not even on the graph. It's 2019 onwards, the COVID years, the accelerated decline. Now it's pretty brutal, and I I don't show this graph to energize despair. I actually feel like this is one of the most exciting times in church history, because I know that in church history, this kind of graph is a precursor to a move of God. And I believe we're at the beginning of that, but we have to honestly look at these graphs.
And these graphs would reflect, the decline in many of the denominations here in the US too. Why is the church in the West dying, declining, hemorrhaging at such a rate? And there's multiple answers to that question, but can I just throw one answer into the mix? Is it because rather than repenting, we've been busy in conversations redefining orthodoxy? And there is no life in the conversation around redefining orthodoxy.
So how did the apostle Paul engage in these conversations? As he traveled around the Mediterranean preaching, planting churches, what were the conversations he was having? And I can tell you that he wasn't in conversations around redefining orthodoxy. He was inviting the church towards repentance. And we're gonna look in a moment as a case study at Athens, but before we do that, I wanna look at Rome very briefly.
Paul had a vision he wanted to get to Rome. So he was preaching around Northern Greece, the Mediterranean. He was in Ephesus, Philippi, Corinth, Thesalonica, Galatia, the list goes on, but he knew eventually he wanted to get to Rome. Rome was the nerve center of the empire. If he could get to the nerve center and plant the seeds of the gospel and the kingdom of god, it would spread out like wildfire.
So he wanted to get to Rome, always had one eye. How do I get to Rome? And eventually, he does get to Rome, not through plan a, plan b, he's imprisoned. But he still finds himself in Rome. And he starts writing letters to all these churches when he's in prison in Rome.
Listen to what he says. This is one example. So this is to the church in Philippi. Paul's in prison in Rome. He says, I want you to know brothers and sisters that what has happened to me, in other words, being imprisoned in Rome, has actually served to advance the gospel.
Like, don't worry about me. You might think this is game over for me. This isn't game over for me. This is game on for the kingdom of God, because I'm now in Rome. This is where I wanted to be.
I'm at the nerve center of the empire, the center of Caesar worship. I'm right there in Caesar's household. So don't worry about me. This isn't game over for me. This is game on for the kingdom of god.
As a result, it's become clear throughout the whole palace guard to everyone else that I'm in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become more confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear. Me being here in prison in Rome has energized courage throughout the churches and all these different cities to proclaim the kingdom of God is at hand. That's how he begins the letter. Are you ready to see how he ends the letter?
Because this is some of the most subversive writing in the new testament. He says this, as a kind of a goodbye statement. He says, greet all God's people in Christ Jesus. The brothers and sisters who are with me send greetings, and here it is. You ready?
All God's people here send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household. So right at the center of the empire, in Caesar's own household, his family members are coming to faith, bowing the knee, proclaiming Jesus is Lord and therefore Caesar isn't. He's saying to all these churches across the the Greco Roman world, like, don't worry about me. This ain't game over for me. This is game on for the kingdom of God.
Because right here in the nerve center, Caesar's own household are bowing the knee to Jesus, proclaiming Jesus is Lord. That's the story of Paul engaging in Rome, but we're gonna zoom in on how does Paul wage war on the city of Athens. He wants to wage war on the idols, not gather some committees to talk about redefining orthodoxy. He wants to cool the church towards repentance. So if you've got a Bible, Acts chapter 17.
We're going to start reading from verse 16. We're going to try and engage in 4 questions that get us to the heart of this passage. Where did Paul go? How did he feel? What did he see?
What did he do? Those are the questions we're gonna engage in. Let's read the text first. From verse 16. While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.
So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day, with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked him, what is this babbler trying to say? Others remarked, he seems to be advocating foreign guards. They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.
Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, may we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You're beginning, you're bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean. All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas. In other words, they were living the dream. Verse 22.
Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, people 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 even found an altar with this inscription to an unknown God. So you were ignorant of the very thing you worship, and this is what I'm going to proclaim to you. Get ready for gospel proclamation. Now let's pause there.
Remember the remember the questions. Where did Paul go? How did he feel? What did he see? What did he do?
Firstly, where did he go? He went to the synagogue, the place of prayer and worship. This always begins in the presence of God, saturating the presence of God. And then he moves from the synagogue to the marketplace, which is the public square. In the marketplace of of any city like Athens, the marketplace would be where people would buy and sell goods.
In other words, where they would trade. It's where performers would come and exhibit their work, do whatever they were doing. It's where philosophers would come and trade ideas, their latest thinking and teaching. So it was the public square. So Paul moves from the place of presence to the public square and then to the Areopagus, the law course, the center of governance.
In other words, he goes for the nerve center of life in Athens. Doesn't remain in the safety of the prayer meetings. He starts in their place of prayer. He catches fire. He goes to the public square and then to the Areopagus.
How did he feel? Says he felt greatly distressed. The Greek word here you up for learning a bit of Greek? No. We're gonna do it anyway.
The Greek word is parexunato. Should we say it together? Paraxoonato. Now this word basically means, obviously, greatly distressed, because it's translated that way. But it's like a righteous anger that rises in your being, and you don't really know whether you're gonna shout in anger or weep because of heartbreak.
This is what happens when Jesus weeps over Jerusalem, the city of Shalom, Jerusalem. He sees that it's become a place of idolatry and he weeps over the city because paraxonatos in the core of his being, heartbreak, righteous anger. This is what happens when Jesus arrives at the temple. His place of prayer has become a den of robbers, and he starts flipping over the tables. What's going on there?
The answer is paraxunato, like heartbreak, righteous anger. And this is how Paul feels as he walks around the city of Athens. This word paraxoonato nearly always is connected to idolatry. As Paul sees that the idols of Athens are destroying the lives of the people of Athens, he feels righteous anger, heartbreak, doesn't know whether he's gonna shout or weep. So here's some examples from the Greek translation of the old testament, the Septuagint.
Deuteronomy 9 verse 7. Remember this and never forget how you aroused the Anger. The anger, the paroxoon or so of the lord your god in the wilderness. God liberates them from slavery, parting the Red Sea, journeys through the wilderness. And what do they do?
They build a golden calf and bow down to it, and it breaks the heart of God. He feels righteous. Anger, because the idols always devastate the lives of the followers of God. Psalm a 106, they yoked themselves to Baal and they sacrifices offered to lifeless gods. They aroused the lords.
Amen. The answer is always gonna be anger, by their wicked deeds, para xunato. God witnesses them embracing the idols, the idols unraveling their lives, and God feels anger, righteous anger, heartbreak at the devastation the idols are bringing to his people. Isaiah 65, all day long, I've held up my hands to an obstinate people who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations of people who continually me to my face, offering sacrifices in gardens and burning insult on altars of brick. Like paraxunato is the righteous anger of god in response to our betrayal, rejection of him in response to our idolatry.
And to understand paraxunato, we need to talk about the jealousy of God. Now before we read some of these verses about the jealousy of God, when we talk about God being a jealous God, it creates confusion, because we have a very human understanding of of jealousy. And our very human understanding of of jealousy looks like this. Out of insecurity, we lust after things that aren't rightfully ours. Yeah?
Out of insecurity, we lust after things that aren't rightfully ours. So for example, as a single individual, you find out one of your good friends is getting married, and you're really excited for them, but there's a small part in your heart that's like, yippee for them. Don't pretend you don't know that feeling. I know you know that feeling. Your best friend lands their dream job.
Right? Your job sucks. You're struggling in your job. Your best friend lands their dream job, and you're like, that's brilliant, small part of you. Yippee for them.
Right? An example from my life as a young worship leader as a teenager, my brother writes the song, Here I Am TO Worship that goes global. I was celebrating with him and a small part of me, yippee for Tim. You know that feeling. Don't pretend you don't know that feeling.
So jealousy is, humanly speaking, when out of insecurity, we lust after that which isn't rightfully ours. Divine jealousy is very different. Divine jealousy is out of complete security. Yahweh God jealously longs for that which is rightfully his, which is you and me. So God isn't up there out of insecurity thinking, oh, I thought they really love me, but they actually really like their comfort.
And I'm not even sure I'm number 2 on the list. I think I might be number 3. God isn't like that. Out of complete security, he jealously longs for your affection. Because he knows when you're abiding in his love, that will lead you to fullness of life.
It's the only path to fullness of life. He knows that the idols will unravel your lives. They will destroy you. So he yearns for you to chase after his affection because his affection leads you to life. So here's some examples then of the jealousy of God.
Exodus 20, you shall have no other gods before me. This isn't insecurity. This is the overflow of complete security, the perfection of God. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.
For I, the lord your God, am a Jealous. Jealous god. Exodus 34. Do not worship any other god for the lord whose name is? Jealous.
Is a? Jealous. In other words, this isn't just something he feels. His name is jealous. In other words, this is at the core of his nature and his identity.
He is jealous for your affection. Deuteronomy 4, be careful not to forget the covenant of the lord your God that he made with you. Do not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything. The lord your God has forbidden. For the lord your God is a consuming fire.
A? Jealous. He's jealous for your affection. He knows what the idols will do to you. They will destroy you.
CS Lewis put it like this. Idols always break the hearts of their worshipers. Not sometimes. They have a perfect track record in always destroying, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. Jonah chapter 2 verse 8.
Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs. When you're clinging on to an idol, your hands are full. You don't have empty hands to receive grace, and God gets angry when the idols destroy your life and my life. He's jealous that you live in the reality of his affection because his affection leads you towards fullness. So how did Paul feel?
As Paul walks around the city of Athens, he feels distress. He doesn't know whether he's gonna scream out in anger, fall to his knees, and start crying. And, honestly, that's how we should feel as we walk around Long Beach, Orange County, LA, SoCal. I know it all looks incredible, but the same ache of the human heart is present. The idols are destroying people's lives.
It should make us feel really angry. What did Paul see? Says this, verse 22. I see that in every way, you're very religious. Now there's 2 Greek words for sight.
There's blepo, meaning to see, and there's theireo, meaning to see. So what's the difference between blepo and theoreo in the Greek? And the answer is blepo is when you visibly can see what's in front of you, like a physical sight. Is when you see beneath what's in front of you. It's like understanding.
It's where we get the word theory. I have a theory for why things are the way they are. So Paul's walking around Athens. He can blepo. He can see things, but then he says, I'm actually seeing beneath, like, the stuff now.
I'm seeing beneath it. I can see what's happening here. This ache in the human heart, and that you're going after these idols, you're worshiping these unknown gods, and they are breaking your hearts, And I want you to wake up. How do we begin to see beneath in the culture but in our own lives? And I wanna suggest it starts in our own lives and then moves outwards.
How do I identify the idols present within? And the answer is you have to ask soul level questions. Questions like this. What do you daydream about? How do you spend your money?
What makes you angry or afraid? Like, these are the kind of questions that get to the core of the idols that are tugging on your desires, leading you away from the kingdom. And we can play this game at a personal level, but we can ask these questions of a culture. What is the average SoCal individual daydream about? And how does the average SoCal individual spend their money?
And what makes them afraid? And then you begin to do the work of ethnography, reading culture, discerning what are the idols choking the life out of the people. Now we need to do this for our individual context, and this is the work we're trying to do in the context of of London. And I wanna give you an example. As you look through different spheres of culture, you can begin to read the idols that are present in the culture.
So imagine you're in the 1st century, and you're plonked into I I guess you don't have the word plonked in American culture. You're placed in a in a city, and the question is, who do they worship in this city? Now if you're in the 1st century, you'll know what to do. You will basically walk through the city. You'll find the tallest building, and the tallest building in any city was the temple of the God they worshiped in that city.
So if you were placed in Ephesus, you would walk around the city. You'd find the tallest building. Oh, here we are. Ah, it's the temple of Artemis. They worship the goddess Artemis.
Now take that strain of thinking and imagine you're placed in London in the year 16/16. This is a a drawing of London in 16/16. And you were asked the question, who do they worship here in the city of London? You wouldn't even need to look around. You could look at the skyline and look at all these spires, and you can see that there's Saint Peter's and Saint Pauls and Saint Michael's and Saint Matthew's, and you're like, oh, this must be a Christian city.
This must be a Christian nation because all the the tallest buildings point to the heavens point towards God. Now there's a a darker underbelly to this story, because a lot of these church buildings were built using the money from the slave trade. So every age has a dark underbelly. Right? But someone could look at the city and say, I think this is essentially a Christian city, a Christian nation.
Fast forward 400 years, an artist did a redraw of this picture from the same vantage point south of the river Thames, and it looks very different. An individual might cross the bridge, walk into the city, and find themselves at these huge buildings thinking, I think they worship money in this city. I think the idol they bow down to is power. So this is a list of the tallest buildings in London, starting with the Shard on the far left, and you work your way right to the other end. You got the London Eye.
Anyone been on the London Eye? No one. Okay. There we go. Then you've got St Paul's Cathedral, then you've got Big Ben.
But if you look at history of the tallest buildings in London I know this is unbelievably boring. But we, it's only gonna last a minute. This is only gonna last a minute. Okay. So go back a 1000 years.
White Tower was the tallest building. This is one of the residences for the king, and the center of White Tower was Saint John's Chapel, in other words, a place of worship. And then for 350 6 years, the old St. Paul's Cathedral was the tallest building, and then for 11 years, it was Southwark Cathedral, and then for 6 years, it was the monument to the Great Fire of London, then it was Saint Mary Le Beau, then it was the rebuilt Saint Paul's Cathedral, and then there's a shift. And I want you to notice the year, 1939.
Then it became power station, and then a huge low point, the crystal palace transmitting station, then 1 Canada Square, now the Shard. I said, notice the year 1939. The horrors of the second World War meant a wave of atheism swept through Europe. People struggled to believe in God, so they rejected God, and they went after money and power. And you see that play out in the buildings of our city.
I've just taken one lens, one sphere architecture to do the work of ethnography, reading the times. The architecture of our city tells you something about the idols that we bow down to and the idols that are choking Londoners of life. What does God feel about it, parak zoonito? He's livid about it. The idols that are devastating the lives of Londoners.
He feels paraxunato. He doesn't know whether to shout in righteous anger or break down in tears. What did Paul feel when he walked around Athens? He felt paraxunato. I feel so livid that these idols are destroying the lives of the sons and daughters of God, and he wants to do something about it.
Tim Keller, in his book, Counterfeit Gods, says, the work of dethroning idols, there's 3 parts to the journey. Number 1 is you recognize the idols. Without that honest moment of assessment, I've been bowing the need to idols. There's not gonna be remedy until there's an awakening moment, like waking up from sleep. So we recognize the idols, then we repent.
We get down our knees on our knees and say, Lord, have mercy. And this is what Paul was doing in Athens. He he went from the place of prayer to the marketplace, to the center of governance. He felt paraxunato. He could see beneath what was really going on.
What did he do? He was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Wasn't trying to be culturally relevant. Right? He preached the gospel of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Messiah.
And at the center of that message was this. Now he commands all people everywhere to repent. Not to establish committees, to redefine orthodoxy. How can we make this message more palatable? No.
We're gonna invite people towards repentance. So we recognize, we repent, and then we replace. We put Jesus back on the throne, and we are undivided in our devotion towards him. And when this starts happening in the church, recognition, repentance, replacement, the language that we use in church history for these moments are holiness movements. When the church starts taking holiness seriously again, and when the church starts taking holiness seriously, in other words, we give up on conversations about redefining orthodoxy, we get down on our knees.
We recognize there's a gap between what we believe and how we believe, and we say, lord, have mercy on me. I repent. When that happens, the fire of heaven begins to fall. If you know anything about the Hebodean revival, one of the key hinge points in that revival is the young guy in a small prayer meeting starts reading Psalm 24, starts saying, Lord, I wanna ascend the hill of the Lord, but I've got unclean hands and an impure heart. Lord, I wanna get further into your presence.
Lord, have on me, and then he falls into a trance. And the people keep praying, and the fire of heaven falls. See these moments of repentance, waves of repentance, they revive the church. The fire of heaven begins to fall, And when the church is revived, it brings awakening to the surrounding culture. So let me close by asking you 4 questions.
The 4 questions that are at the heart of Paul's missionary engagement in the city of Athens. Number 1, where should where should you go? And the answer is go where you spend most of your time. You were to go from this place, the place of worship and prayer, and you're to go to your workplaces, and your universities, and your schools, and your gyms, and wherever you socialize, your streets, your homes, just go where you spend most of your time, to where the people are. How should you feel?
And let me just put this really bluntly. You shouldn't feel numb. One of the great problems of the Western church is when we look at culture, we feel nothing, numbness, because we've been self medicating on things to help an anesthetize our own pain. You shouldn't feel numb. Yeah.
As you walk around Long Beach, LA, Orange County, SoCal, you should feel angry that the idols are devastating the lives of your nearest and dearest. That should make you angry. It makes God angry and we wanna carry the heart of God for our location. So I wanna pray over you an uncomfortable prayer that you would carry the heart of God for your context. That you would feel what he feels.
He doesn't feel nothing, because he isn't a distant apathetic God. He's a jealous god that yearns for the affection of his image bearers. How should you feel, Parakh Zunato? What should you see? Like, we need to wake up, not just leppo sight.
We should see beneath what's going on. Beneath the shiny perfect lies. To recognise there's an ache in every heart. And the ache is for Jesus. And if that ache is directed to the the idols, the idols will devastate their lives.
Idols always break the hearts of their worshippers. We need to learn to see. And therefore, we pray, lord, show me what's really going on. Yeah. I I can see all this like presentation of perfection.
Show me what's really going on. Insight into the natural realm, but also the spiritual realm open my eyes to see what should you do about it. And the answer is you should preach the same gospel Paul was preaching in Athens. The same gospel Jesus was preaching in his ministry, and it's this, repent, The kingdom of God is at hand. Yes.
It's not just a future reality. It is that, but it's a future reality breaking into the here and now. The kingdom of God is here right now. Everything you're craving, longing for, that ache is for this. Everything you're longing for, you can access, you can experience in the person of Jesus Christ.
Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. And as people encounter Jesus, they experience revival. They are revived from death to life. They are revived. And as the church is revived, as people are revived, we experience awakening in the surrounding culture.
Why don't we stand?
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