We'll be opening to Acts chapter 17. I'd like to say thank you to Brother Curtis and the church for the invitation and the hospitality, the fellowship. It's been a blessing to be here this Friday and Saturday and today. We appreciate you and have been blessed to meet you and get to know you. It's been an encouragement to us. We would appreciate your prayers. We were in Mexico for those many years and then the Lord brought us to a point where we knew it was His will to move in a new direction and we didn't know exactly at first what direction that would be and we thought we would be going to Chile and made a trip there and began preparation to move to South America and then the Lord closed that door and made it very evident to us that it was His will to move back with our home church and to work in the area of Oklahoma City among the Spanish-speaking people there. So that's what I'm still doing, full-time mission work and evangelism and church planning and teaching among Spanish-speaking people, but now in Oklahoma. So I would appreciate your prayers for us there. That has been very slow going in Oklahoma, but the Lord has blessed, has worked in some lives, and we'd appreciate your prayers for us as we continue that. I want to turn to Acts now and just read one verse, verse 16. We'll read further after we pray, but Acts chapter 17 and verse 16, and then we'll look to the Lord in prayer. waited for them, that is for Timothy and Silas who had gone back to Thessalonica, while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Let's pray. Father, we bow before you now and we call upon you as our maker and as our Lord and as our Savior. Father, as we open your word, we pray that you would speak to us. That you would feed our soul, that you would open our understanding, that you would challenge our hearts. And Lord, that we might be stirred as Paul was stirred. And Lord, we might see the vision of what he saw. And Lord, that we might be engaged in the work that he was doing. in our generation. Lord, we just pray that you bless this church, bless us now, and bless souls who hear that if some are lost, they might receive the same gospel that Paul priested Athens, and that sinners even today need. to come to Christ in faith, repentance, trusting him as Lord and Savior, as the one who gave himself in sacrifice for sinners. Lord, we praise you for your goodness to us and ask your blessing in Jesus name. Amen. Well, this passage that we're looking at, you probably have read and are very familiar with. In fact, I'm doubtful that there's much I can say in all of these sermons that you haven't heard, except my own experiences. But you have a faithful pastor who has not only a heart for the Word, but a heart for missions. And so I know that he's said most everything that I could possibly say. But maybe my teaching could confirm what he has said in restating it. But this is, in this chapter here we see Paul at Athens and his spirit is stirred, it says there in the verse that we've read, this is when we find Paul in Athens and he's looking over the city, he sees the altar to the unknown God. Very interesting occasion in the ministry of Paul and that was an interesting occasion in the history of Athens. You know, there is historical background that gives us a little bit of understanding about what he saw here. Actually, you can read Greek history. There's a lot to read. Some of it's history, some of it's tradition, some of it's embellishment, and you don't always know which is what, but there are a lot of clues that we can piece together about exactly what is being referred to here. Plato, you've heard that name, right? Plato and others, they contribute some clues that do fit in to what is being stated here. 600 years before Paul went to Athens. Athens was already a religious center. It was already a center of philosophy and intellectual studies and religious debate. And at that time, about 600 years before Paul, there was a plague that occurred in Athens. They tried everything they could. They prayed to their pantheon of gods. They sought relief from the drought and from the plague and all these things that were occurring there. And nothing was bearing any fruit in what they were seeking to do. And so they had heard of this teacher, prophet, poet over in Crete named Epimenides. He was supposed to have great wisdom. They sent for him. They brought him to Athens. And he said, well, let's try this. Let's take a flock of sheep, some white sheep and some black sheep, and we'll set them out grazing here on Mars Hill. And if some of them should lie down here on the hillside, When there should be the hungriest feeding on the hillside, then that will be a sign from some unknown God. that he was willing to help. Well, they have written about this in ancient Greek history. And so the men followed, they brought the sheep, they set the sheep out to wandering there on the hillside, and some of them, sure enough, they did lie down, when they should have been hungriest and feeding, some of them did lie down to rest there on the hillside. And so they did just that, they built altars in those spots where those sheep had laid down, and they built altars, they sacrificed those sheep, and Coincidentally, soon the plague did stop. Well, others wrote in Greek history that there were altars across, not just Athens, but many other places where they had set up altars that had no God name on those altars. And there were at least two actually in Athens that were designated to the unknown God. It was historically recorded by the Greeks before it ever became part of the Book of Acts. Now, it doesn't really matter. They're talking about 600 years before Paul. Do we know if that actually happened? Did he ever actually come there and set out the sheep, and they lay down, and all those things happened? It doesn't matter if it happened or not. The Greeks in Athens, the Athenians, thought it happened. They believed it, and so they had set up these altars to the unknown God. Well, 600 years later, Paul arrives. Let's read the account, beginning in verse 16. Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews and with the devout persons and in the market daily with them that met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, and some said, what will this babbler say? Others, he seems to be a setter forth of strange gods, because he preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. They took him and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, may we know what this new doctrine where you speak of is? For you bring certain strange things to our ears, and we would know therefore what these things mean. For all the Athenians and the strangers that were there, they spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill, and he said, you men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are, King James says, too superstitious, very religious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Neither is worship with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing that he giveth to all life and breath and all things, and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, that they should seek the Lord. if happily they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. As certain also of your own prophets have said, for we also are his offspring. For as much then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art and man's device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at, he overlooked, he was patient. But now commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, and that he has raised him from the dead. When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, and others said, we will hear thee again about this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit, certain men cleaved to him and believed, among the witch was Dionysius, the Araopagite, and the woman named Damaris, and others within. There's the account. Paul preaching the word of God at Athens. You know, when we come to verse 16, right there at the very beginning of the verse, what do we see about Paul? It says, while Paul waited for them in Athens, his spirit was stirred. The first thing that I want to set out to us as we begin to think about this passage and go through it here is that we need Paul's stirring. This is something I've been emphasizing in all of the messages that we've had so far. We need this stirring. When Paul was there, everywhere he looked, he saw memorials or altars or statues or idols, representative of the multitude of gods that these Greeks had. One of the ancient Greeks wrote that it was easier to find a god in Athens than it was to find a man. Athens was not a small place. It was a densely populated large city for its day. But he says there was a multitude of gods, so to speak, in their way of thinking there in Athens. And Paul looks around the city, and he is stirred. Now while Paul waited, his spirit was stirred. Now this is an interesting phrase that he uses here when he says he was stirred. It's only used two times in the Bible. The other time that it's used is over in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 where it's talking about love and it says love is not easily provoked. Well, it's obvious that in that case in Corinthians he's talking about being stirred or provoked to sinful reaction, right? But in this chapter, it's saying that Paul was, in fact, stirred. He was provoked as he looked on the idolatry. Well, was he inconsistent with what he was teaching over in Corinthians? Well, you know, Paul and Luke, the writer of the book of Acts, they would have been very familiar actually with the way this word was used and the way it was used in the Old Testament. And go back with me to the book of Deuteronomy because the Old Testament as it was translated into Greek used this word on several occasions. Look back in Deuteronomy chapter 9 and verse 7. Deuteronomy chapter 9 and verse 7. Here he is saying, remember and forget not how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness." Here, Moses is speaking, in the second giving of the law, he's speaking to the nation of Israel, and he says to them, you, Israel, provoked the Lord to wrath when you were wandering in the wilderness. From the day that you did depart out of the land of Egypt until you came into this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. They provoked God Himself, and it's the same Greek word here in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew that uses Paul. Paul was stirred, he was provoked. Here it says that God was provoked. What provoked Him? Down in verse 12 it says, And the Lord said unto me, Arise, get you down from here, for the people which you brought forth out of Egypt have corrupted themselves, they are quickly turned aside out of the way which I commanded them, and they have made them a molten image." So here was the people of Israel, and they were setting up images of God's, when God had forbidden such a thing, God by their idolatry, and giving honor to petty, false, God's made by the hands of men. They were dishonoring the true God of Heaven. And God was provoked by that. In verse 18 of the same chapter, Moses says, I fell down before the Lord as at the first 40 days and 40 nights and I did neither eat bread nor drink water because of all your sins which you sinned and doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to anger. Again in verse 22, "...and at Taborah, and at Massah, and at Kibrath HaToveah, ye provoked the LORD to wrath." What do we see here? And these examples, many others in the Old Testament, since Psalm 106 and Isaiah 65, Scripture says, as God looked upon the sins of the nation of Israel, as God looked upon the idolatry of the nation of Israel, God was provoked. So then, we come over to Acts 17, and we see Paul looking upon an idolatrous people. And in the same way that it says God was provoked, Paul himself was stirred. Paul himself was provoked. You see, he was exactly in the same place where we saw Andrew Fuller yesterday. Jealous for the holiness of God and that God might be known and honored. As he quoted from 1 Kings, and of Elijah's own words, that he was jealous for the Lord God of Heaven. Elijah was provoked. Andrew Fuller was provoked. Paul was provoked. And we need to be provoked, not sinfully to anger, but to be provoked in jealousy for the holiness of God and that He might be known and that He might be honored because He is worthy. To what response was he provoked? Verse 18, we see the response that was provoked in him. It said, then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and Stoics encountered him, and some said, what will this babbler say? And others, some, he seems to be a setter forth of strange gods, foreign deities, because, what? He preached unto them Jesus and the resurrection. You see, when Paul saw the idolatry, when Paul saw the sin, it provoked him. It provoked him to do what? To preach Jesus! That God might be known and that God might be honored. Not to move away. Not to isolate himself from them. We should never be so callous, or be so cold, or desensitized, or hardened that we see men in idolatry, or we see men in sin that we just roll our eyes, or we sneer, or we feel bitterness. We should be stirred, we should be broken, we should be provoked, yes, but with a broken heart to preach Jesus and the resurrection as did the apostle. We need to be stirred, we need Paul's stirring. Let's move on in the chapter. I want us to take note next of the diversity in Paul's outreach. Just a short comment here on this, but you look at verse 17, it says, therefore disputed he, first of all it says, in the synagogue with the Jews. Now there he's identifying one people that he was provoked to go and preach to. He went to the synagogue and he preached to the Jews. But then there's that and, and it says, and with the devout persons. And so, he found the religious people who were praying or offering sacrifices on these altars, who were engaged in religious observation, and he went and he talked to them. and in the market daily with him that met with him. So he went to the synagogue, then he looked for religious people, and then he went to the market and he, just right in the market in open air, would try to gather a crowd just so that he could preach to them. Who were these people that were there at the market? Well, it wasn't the homeowners who were down at the market buying vegetables or buying meats. It was the servants. It was lower class of people that were down at the markets. And it was the vendors that were down at the markets. And so here Paul is, he goes to the Jews, he goes to the religious, he goes to the lower class of society here, the more common folk in the way that they would have been regarded within that society. The servant class of people that he went there and he's meeting and he's sharing the Gospel with them. And then in verse 18 we see this. Then certain philosophers of Epicurean and Stoics. And so he went and he looked for the philosophers. Here's the intellectuals. He's looking for them. And he's preaching the gospel to them. And then finally, verse 19, they took him and brought him unto Areopagus. You know, he was meeting up there. That's the great counsel, the court counsel. These are governmental officials that are going to be up there at the Areopagus. You see, Paul didn't target one segment of society. He looked for all that he could. Well, we get into our comfort zones, don't we? There's just a certain kind of people we're more comfortable with talking to, with rubbing shoulders with. Maybe they need to be our same skin color. Maybe they need to be our same educational level. Maybe they need tattoos and beards. Or maybe they shouldn't have tattoos and beards. Maybe they need to drive pickups, or maybe they need to drive Mercedes. You know, but there's certain people that we're just more comfortable with. We have our comfort zone. And Paul said, I'll have none of that. I'm going to go to the market with the servants, and I'm going to go to the Areopagus with the governing council, and I'm going to find the philosophers, and I'm going to find the religious, and I'm going to preach the gospel to all of them because they're all sinners. We need to broaden our vision. and sometimes break out, step out of the comfort zone and realize that all they can do is just laugh at us or tell us no. But break out of our comfort zone and preach the gospel to all. Paul did that. Then as we go on here in the chapter, we need Paul's discernment in declaring the message of the gospel. I know it's not a surprise to you, but we need to remind ourselves that other ethnicities, and I'm talking about in third world countries and so forth, other religions do not think in biblical patterns and concepts. They heard Paul and You look down there at the last half of verse 18. When they were reacting, they said, he seems to be a setter forth of strange gods. That's the King James rendering of it. Foreign deities. If you look at the word that is written in Greek there, it's the word daimonion. If you listen closely there, daimon, you hear the similarity because there's a direct relationship between daimon and demon. The word daimonion was the word that was used to refer to devils, to demons, or to pagan gods. New Testament never ever uses the word daimonion to refer to the true God, the God of heaven or the God of the scripture. It's foreign deities or devils. And those foreign deities, they are petty, second class, not the supreme being, but they are a little specific individual gods. And really the Athenians thought and the Greeks thought in that mindset that there are just these many individual gods. And these gods all vary in strength and they are all in competition with one another and striding with and against one another. They have their alliances and their battles and all of these things going on. First Corinthians 10 and verse 20, the scripture there says, where Paul wrote, he said, the things that the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, daimonion, demons, and not to God, theos. So here we see two different words, and we see them here in this chapter, two different words that mean God. One is daimonion, which the Greeks used, and then theos, which Paul used. The word Theos was a very generic word meaning God. It was kind of an umbrella word that was very inclusive. It could mean God, just as we would write it with a little g. But some of the well-known philosophers, like Aristotle, Plato, and a few others, they had used the word Theos referring to the supreme, a supreme being above all other gods. He was not one of the daimonion, one of the little sub-gods. He was the supreme being. The Athenians had the preference, thinking of deities, but of all the daimonion, these pagan gods. Paul never used the word daimonion, but when they heard the word theos, they thought They said he is teaching us about foreign daimonion, about foreign deities. Because they in their mind would equate the two things. Because in their mind there was just every god was one more god among the many gods. And so when Paul was saying one thing, they were hearing another thing. Thinking another thing. They misunderstood. Paul faced that. Missionaries faced that. Every time you walk into a new culture and you preach the gospel, They are hearing what you're saying, carrying their own baggage, their own interpretation of those words, and implying... I'm starting to skip over to Spanish, I'm sorry. They're pouring that into their definitions of what you're trying to say. When they hear you preach the Gospel for the first time, it's just like hearing "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wave, And all mensy were the wargroves, And the mome raths our grave." Huh? Yeah, that's what their reaction is when they hear you preach the gospel. Huh? That's Jabberwocky. Alice, through the looking-glass. Makes no sense, does it? When they hear the gospel, you could have just as well been reading Jabberwocky because they don't get it the first time. In the darkness of their heart, and with all that they are putting on the words that you're saying, they don't understand. It must be the Spirit of God that opens their understanding. Anytime you see Paul go into one of these villages for the first time or one of these towns for the first time and he preaches the gospel and there are many who come to Christ, most of those who come to Christ at first are Jews who have been studying the Old Testament and they have an Old Testament concept of God and of the sacrifices and they've been hearing that And so their heart has been plowed up by the Spirit of God and prepared so that they hear that and it makes sense when the Spirit opens their understanding. And then there are Gentiles that eventually they hear this and He explains it and He re-explains it and God opens their hearts. And it's a very miraculous thing when you see someone on first occasion of hearing the Gospel believe, understand. That is a mighty working of the Holy Spirit. Something that missionaries find as they go into the fields, that you preach the gospel, but you're going to have to come back and preach it again, and preach it again, and preach it again, and explain it. And over time, as you sow seed and you water that, little by little, they begin to see more and more light until the day comes that the Spirit just takes away the blindfold and they see and they believe. And that is a work of God's grace. That's an issue. The concept of God. It's an issue in missions today as you go preaching. to any people. It's an issue in Muslim evangelism. Sister Knapp was talking about the question that she had one time way back then. She was thinking about whether in Muslim evangelism and using the name Allah. You know there are evangelicals who say very adamantly that when we preach God that we use the name Allah because he is God and when we're preaching to Muslims and then there are others who say no you cannot absolutely cannot use the name Allah when you're preaching the gospel to Muslims and you know you have to remember that some do consider the name Allah as a generic Word that means God, but there are many others that they know that Allah means a specific one and only God, and you dare not call the God of the Bible Allah. So it's a huge debate. And whichever side you take on it, you're going to have to realize they're going to bring their definitions into the Word. And so you're going to have to brush away, you're going to have to wash away all those definitions if they're ever going to have faith in the God of the Bible. Interesting, the expression in Spanish, I wish or I hope, is ojala. Oh, Allah. That's what it is. That's the expression. It's, I mean, that's the etymology. If you're going back to the roots, it goes way back to when the Arabs invaded Spain many, many, many years ago. And then that came into the Spanish. And so it's just, nobody's thinking of Allah when they use that expression, oh Allah. They just say, no, I hope so. No, but that's what it means. That's what it goes back to. But in my last years in Northern Mexico, I was working among Pami Indians. I never learned to speak Pami. They're very fluid in Spanish. So I was always preaching in Spanish, but there is now all of the New Testament, but when I was there, only the book of Acts existed in Palmy. So I picked up a copy of Acts in the Palmy dialect, opened it up, and looked through my Acts in my Bible, and I find every place that uses the word God. And I just turned over to that verse in Palme, even though I can't read Palme, but I turned over to that verse just to see what word I could find there that means God in Palme. And you know, when I turn over one verse, and then turn over to another verse, and turn over to another verse, I found that the word Dios, God, in Spanish, is in Palme, Dios. Well, you know what? Pame existed before Spanish ever came to Mexico. Dios is not a Pame word. They used the Spanish word in the Pame New Testament translation. Why is that? They didn't have in Pame a word for the supreme being who is God. So they just had to use the Spanish word. They had their daimonion, they had all their little different gods who were in competition, known by their specific names. They didn't have God. So, when you preach the gospel to Palmy tribe people, and you walk in there and start preaching the gospel, you need to remember that they're going to be thinking in those terms when you say God. And so you have to explain exactly who this God is and what is this God like that you are preaching about when you preach the Gospel. Now this leads us to the next thought that I want to point out to us here as we go through this. Notice how Paul developed the message of the Gospel as he went through here. If you were Paying close attention, if you think to Acts chapter 2, and compare those two in your mind, you see there's a big difference in the way Paul preached here in Athens, and the way he preached in Acts chapter 2 to Jews. To those people who were steeped in the Old Testament. He could just cite all these Old Testament quotes, and he didn't do a whole lot of explaining about who God is. Did he? Acts chapter 2. But we get here, in Athens, where they have no concept of the God of the Bible, and he devotes a huge amount of time explaining who God is, and who the God of the Bible is. His approach is entirely different. We have to remember that. He spoke to them of this unknown God. Agnóstótheo. Unknown God. Who is this God that you don't know? Let me tell you about Him. You see, you know about this and that and the other God, but let me tell you about this one that you don't know. Paul looked for, first of all, a beginning place where they did agree about something. What was that? Well, there's this God that you don't know, and He is out there. They acknowledge that much? Well, there's a starting place. One you don't know. So Paul says, let me tell you about Him. So in verse 24, he says, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. He says, this God that you don't know, He is Creator of everything. And He really doesn't need these little temples that you have all over the place. Because He doesn't dwell in a building. Verse 25, neither is worshipped with men's hands as though He needed anything, seeing that He giveth to all life and breath and all things. This God that I'm talking about, the one you don't know, He's self-sufficient. He doesn't need you or me or anything that we could do for Him. He gives us life. Very different from all those multitude of gods that you esteem so highly. Verse 26, and He is made of one blood, all nations. Oh, He's not just a God of Athens, or just a God of Greece. He's a God of all nations. He is supreme. So He's not only a ruler over your gods, but He's a ruler over the gods up in Macedonia, and the gods over in Rome, and the gods over in Asian minor, and then Israel, and it doesn't matter where you go. He says, He has made one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation. So here is a God who is sovereign. He is the first cause of life and He's the author of history and nations and rules over them all. And not only that, verse 27, that they should seek the Lord, if happily they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." He's not only a distant God, not even remote, and certainly not uncaring and unconcerned and out of contact. He's right here. He's over there, but He's right here. Verse 28 is interesting because obviously Paul did know about the connection of this altar to the unknown God and the story of Epimenides because he quotes Epimenides, one of his poems. And he quotes these words to say that the God that you don't know, These words are not really true of Zeus. They're true of the God you don't know. He says, for in Him we live and move and have our being. That's in the God you don't know. So, that's not in Zeus, the one you think you do know. He says, in Him we live and move and have our being. He's in the unknown God. Those truths are in the unknown God. As certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also His offspring. We are created by Him. And so, these characteristics, these attributes don't belong to any of your daimonia. He's saying, they belong to The Agnóstico Theó, the one you don't know. The one that I'm preaching to you and telling you all about. And so, you need to know this. The Godhead, this God, is not likened to gold or silver or stone, graven by art or man's device. He's not a man-made God and He can't be worshipped by your images. At the times of this ignorance, all of your idolatry and sin got winked at. He overlooked it. He left you. And by overlooking it, I'm not implying that he just said, oh, well, I'll forgive it or something like that. He just left you in your ignorance. He left you in your blindness, he's saying. But now, Paul is saying to them, now, the Agnostic, the unknown God, He is revealing Himself to you through the message that I am proclaiming. But now, He commands all men everywhere to repent. The Gospel is being sent unto all the world. And I, as a missionary, as one sent out, I'm preaching the Gospel everywhere I can in all the world. It's going to not just Israel only, but it's going to all nations. And now He is commanding all men everywhere to repent. He's no longer leaving the nations in ignorance and in darkness. He is revealing Himself, and He is demanding repentance, and turning from these false gods, and turning from idolatry, and turning to Him. And He says this, verse 31, He is the Judge of all men. because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom He has ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, and that He hath raised Him from the dead. This God is judge of all." So he spends a huge amount of time explaining who the true God is, if they're going to be able to come to Him. Now, is what we read in all of this a full gospel message? Well... I have to say that Paul did preach more than this. It didn't take but a couple of minutes to read the whole thing, right? And it's the same in all of the sermons that you find in Acts or in the Gospels. It doesn't take a minute or two to read the whole thing. Well, then why don't we preach 45 minutes, brother? No, he's just giving us an outline, right? He's just giving us some high points. In any of these messages that are written here for us, In the Scripture, no sermon in the Scripture is given in full detail. But Paul is showing us some emphases that Paul focused on. And shows us how important it was to make the true God known. But, let's notice some clues here too. Do you see the cross mentioned here? Well, I didn't see the cross mentioned in this. But I would tell you, He must have preached the cross here. Well, why is that? Well, you know He preached the death of Christ. Well, how do you know He preached the death of Christ? Because they say, He's preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Well, if He's preaching the resurrection of Christ, then Christ had to have died. So we know that Paul has preached unto them the death of Christ, and if he preaches the death of Christ, he preaches the cross. Now, we didn't see that he mentioned faith here, did we? But he does say that he's calling all men to repentance. Anywhere you see a full statement in all of Paul's epistles and in the book of Acts, he always joins repentance and faith together, doesn't he? You find him over in Acts chapter 20, verse 21, that he's preaching to all there, what? and it's toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. When he preached repentance, he would preach faith in Christ. And so even though Luke doesn't mention it, we know Paul did. Did he preach to the deity of Christ? I mean, we do see down here he says that God would judge the world by that man. He preached to the humanity of Christ, obviously. But did he preach to the deity of Jesus Christ? Well, you don't see it stated there where he says Jesus Christ is God manifested in the flesh. But what did the Athenians say when they heard him preaching? Remember back in verse 18? He seemed to be a setter forth of foreign deities. They understood he was talking about the deity. A deity, Jesus Christ. So He did preach the deity of Christ. He did preach the humanity of Christ. He did preach the redeeming, atoning death of Christ and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so we see as we look at all of this that He preached that God is Creator and Sustainer and Ruler and creatively the Father of all and Judge of all. And Christ is the Redeemer who died and rose again and will judge over all and is calling all men to repentance and faith. And so Paul says to them, you have been ignorant, but now the gospel has come. And you will be judged according to this gospel that you've heard. John Stott, I don't read a lot of Stott, and I disagree with him on many things, but he says a lot of good things too. And he said, we learned from Paul that we cannot preach the gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God, or the cross without the creation, or salvation without judgment. Today's world needs a bigger gospel, Stott says, the full gospel of the scripture. It's what Paul called over in Acts chapter 20, the whole counsel of God. Brethren, we don't need to reduce the gospel down to three points. Or one point. We need a bigger gospel. Preach the whole counsel of God. And as we do that, He draws men to Himself. I don't know if you know the Lord Jesus Christ personally, But the Savior that Paul was preaching there is God manifested in the flesh. He is the God-man who went to Calvary bearing the sins of His people. And as He died there on that cross, God poured out His wrath, and so condemned sin, and so judged sin, and so punished sin in a substitute. that He has sent so that He might justly forgive us and count us as righteous and a perfect substitute Jesus Christ. And He calls you to come to Him, to come to Him in repentance, to come to Him in faith. He says, any who come to Me in that way, I will in no wise cast out. Come to Jesus Christ, the one Paul preached, the one who we preach, and the one who must be declared among the heathen. I pray God will bless His word to your hearts today as we stand in the last pastor to come.