We pick up today
in the book of Acts chapter 17 where Paul is waiting in Athens for a couple of
friends of his, Timothy and Silas. Even
in Paul’s time, five centuries past it’s heyday, Athens was still the center of
Greek philosophy. It was a city full of
history, with buildings like the Parthenon that still draw tons and tons of
tourists in our day and age. Athens was
the city that so famously fought (and lost) to the city of Sparta in the
Pelloponnesian war—a war made so famous through such figures as Helen of Troy
and Archilles.
In the text today,
Paul is said to have “reasoned” or discussed what he was seeing in Athens with
both Jews and the God-fearing Greeks in the synagogue. The text says that he was greatly distressed
by the idols he saw throughout Athens. Why
was that such a big deal? Well, idols
have always been a problem for God’s people.
Instead of worshipping God they would worship these idols such as the
infamous “Golden Calf” or Asherah poles or the Baals. Whenever names like that come up, God is
never happy about them.
In the version of
the ten commandments written in Exodus 20, the first two commandments are
closely connected. First, “I am the Lord
your God. You shall have no other gods
before me.” And to make this even more
clear we read the second commandment, “You shall not make for yourself an image
in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the
waters below. You shall not bow down to
them or worship them.” In other words,
God forbids worshipping idols and, yet, throughout Athens there are idols
everywhere. Paul understood that this was
a dangerous situation for any follower of God, whether they be Jewish or
Christian. He starts discussing this
danger in the synagogue.
What is an idol? According to the second commandment from
Exodus, it seems to be something material that is worshipped as a god. And what is a “god”? According to Martin Luther in his Large
Catechism, “a god is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and
in which we are to find refuge in all need.
To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with
your whole heart.” So, an idol is a
material something that is trusted in; something that serves as a refuge in
times of crisis. It is something that we
look to for strength or for happiness when times are difficult. The city of Athens was full of idols, the
text says—made of gold, silver and stone.
What would Paul say about our city?
Or, for that matter, what would Paul say about our homes? Do we still have idols?
I took a sociology
class in college, one of those classes that I had to take because I went to a
liberal arts college. In that class, I
remember the teacher explaining that one of the ways archeologists determine
what was important to people from long ago was to look at their homes and see
what things were featured prominently.
For instance, if all the chairs are turned in a particular direction,
often there will be a shrine or altar in the corner that they are facing. In a group of pictures on the wall, the most
important will often be on the top. I’d
like you to think about your living room.
What is the most prominent feature?
In many living rooms, it’s the TV—all the couches and chairs are turned
to look at it. It’s like a little
shrine. When we are sad, we trust that
there will be something on the TV to cheer us up. When we are scared during a huge storm, we
turn on the weather channel to be warned or comforted. We are guided in many of our decisions due to
the programming we watch, whether it’s the kind of cereal we ought to buy or
for whom we ought to vote.
We live in a world full of idols
whether they be as small as i-pods or as big as tractors—in fact, I can’t
imagine that Athens had any more idols than we do today. As followers of God, we must constantly be
aware of how the material things in our world seek to pull away our allegiance
from the one true God. Some worship
money, others worship blogs, some worship their cornfields, others worship
shoes or their cars, or facebook, or cookies or even basketball. The first point Paul makes in Athens is to challenge God’s people to put their
complete trust in God rather than in all the things that seek to draw their
attention away.
But Paul doesn’t
just speak in the synagogue, to the so called “religious” people in town, soon
after, he begins to debate with two groups of unbelievers: philosophers known
as the Epicureans and the Stoics. The
epicureans believed that one found happiness by having a good time—through
sensual pleasures. “Eat, drink and be
merry!” might be their motto. On the
other hand, the Stoics, would have argued that happiness is found, not is
seeking pleasure, but in curbing one’s appetite for pleasure. According to this philosophy, happiness is
found only through self-sufficiency or, as Ralph Waldo Emerson would say,
“Rugged Individualism”.
In the synagogue,
Paul had to deal with believers who struggled with idols surrounding them. Here, Paul is dealing with unbelievers, but
the idols are just as real, it’s just that, rather than being material, they
are philosophies which, in some ways, are harder to contain. What do I mean? Well, these two philosophies are still
prevalent in today’s society and they steal a person’s faith just as easily as
any material idol ever could. In the
book, “The Prodigal God”, Tim Keller talks about the story of the Prodigal Son
as really being about two sons, both of whom have a broken relationship with
their father.
The first son, the
most famous of the two, is rather epicurean in his actions. He offends his father by asking for his
inheritance, pretty much saying, “I’d rather you were dead” and then goes off
and spends it on food and sex. The
second son, is much more stoic. He
offends his father by refusing to join in the party when his brother returns,
arguing that he’s worked hard and never received any reward—not even a young goat
to serve up at a party with his friends.
In society today,
both within and outside of the church, these two ways of thinking separate us
from God. They may not be material
idols—but we idolize these philosophies.
Some people believe that Christianity is too strict, too many rules, too
many expectations, and so they believe they will find happiness in a life of
boundaryless pleasure and experimentation.
Other’s believe that Christianity is actually not strict enough, too
tolerant, too forgiving, too focused on faith and not on action. The one group has a broken relationship with
God because they refuse to obey him. The
other group has a broken relationship with God because they try to earn their
salvation through hard work and keeping the law. Both lawlessness as well as pride can become
idols. Some of you here struggle with
finding any good reason to follow God’s laws in your life because you
figure—“God wants me to be happy right?”
Others here struggle to find any good reason to be merciful or forgiving
to those who aren’t just like them.
Acts 17:31. In America, we act just like the
Athenians. We say that we are tolerant
of everything. We have freedom of
religion after all. We are willing to
listen to anyone. We’re all worried that
we’re missing something. We are always
ready to read the latest new age book telling us about the “unknown god” that
we never knew before, or to get on the “unknown diet” that will fix our health,
or how to meet that “unknown man or woman” that will change our lives
forever. But tolerance of many ideas
doesn’t necessarily mean freedom—sometimes it just means that the truth is
harder to hear over all the noise. True
freedom is only found in Jesus Christ.
Just like the
Athenians, we are all very religious. We
worship many things, whether they are material possessions or even our own
ideas. We worship our favorite teams or
our favorite political opinions, we worship our bodies or even our sense of
pride. And the really sad thing is that
we think we can do this AND continue worshipping God. God says, “No!” “I am a jealous God. You either love me completely or you are
loving something else. You either trust
me completely or you are giving your trust to someone else.” God isn’t demanding that you get rid of your
TV’s or stop eating cookies or listen to Christian radio all day or any of
that—he simply desires to be first in your heart and first in your life—is he?
We all have
idols. The next question is, what should
we do about that? Admitting that you
have a problem is that first step and sometimes that’s all it takes to make a
change. Who’s in charge? You or that TV? Sometimes just noticing the silliness of
idolatry is enough to break yourself of a bad habit. If your heart is a little more set on your
personal idol, the next step is to focus your time in a new direction. If you just HAVE to check facebook first
thing in the morning, decide to, instead, read a chapter of your Bible first
thing in the morning instead. Just that
little change might be enough to break you of obsessive overuse and help you
reprioritize your life. Finally, in some
cases, I don’t think we need to be ashamed to get rid of something completely
when we can’t control ourselves any longer.
Idols can be very dangerous things, and if you can’t help but obsess
over your fancy new car day in and day out, if it is affecting your work, your
family and your life, trade that baby in for a beater and you might notice a
new sense of freedom that you’ve never known before. The truth is, God knows that when we place
our trust in idols, whether material or philosophical, we will end up feeling
trapped.
You may have built many idols in
your home. You may have exchanged God’s
truth for being “open” to all ideas.
Today, you are being called to give your allegieance to one God-God the
Father of Jesus Christ. Repent, turn
away from the things that have stolen your faith, and ask for forgiveness from
the only true God who can give it. If he
was unknown to you before now, hear and believe that Jesus Christ loves you and
has loved you forever. He forgives you
for sins and promises you eternal life. Don’t
let an idol or an idea steal your faith.
Repent and believe in the good news.
Amen.
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